A Divine Time Was Had by All

The Scene: Bette Midler’s opening night concert at the Universal Amphitheater with a benefit reception for 500 afterward in the lobby. The long awaited show arrived in L.A. (“Sodom and Gomorrah with cable,” as Midler called the city in the show) as part of a 29-city tour that ends New Year’s Eve in San Francisco. “I wanted to see the country,” said the singer after she performed. “I wanted to find a place to move.”

Who Was There: Midler’s writer, Bruce Vilanch, said it was pandemonium after the performance. Backstage was “like an awards show” with celebrities paying respects. Among “the American Express Gold Card ticket-holders,” as Midler referred to them, were Meryl Streep, Patrick Swayze, Raquel Welch, Laura Dern, Lew and Edie Wasserman, Sid and Lorraine Sheinberg, Kirk Douglas, Terry and Jane Semel, Hugh Hefner, Wendy and Leonard Goldberg, L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan, Rick Nicita, Eli Broad, Dominick Dunne and Lily Tomlin, who said Midler’s performing is “one of a handful of reasons for her being. She’s born to do it.”

The Scene in the Lobby: While waiting for the Divine, things got a little tense. Until Midler arrived from backstage, there was much glancing at watches and calculating how long could be spent sipping champagne on a school night.

Audience Review: Variations on “the best thing I’ve seen in a long time.” And that Midler is one of the great live acts in show business. “Nobody beats her,” said Garry Marshal. “There’s a magic she has live that can’t be captured.”

Dress Mode: California winter. Leather jackets, long-forgotten wool coats and minks that haven’t been out of storage since the Nixon inauguration. One woman said she “hadn’t seen so much fur since the Care Bears special.”

Money Matters: Midler donated 500 seats that were sold for $250 and $500 by the Colette Chuda Environmental Fund. More than $150,000 was raised for research into causes of childhood cancer related to household toxins and pollution.

Topic of Conversation: That Midler was a markedly slimmer version of her divine self. As she eyed the cake at the party, the singer made reference to her mermaid-in-a-wheelchair act when she said she lost the weight “by hopping around in a fish tail.”

Quoted: In her act, Midler mentions that she’s taken up composting as her own personal cause because “that’s all that was left. Sting has the rain forest, Willie Nelson has the farmers and Whoopi has the homeless--which now includes Ted.”