Authors: Mark Bego
When it came time for casting, Mazursky had Richard Dreyfuss in mind for the role of Dave Whiteman. “I met with Richard,” he explains, “and definitely wanted him as Dave, but I didn’t want to commit until I knew who would play his wife and vice versa. The same is true of the actor who would play Jerry. These things are very tricky” (
8
).
Mazursky’s first choice for the part of Jerry was Jack Nicholson. “He read the script,” says Paul, “but it became quite evident within a few weeks that there was to be no clear starting date for another project of his,
The Two Jakes
[which ended up being postponed]. By then I had already cast Richard Dreyfuss, and when Richard read the script, he suggested Nick Nolte [to play Jerry]. I’d already had that idea, so it was good to have the confirmation” (
104
).
Next came the casting of the role of Barbara Whiteman. “For the wife,” explains Mazursky, “I thought about Dyan Cannon, or Cher, but decided on Bette Midler, because the casting would be funnier. It would be a surprise. When I told the studio executives, they were ecstatic” (
104
).
Bette had never met Mazursky, and when he contacted her and set up a meeting to discuss the possibility of doing the film, she didn’t know what to expect. “I thought I was going to meet some silver-haired Hollywood type,” says Midler, “but Paul turned out to be an ex-stand-up comic, a guy with whom I had an instant rapport” (
97
).
Paul recalls their meeting. It was not the wild and crazy Divine Miss M who showed up that day, but a very modest Bette. When Mazursky described the film role, it was Bette who had misgivings. “Do you think I’d be real?” she asked shyly. Says Mazursky, “Pretty soon she lit a cigarette and was relaxed. I knew she’d be funny” (
104
).
Although she didn’t think that the part of Barbara Whiteman had anything to do with herself, something about the role and the opportunity
appealed to her. “I don’t consider myself even remotely a Beverly Hills matron,” she explains, “although I certainly know what they’re like. And I sort of appreciate them, too, in a way that a lot of people don’t. I find them amusing and colorful. They try to be exotic flowers—daisies trying to be orchids. And I like people who try to get better, even if it’s only in a physical sense” (
18
).
The film was originally called
Jerry Saved from Drowning
, but a month before filming began, the title was changed. According to Mazursky, he changed his mind one night with his card-playing buddies. “At the poker game I play once a week with people not in the movie business, I mentioned the title and everybody thought it was some rescue movie, like
The Poseidon Adventure”
(
104
). And so the film became
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
.
Both Bette Midler and Nick Nolte did extensive research for their roles in the film. Nolte spent several hours at the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles dressed as a bum, to try and understand the part. According to him, “Three months prior to the start of production, I started to get into character by letting my personal appearance go. I stopped bathing, and I no longer brushed my teeth or combed my hair” (
8
).
Bette’s role preparation was quite the opposite experience. “I walked all around Beverly Hills, and I shopped until I was blue,” she laughs. “I decorated, I went to lunch at the Rodeo Collection and met all kinds of people. I met landscapers, pest-control people, and dry cleaners. You’d be amazed at how much the people who work in the backstage of the rich and famous know about the people who are actually on the stage. I also spent some time with ladies who actually live the guru life. You know, rather wealthy women who are in search of fulfillment. Barbara Whiteman is an amalgam of all those ladies. They’re fabulous people in their own way. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be in a world where they don’t exist” (
8
).
Before the cameras rolled, Mazursky insisted upon rehearsing every scene thoroughly. Recalled Midler, “We rehearsed for three weeks. If you’re doing a stage production, that’s not a lot, but it’s a lot for pictures. It was a big help—a tremendous help. We knew each other, and we knew what the relationships were. We had explored all that, even to the point of knowing what our blocking would be” (
8
).
“I have no real empathy for matrons who don’t have a lot to do with themselves,” she continued. “You know the type—so much time on
their hands and no real imagination. However, Paul showed me what was wonderful about Barbara and how to make her amusing. Barbara Whiteman is a soul in torment. The reason it’s funny is that she really doesn’t have anything to be in torment about. She has a lovely family, lots of money, and the freedom to do whatever she wants to do, and yet she feels unfulfilled. She’s a character who’s searching blindly for the way to live her life. She’s nothing if not an explorer of the psyche and—trends, she loves a trend” (
8
).
“I was able to bring my own saltiness to the role,” she went on to say. “Barbara is quite cynical and more than a little angry. I have those elements in my own personality, but the rest is totally new to me. I’ve never worn clothes like this, or nails like this. The whole visual thing is completely different from my own life, and I can’t tell you how bizarre it is to be playing a woman with grown kids” (
8
).
One of the most unique aspects of the casting of
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
was that Midler, Dreyfuss, and Nolte all had reputations in Hollywood for having personal problems that spilled over into their movie careers. Principal photography began on May 20, 1985, and on the set, Mazursky fondly referred to his stars as “the Betty Ford Kids”—after the famed rehabilitation clinic (
100
).
“That hurt our feelings,” said Bette, who had to admit, “We all had these strange reputations. I was supposed to be impossible to work with, Richard had certain drug or alcohol-related problems, and God only knows what they said about Nick” (
100
). Nolte had a reputation as a heavy drinker.
One of the most amusing ironies about the production was that it was produced by Touchstone Films, which at the time was the new adult division of Disney Films. Imagine the raunchy Miss M’s surprise to awaken one day and find herself a Disney employee. The outrageous singer who exposed her breasts was suddenly working shoulder-to-shoulder with Mickey and Minnie Mouse! This was the film that marked the beginning of a long and very creatively productive phase of her film career.
“I never tell people I’m working for Disney,” exclaimed Bette at the time. “Walt would roll over in his grave! If I hadn’t made my name practically taking my clothes off and being bawdy, I’d be delighted to work for the straight Disney guys. I grew up watching Dumbo and those movies. And Hayley Mills—I was crazy about her” (
101
).
Recalls Mazursky, the entire cast really projected themselves into
their roles. While Midler was in Beverly Hills studying the lives of rich matrons, Nolte was wearing bum’s clothes and wandering the streets. “He started wearing those clothes for two or three weeks. All during the rehearsal he didn’t shower. He sort of . . . became Jerry. In rehearsals he didn’t immediately snap out of it. He’d walk off by himself and sit in a corner. I remember Bette looking at him as if to say, ‘Is he all right?’ But this was really what I wanted. I tried to create an atmosphere in rehearsal that would really make them believe that what was going on was actually happening. That’s good. I think comedy has to be [more real] than drama” (
105
).
The result of the pleasurable working relationship between Midler, Nolte, Dreyfuss, and Mazursky was an instant hit when it was released in January 1986. According to Bette, being a member of an ensemble rather than being the lead character was a welcome change of pace. “That’s why
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
was such a relief for me,” she said. “Paul wants everyone to get in the spirit of the silliness. I can generate that kind of silliness myself, in my shows, but at home I don’t because I’m too beat. So it’s nice when somebody else is the clown and the host for a change” (
97
).
Although he was gregarious and charming, Mazursky ran a tight ship. “With Bette’s problems and Richard Dreyfuss’s problems, perhaps we should have filmed at the Betty Ford Center. Instead I made it clear that if either stepped out of line, they would be replaced,” he later admitted. In fact, said Paul of Bette, “She managed to pull Richard Dreyfuss and Nick Nolte out of their shells” (
8
).
David Whiteman (Dreyfus) became wealthy in the wire coat hanger business. So wealthy is he that he lives the lush life in Beverly Hills, drives a Rolls Royce, and even his dog—Matisse—has its own psychiatrist. His wife, Barbara (Midler), employs both a nutritionist and a personal guru. She hasn’t had an orgasm in ages. And David and Barbara’s two teenage children are already having their own separate identity crises.
David saves Jerry (Nolte) from drowning himself in David’s immaculate backyard swimming pool. Much to the shock of Barbara, David decides to move the rescued bum into their house until Jerry gets his act together. In the ensuing action, Jerry, the bum, ends up improving the lives of each member of the Whiteman family. They come to find out that, although financially broke, Jerry is rich in wisdom, and much more so than any of the members of the Whiteman household.
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
has a lot in common with the classic William Powell and Carole Lombard comedy
My Man Godfrey
(1936). As Godfrey, Powell goes from living under the 59th Street Bridge to owning a ritzy bar under the 59th Street Bridge. In many ways, this is the 1980s West Coast version of that tale.
Jerry plants charm and wisdom everywhere he goes. And before he is finished, he has slept with every female under the Whitemans’ roof—including their maid. And, yes—thanks to Jerry—by the end of the film, Bette’s Barbara comically achieves her elusive orgasm.
In another delightful twist of casting, rock star Little Richard co-starred as one of the Whitemans’ neighbors. His appearance further upped the ante for zaniness.
Midler fans and critics alike were surprised and delighted with the amusingly restrained Miss M on the screen in the hilarious comedy role. “I was holding back as much as I knew how,” she explained. “When I saw the picture, I thought I was in a Jerry Lewis movie—I looked like I walked in from another set” (
18
).
The critics and moviegoers alike loved this film. Even fussy Roger Ebert in the
Chicago Sun Times
gave the film four stars (out of four) and proclaimed,
“Down and Out in Beverly Hills
made me laugh longer and louder than any film I’ve seen in a long time” (
106
).
Time
magazine’s Richard Schickel claimed, “The old film that
Down and Out
most consistently evokes is Mazursky’s own
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
, also a nervously ambiguous but hilariously etched caricature of the bourgeois at self-improving play. . . . on a basically farcical level where it chooses to stay, it is a funny and likable movie” (
107
).
One of the most complimentary reviews that Bette received for
Down and Out
came in the
News and Observer
in Raleigh, North Carolina—a town she once performed in while she was still a fledgling singer wishing for fame and fortune. “[The film] gives Miss Midler a chance to catch up with her image, proving that she’s an actress as well as a star. That’s what she dreamed about when she was playing clubs like the old Frog and Nightgown in Raleigh. She’s achieved what she set out to achieve” (
108
).
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
represented a rebirth in Bette Midler’s career. After years of playing the role of a star who had to shock, stun, and amaze her audiences time and time again, she suddenly found she was a bigger star than ever in a role that required her to tone herself down.
In January of 1985, Bette went on
The Tonight Show
as Johnny Carson’s guest and sang a song from her
Mud Will Be Flung Tonight
album. The song was the self-parodying “Fat As I Am.” In the song Bette sang that “they could park a DC-10 on my rear.” It just so happened that three of the millions of people watching the show that night were brothers David and Jerry Zucker and their business partner Jim Abrahams. They were busy developing a film property that they were going to direct for Touchstone Films, called
Ruthless People
. Zucker, Zucker, and Abrahams had become famous for their first hit comedy,
Airplane!
(1980), which starred Robert Hayes and Julie Haggarty. According to Abrahams, “We knew she would be perfect” for the role of out-of-shape Barbara Stone in
Ruthless People
(
109
).
When
Desperately Seeking Susan
became a huge box-office hit in the spring of 1985, however, Disney decided that it wanted to sign that film’s big star—Madonna—to play Barbara Stone. Disney/Touchstone had already signed Danny DeVito for the part of Sam Stone, and it was going to be a bit of a stretch for Madonna to play his wife of fifteen years, but the role was the only one the studio had available. Happily for Bette, Madonna instead went on to film the huge box-office disappointment
Shanghai Surprise
(1986).
By October, Zucker, Zucker, and Abrahams still did not have a female star. According to a November 1, 1985, item in
Variety
headlined, “Disney’s People Still Searching for Femme Lead,” “Both Madonna and Bette Midler’s names have been bandied about, but Madonna is rumored to be pregnant and Midler reportedly is not interested” (
8
). Well, Madonna was not pregnant, and Bette was interested. She was signed for the role, and in January 1986, before
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
even opened, she was in front of the cameras, doing her second Disney/Touchstone film.
The film was originally called
Would Anyone Please Kill My Wife?
and is about a man who plots to murder his obnoxious spouse.
Ruthless People
ended up being one of the funniest movies of the past ten years. It is filled with plot twists involving mistaken identities, sharp dialogue, and snappy performances by the entire cast. As in
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
, Bette accepted a role that was not the lead. Instead she is part of an ensemble effort that includes Danny DeVito, Anita Morris, Judge Reinhold, and Helen Slater.