Season: 2 (The Sonny & Cher Show)
Episode: 23
Guest(s): Joey Heatherton, Don Knotts
CBS Air Date: December 26 1976
Also aired: TVLand, GetTV
The original promo for this show.
Opening Song: “Don’t Pull Your Love” (Video)
Cover of Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds (1971)
Cher wears a big peach and orange gown (a crumb catcher). and she is enjoying twirling it around and curtseying with it. Sonny seems distracted. He wears a green shirt with a darker green vest and an even-darker coat and a lot of bling, even for him. Cher seems to be having fun.
Opening Banter: This is the day after Christmas, They talk about the gifts they got each other and how cheap Sonny is. Last year Cher gave Sonny a Moroccan gun. This year she got him an Australian tennis racket. Cher says she doesn’t know the difference. She doesn’t play tennis. Cher says Sonny has three rackets “if you count what you do on this show.”
They talk about Sonny’s new girlfriend Susie Coelho and how she’s Eastern Indian and Cher is as Sonny says, “your kind of Indian.” There’s a scalping joke. Cher says Sonny is a terrific ex-husband and he says he has a “natural tendency to land on his feet.”
So for Christmas, Sonny gave Cher a cheap set of towels from the Hilton Hotel. Sonny says he’s not cheap; he gave all the staff and crew gifts. The director Tim Kiley chimes in overhead to say they all received gift certificates for McDonalds. Sonny protests that Cher is a girl who has everything, “just ask my lawyer.”
Except that this is another mythological story. In reality, Cher owed Sonny all the monies after the divorce. There’s that. Sonny sued for custody of Chastity because Cher was living that decadent rock-and-roll lifestyle and all, but Cher won full custody at the end of the day, (and chose to share it with Sonny anyway because like, high road). David Geffen was unable, despite his genius, to extract Cher from all of Sonny’s nefarious performing contracts. And so she spent three or four years in the mid-1970s working off her debts for broken engagements with him. She did negotiate royalties from songs they recorded together, although she’s still fighting for those to this day, first from the record companies and now from Sonny’s third-wife Mary Bono, who is trying to keep all of the royalties for herself on the grounds that a divorce deal would die with Sonny.
Operetta: The Heartbreak of Psoriasis
Interestingly, this is one of the skits I remember from childhood. The skit is a spoof of the 1960s-era magazine ads (which I had never seen) and is fashioned like an Ancient Egyptian soap opera. Sonny is a philandering pharaoh (Jay’s well-said summation) and likewise, Cher is his unfaithful Queen Psoriasis. Joey Heatherton is Sonny’s lover. (Art imitates life there). Don Knott’s is Cher’s slave lover. They recycle TV ads for jokes, including Parkay, Budweiser, AlkaSeltzer, Folgers, Yellow Pages, Right Guard (my Dad’s old preferred brand) and Toyota commercials. I’ve starred this. This skit is missing from GetTV.
Cher Solo: “Yesterday” (Video) (Better audio)
Cover to The Beatles (1965)
Cher wears a huge fur and is surrounded by tree branches. She wears garage-door eyeshadow and is starting to really belt these things out. Cher also sang this solo spot on episode #52 of the Comedy Hour and episode #16 of the Cher show. The look is a prototype look for her “After All” fits in later concerts. I’ve starred this.
Skit: Don Knotts is looking for action in a single’s bar. He plays it like an insecure man wearing a man-bag. He orders a grasshopper. Another barfly, Sonny, calls Don a sissy and a creep. (Yikes!) “What kind of bar do you think this is?” Sonny asks. “I oughta punch your right now!” (Wtf!) Don Knotts overhears Cher, in a red wig and a pretty blue dress propositioning Sonny. She’s a cop in the “female decoy” squad. (Is that a thing…?). Don Knotts does his Don Knotts faces at all the saucy things Cher says to Sonny. My notes say “totally homophobic.”
Concert: “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine” and “You Are My Sunshine” (Video)
Cover of Gale Garnett (1964) and Standard (unknown date)
Sonny & Cher recorded “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine” on their 1967 album In Case You’re in Love. They also sang this same medley on episode #12 of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. Cher wears a black and gold halter top and pants with a nice, sheer jacket, silver earrings and a silver cuff bracelet and hey, this is news: her belly button is showing again! I guess the censors were on vacation this week. Instead of blending the songs, this time they finish one and start the other. There are weird, overdone edits.I’ve starred this but I don’t know why anymore.
Laverne: Laverne and Alvin at the bar watching The Sonny & Cher Show and talking about their upcoming wedding and honeymoon. Alvie asks Herbie the bartender to be his best man. There’s a Robert Redford joke. Laverne jokes about getting her dress from Fredericks of Hollywood. Cher suggests they “check out my brochures.”
Beauty and the Beast: King Kong and Fay Wray (filing her nails very loudly) talk about how uncommunicative King Kong has been and about his last visit to his therapist, how therapy is helping him deal with his hang-ups and coming out of his shell. He’s a wallflower at parties. Fay says he should do his James Cagney or W.C. Fields impressions at parties because they’re very good. She says he should take confidence in talking the city of New York out of giving him a ticket for climbing the Empire State Building. Although she admits her parents are afraid of him, she says this is the first healthy relationship she’s ever had. (These two! Totes adorbs.)
Guest Spot: Joey Heatherton sings “What I Did For Love” (Video)
She’s surrounded by ferns and other plants on shelves, lattices, and a chandelier. It’s like a fancy gardening shed. I think she’s lip syncing.
The Prisoner: The guards tell Rocco he gets five minutes with his girl. Cher tells Rocco she’s now going to college. She says Poli-Sci is her major and fooling around is her minor. She plans to move into a fraternity house. (Jay notes that these Prisoner skits were consistently funny and I would agree.)
Mother Goose: Cher does her very colorful Mae West in front of the turning carousel.
+ The Old Woman Who Lived in the Shoe, Don Knotts with big boobs and too many kids, gets a visit from Planned Parenthood social worker, Cher in a great green suit with a big feathered hat, who asks him questions about a shoe being an appropriate environment for children. (Wow! A drag queen and Planned Parenthood in the same skit! But no belly buttons.) Ted Zeigler plays a very bad baby. The skit ends with a Cher stare at the camera, reminiscent of the old Sonny stares at the end of the Comedy Hour sketches.
+ Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater (Sonny) and his wife, Cher in an orange dress, a bonnet and black curls. There’s a joke about tract pumpkin housing. Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary (Joey Heatherton) lives next door and Don Knotts is the telephone or TV installer (I have two sets of notes and they say different things) complaining about having to jump over candlesticks. Ted Zeigler plays Jack Be Nimble.
IGUB: Full closing. Sonny makes Cher laugh with a private joke.
Thanks to Jay for the official run-down on this episode. Online guides have this episode airing on December 12, 1976 but Jay has referenced the original TV Guide airdate which says December 26, 1976. GetTV cut The Heartbreak of Psoriasis skit.
Highlights: Stalwart Prisoner and King Kong skits. The first Heartbreak of Psoriasis sketch.
