This last-ditch effort to present Bette Midler as a mainstream pop-disco singer succeeds only too well. Though Midler sings on pitch for once, she squelches her personality for the sake of musical propriety, and with her raucous chutzpah muted, becomes a very mundane vocalist given to affecting a cramped, throaty croon. "Big Noise from Winnetka," a swing-era camp chestnut, is Thighs and Whispers' highlight, thanks less to the Divine Miss M. than to Arif Mardin's classy disco-swing production.

"Millworker," though decently sung, misses the dramatic subtlety of James Taylor's version, and it can't hold a candle to Midler's riskier dramatic monologue of John Prine's "Hello in There" on her first album. With the exception of "Married Men," an intelligent pop-disco tune that boasts the artist's chestiest singing, the rest of the material is weak or inappropriate.

Thighs and Whispers is the most convincing proof yet that Bette Midler is a stage personality in the tradition of Ethel Merman and Liza Minnelli, entertainers whose talents can't be captured in a recording studio either. (RS 305)

STEPHEN HOLDEN