About 50 years ago, a dear friend of Iris Rainer Dart shared a vulnerable hope. “She said, ‘When one of us dies, I hope it’s me first because I couldn’t live in a world that didn’t have you in it,” Dart told Broadway News. “And I said, ‘I’m going to write about that because what will happen?”
Dart began writing a novel about two young girls who meet under the Atlantic City boardwalk and grow to be lifelong best friends. And Dart confided that while she wasn’t writing about her own female friendship, of course she sort of was. “I was writing the book, and I was kind of sobbing writing it, and [the same friend] called me and she said, ‘Okay, who dies? You or me?’ And I said, ‘It isn’t you or me. It is Cee Cee and Bertie — and you die.”
“Beaches” is famous for its emotional depth. In both the novel and the movie, Dart goes for the jugular, showing the stinging betrayals and heartfelt repairs between these two best friends. It chronicles the evolution of these women as individuals and as a pair, while they go through career struggles and romantic triumphs and, when Bertie falls ill, they confront death and sacrifice.
The spitfire Cee Cee Bloom grows up to be a performer. Immortalized on film by Bette Midler, the character of Cee Cee finds her roots in Dart, who admitted she’s always been a bit of a showperson. “I started tap when I was five,” she said. “I was a child actress in Pittsburgh. … I took lots of dancing lessons, and then I was an acting major at Carnegie Mellon — it was Carnegie Tech in my day.” During her undergrad, Dart co-wrote the university’s varsity musical with future Oscar winner and Tony Award-nominated composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz. (Dart described their meeting in the latest episode of “Broadway Press Day with Ruthie Fierberg.”)
An affinity for the theatrical connects Iris and Cee Cee, but actor Jessica Vosk, who plays Cee Cee in this new “Beaches” musical, also notes the personality similarities. “She was the first female writer on the ‘Cher Show,’” Vosk noted of Dart’s television career. “When I think that she was the only woman there trying to get her voice heard in a space that was dominated by men… She’s so strong, right?” Midler brought that strength to the screen, making Cee Cee opinionated and tough, while also being self-deprecating. Vosk plans to do the same onstage. “Those were all the things I am as a person,” the actor said. “My goal is not to be a replica, but to pay massive respect to this person [Midler] who shaped my career.”
