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Midler Announces Second Leg of Tourimdb.comSinger and actress Bette Midler has announced a second leg of her hugely successful Kiss My Brass! tour. The Grammy winner's additional dates will kick off on September 30 at the Verizon Arena in Manchester, New Hampshire, and will include a four-night stint at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The first leg of Kiss My Brass! was 2003's most successful North American tour, averaging almost $1 million per night at the box office. The second leg of the tour will make 31 stops in cities across North America and will end in Denver, Colorado, on December 10.

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Liz SmithNY Post BETTE MIDLER called in to pump her returning "Kiss My Brass" concert, which plays Radio City Music Hall Oct. 13-17. "Maybe I should call it 'Kiss My Brass Again!' " she said. "It's not really different from what it was before, just sort of 'fluffed up' to keep things timely in terms of current events. I change numbers sometimes. People remember 'One for My Baby,' which I did on Carson's last show, so I give 'em that. I go with how I feel. I regale my audience with the vicissitudes of my career, which I consider an ongoing art project which I must comment on; the good times and the many, many disasters.""Oh, but Bette, you've had mostly great times; they outweigh the bad," we said."Yes, you're right, I've been blessed," she said. "But complaining is funnier."Midler seemed downright emotional when I told her that her 1991 movie, "For the Boys," had been on TV a lot recently, and that it was great. (Bette garnered an Oscar nod for this tale of a TV star-USO entertainer, but the box office was weak.) "You're kidding? It's been on? A lot? Oh, that's so great. You know that was a heartbreak, but . . . I guess I have to be grateful it's there to be seen." We spoke of Donna Summer, who was such a sensation at last year's Hulaween bash to benefit Bette's fabulous New York Restoration Project. (This year's event happens Oct. 26 at the Marriott Marquis.) "Was she the greatest, or what? I want to bring her back again. She is the dearest, sweetest person. And that voice! It's from God." (Indeed, when Summer opened her mouth to sing, the audience gasped ? it was a disco world again.)Midler's latest Restoration Project was the building of the first boat house on Harlem River Drive, which will include all sorts of special activities for local residents.Any movies in the works? "Scripts come in, and I look, naturally. I think 'The Stepford Wives' turned out well, though it was a rough shoot, I won't lie."Rough how? "Oh, it just was, you know . . . my focus is the Restoration Project, my concerts and records, like the Rosemary Clooney CD. Movies are great. But I have plenty to do."

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Ted C. of E!

 

..Out 'n' unveiled, too, was Ms. K.'s Stepford Wives costar...

 

Bette Midler, reliving her youth at a Prince concert. Wachovia Center, Philly. Adopting a tame rocker guise, B.M., sans makeup, pulled together a brown leathuh jacket over a turquoise tee paired with jeans and blue-tinted shades. With the semihaughty Ms. M. were a posse of younger amigos . Though Bette-love wasn't signing autographs, she did shake a few hands and chat some folks up. When Prince emerged onstage, B.M. let forth with screams and hurrahs and boogied like a feverish 16-year-old.

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Filth2Go.comThis past weekend, I was back east with the Divine Miss M, who started up the fall leg of her hugely successful tour ? Kiss My Brass. Even if you saw this show earlier in the year, it?s definitely worth checking out again (but that?s coming from someone who could see Bette Midler every minute of every day ? yes, I think I scare her just a little bit). The show is better than ever, and Bette has added some new material ? including an extension of the ?Chapel of Love? sequence and an homage to Britney Spears? marriage called The Britney Bunch.

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NY PostLiz SmithBETTE MIDLER's Radio City Music Hall tix are flying! Some would love the Divine One to extend her limited run. After all, Cher's been "extended" for three years!

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NY Daily NewsA high-level Bette Midler sighting How serious is the Divine Miss M about the "divine" part of her moniker?So serious, it seems, that the 60-year-old diva spent Easter weekend communing with her spirituality in the remote Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, a country of fewer than 1 million inhabitants nestled high in the Himalayas between India and Tibet.Lowdown's Katherine Thomson was there, too, and passed within inches of a Midler look-alike while making the three-hour zigzag climb up the sheer face of the mountain — endless stairs with no railings and a 1,000-foot drop — on the way to Tiger's Nest, a Buddhist monastery built into a cliff.Later, a guide explained to Thomson and her fellow hikers: "It's some American singer or actress. You passed her on the trail today and you were all too busy taking pictures to notice."The locals had already been whispering that Miss M was in town, reportedly staying in the $1,000-a-night Aman resort in the city of Paro — where a private jet, apparently Midler's, was parked conspicuously at Bhutan's lone airport, and took off the first thing Monday morning. (There is only one commercial flight from Bangkok every other day.)Midler's flack had no comment.

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Midler's 'Showgirl' goes on in Vegas

 

By RYAN NAKASHIMA, Associated Press WriterWed Feb 20, 7:31 AM ET

 

Bette Midler unfurls the big feather boa Wednesday in her Las Vegas show, "The Showgirl Must Go On," a sassy musical reprise of the best hits and worst jokes from her decades in show biz.

 

The glitzy production, backed by a 13-piece orchestra and 22 rhinestone-studded showgirls, opens with a computer-animated sequence of a whirlwind barreling down the Las Vegas Strip. Some 90 minutes later it ends with Midler towering high above stage on a platform and singing her Grammy-winning "Wind Beneath My Wings."

 

In between, a boisterous Midler intersperses her songs with plenty of gutter-ball humor, as seen during a full dress rehearsal before 4,300 invited guests Monday night at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

 

Midler entered the stage in a sparkly silver pant suit atop a burro before breaking into a classic Las Vegas-style showgirl number.

 

Tired and panting afterward, she kept the crowd laughing.

 

"Oh my God, I'm exhausted," she said in a mock collapse. "See, that's what happens when you do your own singing."

 

Wednesday's grand opening is the start of a two-and-a-half year, 200-show engagement at the stage once filled by Celine Dion, before she embarked on a worldwide tour for her album, "Taking Chances."

 

It marks the 62-year-old Midler's first major live performance run since her "Kiss My Brass" tour in Australia in 2005.

 

Midler worked with gusto, recreating such hits as the song that launched her career, "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," from 1973, and many others: "Do You Want to Dance?" (1972), "From a Distance" (1990) and even an upbeat bola-swinging version of "My Way."

 

She frequently joked at the size of the stage, at one point equating a walk to stage right to moving into another ZIP code. "If I have to cross this stage one more time, I'll have a stroke," she said.

 

Midler had a half-dozen costume changes and broke out many of the signature characters from over the years, such as Dolores DeLago, the singing mermaid on a wheelchair, and the crass joke-teller in a nightgown, Soph. She also poked fun at today's troubled young celebrities, including Britney Spears and Spears' pregnant teenage sister, Jamie Lynn before declaring herself the front-runner as a trashy party girl.

 

Along with the "Caesars Salad Girls" roster of dancers ("each and every one a tomato"), Midler got backup singing from three recent graduates of a famed school, for which she was pleased to spell the acronym, the Staggering Harlette Institute of Technology.

 

Various forms of the Harlettes have long been back up singers for the Divine Miss M, who got her start in show business in the 1966 movie epic "Hawaii." She later landed on Broadway in "Fidler on the Roof" and in the 1970s, thrilled the gay clientele at New York's Continental Baths with her trashy sass and Barry Manilow on piano. She went on to win four Grammys, an Emmy and star in movies such as "Beaches," "Ruthless People" and "The Stepford Wives."

 

The $95 million Colosseum was custom-made for Dion's run, which began in March 2003, played to nearly 3 million fans and grossed more than $400 million over five years. For Midler, the stage was shortened and its rake, or incline toward the audience, was flattened, allowing more than 100 seats to be added, at a cost of $5 million.

 

Nearly $20 million was spent on the production, and more than that was guaranteed for Midler herself, said John Meglen, the president of Concerts West, an AEG Live company that books talent for Caesars. Midler shares the Colosseum with Elton John on different nights and then with Cher, starting May 6.

 

Tickets, ranging from $95-$250 for Midler's first run of 19 shows, are more than 90 percent sold through mid-March, Meglen said, and are available through Ticketmaster. She performs five nights a week.

 

"She was right, we're paying her a lot of money. But you know, Bette's worth it," he said.

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Bette Midler has given the thumbs-up to Broadway's "Passing Strange." After taking in the musical at the Belasco Theatre, the Divine Miss M ventured backstage and told the cast that she hopes the show "runs forever."

 

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Bette Midler returns to the stage and screen

 

They just don't make entertainers like they used to and, at 62, Bette Midler should know.

 

Midler is experiencing what she calls a "boomlet," or a career mini-boom. She has replaced Celine Dion in a two-year singing engagement in Las Vegas and is co-starring with Helen Hunt in "Then She Found Me," her first film in three years which was released on Friday.

 

The all-around entertainer told Reuters that juggling acting with singing, cracking jokes and strutting on her tiny high-heeled shoes across one the world's largest stages on the Vegas Strip are skills from another era.

 

"You could say I am the people's diva, I am like the last one left," she said in a recent interview. "I just think you have to do everything.

 

"I am like the last of another breed."

 

The American singer, actress, comedian and one time go-go dancer, who launched her career in a Broadway production of "Fiddler on the Roof" and once played a Manhattan gay bathhouse with Barry Manilow, lamented the loss of "full service entertainers." She joked she should set up a "diva boot camp."

 

She said some modern performers were so stiff and interacted so little that audiences might be forgiven for thinking "they are looking at a gigantic television set."

 

In "Then She Found Me," Midler plays a gregarious television show host mother of a demure schoolteacher played by Hunt. She said Hunt, who directed the film, hounded the two-time Oscar nominee to be in the film, then asked her to tone down her famed bawdy antics. Midler was nominated for 1979's "The Rose" and 1991's "For The Boys."

 

"She nagged me," she said. "She wanted me to be much lower key than what I usually am. I was a little nervous about that, but I think she was right."

 

Midler has acted in only a few films in the past decade after starring in a raft of films in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including "Ruthless People" and "Beaches."

 

"There is a cycle to it and you are hot for 10 years and then ... you do what you do," she said. "I have been very lucky because I have my own shows that I really love to do and my own music that I have been singing since I was a kid."

 

But she had once hoped for more dramatic roles after her star-making turn in "The Rose."

 

"I was really hoping I would go on that path but it didn't turn out for me, you know, " she said. "They didn't really know what to do with me -- and then I arrived in comedy."

 

While she doubts she will ever return to Broadway with its punishing eight-shows a week schedule, she says she still gets a kick out of show business.

 

"When it really belongs to me, when I own it and the house is in my hands, I do, I love it," she said.

 

(Editing by Jackie Frank)

 

Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited

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Bette Midler's Wedding Wait

 

Bette Midler waited 24 years to get her wedding photos back.

 

The 'Beaches' actress wed husband Martin von Haselberg in a Las Vegas ceremony conducted by an Elvis impersonator in 1984 but they didn't have any photographic evidence from their union until last year.

 

She said: "We only got our wedding pictures back last year after 24 years. I got a letter from a guy saying, 'I'm closing my chapel and I thought you would like these.'

 

"He sent us our pictures and we looked like children, even though we were quite old. I was 37, Martin was a couple of years younger, and all his hair is dark, no grey hairs. I'm a redhead. My hair is silver now, but you can't tell. It was frivolous to do it there with an Elvis impersonator but it was a whim."

 

Bette admits she and Martin - who have one daughter together - have had to work hard at their marriage but have always been determined to make it last.

 

The 63-year-old star added to Britain's Seven magazine: "There were plenty of times we felt like throwing in the towel because it was so hard, with my working. But we kept putting one foot in front of the other. It was hard. We kept plodding along and each success you have within the framework of the marriage you build on."

 

Source: femalefirst

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Bette Midler Admires British Men

 

Bette Midler says British men are "hot".

 

The American actress-and-singer has been spending time in the UK recently, and admits she is amazed by how good looking some of the guys are.

 

She said: "There are some real hotties. I've seen some really hot men over here, I really have. There is this look a lot of them have, the long messy hair - that's cute. But hey, I'm 63!"

 

Bette is happily married to Martin von Haselberg - who she wed in a ceremony in Las Vegan conducted by an Elvis impersonator in 1984 - but recently revealed she waited years to get copies of her wedding photos.

 

She said: "We only got our wedding pictures back last year after 24 years. I got a letter from a guy saying, 'I'm closing my chapel and I thought you would like these.'

 

"He sent us our pictures and we looked like children, even though we were quite old. I was 37, Martin was a couple of years younger, and all his hair is dark, no grey hairs. I'm a redhead. My hair is silver now, but you can't tell. It was frivolous to do it there with an Elvis impersonator but it was a whim."

 

Source: monstersandcritics.com

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Midler To Close Vegas Residency In January

 

Veteran entertainer BETTE MIDLER will bring the curtain down on her Las Vegas residency in January (10).

 

The Hollywood singer/actress has been a regular at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino since debuting The Showgirl Must Go On in February 2008.

 

But she will perform the show for the last time on 31 January, it was announced on Thursday (05Nov09).

In a statement, Midler says, "What a fabulous two years this has been...

 

"These legs have had such a great run in the desert - it may be time to haul them to places with more humidity and fewer slot machines."

 

Midler is bringing the Sin City show to an end so she can head back into the recording studio to compile an album of love songs.

 

Source contactmusic

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