Michael Ritchie was best known for films like The Candidate (1972) and The Bad News Bears (1976) before taking on "The Divine Miss M." Ritchie prepped for weeks at the Auditorium before the performers arrived. Leaving nothing to chance, they rehearsed the show for a week to make sure that the cameras would catch the choreography. While the film appears to be an entire evening's performance, it was actually made up of the best segments from four nights of Midler's engagement at the Civic Auditorium from February 13 - February 16, 1980, captured by ten cameras shooting more than 1.5 million feet of film, and edited together seamlessly over seven months.
It was not Midler's first filmed performance - she had previously had a 1976 HBO special, but wanted to improve on it in every way. That included the cast. According to her original backup singers, "The Harlettes", Midler had promised them that they would appear in the film and be paid $14,000 a week for their performance. However, right after the stage show ended, the three women were fired - by telegram, which resulted in a $3.5 million dollar lawsuit filmed in LA Superior Court, but was later dismissed. The original Harlettes were replaced with Jocelyn Brown, Diva Gray, and Ula Hedwig, who had worked with Midler before. Midler and Ritchie also improved on the show itself. As Ritchie would later tell Cincinnati Magazine , "We redesigned all the scenery, the costumes, and added new songs. We treated it like a movie."
While the film captures Midler's undeniable energy and star power, the star herself was suffering from pneumonia during production, which might have been one of the reasons that some of the music was rerecorded (with Luther Vandross, then a backup singer, appearing on the film's soundtrack album) before the film premiered in Los Angeles on September 17th, 1980.
Critic Roger Ebert praised Ritchie's direction, writing that the director "opens as if Divine Madness is going to be a traditional concert film. Bette charges on stage, the audience cheers, there's an electric performance feel. But from that beginning, Ritchie subtly moves into the material until there are times when we almost forget we're watching an actual concert performance." Despite the good reviews and Midler's nomination for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress - Musical/Comedy, Divine Madness did not make much of a stir at the box office and it disappeared from theaters quickly. Bette Midler did not disappear; by 1986, she would focus on her acting career with a string of successes like Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), and Beaches (1988).
SOURCES:
http://www.allmovie.com/movie/divine-madness%21-v14062/cast-crew
Bego, Mark, Coolidge, Rita Bette Midler: Still Divine
Fuller, Richard "Films: Ordinary People; A Direct Hit for Redford" Cincinnati Magazine Nov 1980
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/divine-madness-1980
