Bette Midler

Credit: AP; WireImage

Tom Hanks, Cyndi Lauper, Kinky Boots Among Top Tony Nominees

Originally posted 04/30/2013 09:25AM

Star power shined on Broadway this season – and some of the big names even managed to gain Tony nominations, it was announced Tuesday morning.

Among them: Tom Hanks, in the Tony-nominated best-play contender by the late Nora Ephron, Lucky Guy; Laurie Metcalf, in Sharr White's The Other Place; Cicely Tyson, in a revival of Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful; Holland Taylor, in the play about the late, outspoken Texas governor Ann Richards, written by Taylor herself, Ann; David Hyde Pierce, in Christopher Durang's best-play nominee Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike; Nathan Lane, in Douglas Carter Beane's The Nance.

In the best musical category, the nominees are Bring It On, A Christmas Story, Matilda and Kinky Boots, which received the most nominations of any show: 13, including a nod for its Cyndi Lauper-written score.

Best play contenders, besides Lucky Guy and the side-splitting homage to Chekhov, Vanya, are Richard Greenberg's The Assembled Parties and Colm Tólbin's The Testament of Mary.

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Credit: Reuters/Landov

Bette Midler Blasts Lady Gaga Over Mermaid Routine

Originally posted 07/19/2011 07:25PM

It's a battle of the divas.

Bette Midler was less than impressed when Lady Gaga rolled onto stage in a wheelchair and dressed as a mermaid in a show last week in Australia.

"I've been doing singing mermaid in a wheelchair since 1980-You can keep the meat dress and the firecracker t--s," Midler tells Gaga in one of several Tweets. "Mermaid's mine."

But soon Midler has a change of heart. In another Tweet, she writes, "Let's drink this over at the Emmys in September. Fabulous mermaids can coexist!"
– Dahvi Shira.

Credit: Johnny Nunez/WireImage

Good Deeds

50 Cent Collaborates with Bette Midler

Originally posted 11/04/2008 09:00AM

Odd couple alert!

What could 50 Cent and Bette Midler possibly have in common? Plenty, it turns out.

The two joined forces Monday to celebrate the opening of "The Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson Community Garden" in Queens, New York.

"I called and nagged him," Midler said, describing how she got 50 Cent involved with the garden. "His G-Unity Foundation gives a million dollars away every year in grants to non profits all over the city ... They're just brilliant."

The garden (the most recent endeavor for Midler’s New York Restoration Project) is located in Jamaica, Queens, where the rapper grew up. It will mainly serve as a living classroom for neighborhood school children to learn about how food grows.

"I wish I had this to come to when I was growing up around here," he said. "The opportunity to create this garden for the youth and the community is a great one."

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Good Deeds

Katie Couric Joins Bette Midler in Sing-Along

Originally posted 05/23/2008 11:30AM

Two children of the '60s – Bette Midler and Katie Couric – got down and dirty, and pretty groovy, for Midler's fundraiser for the New York Restoration Project, which the Divine Miss M established in 1995 to help green up the city. The goal: to plant one million trees in the five boroughs by 2017.

"To walk under the branches of a tree that you have planted connects you to the roots of our past and the aspirations of our future," Midler says of the project.

And speaking of roots, she and Couric – who introduces their appearance in this video – dug deep into their adolescent pasts for a song medley they delivered sing-along style at the gathering earlier this week: Petula Clark's "Downtown," the Beatles' "When I'm 64" and, from the American tribal rock musical Hair, "The Age of Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine." Peace.
– Stephen M. Silverman

TV: Geena, Bette Score

Originally posted 07/15/1998 12:00AM