Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, as a member of the only Jewish family in a Polynesian neighborhood, Midler early on showed an interest in singing and acting. Having worked briefly in a pineapple cannery, she moved to New York in the '60s to try her luck in showbiz, following in the footsteps of her namesake, Bette Davis. Midler landed a role in the chorus of Broadway's long-running hit Fiddler on the Roof and eventually gained a lead role. She developed a nightclub act that included comedy and singing of a variety of kinds of material, including show tunes, pophits, and even a takeoff on The Andrew Sisters. Bawdy, brassy, and rambunctious, she told dirty jokes and belted out songs in Manhattan's Continental Baths in 1971, and she became a campy cult figure on the local gay scene. Her appearances on David Frost's show, The Tonight show, and in nightclubs exploded into hit pop albums. She was signed to Atlantic Records and released The Divine Miss M (1972), which went gold and included a Top Ten single cover of The Andrew Sisters' Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. The album Bette Midler (1973) was similarly successful. 

Midler's album sales fell off during the rest of the '70s, though her records always reached the Top 100 in the album chart. But for 1979's The Rose, her impressive first starring movie role (loosely based on Janis Joplin), Midler snapped up an Oscar nomination and a Grammy for the title song. 1980 saw the release of Midler's concert film, Divine Madness, and her best-selling book, A View from a Broad. 

Her film career over the next several years was characterized by the name of her next film, Jinxed (1982), a major flop, and subsequent records didn't fare well. Midler made a cinematic comeback in the mid-eighties with Disney comedies such as Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), and Ruthless People (1986) , and she parlayed those successes into a production company of her own, but it wasn't until 1989 that she had another pop hit, when her version of Wind Beneath My Wings from her film Beaches (1988) became a number one hit. This rejuvenated her singing career, and 1990's Some People's Lives became a Top Ten, million-selling album, with the song From a Distance hitting number two. Midler was less popular in a couple of tearjerkers that followed, e.g. Stella (1990) but she did earn a 1992 Academy Award nomination for her role in For the Boys, the soundtrack album to which was also a gold-selling hit. The album Bathhouse Betty would follow in 1998.

Her Good-bye To Johnny Carson in 1992 was rewarded with an Emmy, and in 1993, her Experience the Divine concerts sold out for six straight weeks at Radio City Music Hall. 1995 delivered up an uncredited role in Get Shorty, and the following year, Midler joined Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton to round out the full-tilt cast of cast-off wives of the revenge comedy The First Wives Club (1996). Their teaming was so successful, in fact, that the triumvirate is considering teaming up for Avon Ladies of the Amazon, a story based on the phenomenal popularity of Avon products in the jungles of South America. Midler played another first wife whose romantic sentiments for her ex-husband are rekindled at their daughter’s wedding in That Old Feeling (1997).

 

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