Gay icon Own Kind of Music" and "Different") and free love. Her music was later featured in the acclaimed gay film "Beautiful Thing" (1996), adapted from the play of the same name. Singer and actress Bette Midler became recognized as a gay icon in the 1970s. After performing on Broadway, Midler began performing at the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse in the city, where she became close to her piano accompanist Barry Manilow, who produced her first major album "The Divine Miss M" (1973). "Despite the way things turned out [with the AIDS crisis], I'm still proud of those days [singing at
Jackpot! The Best Bette BMG, this is the second single-disc compilation of Midler's best-known recordings, following 1993/1996's "Experience the Divine", and this time released by Warner Music Group's reissue subsidiary Rhino Entertainment. "Jackpot! The Best Bette" includes three titles from Midler's more recent albums for Columbia, "This Ole House", "Tenderly" and "Cool Yule", and also sees the debut of one previously unreleased track, "Something Your Heart's Been Telling Me", co-written by Midler, Robert Kraft and Barry Reynolds and originally cut as a demo by the singer herself in 1984 but first released by Roberta Flack who recorded the song for her 1991 album "Set