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
Experience the Divine: Greatest Hits Experience the Divine: Greatest Hits Experience the Divine: Greatest Hits is a compilation album by American singer Bette Midler, featuring many of her best-known songs. The fourteen track compilation was released on Atlantic Records in 1993. While several greatest hits albums with Midler had been released in the UK, Continental Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and Japan throughout the 1970s and 1980s, such as "The Best of Bette" (1978) and "The Best of Bette" (1981)—two different compilations with the same title—and "Just Hits" (1987), this was the first career overview to be released worldwide including the US and Canada, some