Music and screen legend Bette Midler will be performing at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow on Monday, July 13, reports Faron Stalker.
To put you in the mood for the gig, here are 20 amazing Bette Midler facts to impress your mates with.
1. Bette Midler is a woman of many talents. She is a celebrated singer, songwriter, actress, comedian, dancer, and producer.
2. Bette was named after Hollywood actress Bette Davis, and her sisters, Susan and Judy, are named after other Hollywood stars, Susan Hayward and Judy Garland.
3. As a young girl in Hawaii, Bette worked at a pineapple processing plant.
4. Before becoming the multi-talented performer she is today, Bette Midler says that she was very “inward” as a child. “You wouldn't believe it but I was very shy, stayed by myself, read a lot, lived very much in my head ... in my daydreams.”
5. At school, Bette Midler was voted “Most Talkative” and “Most Dramatic” by her classmates.
6. Midler first adopted her stage name, The Divine Miss M, while performing a weekly cabaret at the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse in New York, often accompanied by the then unknown Barry Manilow.
7. Mick Jagger made an appearance at one of Bette Midler’s performances at the Continental Baths.
8. Midler won a GRAMMY award for her very first album, The Divine Miss M, which was released in 1972.
9. In many interviews, Midler has credited the Andrews Sisters as her idols and inspirations.
10. Midler’s first movie was The Rose, in which she played a drug-addicted rock star modeled after Janis Joplin. For this role, she was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe.
11. Many of Bette Midler’s songs topped the charts such as her renditions of The Rose, Wind Beneath My Wings, Do You Wanna Dance?, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and From a Distance.
12. Midler has lent her voice to many animated characters including a wooden spoon and a snobby poodle.
13. Midler married artist Martin Rochus Sebastian von Haselberg in 1984 and an Elvis impersonator was the officiator of the wedding.
14. Bette Midler sang alongside Michaell Jackson, Lionel Richie, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel and many more in the charity single We Are the World in 1985.
15. Midler’s not-for-profit organization, the New York Restoration Project, that helps to restore green areas in low-income neighborhoods, has planted over a million trees in New York City since its founding in 1995.
16. From 2008 to 2010, Bette Midler performed a series of shows that she called Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On at the popular Roman-themed resort and casino, Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
17. Her 25th album, released November 2014, is a tribute to girl groups and features covers ranging from the 1930s group, the Andrews Sisters to the 1990s group TLC.
18. Like Taylor Swift and many other artists, Bette Midler has taken a stand against Spotify and Pandora for the unfair compensation artists receive from these music-streaming sites.
19. Throughout her career, Bette has won three Grammy Awards, four Golden Globes, three Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award, and has been nominated for two Academy Awards.
20. The last time Bette Midler performed in the UK was over 35 years ago. On July 13, her Divine Intervention Tour reaches Scotland at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro.
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