Watch Bette Midler’s Life in Looks, From Hocus Pocus to The First Wives Club

♪ Oh you gotta wear a wig, wig, wig, wig, wig ♪

♪ If you wanna be famous ♪

♪ You gotta wear a wig, wig, wig, wig, wig ♪

♪ If you wanna be smart ♪

♪ Because a wig will hide the worst of all your features ♪

♪ Yes a wig will really help you play the part ♪

[jazz music]

Hello, I'm Bette Midler,

and this is part of my life, in Looks.

Okay, this costume was made by a woman named Pat Zipprodt.

She was the costumer for Fiddler on the Roof.

Fiddler on the Roof was just a phenomenon, in New York.

And on this show,

I met a hairdresser named William Hennessy.

And he became my best friend.

His customers called him Mr. G, and I became Ms. M.

He started calling me Ms. M, when I was in this show.

And he became one of my best friends.

When I was finally asked to do my act, my 20-minute act,

in a bathhouse in New York City,

he filled in the gay gaps that I didn't really understand,

and we wrote jokes together,

and he was my bestie for many, many years.

Here I am with Barry Manilow,

who turned out to be the greatest musical director

I ever could have found at this point.

It was just an accident.

He found the same things funny that I found funny.

And, he had a vast musical knowledge

of all kinds of pop music,

and he would make suggestions,

and I would make suggestions, and he never said, No.

He never said, That song stinks, don't do it.

I am wearing a hot pink sequined gown,

with a pair of platform shoes,

I was one of the early adopters of platform shoes,

and I remember going to Paris for the first time

in 1974 with my platform shoes and my tight little jeans,

and my little chubby fur,

and, fake fur, and I remember being surrounded by a group

of school children, in uniforms.

And they were all laughing at me and pointing at my shoes,

and I couldn't figure out,

was I too early, or was I too late?

Because you know how the French are.

This is, from the movie, Beaches.

CC's character has very big bold looks,

and some of those costumes were [laughs] my own!

And some of them, I went to a thrift shop in Santa Monica,

and bought, and they were Cher's.

They were Cher's old wardrobe.

When we were doing the press for that show,

for this movie, I told them that.

Of course nobody believed me but it was really true.

In certain scenes I'm wearing Cher's old wardrobe.

In the scene with the white dress,

that is Christian Lacroix, when he was at Patou.

I ran over there, and I was in Paris,

I ran over there, and I got a whole bunch of stuff.

One of my dearest friends,

a guy named Bob DeMora who was a costumer,

he was the costumer on this picture,

and in the middle of the picture his partner got sick.

And was, you know,

was diagnosed with AIDS and he left the picture.

This whole picture was a blessing and a joy to make

but it had sorrowful moments too.

Yeah, this movie really spoke to people,

and yeah, the first time I saw it I wept copious tears.

My daughter didn't see it until she was about,

I would say maybe 17.

It undid her too.

It's a love story.

And,

it has everything.

Here's a joyful moment. [lively jazz music]

And this is one of the great highlights of my life

because this, was built by

my friend the costumer, Bob DeMora.

It's an apron, it went over it's little leotard thing.

This was was Johnny Carson's last show.

He was

so,

so important in my life.

He pushed me

along,

and gave me such a big break.

I never expected him to be so kind.

And it's so funny because still to this day,

people still come up to me on the street and say,

I love what you did for Johnny Carson.

He was so loved, so beloved,

and I personally thought he left too soon.

This is one of the highlights of my life

and I'm talking as a woman who's had a lot of highlights.

I've been very lucky.

This of course, is the great Winifred Sanderson,

of the Sanderson sisters,

the first Hocus Pocus movie, costumed by Mary Vogt,

and the palette she chose was blues and greens, and purples.

And I told my people, my hair and make-up people

that I wanted to look like the Red Queen,

in Alice in Wonderland.

I wanted the hair to be this certain shape,

this sort of heart-shaped, and I wanted to have no eyebrows,

and I wanted to have just little tiny, little red specks,

and have just two little,

I actually designed that make-up myself.

And I was very, very proud of it.

The nails are very curved, and the teeth,

and I wanted the teeth as well.

So we found Kevin Haney who built the teeth,

the costume is sensational but my feeling was

that the wig really sold it.

You know, that the triangle on my shaped face,

and these streaks of blonde, and the hair,

and the little blonde halo around the face,

really lit the face up.

She's such a scenery tour, and she's so unapologetic.

She's not exactly cruel,

but she does have a real mean streak.

And, I just loved her.

While she is very, very tough,

she does have that vulnerable side

and she is insecure, and she does get weepy, you know?

She's, it's just got that close to the surface.

That's the thing about comedy.

It's only a quarter of an inch away from tragedy.

This picture is the poster of the movie,

and we got suits, and we got cigars.

And I must say, we all look terrific.

This is one of the most fun shoots I ever had.

This was what they decided on.

This was what the advertising people decided

we should look like, but really in the movie

we didn't look like this at all.

The first picture I made, which was The Rose,

I wore my own hair, and I practically went bald,

so I decided Oh, it's wigs for me.

So every time I make a picture, I start with the hair.

If I don't have the hair right, I don't have the character.

I simply just don't have the character.

And the last image is those white suits,

which became iconic.

I was really, really, surprised.

When I first saw myself, oh noway!

White shoes?

That's like rule number one in show business.

Make your feet look big. [laughing]

But they talked my into it.

Let's see, what's next?

This is Bathhouse Betty, this was a sort of homage

to Mae West, because she was about my size,

and she stood on an orange crate

so that she looked really tall.

She insisted on looking tall, she always wore platforms.

And this was made for me by Bob DeMora.

I always told him, Bob, you gotta make me look tall.

Well!

I have this organization

called New York Restoration Project.

We clean in green parks and underserved neighborhoods

all over New York City,

and every year we would do a Halloween party.

I did 25 years of Halloween parties,

and I gotta say, I tried everything!

This, is my homage to the chef world.

I was supposed to wear an entirely different costume,

but I got a black eye, the night, not the night,

yeah, I got a black eye the night before the gala,

and I had to adjust, I had to improvise.

I sent my husband down to the uniform store

to get a pair of chef's pants and a chef's outfit,

and kitchen clogs, and this is what we came up with.

Let me point out to you that I'm wearing Crocs.

I think the Crocs really sell,

the idea.

You know, it's the time of the celebrity chefs.

And I thought, well why not?

You had to wear Crocs, that's what they wore.

And of course, don't forget the cleaver. [laughs]

A cleaver doesn't hurt either.

Oh, my!

Here I am with Marc Jacobs.

He made this for me, it's a custom order.

I went down to the studio and I looked at fabrics.

I think that we decided, 'cause it was wheels,

these wheels sort of spoke to the theme.

And the head dress seemed to speak to it too.

It came in a green, it came in a purple, and I chose this

because I was just showing gray hair at the time,

and I thought, mm, gray.

So, these are the gray years.

Well this was a real triumph!

This was my costume for Hello Dolly.

She always wears red, and the set is always red,

and this is by Santo Loquasto,

for the last great production of Hello Dolly on Broadway,

which was a very big, big hit for me.

I have to say, those were the greatest bunch of actors

and dancers and singers that I ever worked with in my life.

Absolutely fantastic, I loved it!

For my efforts I was rewarded with a Tony.

And Michael Kors, he made this dress for me,

another custom order,

and he was really, really happy to do it.

I think it's a great dress.

The only thing I wish is, I wish I'd wore my silver hair.

I think I'm wearing a wig here too.

I wish I had worn my silver hair.

But, hey, easy come, easy go.

Here I am with my brilliant daughter, Sophie Von Haselberg,

and,

Michael Kors in the back, at the Met Ball.

This was the camp theme,

and I can't imagine why he invited me to be his guest,

but we had a lot of fun on this.

He wanted to do butterflies,

for me, and fire for my daughter.

We really enjoyed the fittings

because we've worked with Lance,

and Michael for many, many years.

I've done a lot of his benefits,

and we love each other so much.

We go back and forth, back and forth.

And I think this is a fantastic costume.

I think I wanted the netting a little bit lower,

I wanted a little more cleavage,

I think it had been higher and I asked for it to be lower,

because I want to show my assets.

I don't think that there's anyone who can define camp.

I will be quite honest with you.

Camp is such an ephemeral word, it's a word

that means something different to every single person.

I mean, I've read notes on camp 55 times,

I still don't know what she's talking about.

Camp to me is, it's an attitude,

but it's also a kind of a joyousness in the ridiculous.

That's what I think.

Did I get to keep the outfit?

Are you crazy?

Of course I kept the outfit.

I mean that was actually a part of the package.

Come let's go to the Met Ball, and you can keep the dress!

Okay!

Okay.

This dress is Pam Dennis, and the Kennedy Center Honors,

is absolutely the cherry on the cake in this country.

So I was determined to show off the medal,

and I noticed, in looking at the pictures of past medals,

that if you didn't wear something plain as your background,

you wouldn't see the medal.

I called Pam Dennis for this, and she said,

Oh, it's either got to be either black or white.

She made me a black dress,

and she made me the same dress in white.

And, I was doing fittings with her,

down in the garment district, with a man who makes pleating.

The premier pleater,

in,

Manhattan.

I've worked with magical, magical people.

And I have to say, it has been a blessed life.

It really has been, it's been,

I have, how did this happen to me?

Are you sure I'm not dreaming?

I wake up every day and I say that.

This has to be a dream.

[mellow jazz music]

And that was my life in Looks.

Thank you for having me,

that was so much fun!