Season: 2 (Cher)
Episode: 26
Guest(s): Jerry Lewis, David Essex
CBS Air Date: November 30, 1975
Also aired: VH1
Last season’s opening and music. What the.
Torch Open/Opening Song: “I Feel a Song Coming On” and “Sing” (Video)
Cover of the Jerry Vale (1964) and from Sesame Street (1973)
Cher does the torch part in a short cape of pink ruffles. There’s no zoom in, but a transition effect. She throws off the cape to reveal a beautiful lace halter dress. The circle is in pink and lace.
The Cher show audience:
Monologue: Cher says she’s been asked to do commercials. Cher says she’d have to believe in the product and doesn’t think she looks like the typical American housewife or cares about the coffee she serves. She said she had a nightmare that she was at a big Hollywood party and everyone there had TV commercials. She mentions Fred MacMurray, George Kennedy, Jonathan Winters, Andy Griffith, Henry Fonda, David Janssen and Italian actress Anna Maria Alberghetti and their commercials. Somebody keeps giving her shit.
Of course Cher would go on to do commercials in the 1980s and 90s and it would still be very controversial. She did ads for Jack LaLanne gyms, Equal sweetener, Marc Jacobs, The Gap and her own ads for her Uninhibited perfume. And we can’t forget the infomercials for Lori Davis hair products and her own brand of skincare Aquasentials.
She calls out Jerry Lewis and he jokes that she didn’t call him a “special” guest. She then introduces David Essex and Gailard Sartain (who is suddenly a guest and not a cast-member). He wants to ask her question like John Holland did weeks earlier. He asks her if it annoys here when people (does a Jerry Lewis scream in her face). He asks her if she has a Black and Decker beauty kit. Has she ever had her teeth pierced. He tells a baby umbilical chord joke, a cow joke and a joke about her flat chest. Has she seen Mona Freeman’s luggage? He asks if she would let Marty Allen use her bathroom. Does she think Walter Cronkite is wearing pants on the 6 o-clock news. There’s a bit of a closeup to conceal what Lewis is doing when they start to sing. He’s a bit touchy. Ick.
Guest Spot: Jerry Lewis plays a movie fan trying to watch a disaster movie with “feel around” technology. He gets rained on, hailed on, snowed on, waves hit him, knives come at him, icebergs crash on him. Finally he is promised a love scene. And the film breaks down right then.
Duet with Guest (Video)
Cher and David Essex sing “The Long and Winding Road” (Beatles, 1970)
Cher wears a laced head wrap and a fluff-trimmed white pantsuit with high white boots. He flirts with her and she does all the lip licks and hand hanging. Cher does a playful bump at the end. In my old notes, this got as star from me.
Trashy Ladies:
Harkening back to the Trashy Lady skit in episode 1, Cher now wears black lingerie with a yellow boa. Her hair is in a curled updo. This time she introduces skits with a very long song. The color scheme for these skits is yellow.
– Tarzan and Jane: Lewis and Cher play Tarzan and Jane. Lewis is a klutz (Sonny is a memorably more loveable one, though). She calls him Jerk of the Jungle (that made me laugh). There’s a joke about their son being boy crazy. There’s a joke about the natives, “Don’t yell ‘boy’ in this neighborhood.” Cher tells him she’s leaving him for somebody more attractive, smarter and a better conversationalist, a monkey. This skit keeps reminding me of Good Times.
– Ma Barker: Cher plays Ma Barker. Lewis leads a band of bandits (including David Essex and Gailard Sartain) holed up in a standoff. Everybody takes their turns slapping Jerry Lewis. The stuttering gag of Sartain didn’t age well. Essex is adorable in the skit. Cher and Sartain kid each other.
– Samson and Delilah: Lewis and Cher play Samson and Delilah. We’re seeing an inordinate amount of Jerry Lewis legs in these. Cher looks amazing. She calls Samson in to “break a few commandments.” She offers to coif his hair and he asks for a blowout and a tease, which is meant to be an innuendo. There’s a Vidal Sassoon joke.
Skit: Cher, David Essex and Lewis talk about movies they like. They decide Westerns are missing one thing: Jews or Englishmen (there were both, actually, in reals in the movies). They then say that John Wayne killed all the Indians and the ones he didn’t kill he bored to death. Lewis says “Injun.” (Oooh. Yeah. I’m gonna have to ask you to move your things into the basement.) Lewis talks over everybody and it’s annoying. They fade into the cowboy skit with Cher as an Indian princess and Lewis as a Jewish sheriff. We get another incarnation of the stunning Half Breed fit. Sam Katz is the sheriffs name and he comes in singing and twirling his gun. There are jokes about Yiddish and Indian tongues, all kind of stereotypical. Essex arrives to make a name for himself in the West and ends up challenging the sheriff. Essex throws up an English Muffin and shoots it and a bagel comes down. (That was kind of funny.) Cher says she’ll marry whoever wins the duel and hides behind the bar. You can see her headdress sticking up.
Guest Spot: David Essex sings “Hold Me Close.”
Cher Solo: “Rhinestone Cowboy” (Video)
Cover of Glen Campbell (1975)
Cher wears a sparkling silver pantsuit that throws off some great camera flares. The are neon signs behind her that say things like ‘BAIL BONDS’ and ‘Buckaroo Club.’ I love the sparkly stage, rhinestone mic and scarf, Cher’s pretty eyelids, her almost perfect performance of a song seemingly made for her to sing. I loved this song at the time and it was a real treat to discover Cher’s version of it years ago. Cher also looks amazing in a cowboy hat (especially this black one with a silver hat rim). Allegedly she had just discovered she was pregnant and you might be able to see a baby bump. I could not. I’ve double starred this but that’s just ridiculous because this is the awesomeness of a million stars.
Skit: Allegedly Jerry Lewis wrote this sketch with Cher and Lewis doing a pantomime about two lost souls meeting in a park. Cher arrives at a park bench first. Then Lewis arrives and they have problems deciding who should sit where. Then Lewis offers Cher some used cigarettes. He then pours booze for them in snow cone cups. He then cracks an egg on her legs in an attempt to provide lunch. She leans in to kiss him but strangles him instead and throws a dummy over the back of the park bench. At the end they share a candy bar.
Close: Cher closes the show with David Essex and Jerry Lewis. Lewis seems unimpressed with David Essex just as he seemed unimpressed with his own son Gary Lewis (of the Playboys) and pop music in general judging by his pop-star spoof of it in his movie The Patsy.
VHI is missing the Trashy Ladies skits, the cowboy and the pantomime sketch with Jerry Lewis. Cher’s 78th birthday viewing skipped the Essex solo and the close but showed a much expanded opening monologue.
Highlights: “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “The Long and Winding Road.” Great dress for the open.
