TONY-winning playwright John Logan is at work on a onewoman show about Hollywood super-agent Sue Mengers, who died last year.
And he wants Bette Midler to play her.
Midler hasn’t done a Broadway show in years. Her last appearance was in “Bette! Divine Madness” at the Majestic in 1979. Midler aficionados, however, think her best show was the “Clams on the Half Shell Revue,” which played 80 performances at the Minskoff in 1975, with some snappy jokes by a young Bruce Vilanch.
Midler was a producer of “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” last year, and I’m told she’s been eyeing a Broadway comeback. At one point, she was in discussions with the Nederlanders to do a musical revue.
She’s interested in Logan’s play — as yet untitled — because, says a source, “a one-person show isn’t as risky as shouldering a big musical.”
That — and the fact that Mengers is a hell of a character.
She was brazen and hilarious, rolling into Hollywood “like a tank,” as she once said, and lining up a galaxy of star clients in the 1970s — Michael Caine, Faye Dunaway, Candice Bergen, Nick Nolte, Burt Reynolds, Steve McQueen.
Logan’s been interviewing many of them for his play. So has Brian Kellow, who’s at work on her biography.
I had lunch yesterday at Michael’s with the ever-dapper theatrical agent Lionel Larner. He worked with Mengers at the beginning of their careers at the legendary agency Baum and Newborn.
“She had more balls than any of the guys in the office,” Larner says. She was the receptionist, though she passed herself off as a top-tier agent.
The producer Billy Rose once met her at a party and took a fancy to her. She told him she was an agent at the Baum-Newborn Agency. He called her up there and, being the receptionist, she answered the phone.
“Baum-Newborn.”
“I’d like to speak to Sue Mengers,” he said.
“Please hold.” She waited a few seconds. “Sue Mengers’ office,” she said. “Just a moment, please.” She got back on the phone and made a date.
At the time she was living in a boarding house. But she told Rose she lived at the Hampshire House.
“I’ll send my car to pick you up,” he said.
“I’ll be waiting in the lobby,” she replied. She borrowed a friend’s fur coat, and was off and running.
Another great story — insider-y, but I’ll explain.
She went to Fire Island to stay at composer Jerry Herman’s house. The “boys” went off to a tea dance, and, left on her own, she went skinny-dipping in the pool. Two people arrived, and she got out of the pool, zaftig, naked and dripping wet.
“I’m Flora Roberts,” she said.
Now the explanation: Flora Roberts was another legendary agent who represented Stephen Sondheim. She was short, fat and gravelly voiced.
Mengers had a tough upbringing, which, I’m told, Logan explores in the play. She was born in Germany and arrived in Utica, NY, with her parents in 1938. Her father, a traveling salesman, committed suicide in the Times Square Hotel, and she moved to The Bronx with her mother.
Her escape from poverty and sadness was Broadway, where she saw all the great shows and performers in the ’50s from the last row of the balcony.
“She was completely self-made,” Larner says. “And absolutely fearless. Baum would fire her on Friday, and Newborn would hire her back on Monday. There are no characters like Sue anymore.”
She was the inspiration for the tough-talking agent Dyan Cannon played in “The Last of Sheila,” as well as the blowsy agent played by Shelley Winters in Blake Edwards’ “S.O.B.”
If any of you showbiz types out there have any more good stories about Mengers, send them my way, and I’ll pass them on to Logan.
Let’s hope his Sue Mengers is as funny as the real thing.