If you had seen the show, in addition to the amazing talent, great unsung production values, and all-around nostalgic good time you would have experienced, you also would have learned some surprising facts about Sonny & Cher. Among the more interesting….
1) Pre-duo success, Sonny & Cher worked for Phil Spector who in the early 60s ground out girl group hits whether the group was there as scheduled or not. Thus Cher filled in and sang as a Crystal on “Da Doo Ron Ron”, as a Ronnette on “Be My Baby”, and as backup for the Righteous Brothers on “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” and did friend Darlene Love on the infamous Christmas classic “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) .
2) When in London for their debut of “I Got You Babe”, Sonny & Cher were thrown out of the Hilton Hotel despite having reservations due to their hippie chic wardrobe, designed by Cher, being deemed inappropriate.
3) The TV sensation The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour was an accidental byproduct of desperation. After their initial success as Sonny & Cher, acid rock pushed them aside and the couple hit rough times from overspending, owing the IRS over $250,000 (in 1970 dollars!). Sonny devised a Vegas lounge act to make some quick money, which was seen by CBS execs and quickly parlayed into the iconic variety show.
4) Cher was in continuous hot water with the network standards and practices department at CBS because of her colorful 4-letter ad libs that could not air on 70s network TV. Since she was forbidden from saying any others, she found one 4-letter word she was guaranteed to use a few times in every other episode, so she channeled all her frustration symbolically into that word . Her new de facto “4-letter” word? “VAMP”. Watch the videos of the skit here and, knowing that, you can see her face, demeanor, and body language change drastically when she says it.
5) Cher is dyslexic.
6) While she eventually became his eternal muse, Cher’s 50 year partnership with Bob Mackie almost never happened. They met when Cher guest starred on an episode of The Carol Burnett Show, and she fell in love with his creations and begged him to costume her show. But seeing he had on average 500+ to design for Carol’s cast 26 weeks a year, he turned her down. Upon further imploring, he agreed to do just her costumes for The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. For the next 5 decades thru today, the two names would become synonymous.
7) The duo were under stress from Sonny’s intense scheduling to maximize profits–the show to Vegas to magazine shoots and talk show appearances–when Cher wanted nothing but more time with baby Chaz. But the last straw was when she found out that he had set up their professional contracts under the company Cher Enterprises–of which he owned 95%, their lawyers 5%, and Cher personally, 0%. The idea that she had no input in decision making in their professional ventures in a company that was literally her name was the final breach of trust.
8) Lucille Ball famously arranged a meeting with young Cher when she and Sonny were in the process of breaking up. She gave Cher valuable advice from her experience about divorcing her costar and business partner, as well as naming future TV projects (“instead of being above the title, you’ll be the title”), as worked for Lucy in her next three endeavors.
9) When Cher hit big Hollywood at Mike Nichols invitation to costar in Silkwood, he enthusiastically suggested she check out the trailer in LA when it first appeared. She sneaked in the back of the movies and when the trailer aired, the audience cheered when Meryl Streep and Kurt Russell’s names appeared on the screen. When Cher’s name appeared, they laughed. She says she bit her cheek to keep from crying.
10) Anyone who thought Cher’s over the top 1986 Oscar get up was just a grab for attention or business as usual, there is a story behind it. In arguably Cher’s finest film performance, as no-nonsense Rusty Dennis in Mask, despite all the Oscar buzz, she was denied a nomination because the Academy determined, based on her over-the-top image, that she was not ”a serious actress”. Yet they asked her to present. She got even by showing up in the most outrageous outfit complete with headdress that Bob Mackie could design and opened her speech, “As you can see, I received my handbook of how a serious actress should dress.” Her next motion picture, Moonstruck, earned her an Oscar.
Check out my companion piece to this article, my review of The Cher Show in New York.