Bette Midler

Her television work includes a production of Gypsy and her sitcom Bette. It was only after her death that this was revealed to have been a fabrication. Other films include Scenes From a Mall, For the Boys (for which she was again nominated for an Academy Award), Hocus Pocus, The First Wives Club, and The Stepford Wives. Throughout her life, Oberon maintained that she had been born in Tasmania, Australia. Her rendition of 1990's "From a Distance" also earned her a Grammy and is another of her most popular songs. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Motion Pictures, at 6250 Hollywood Boulevard. Midler sang several of the film's songs including "Wind Beneath My Wings," which became one of Midler's most popular hits, receiving multiple Grammy Awards. She was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

In 1988 she starred in the film Beaches. She married twice more, to Italian-born Mexican industrialist Bruno Pagliai (two adopted children) and Dutch actor Robert Wolders, before her retirement to Malibu, California, where she died after suffering a stroke. She appeared in such other popular comedies as Ruthless People, Outrageous Fortune and Big Business. Merle Oberon divorced Sir Alexander Korda in 1945, to marry cinematographer Lucien Ballard. In 1986, director Paul Mazursky cast her in Down and Out in Beverly Hills, beginning a successful comedic acting career. During her time as a film star, Oberon went to great lengths to disguise her mixed-race background and when her dark-skinned mother moved in with her in Hollywood, she masqueraded as Oberon's maid. In her first film role, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She went on to appear as Cathy in Wuthering Heights (1939), as George Sand in A Song to Remember (1945), and as Empress Josephine in Désirée (1954).

She was tapped for the pseudobiographical role of the drug-addled rock music star in The Rose, modeled after Janis Joplin. Merle Oberon was scarred for life, but skilled lighting technicians prevented her injuries being spotted by cinema audiences. Midler appeared in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway, but it was her singing that made her a star. She was to star in Korda's film of I, Claudius (1937) as Messalina, but a serious car accident resulted in filming being abandoned. He produced her first major album, The Divine Miss M (also the name by which she is known to her fans.). She received her only Academy Award for Best Actress nomination for The Dark Angel (1935). Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, she majored in drama at the University of Hawaii, but got her start singing in gay bathhouses in New York City where, among others, she became friends with Barry Manilow, who was her piano accompanist. Oberon's career went on to greater heights partly as a result of her relationship with and later marriage to director Alexander Korda, who had persuaded her to take the name under which she became famous.

Bette Midler (born December 1, 1945) is a singer, actress and comedienne. In 1934, she played the female lead in The Scarlet Pimpernel, opposite Leslie Howard. Her first major film role was as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). Initially she worked as a club hostess under the name Queenie O'Brien and played in minor and unbilled rolls in various films. Born in Bombay, India to an Anglo-Irish father and an Anglo-Sinhalese mother, Constance Selby, who gave birth to Merle at the age of 15 and allowed her to be raised as her sister, Merle came to England for the first time in 1928.

Merle Oberon (February 19, 1911 - November 23, 1979), born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson, was a film actress, known for her sultry looks.