Bette Midler’s clever twist on her ‘Beaches’ classic turns her tribute to Stephen Colbert into viral perfection

Legendary actor Bette Midler told Stephen Colbert how much she will miss him on The Late Show Tuesday night with a special performance of one of her classic hits.

Midler appeared on the show to discuss her non-profit, the New York Restoration Project, and its work in New York City, but started off by sharing a unique tribute to the talk-show host with a loving spoof of her song “Wind Beneath My Wings” from the 1988 film Beaches.

“I want to beg you, ‘don’t go, don’t go, don’t go,’” Midler said to Colbert, who reminded her he will be on the air until May.

“Well, I’m not coming back,” she joked with the host, quickly adding that she “just wanted to thank you publicly and privately for me for these last nine-and-a-half years.”

“I would not have made it through without you — you’re a voice of reason, and sanity, and honor … so I wrote a little something for you,” Midler said, noting that she has “a reputation for singing famous talk show hosts off the air.”
Stephen Colbert, center, during the Emmy Awards in September after “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” won its most recent Emmy, welcomed Bette Midler to “The Late Show” on Tuesday, where she sang a tribute to his time hosting from the Ed Sullivan Theater. Photo by Chris Chew/UPI

Miller then unrolled several sheets of paper rolled like a diploma, but was actually the song’s lyrics rewritten for the tribute.
Bette Midler arrives on the red carpet at the WSJ Mag 2019 Innovator Awards at the Museum of Modern Art on in New York City in 2019. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI
“It must have been cold here at the Late Show, despite the high ratings and awards,” she started, continuing that he needs “a gig that’s more worthwhile, now that you’re more in demand than Epstein’s files.”

As the Late Show band slowly picked up the song’s tune, she finished the tribute — titled “Did you ever know that you’re my Frodo,” complete with myriad references to The Lord of the Rings — by noting that Colbert, in his departure from The Late Show, never “kissed the orange [expletive].”

CBS announced in July that it would be canceling The Late Show, which Colbert took over after David Letterman in 2015, more than two decades after Letterman launched when he joined the Tiffany network.

Although CBS said the decision was a financial one, critics have said the network made the decision to curry favor with the FCC for its parent company, Paramount, to merge with Skydance — a merger that was later approved.