Authors: Mark Bego
When Stephen comes back into her life, again she refuses him. Stephen’s world is dining at the Plaza Hotel. Hers is drinking at the local seedy bar with her friends. Bette’s best scenes with her daughter come after Jenny (Trini Alvarado) becomes a teenager. That is also the point at which the mother-daughter problems between them escalate.
It is very funny to see working-class Bette running up a dress for her daughter on the sewing machine, so that Jenny can “look like that Madonna girl.” There is also a touching sequence with Bette singing “California Dreamin’ ” a cappella with Trini. These scenes establish the obviously deep-flowing love that Stella feels for her daughter.
At one point in the film, Stella clashes with a snooty member of the local school board (Eileen Brennan). Afterward, Stella says to her, “I think you probably haven’t had a good lay in years. I think your legs have been together longer than the Lennon Sisters.”
When Stella is arrested in a barroom brawl, the mother she previously clashed with sees her being led to the paddy wagon. It is followed by a sad sequence in which no one comes to Jenny’s sixteenth birthday party—a party she had so looked forward to throwing. The only “guests” who do show consist of a carload of teenage boys driving by and “mooning” the apartment. Perceptively, Stella comes to realize that she is ruining her teenage daughter’s life.
She then gets a look at the kind of boys Jenny is hanging out with. A pre-stardom Ben Stiller appears here as a punkish older boy—Jim—that Jenny brings home to meet her mother. Stella sees up close how Jenny’s fate will be as bad as hers, if she doesn’t do something to help.
Desperate for money, Stella hits the streets, selling Nancy Lee cosmetics.
One of her more amusing sequences is during this door-to-door saleswoman phase in Stella’s forlorn life.
However, Jenny’s life is tempered by the kind of existence she experiences while visiting her father in New York City. Stephen Dallas is a successful doctor, and his girlfriend, Janis (Marsha Mason), is a successful editor. When Jenny visits them, she is exposed to a completely different life and a new class of suitors. It becomes an emotional tug-of-war on Christmas Eve for Jenny to have to choose between a night at Mom’s slum-like apartment or Dad’s truly dazzling party.
One of the most memorable sequences occurs after a credit card shows up in the mail. Stella takes Jenny on a trip to Florida to surprise the aristocratic boy Jenny is in love with. The love affair is undone after Stella makes a fool of herself at a beachside bar, dressed like a crazed floozy. A suddenly blonde Stella proceeds to cause a wild scene, lubricated by
waaaaaay
too many cocktails. In this crazy scene, Stella is dressed in a blue ruffled nightmare of a dress that not even Vicki Eydie would be caught dead wearing.
Later, relaxing by the ocean, Stella overhears two girls laughing to themselves, “You know that ‘thing’ we saw in the bar this morning? You know who that is? That’s Jenny Claire’s mother! Can you believe that? I thought it must have been Pee Wee Herman’s wife or something!” The scene is largely played off Bette’s sinking face.
The World Trade Center is seen in an “establishment” shot, when Jenny goes to New York City to stay with her dad.
Realizing that Jenny would be better off living with her father, Stella launches a plan for the ultimate self-sacrifice. Unexpectedly, she shows up in New York City at Janice’s office, and in a woman-to-woman conversation, she plots Jenny’s future. One of Bette’s best dramatic scenes is with Marsha Mason, where she plans to have Jenny go and live with her father. It is sharp, touching, and emotion-filled.
Naturally, Jenny refuses to consider leaving her mother. So, Stella sets up a scenario to discourage Jenny from staying with her, by embarrassing her and hurting her feelings. By claiming that she is in love with her drunken slob of a boyfriend, Ed, Stella drives Jenny away.
The film ends with a truly tear-jerking scene of Stella watching Jenny’s wedding, while standing in the pouring rain outside Tavern on the Green. It is a weepy, melodramatic story of maternal sacrifice. The wedding scene does, however, walk a fine line between being touchingly sentimental and completely sappy. Through it all,
Stella
is a great ensemble
film, a well-paced drama, and Bette really did throw herself into becoming the character.
As the credits roll, Bette sings her only song in the film, “One More Cheer.” It was produced by Arif Mardin and written by Jay Gurska and Paul Gordon. There was no soundtrack album released.
Bette admitted that she did have her misgivings about doing
Stella
to begin with. However, it was a great deal for her. According to her, “They told me to do it. Jeffrey [Katzenberg] had it in his mind to do it for a long time: he always loved it. He got a wonderful script, and Sam Goldwyn had the rights to it because it was his father’s picture. Jeffrey paid buckets for it, so I read it, and it’s a good script. I don’t exactly do what they tell me without putting up a fight, but I couldn’t say ‘no’ to this because he paid so much money for it” (
131
).
When it was released in 1990, the critics either loved it or hated it. Mainly, they hated it. Roger Ebert, in the
Chicago Sun Times
, was one of the few reviewers who really liked it, giving it three and a half stars (out of four). According to his review, “Every charge you can make against this movie is probably true—it’s cornball, manipulative, unlikely, sentimental and shameless. But once the lights go down and the performances begin, none of those things really matter, because this
Stella
has a quality that many more sophisticated films lack: It makes us really care about its characters. . . . There are scenes here of great difficulty, which Midler plays wonderfully; the scene, for example, where she goes to Marsha Mason’s office to ask if Jenny can come to live with Mason and Collins. . . .
Stella
is the kind of movie that works you over and leaves you feeling good, unless you absolutely steel yourself against it. Go to sneer. Stay to weep” (
132
).
His long-time sparring partner, Gene Siskell, in the
Chicago Tribune
, had the opposite opinion when he wrote, “Bette Midler stars in a laughably bad remake of
Stella Dallas
, the story of a working-class mother who sacrificed her own future for that of her daughter. Stephen Collins is wildly miscast as the man who loves Midler, and Trini Alvarado is too contemporary for the dated character of the daughter. Nothing—absolutely nothing—works here in this shoddy soap opera” (
133
).
Stanley Kauffman, in the
New Republic
, really ripped into Bette by stating, “Come back, Bette Midler. She is a true original. Why does she spend her time copying others? Especially since she’s not doing it very well. She made her reputation, outside singing, as a rude, anticonventional comedienne. But her last film,
Beaches
, and her latest,
Stella
, are
mainline tearjerkers. . . . In fact, she once announced plans for a film on the life of Lotte Lenya. Where is it? Where is anything other than her two latest films? They’re not only dreadful in themselves, they debase her talent” (
134
).
Stella
was something of a disappointment at the box office. However, Bette didn’t take a lot of time to dwell on its outcome. She was busy with several other projects.
While the film was still in theaters across America, on February 21 the song “Wind beneath My Wings” won the Song of the Year at the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards. The award went to the writers of the song, Larry Henley and Jeff Silbar. Bette herself won the Grammy Award for the Record of the Year, marking the fourth time she had one of the trophies. Furthermore, Bette’s performance of her winning song was used to close the show that night.
On April 22, 1990, Bette was one of the stars on the ABC-TV broadcast of its
Earth Day Special
. Other stars who appeared on the telecast included Robin Williams, Barbra Streisand, and Quincy Jones.
It had been seven years since Bette Midler had released an album of music that wasn’t tied to a movie soundtrack. When it came time for Bette to go into the recording studio to record her twelfth album,
Some People’s Lives
, she did so with longtime producer Arif Mardin at the helm.
With regard to her ability to choose the right songs to record, Midler claimed at the time, “I know right away if it moves me, it’ll move the public. That has always been my criterion. I have been pressured at points by my label to record this or record that, and I’ve had terrible, terrible flops . . . so I stopped doing it for the most part. . . . I think that’s bullshit” (
40
).
According to Ahmet Ertegun, the president of Atlantic Records, Midler often derails herself. “She was her own worst enemy when it came to recording, because she had so many doubts about everything,” he explained. “The reason for some of her albums not doing well was that there was no real marriage between her and her producers. I think finally we found Arif Mardin, who is the right person to bring out of her what’s in her. She’s very, very anxious to do her best, and nothing sounds like her best to her, so it has been a very tough procedure” (
40
).
Some People’s Lives
is an excellent Bette Midler album. Though it tends to center itself on pop ballads, the diva sounds great, and she can be heard stretching herself into a couple of jazz standards. While the
song “Miss Otis Regrets” is presented here as a game bit of fun, there aren’t any real Divine Miss M excursions into the outrageous found on this album. Instead, she reaches for touching love songs. Two of the best performances on this album are the ballad “The Girl Is On to You” and the medley of Rogers & Hart’s “He Was Too Good to Me” with the contemporary “Since You Stayed Here.”
The album opens with a quirky little song that sounds like a rhyme to jump rope to, called “One More Round.” It leads into the sentimental Janis Ian ballad “Some People’s Lives.” On the jazzy side of things, Bette is especially effective on “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” which features a tenor sax solo by Nino Tempo.
However, the album’s real masterpiece is Bette’s recording of the Julie Gold composition “From a Distance.” The song is an emotional epic, which finds Miss M backed up vocally by former Harlette Charlotte Crossley, Cissy Houston of the Sweet Inspirations, and the Radio Choir of New Hope Baptist Church of Newark, New Jersey. “From a Distance” is a song of pacifism; it was unforeseeable that America would get into a Middle Eastern military conflict at the same time that the single version of this song was released.
Swept up into the whole Desert Storm 1990–1991 conflict, Bette’s recording of “From a Distance” captured the hearts and minds of radio programmers and record buyers alike. Within weeks, Bette had the second-hottest single recording of her entire career. Between November 1990 and January 1991, the song was in the American Top 10, peaking at Number 2 the week of December 15. The single alone sold over a million copies and was certified Platinum in America. In the United Kingdom it peaked at Number 6.
The album ultimately sold two million copies in America alone. Hot on the heels of what she had done with the
Beaches
soundtrack and “The Wind beneath My Wings” the year before, Bette Midler again had an incredibly hot hit single and a multi-Platinum album. In America,
Some People’s Lives
reached Number 6 in America and Number 5 in the U.K.
In February of 1991, Midler was back in movie theaters. Her next screen role was in Paul Mazursky’s lunatic comedy
Scenes from a Mall
. The film found her cast as a Beverly Hills relationship counselor, encountering some problems in her own marriage. Starring opposite her was one of her favorite leading men, Woody Allen. According to her, “It was the most fun I ever had in my life. During filming, I’d get up
every day and say, ‘I’m going to see Woody,’ and I’d jump into makeup and run out there and wait to hear what he was going to say next. He was really magical to work with” (
27
).
She also confessed, “I hadn’t had a crush like that since I married my husband. . . . I love to scream and laugh, and that’s why I fell so in love with Woody. I would laugh and laugh. I would pee! I would have to go and change my diaper. I swear to God!” (
40
)
Scenes from a Mall
is a very quirky, but highly amusing film, produced and directed by Paul Mazursky of
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
fame. Bette loved working with Mazursky—who also makes a cameo appearance—and she had high hopes for the project. This film again mocks the shallow culture of Los Angeles; this time it’s a married couple at each other’s throats at a shopping mall.
The action takes place at the Beverly Center, a shopping mall in the Beverly Hills area, which—in reality—is an odd conglomeration of stores. The regular department stores—Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s—share mall space with high-end jewelry stores, sushi bars, and designer boutiques. (
Scenes from a Mall
was filmed at Stamford Town Center in Stamford, Connecticut, as well as at the Beverly Center.)
Bette plays psychologist Debra Feingold-Fifer. She and her husband, Nick Fifer (Woody Allen), are about to celebrate their sixteenth wedding anniversary that evening. They drive to the mall to purchase clothes, food, and gifts for the anniversary party. However, as they find themselves trapped at the shopping mall, one comic series of mishaps after another transpires. In addition, a white-faced mime (Bill Irwin) seems to follow them wherever they go, mocking their misadventures. The obnoxious mime is played by Bill Irwin, whom Midler had presented on her
Mondo Beyondo
TV special in 1988. He was later to find fame in the 2000 hit film
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas
, as Cindy Lou Who’s father.
At the mall, after a sushi lunch, Nick admits to his wife that he has been having affair. It is the Christmas season, and Debra is actively promoting her new book about marriage,
I Do! I Do! I Do!
In fact, at the mall’s Waldenbooks store, a promotional clip about her book plays over and over again. True to her marriage therapist stature, at first she instinctively attempts to digest the news of her husband’s infidelity intellectually.