bette midler mermaid tour

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Divine Madness

Movie comedy queen Bette Midler reigns supreme in this rocking, rolling concert movie bash. The Divine Miss M at her trashiest, flashiest, heavenly best! Movie comedy queen Bette Midler reigns supreme in this rocking, rolling concert movie bash. The Divine Miss M at her trashiest, flashiest, heavenly best! Movie comedy queen Bette Midler reigns supreme in this rocking, rolling concert movie bash. The Divine Miss M at her trashiest, flashiest, heavenly best!

• Michael Ritchie
• Jerry Blatt
• Bette Midler
• Bruce Vilanch
• Jocelyn Brown
• 8 User reviews
• 9 Critic reviews
• 1 nomination

• The Harlettes
• Band Vocals

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia The 94 minute theatrical cut of this film was edited from around 185 hours of footage equating to about one million feet of exposed film.
• Alternate versions Home video version does not include two songs, "Rainbow Sleeve" and "Shiver Me Timbers", which were heard in the theatrical version.
• Connections Featured in Sneak Previews: Divine Madness/Willie & Phil/The Great Santini/Ordinary People/Middle Age Crazy (1980)
• Soundtracks Big Noise from Winnetka Written by Ray Bauduc , Bob Crosby , Bob Haggart and Gil Rodin Performed by Bette Midler

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• Runtime 1 hour 35 minutes

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1978 – Bette Midler As Delores DeLago The Mermaid – World Tour

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Divine Madness [DVD]

• Prime Video $3.59 — $9.99
• VHS Tape $2.55

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IN 1980, THE HEAD USHER AT THE PASADENA CIVIC AUDITORIUM GIVESHIS CREW A PEP TALK: HE WANTS TONIGHT'SBETTY MIDLERSHOW TOGO SMOOTHLY

Audacious, brazen, funny, and perhaps the unconscious inspiration for Madonna's shows, Divine Madness makes an absolute spectacle of itself. Bette Midler's raunchy, entertaining persona is on high in this concert film filmed in Pasadena. Midler tells dirty jokes, berates herself and the audience, and most of all belts out (some may say shrieks out) covers of Bruce Springsteen and rock and swing classics. Somewhere between "Everything's Comin' Up Roses" and "Vogue," Midler seems a bridge between eras, that of burlesque, do-anything-to-please-'em showmanship and shocking, pyrotechnic exhibitionism and aloofness. (A hint at just how old this 1980 movie feels, Midler unabashedly makes a reference to Georgie Jessel!) Directed by Michael Ritchie, whose Smile and The Bad New Bears were interesting takes on America, Divine is also a slice of the American experience. It's dirty enough to be fun and clean enough to stay just this side of bawdy. That used to be a fine American tradition. Note: The songs "Shiver Me Timbers" and "Rainbow Sleeve," which appeared in the theatrical release of this picture, are not included in this DVD. That's a shame because with Midler, more is more. --Keith Simanton

Product details

• Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 2.35:1
• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ R (Restricted)
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 5.38 x 0.6 inches; 2.4 ounces
• Director ‏ : ‎ Michael Ritchie
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC, Letterboxed
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 35 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ January 1, 1980
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Bette Midler, Jocelyn Brown, Ula Hedwig, Diva Gray, Irving Sudrow
• Language ‏ : ‎ English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Warner Home Video
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0790742039
• Writers ‏ : ‎ Bette Midler, Bruce Vilanch, Jerry Blatt
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #1,547 in Performing Arts (Movies & TV)
• #3,478 in Music Videos & Concerts (Movies & TV)
• #5,117 in Special Interests (Movies & TV)

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 72% 11% 8% 5% 4% 72%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 72% 11% 8% 5% 4% 11%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 72% 11% 8% 5% 4% 8%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 72% 11% 8% 5% 4% 5%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 72% 11% 8% 5% 4% 4%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the movie entertaining, funny, and a great performance. They describe the talent as phenomenal and the quality as genuine. However, some customers have reported that the DVD quality is not as good as the video.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the movie entertaining. They say it's a great concert film, with great tunes.

" This is so good . I watch it over and over again, and now I think she sang rather well in it (in hindsight)...." Read more

"...on Divine Madness, especially during the 2nd half, is classics, unforgettable Bette . I recommend the DVD to any Bette Midler fan." Read more

"It brought back memories of our youth . Oh! those wild and crazy days. Bette is great in all she does." Read more

"...Bette at her best. She's bawdy, raunchy tireless and genuine. She gives her all to every song. No one does it better." Read more

Customers find the humor in the movie funny. They say Bette Midler is a great comedian and they enjoy this side of her.

"...it as she talks about the mundane things of life and sarcastically turns everything into humor . The music is WONDERFUL...." Read more

"...The jokes are dated, but funny all the same and I did enjoy seeing her in her early days, before all of the Disney movies and chart topping hits of..." Read more

"...of Granular Inhalants, KILLS in this manic display of music, comedy and euphoria ...." Read more

"Bette midler is a great comedian and you will enjoy this side of her. Bette has boundless energy and you'll enjoy it." Read more

Customers find the talent in the movie phenomenal. They say the performances are some of the best they have ever seen.

"...He performances are some of the best I have ever seen, and the polish and grace she brings to the stage are unequalled by any other performer alive..." Read more

"Divine Madness is one of her best concert appearances and this DVD shows nearly all of it...." Read more

"...Well, this movie shows you how great cocaine created a great talent ...." Read more

"Great concert film, great performance , they need to do a full edition including songs cut out due to theatrical running time." Read more

Customers are satisfied with the quality of the movie. They mention it's genuine and an excellent purchase.

"...Bette at her best. She's bawdy, raunchy tireless and genuine . She gives her all to every song. No one does it better." Read more

"...The dvd was shipped quickly,was in excellent condition ,packed very well,of all her shows,this one is by far one outstanding show!..." Read more

" Excellent purchase !" Read more

"Outstanding with both delivery and quality of purchase ." Read more

Customers appreciate the voice quality of the movie. They mention Bette has a wonderful voice and the music is wonderful.

"...The music is WONDERFUL . The energy she projects awes me. She takes nothing seriously, even herself...." Read more

"Funny and great tunes.Bette as a wonderful voice !" Read more

"...like her being wild and crazy she should have just sang she has a beautiful voice and she is funny" Read more

Customers are dissatisfied with the DVD quality of the movie. They mention it's not as good as the video and they are disappointed with it.

"I had to attend a NA meeting after viewing this wonderful movie. It's not brilliant , but its got its moments...." Read more

"I got the VHS copy also the DVD quality is not as good as the video" Read more

"I was very disappointed with this DVD . Thank God she grew up sometime after this DVD was produced.." Read more

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Bette Midler doesn’t miss a beat amid her Divine Intervention tour

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Bette Midler knows what’s expected of her onstage in 2015.

“I have to sing well, and I have to have a great band,” she said recently. “But my audience, they’ve known me at this point for 50 years. Whether I show up in a fishtail or not, I don’t think it matters to them.”

The fishtail, of course, is a reference to her character Delores DeLago, the mermaid in a wheelchair who (mostly) sits out Midler’s new show. So what does it mean for this veteran entertainer to skip one of her most famous bits?

“It means I had to fill 20 minutes,” she answered with a throaty laugh.

As quick with a quip as ever, Midler, 69, sat down in Hollywood for a chatty interview between rehearsals for what she’s calling the Divine Intervention tour, which hits Southern California this week with concerts Thursday at Staples Center and Friday at Honda Center in Anaheim.

The road show, Midler’s first in a decade, follows the release last year of “It’s the Girls!,” a studio album collecting the singer’s vivid renditions of songs by girl groups from the Boswell Sisters to TLC.

Given that it brought Midler back to music after a stretch spent primarily focused on acting (most notably in the acclaimed Broadway play “I’ll Eat You Last,” about the late talent agent Sue Mengers), “It’s the Girls!” could be thought to have set the table for the tour. Yet Midler admitted she had another, more pressing reason for heading out on the road now.

“I’m old,” she said. “I don’t know how much longer I can do it.”

She also knows that, at a moment when records don’t sell the way they used to, touring is key for performers, even the veterans. “Streisand, McCartney, Mick and the Stones — they all do well,” she said. “People come out for their shows.”

As for more current pop, Midler said she keeps up with what’s happening and recognizes something of her famously eclectic approach in the work of Kelly Clarkson and Bruno Mars (who, like Midler, was born and raised in Honolulu).

“But I don’t feel like I’m really in the swim,” she said, her golden-blond hair slicked back against her head. “I’m sort of on the shoals, just treading water. But I’m comfortable with that.”

For her new concert, Midler said she was after something “smaller and a bit more intimate” than her last production, which she put on at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas beginning in 2008.

“That show was gigantic. I could never top it,” she said. Asked whether she enjoyed the Vegas experience, Midler replied, “I enjoyed it up to a point. Then it was like, ‘Who do you have to sleep with to get out of here?’”

Her stint in Sin City overlapped with the late-’00s economic crash, which hit the rapidly developing town especially hard. “The construction cranes stopped in the middle of the night, and everybody walked off the job,” she recalled. “People with those subprime mortgages just got in their cars and left. I’d never seen anything like it.”

Those on the glittering Strip weren’t insulated from the damage. By the middle of her show’s second year, Midler said, empty seats began creeping forward from the back of the auditorium. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this never happened to me in my life.’” Promoters asked to put her on a three-day week, which she couldn’t afford to do. “I had to pay everybody in the show, which was very, very expensive.” Midler finished out the gig in early 2010, but it left a mark.

“I still have $75,000 worth of pantyhose that nobody ever wore,” she said. “Can I offer them to you?”

Olivier Goulet, one of the creative minds behind her new traveling show, said the concept this time was to “bring the theater to arenas,” which the production seeks to accomplish with a proscenium arch that doubles as a surface for various state-of-the-art projections. There are also elaborate costumes and custom choreography by Toni Basil. Yet the focus, Goulet insisted, is Midler herself.

“I wanted to do some new songs, and I wanted to hear a blasting band behind me,” the singer said. “I hired some horns and a real funk rhythm section, which is interesting because I’m not really a funkmeister. But I have my dreams.”

Those new songs include selections from “It’s the Girls!,” which is a far more imaginative record than it might’ve been. For many artists late in their careers, the covers album is where inspiration goes to die (or at least retire).

Yet unlike, say, Rod Stewart’s snoozy series of Great American Songbook discs, Midler’s project puts across real feeling for its material — no surprise, perhaps, given that she’s been doing girl-group tunes since her 1972 debut, “The Divine Miss M,” which paid homage to the Dixie Cups and the Andrews Sisters.

The album, produced by Marc Shaiman, also makes unlikely connections between styles, as in a country-fried take on the Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love” and TLC’s mid-’90s R&B hit “Waterfalls,” remade here as a mournful supper-club ballad.

Midler said that interpretive ability has always come naturally to her, in large part because of her childhood in Hawaii, where pop radio in the 1950s “was about 10 years behind the time.”

So although she “came of age in the rock ‘n’ roll world,” as she put it, she’d earlier been exposed to music from the ‘20s and ‘30s. “I’m really a bridge,” she said.

And where does that bridge lead next? She’d like to make a jazz record, she said, and sing with an orchestra, something she got a taste of at the Academy Awards in 2014 when she performed “Wind Beneath My Wings” during the annual “In Memoriam” sequence. (Look for a spoof, with Delores DeLago in an important role, at Staples.)

“You haven’t heard anything until you’ve stood in front of 90 pieces,” Midler said. “The sound was like a wave.”

Or maybe she’ll go in a different direction. “I know a lot of Hawaiian music, which I never sang,” she said. “Somebody call Bruno!”

:: Bette Midler

Where: Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday

Tickets: $42-$307

Info: https://www.axs.com

Where: Honda Center, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim

When: 8 p.m. Friday

Info: https://www.ticketmaster.com

[email protected]

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Bette Midler and Laughing at Disability

July 2, 2014.

I grew when there was no ADA, no social media, and no role models for young, female wheelchair users. Then in the late ’60s, along came Bette Midler , whose music I’d first discovered on the radio. I immediately bought some of her albums (vinyl records then), but it wasn’t until I saw her in concert that I learned that disability was something I could laugh about.

I’ll never forget it: Bette Midler zipping around the stage in an electric wheelchair, with palm trees rising from the back of the chair and dangling coconuts right where she could caress them. In that wheelchair, she danced, she sang and she told (mostly raunchy) jokes.

Did I mention she was wearing a mermaid costume, with her fin/legs stretched out on the footrests? At one point during a song, Bette Midler slipped out of the wheelchair onto the floor — the zaniest wheelchair transfer I’ve ever seen. She got herself back into the chair, mid-song, without using her legs, err, fin.

Delores De Lago, the Toast of Chicago, aka the mermaid, aka Bette Midler, debuted during the singer’s 1978 world concert tour. When it was over, she wrote a book about the adventure, which she recently re-released.

In “A View From A Broad” (Simon & Schuster), the entertainer describes Delores De Lago as “a woman of tremendous ambition and absolutely no pride at all; a woman of tremendous determination and absolutely no skill; a woman of the grandest notions and not the simplest hint of taste.

“Who else would but a woman like that would dream up an act as a mermaid cavorting about the stage in an electric wheelchair, complete with swaying palms and trick coconuts? … Yes, Delores is a pretty tough cookie. But, then, I have a weakness for tough cookies.”

This from the singer who sometimes opened her show as a patient in a hospital bed, which was not, she wrote, “a cheap and tasteless plea for audience sympathy … but rather a bold foray into the political arena which contained within its small but swollen framework, a thoughtful, even angry cry for socialized medicine.”

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Bette Midler lights up KeyArena | Concert review

Bette Midler lit up KeyArena with a racy, megawatt performance Monday, June 1, that included ‘girl group’ songs from her recent album as well as a retrospective of her career.

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Concert review.

Sassy, brassy, but not always classy, the veteran singer, dancer and comedian Bette Midler offered a megawatt performance Monday (June 1) at KeyArena.

The capacity crowd was with her all the way, clapping, cheering and hoisting cellphones during a retrospective show spanning a career that began in the 1970s with her debut album, “The Divine Miss M.”

Wearing a short pink dress, Midler, 69, opened with “Divine Intervention,” “I Look Good” and “I’ve Still Got My Health” -— colorful songs that reflected her energy and radiance.

“Don’t I look good tonight?” she crowed, adding, “Everything you see up here is real.”

Midler was backed by more than a dozen musicians and three singer-dancers who wore as many different costumes as she.

The sets, production, choreography and lighting were as elaborate as those of a Lady Gaga performance. But the bawdy humor was classic vaudeville.

The girl-group classic “Tell Him” kicked off a tribute to all-female groups that featured such songs as TLC’s “Waterfalls” and the Andrews Sisters’ “Bei Mir Bist Du Schon,” a childhood favorite.

A hilarious segment lampooned today’s obsession with social media.

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“I could kill myself for not having the brains to monetize my sex life,” she quipped before displaying a series of fictional selfies showing her in bed with Richard Nixon, Vladimir Putin, Chris Christie and the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady (“I was the first to suggest that he might want to deflate his balls,” she said).

Midler bemoaned the long reach of social media and what she called “a perfect storm of useless information.”

“I miss being unreachable,” she said. “Remember when people were afraid of being followed?”

Midler saluted her comic mermaid character “Delores Delago,” which she “retired” last year, in song and video, and belted out a powerful “Beast of Burden” dedicated to Mick Jagger. And she sang a lovely version of the classic ballad, “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.”

Midler closed with “The Rose,” “From a Distance” and “Stay With Me,” a song of unrequited love that has evolved into a poignant lament about those who have passed from her life.

Midler returned for her signature “Wind Beneath My Wings” before ending with the boisterous “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.”

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Bette midler on her favorite costumes and starting her performing career “in rags, literally”.

The multitalented star, who’ll receive the Distinguished Collaborator honor at the Costume Designers Guild Awards, says, “I’m a sucker for a costume that can do more than one thing.”

By Degen Pener

Degen Pener

Deputy Editor

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At the 25th Costume Designers Guild Awards (CDGAs) on Feb. 27 at L.A.’s Fairmont Century Plaza, special honorees will include costume designers Deborah L. Scott ( Avatar: The Way of Water ) and Rachael M. Stanley ( Sabrina the Teenage Witch , Ally McBeal ); Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Oscar nominee Angela Bassett, who will receive the Spotlight Award; and Bette Midler , who will be recognized with the Distinguished Collaborator Award .

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Midler got an early taste of the work that goes into costume design when she made her Broadway debut in 1967 as Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof . “I started my performing life in rags, literally,” she recalls. “When I played on Broadway in Fiddler on the Roof in the ’60s, I had the chance to examine costumes made by a master, the great Pat Zipprodt. Every piece of clothing was aged, and the skirts were weighted so that they hung properly on the body and moved beautifully during the dances. I had never seen such care and attention to detail, and it made a huge impression on me. I realized costume could carry character a long way, and certainly that it could affect audiences without them quite knowing why.”

Over her storied career, she’s worked with many of the greats in the field of costume design including Robert DeMora, Theoni V. Aldredge, Rosanna Norton, Albert Wolsky and Bob Mackie.

Most recently, she paired up with designer Sal Perez, a 2023 CDGA nominee for Hocus Pocus 2 , on updating the sumptuous dress that her character Winifred Sanderson wore in the original 1993 film. “It’s so exciting for him, and he is a just doll,” says Midler of Perez. “We had so much fun, and although audiences have been familiar with that Mary Vogt costume for 30 years, it needed that extra Sal Perez touch of love to update it. He added sparkling stones, a ton of hand painting, plenty of layers of chiffon in very intense colors, and wool for warmth, because we were in Rhode Island in the winter. I adore that costume, although it takes 45 minutes to get into!”

Asked to name some of her favorite costumes of her storied career, she says, “I’ve loved them all, really. That said, I loved  Hocus Pocus , everything I wore in Santo Loquasto’s Hello Dolly [on Broadway], Ann Roth’s caftan for Sue Mengers in I’ll Eat You Last , and Constance Hoffman’s costumes for The Showgirl Must Go On [Vegas residency] and Kiss My Brass [concert tour], especially my ‘Tattoo’ dress.  Brilliant and beautiful.”

When it boils down to, says Midler — having collaborated with so many talented costumers over the years — is “respect. I love all handicrafts. My mom was brilliant. She made all our clothes for years. So when I meet a costume designer, I know that they come with huge stores of knowledge of fabric, construction, history, psychology, decoration … and I respect that knowledge. They always know more than you.”

As for what she will wear to accept the CDGA Distinguished Collaborator Award on Monday night, Midler was undecided 12 days before, but teased, “I’m still trying to come up with something worthy of the occasion! Maybe I’ll wear something from the archive!”

A version of this story first appeared in the Feb. 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe .

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