Season: 1 (The Sonny & Cher Show)
Episode: 2
Guest(s): Raymond Burr
CBS Air Date: February 8, 1976
Also aired: TV Land
Opening Song: “It Takes Two” (Video)
Cover of Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston (1966)
They sang this song on the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, episode #10. Cher is starting to show in this episode (my notes say: “Cher heavier” and “big boobs”). They both wear kind of matching maroon outfits, Cher is in a slip dress and Sonny in a suit and bow tie. Cher is still clapping loudly. Sonny has longer hair my notes say and his mustache is bigger and thicker and with longer handlebars now. Like the first few seasons of the Comedy Hour and the Cher show, the stage has a projecting tongue.
Sonny continues to do his hand-on-hip move. I like to compare it to the way Mick Jagger does it: Sonny (angry parent, backside of the hand) vs. Mick Jagger (open palmed, mating-animal move).
Opening Banter: They say thank you for making last week’s show such a success. Cher flips her hair a lot. They tell football jokes (it’s Superbowl month). Sonny tells Cher about last week, “You knew your lines. You were fun. You were on time.” Sonny asks, “Is he around?” meaning Gregg Allman who Cher indicates is backstage.
Skit: This seems to be a Monty Python-like skit about Raymond Burr [thank you CS Jay] returning a dead pet rock and Cher is the store clerk. There are jokes about walking your pet rock, a rock concert…(Oy. The pet rock thing. I think when an older brother tries to convince his younger sister a pet rock will “move now any minute” and she sits there and waits for it, the little rock is not the real pet there.)
Sam Spade (Video)
This is actually a funny recurring skit with Sonny playing a comical Sam Spade character. They make Sonny look much older with gray hair. He starts out in his library standing on a rolling ladder sorting through his books. He then sits in a chair telling stories about his famous cases. This one is called “The Case of the Missing Case” and it takes place in 1932 in Morocco. His chair keeps eating him alive as he starts to tell his tales.
In the flashback he meets Cher (in a 1940s hairdo and yellow dress) in a bar. Ted Zeigler plays the bartender. Things in this skit still make me laugh, like Cher saying, “Are you going to be sick or something?” She tells sonny to find the missing case. Billy Van plays a mysterious man who draws a gun. Gailard Sartain plays the fat man. There’s an E.F. Hutton joke. Sonny identifies the missing case as being inside Gailard’s stomach. But Sonny’s wrap-up explanation takes too long and everyone gets bored. The restaurant starts closing up.
Back in the 1970s I had a real obsession with beaded doorways, mostly from Rhoda’s apartment on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (which I never even watched until college so I have no idea why I was obsessing over that back then) and I had my own set of beads that my Dad installed in my bedroom doorframe. It was just like Morocco…mashed up with Molly Ringwald’s bedroom from Sixteen Candles.
The flashback ends and Sam Spade returns his book to his bookcase and usually there’s some kind of ladder accident.
Cher Solo: “Your Precious Love”
Cover of Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell (1967)
I’m not sure about this one as the video isn’t online. But this song would fit in nicely with the other Marvin Gaye/Johnny Nash songs on the episode. I’ve starred this one. Cher wears a white Mumu dress and there’s foliage everywhere my notes say. Pretty makeup and headdress. My notes say it’s like Cher is singing at her own wedding.
Charlie and Lucy: Sonny is Charlie Brown again in a helmet. Cher is Lucy again. They instroduce little skits:
+ Sonny as the puppet Charlie McCarthy
+ Cher as Tonto and Sonny as Kemosabe (The Lone Ranger). I’ve starred this one. They subvert the stereotype about a “Western bozo.” They hide Cher’s baby bump.
Concert: “I Can See Clearly Now” (Video)
Cover of Johnny Nash (1972)
They sang this song in the concert segment of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour episode #34. Here Cher wears a yellow headband and polka-dotted yellow pantsuit (you can see a half-hidden bellybutton peaking through) and Sonny looks casual in a yellow shirt and white jacket. The band stands behind them. Sonny does a pretty funny shoulder shake toward the end. Lots of hand hanging. I have always liked their nasally version of this song, officially recorded on their 1973 duet album).
Guest Spot: Sonny & Cher both introduce Raymond Burr (correctly). They’re both in black formal outfits and Cher with a curly wig. Raymond sings/speaks his way through “Windmills of My Mind.”
This introduction spawned the famous Sonny & Cher blooper reel (starting at 2:40) where Sonny and Cher keep making each other laugh. There’s a probably the best example of Cher’s crane laugh and Sonny’s cackle.
The Monstrel Show Musical (Video)
They sing a song introducing the skits where Raymond Burr, Sonny and Cher all play vampires. Cher is in a red dress and has red streaks through her black wig. I’ve starred this too. Cher plays a delightful vampire. Lots of puns and language jokes including a Sonny Bone-O joke.
The rock group joke reminded me this makeup job for Sonny is a foreshadowing of his Deacon Dark character.
They do some break-out skits:
+ A spoof on Abbot and Costello (Stabbot and Ghostello) and their Who’s On First routine played by Ted Zeigler and Billy Van.
+ “The Great Ghoulo” played by Sonny and one of the cast (sounds like Sartain) as a hunchback.
+ The Invisible Man voiced by Richard Lewis. He gets a pie in the face.
+ “The songs and stylings of our ever-strange Vampira.” (She was Ms. Bones earlier in the segment). She does a good cackle and sings a song about Things That Go Bump in the Night. Disembodied hands grab at her as she descends the staircase. A little skeleton animation illustrates the lyrics.
They close with a third song about Sittin’ Sippin’ Blood.
IGUB: They say it was a pleasure working with each other. Cher claps loudly through the song and Sonny fixes her hair.
The TVLand version seems complete.
Highlights: This is the episode with the famous blooper reel that appeared on Dick Clark’s blooper show for years. This episode also introduces the Sam Spade sketch. A nice bit of Halloween in February.
