Bette Midler Back on Broadway Spring 2013
Bette Midler will return to Broadway for the first time in over 30 years this spring in a new one-woman play by Skyfall writer John Logan.Midler will play the legendary American talent agent Sue Mengers, who represented actors including Michael Caine, Cher and Steve McQueen before retiring in 1991. She died 20 years later, age 79, having spent what seems to be a great deal of her retirement hosting glamorous industry dinners.
Aside from a one-off benefit concert in 2002, Midler hasn’t appeared on Broadway since 1980, when her concert-revue Bette! Divine Madness played at the Majestic theatre. Logan told the New York Times that the award-winning actor “was always in my mind” as he wrote the play, which is titled I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers and runs from 24 April at the Shubert theatre.
Midler made her Broadway debut in the chorus of Fiddler On the Roof in 1966, before taking over the lead role Tzeitel the following year. She has since won three Grammy and Emmy awards, four Golden Globes and a Tony award, selling more than 30m records.
Bette Midler (born December 1, 1945), also known by her informal stage name, The Divine Miss M, is an American singer-songwriter, actress, comedian, producer and entrepreneur. In a career spanning almost half a century, Midler has been nominated for two Academy Awards, and won three Grammy Awards, four Golden Globes, three Emmy Awards, and a special Tony Award. She has sold over 30 million albums worldwide.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Midler began her professional career in several Off-Off-Broadway plays prior to her engagements in Fiddler on the Roof and Salvation on Broadway in the late 1960s. She came to prominence in 1970 when she began singing in the Continental Baths, a local gay bathhouse, where she managed to build up a core following. Since then, she has released 13 studio albums as a solo artist. Throughout her career, many of her songs became hits on the record charts, including “The Rose” and “Wind Beneath My Wings” as well as her renditions of “Do You Wanna Dance?”, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “From a Distance”. In 2008, she signed a contract with Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to perform a series of shows titled Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On, which ended in January 2010.
