Bette & Barbara old acquaintances in 1988's "Beaches!"

I have sufficient.

Oh, honey -- I never watched it the first time.

I remember in her review Pauline Kael said that Mayim Bialik seemed like she had been specially created to play an 11-year-old Bette Midler.

Mayim remembers...

Have never seen, it's on Tubi but I don't have interest. I hated that song too

I watched "Beaches" mainly because it was on Tubi and out of curiosity. One of the much needed plusses of "Beaches" is several well-done musical numbers by Bette, including this one...

Not a bad movie, but the Oh! Industry sequence is so completely out of place given the timeframe.

Bette was expecting to get an oscar nomination for the movie, and agreed to take part in Allan Carr's infamous oscar opening. When the nominations were announced and she was snubbed, she pulled out. Lily Tomlin wound up doing her part.

Mayim Bialik was also supposed to take part in it.

No, the soundtrack was great.

[quote]Bette was expecting to get an oscar nomination for the movie

SHE WAS ? SERIOUSLY ? WHY ?

I loved the Oh Industry, but it does come out of nowhere.

Still, nothing can compare to Otto Titsling and his travails with patent thieves and big titted divas taking swan dives into the orchestra pit.

Lainie Kazan as Bette's mother was an eye roll, they looked more like sisters, given they were five years apart.

I watched it a thousand times as a child. I probably watched it again a few years ago and part of me no longer understood their connection.

They met once as kids on the beach, then became pen pals and didn’t reconnect until a brief post-college stint as roommates. Then after that, had a bad weekend visit as married women and didn’t reconnect until Hillary was pregnant. That was for a few months and then CC left to become a big star and didn’t come back until Hillary got sick.

The movie acts like they’re soulmates but they disappeared for years and barely knew each other’s lives outside of letters that they weren’t even reading cause they were mad at each other most of the time.

If you approach the movie as a moral of don’t take your friends for granted and don’t let distance, ego, and pride chip away at relationships until it’s too late, then the movie makes sense.

But I don’t think that was the point of the movie.

Bette wanted Shelley Winters to play her Mother.

Barbara Hershey can’t even yodel!

Beaches has more wigs than Wigstock!

1988 was pretty stacked. Jodie Foster, Glenn Close, Meryl Streep, and Melanie Griffith were locks. Maybe she could have thought she would have Sigourney Weaver's spot but she was a double nominee that year so it seems unlikely.

I think she is very good in the movie. Also how was Wind Beneath My Wings not a song nominee?

This thread is full of hand walking queers

Those NY tenements got cold at night. They did plenty of scissoring to keep warm.

R16 I think cause it’s not an original song, it’s a cover.

So because of this thread I decided to watch it right now.

Hillary just upped and fucked CC’s crush and she didn’t feel THAT bad about it.

Hillary's daughter was such a little cunt.

Too bad Mrs. Patsy Ramsey,formerly of Boulder CO didn't get a crack at her.

The “Oh, Industry” sequence is laughably bad.

[quote] Hillary's daughter was such a little cunt.

I felt so bad for her when she finds her mother collapsed and screams "I don't know what to do!" I really start bawling when Wind Beneath My Wings starts.

It's schlock but I love it, especially CC's throwaway "Sexual attraction has nothing to do with character, unless you're Eleanor Roosevelt" line.

As trite as the story is, there's something about the movie I find appealing, including the trite story.

There's something about that kind of friendship that I connect with, mostly because I don't think I've ever had that kind of friend.

It's never too late. I didn't meet my forever friend until I was 40.

I was surprised that "Wind Beneath My Wings" was not a new song for "Beaches." It had been written a half dozen years earlier and recorded by everyone from Sheena Easton to Gladys Knight. Here's Roger Whittaker, the first one to record it, he of the greatest hits TV commercials of my youth--not sold in record stores anywhere!

That year was pretty batshit for nominations.

Dangerous Liaisons and Beaches were completely shut out at the Golden Globes. Barbara Hershey was nominated for best supporting actor, for The Last Temptation of Christ. Geena Davis wasn't even nominated.

Elder gays: was Bette's nomination for For The Boys expected? She was nominated ahead of Annette Bening for Bugsy, Kathy Bates for Fried Green Tomatoes, Babs for The Prince Of Tides, Jessica Lange for Cape Fear, Michelle Pfeiffer for Frankie and Johnny, Julia Roberts for Sleeping With The Enemy, Liza Minnelli for Stepping Out, Linda Hamilton for T2, Irene Jacob for The Double Life of Veronique and Sally Fields for Not Without My Daughter.

As "For the Boys" got very mixed reviews and bombed at the box office, but cost a lot to make, Bette's nom felt like a pat on the back for trying.

Stealing from David Deby's review: C.C. and Hillary spend more time talking about their friendship than actually being friends.

This was one of the movies that we had on VHS and I watched over and over as a kid, for some reason

Imagine Seinfeld's Kramer as CC's personal assistant!

I agree with r25 there is something very heartfelt about having a special friendship, and that is the universal appeal.

Most of Bette's movies feel like they could have been made in the 30s or 40s for some reason - she also remade Stella Dallas, which translated pretty poorly to the 1980s. Beaches feels transported out of that time too - it's all very old-fashioned melodrama.

Was "Beaches" a play on "Bitches"

R35. Only for Rodiney

I thought this movie was most known for Hershey getting collagen lip implants. Bette must have loved that.

Of all Bette's movies I'd say Beaches is the one she is best known for. More so than Hocus Pocus and First Wives Club.

It's regularly repeated on TV here in Britain and Wind Beneath My Wings has become known as her song.

Related: I know someone who lives in Bette’s building in NYC.

They report that she’s a total asshole. Prone to yelling at people and generally looking for fights.

[quote]Of all Bette's movies I'd say Beaches is the one she is best known for. More so than Hocus Pocus and First Wives Club.

Don't you think The Rose is more her signature movie?

Not at all R40. The Rose is largely forgotten.

Beaches is a film people are aware of even if they haven't seen it.

She's awesome in comedies like Ruthless People and Down and Out in Beverly Hills.

Reply 42, Indeed!

I enjoyed the movie when I first watched it on HBO. But, as with all Garry Marshall movies, it began to look cheap and sitcom-ish with repeat viewings. It doesn’t help that Marshall casts so many of his relatives (who lack any sort of talent or charisma) and his sitcom actors in small roles (Carmine and Lori Beth, from Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days, are in Beaches). Pretty Woman, both Princess Diaries movies, Overboard, Exit to Eden, Runaway Bride, etc, all look like TV-movies.

Here's a short interview with "Beaches" author Iris Rainer Dart talking about her start as a writer and working with Cher and Bette Midler.

R12/ They met as kids on the beach

Isn’t that the beginning of Imitation Of Life (1959)

WTF is Katie wearing? Big time suck.

I’ve never seen it either. I think I lost interest in any thing Barbara did after the lip plumping.

Speaking of Mayim Bialik - who remembers "Molloy"? Pre-"Blossom." And notice who's fourth-billed.

I remember that show. God awful. Jennifer's nose that is.

I thought "Stella" was even worse then "Jinxed." I'm amazed that it broke even at the b.o.

If Bo Derek hadn't made "Ghosts Can't Do It!" that year, Bette would have been a shoo-in for a Razzie.

For some reason, the thought of being "Under the Boardwalk" absolutely disgusts me. I envision seaweed, trash, cigarette butts and other grossness.

[quote]I envision seaweed, trash, cigarette butts and other grossness

Some people are into that, r52.

r53 Is the long road to a Barbara Hershey joke?

She does a good cover of Under The Boardwalk. I Know You By Heart is also good.

The over the top friend & the repressed friend of "Beaches" was borrowed from "Old Acquaintance." Another film where the decades long friendship isn't very believable, but entertaining. And yes, the two girls bonding at the beach/boardwalk is a nod to 1959's "Imitation of Life." And the larger than life character walking off with the mesmerized child at the finale is a wink to "Auntie Mame." Here's my look at Bette DAVIS and Miriam going at it in the name of friendship!

It’s also hard to follow the timeline because Bette looked 40+ throughout the whole movie.

I always thought a remake of Outrageous Fortune would work well with a gay couple at the centre.

Say Jonathan Bailey as the uptight classical actor wannabe (Shelley) and Zane Phillips as the frequently shirtless dumb movie star wannabe (Bette) who find out they've been fucking the same daddy Murray Bartlett. Featuring Derek Jacobi as the over the top acting coach, Jonathan Groff as an charming FBI agent who takes a shine to Jonathan B and Coleman Domingo in the role Angela Bassett usually plays. Miss Coco Peru can play the airport check in lady.

Here's one of those "sneak preview" specials from back in the day, about "Beaches." Interesting a number of snippets that didn't make the final cut of the movie. And that Barbara articulated her concern that Hillary was not as interesting a character as CC. Also, Bette's amusing in her take on things, no false modesty here!

Went to see it with my mother and a bunch of her friends, ironically enough, on vacation in Wildwood, NJ. It rained all day, so we wound up going to the movies.

Little gay me loved it so much. I sobbed about it the whole way hme, and God love her, my mother took me to see it at least two more times at the $1 theater in my hometown.

She gave me a copy of the (book) sequel for my birthday later. Even as a kid, I knew it was terrible. It sort of ruins the ending of "Beaches" because (I think) the kid grows up to be an entitled drug addict. At least that's what I remember. Apparently, Dart really wanted Midler to produce the sequel, but it never happened because people wanted to believe everything was hunky dory after.

It is entirely possible they made a TV movie out of it instead....I think with Barbara Eden with all of the names changed so there was little/no association with "Beaches."

Again, I could have all of this mixed up in my old man brain.

I was just thinking, "I can't believe no one has tried to make a musical of 'Beaches.'"

Did a Google search, and , bam, there it was.

Looks terrible.

Barbara Hershey’s lip implants was the first time I’d heard of that procedure. They aren’t as enormous as I remembered but they’re strangely ill-defined.

...and of course, Lifetime had to remake "Beaches" a few years back, with Idina Whatsherfuck and Nia Long...

R7 but Eddie Mekka!

r22 but Eddie Mekka!