Release date: May 12, 1967

There’s one DVD out there with some extra features, a conversation with director William Friedkin and a commentary track by Australian Film Critic/Historian Lee Gambin. Needless to say, Gambin loves the movie (as many of Cher’s fans do) and defends its style and aesthetic, look and sound. I’ll bring in his comments below where they seen relevant.

Since Cher has evolved into a respected actor, the first point we should cover are the performances of Sonny and Cher. I would say in this very rare case, Sonny does a better job. Which is understandable considering Cher didn’t take the whole project very seriously (also a plot point of the movie). Sonny is a passable physical comedian here. Not the worst. Not the best. Mostly Cher is just being Cher. Although I do think in the Film Noir sketch, you do see a slight glimmer of her future acting style. Surely nobody who saw this movie could foresee what she would go on and be able to do.

“Everyone’s a Critic Today”

Rotten Tomatoes has the movie at a 35% audience score. Zoinks! But Cher fans love it, at least as a kitsch artifact.

By 1967 when the movie was finally released, Sonny & Cher in their first incarnation were quickly becoming passé. Folk rock was on the wane and psychedelic rock was on the rise. Sonny came off as too conservative and Cher’s cool veneer suffered as a result.

But the film has not really been rehabilitated since the Cher revival. Modern reviews on Rotten Tomatoes have nothing much positive to say. W. B. Kelso calls the movie “a pastiche of a half-dozen, half-baked scenarios haphazardly thrown together that both look and read like rejected coconut-cranial-induced dream sequences from the old Gilligan’s Island.”

And it’s not like that isn’t true. But considered within the context of its time and intended teen audience…

Matt Brunson says the movie is a “simplistic vanity piece” and “hilarity doesn’t ensue.” And David Nusair, although he admits Sonny & Cher do possess a good amount of charisma, also agrees the movie is “a bloated vanity piece.”

Reviews of the time were mixed to bad.

On April 24, 1967, Roger Ebert said the film was “better than other movies of its type.” He talks about the revolution in music idol movies that was the Beatles movie A Hard Days Night and credits Good Times for being the first non-Beatles film to use this approach.

Lee Gambin quotes The Hollywood Reporter as saying the movie was “the most impressive directorial debut since Francis Ford Coppola’s You’re a Big Boy Now” and Gambin claims the Los Angeles Times said the movie had “moments of Woody Allen brilliance.”

I don’t know about that. But I do agree with Gambin’s aesthetic association of the movie with others like Head (1968), Skidoo (1968), I Love You Alice B. Toklas (1968), Psych Out (1968), Wild in the Streets (1968), Joe (1970), Medium Cool (1969), Easy Rider (1969) and stage musicals like Hair (1967) and Oh! Calcutta! (1969).

What to Look For

Opening Credits Montage: According to the commentary track with film historian Lee Gambin, montages like these are William Friedkin’s forte (see Boys in the Band).

You’ll see a few iconic Sonny & Cher images in this montage: their custom named wedding rings, a peek into Cher’s closet (possibly in the Franklin Avenue house where the film was partially filmed), images of coiffing Sonny & Cher hair, Cher shopping, Cher designing clothes and an image of Cher as a doll or mannequin (10 years later she will be accused of being a human mannequin or clotheshorse and have a Cher doll).

Note the bright colors starting with the pink cherry tree, the field of yellow grass they amble through, lots of hand holding, clips from Sonny & Cher when they sold out The Hollywood Bowl. Their popularity is starting to wane but the Hollywood Bowl shots remind us of how popular they were in 1965 and 1966.

Some interior house shots. We first see the dog Scoongie in the yellow room with Cher and the mythical piano on which Sonny wrote their songs. (He’s smoking away as he composes.)

Opening the Telegram: We hear some good audio/foley with the ripping of the envelope and see the front of their house with their matching custom George Barris convertible Mustang cars are parked,

The LA Fountain/Statue Scene: Cher is climbing on the ledge of the statue/fountain which exists somewhere in Los Angeles. Note Cher’s disinterest in business. This is a true reflection of her actual disinterest in the business of show business. This will come back to bite her in 1974 when she finds out Sonny has created a company called Cher Enterprises and Cher has no stake in it. You also see the credit for the Sonny & Cher fan who submitted the story that became this movie. Sonny gets a nose boop at the end.

The Movie Studio Office: Mr. Mordicus is a creepy movie mogul. His desk shows all the attributes of power: it’s very big and has multiple phones and multiple skirted secretaries. He even drinks from a golden goblet. Note the bright colors of the booze in his decanters.

Lee Gambin says to note William Friedkin’s camera techniques here in the fight scene. He also notes that one of the secretaries is played by Edy Williams who was in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970).

Sonny enters Mr. Mordicus’ office with a cigarette (back in the day you could smoke like everywhere). Sonny will be smoking throughout the film. Cher is seen smoking only in the Detective sketch.

There’s a two-fold writing theme in this movie that begins with this scene, one a meta-commentary on writing a movie script (who can do it, what value does it have?) and the other around the idea of writing your own identity, writing your own story. Sonny wants to control Sonny & Cher’s mythology and he also believes he can write the movie script or “work with the writer.” Mr. Mordicus pushes back on both fronts.

“We need a story and we’ll get one,” Mordicus says, “…a mere detail…we’ll get the finest writer money can buy” (meaning, not Sonny). This also highlights Sonny as a music star outsider in the status hierarchy of the movie business. The mogul is condescending to him. The mogul tricks Sonny into thinking he can “make changes” if he doesn’t like the script. According to Gambin, the camera angle on George Sanders tells us that chicanery is afoot.

Sonny leaves and we find out that in fact no new hotshot writer has been or will be hired for an original script. Sanders intends to recycle another has-been script for the purpose. It’s literally a dusty, old script. “Just add a new cover,” he says. “Put their names on it…in GOLD.”

As if all a music star needs to be bamboozled is a little bit of flattery. Those movie bastards!

George Sanders and the Hollywood Establishment: This is a good time to address the great George Sanders who plays Mr. Mordicus, Knife McBlade, The White Hunter and Zarubian in this movie. George Sanders was a coop for this movie and many Sanders fans feel he is wasted in it. He also appeared delectably as Shere Khan that same year in Disney’s The Jungle Book.

His main character here, Mr. Mordicus, as Lee Gambin notes, is set up like a Mephistopheles character, the movie mogul, the big fish preying on smaller fish. You see evidence of this in his first scene here: the fleet of pretty secretaries, the gratuitous fighters battling to the death akin to modern gladiators. He refers to the dead wrestler as debris to be removed.

He’s got a golden tongue too which he uses to condescend and flatter the young music stars: “I do so enjoy young people.”

Mordicus is even a world power, so much is a movie mogul seen as all-powerful in this movie. He sits on a veritable throne. On the phone he says, “tell his highness there can be no extension on the loan.! Later to Sonny he says, “Small nations are such bad risks.” Later in the movie, mob-like Mordicus goons will arrive at Sonny & Cher’s house.

The subtext here is that Sonny & Cher are small fish swimming out of their depth. Hollywood uses you and spits you out. The movie is Overlord in the entertainment business’. This is reinforced later when Mordicus tells Sonny & Cher, “The world was created in seven days. You have 3 extra days and all this to work with. Make of it what you will.”

Sonny is never intimidated by this, by the way. “We’ve had a lot of offers,” he insists early on to Mordicus when he asks for creative control.

And every single fantasy scenario will have a bummer ending, as if to say you can’t defeat the bad guys. But Sonny stands his ground every time. One theme of the movie is one of resilience in the face of the big fish.

And George Sanders is perfectly cast to represent the big, bad specter of old Hollywood.

The “Little Things” Video: While Sonny meets with Mr. Mordicus, they watch Sonny & Cher’s promotional film for a song called “It’s the Little Things,” Lee Gambin reminds us how popular the 1966 TV show Batman was at the time and how its comic-strip sensibility influenced this video. He also tells us this is the only diegetic song in the movie (vs. integrated song into the story). In the video we also see clips of Sonny & Cher skipping around Watts Towers in Los Angeles. We see Cher in multiple outfits both casual and glamourous (foreshadowing the costume changes she will become famous for making in her TV and Live shows). We see her in pigtails and on a swing. Sonny looks a bit bowlegged in his segments. We see more holding hands and Sonny affectionately laying his head on Cher’s shoulders. Aww.

The Café: Cher shows more disinterest in Sonny’s business meeting, although her designing her own outfits on the café table-top shows her as the creator of her own look. The fact of the graffiti indicates here Cher’s hippie-like irreverence for rules. The proprietor is at his wits end about it and tells Sonny, “You’re her husband, you yell at her.” There are parent and child roles for Sonny and Cher. Cher flashes an adorable smile and Sonny says, “you get away with it and that’s why you do it.” Already as far back as 1967, they’re working on their characterizations of Cher as a pain-in-the-ass and Sonny’s corresponding indulgence of her.

Cher is adorable here. You can see how the camera likes her even this early on. You also get a glimpse of the big jade ring Sonny gave her.

The Western Sequence: The Saga of Irving Ringo! (Ringo and the Bargirl)
The segment starts when Sonny & Cher leave the café and meet a boy in the street with a toy gun and holster. The little boy shoots at them and Cher shoots back first. I like this little bit of gender reversal, Cher as the heroic cowgirl taking the lead, but you get the idea that she shoots first to indicate just that she’s the bigger kid.

Sonny says, “how would you like it if I played Cowboys and Indians with your wife?” The kid says, “I haven’t got a wife!” Sonny steps up to tell the young boy how to wear his gun better. The irony here is that Sonny’s Irving Ringo character in the segment wears his gun ridiculously incorrectly…on purpose. And he shoots by kicking his leg out. (My notes say: “dumb.”) As we bleed into the sequence, Sonny asks Cher about playing a cowboy in their movie and finally, the kid says, “Bang Bang!” which would remind fans of Cher’s February 1966 hit, “Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).”

Lee Gambin tells us the character of Irving Ringo is based on the Ringo movies (A Pistol for Ringo, The Return of Ringo, A Woman for Ringo, etc.)

The sequence plays on many Cowboy Western tropes, for one Sonny is an Italian cowboy (Gambin reminds us how anglo American Western movies were until Spaghetti Westerns came along). Gambin also reminds us of the robust tradition of Musical Westerns (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Annie Get Your Gun, Calamity Jane, etc.) As an aside, he mentions the alternative take on Calamity Jane  with Burt Reynolds on episode #14 of the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.

The music starts out dramatically western and then shortly turns hapless. Sonny gets a early chance here to play a cowboy clown (a precursor to both the Comedy Hour characters he would play and his self portrayal on their future variety show).

There are many anachronistic sight gags in the Western town: the road cart has a license plate, the saloon has a jukebox instead of a piano player. Later there’s a complicated L.A. parking sign and a shop sign reading Gunsmith & Jeweler. Most of the gags in all the sequences are based on anachronisms.

Sonny’s horse is also named Rover and the horse follows Sonny into the saloon and gets scolded. People speak western-y grammar like “He’s the sheriff of this here town” and we hear the sounds of shuffling poker cards and chips. The foley is good in this segment with Sonny slurping a bow of chili at the bar, the sound of his spoon in bowl, a bottle of tabasco being dropped in his chili. Sonny is being confronted with the equivalent of a Cowboy bully, which reflects back on his previous experience with the movie-mogul-bully (bullies of the establishment).

Sonny is not a fighter. He can’t even break a bottle over the edge of the bar. But he’s a biter for some reason, which is strange. And his behavior is simply oddball (the cowboy equivalent of the freakish hippy?), but somehow this works to scare off a duel. That doesn’t quite play.

But Ringo perseveres in any case and the crowd celebrates and Cher appears as the redheaded barmaid. In her gawkiness, she almost can’t pull off the sexuality, but she still pulls focus.

Cher tells Sonny to, “Sing ‘em a song, Irv.” Irving responds, “Shucks ma’am, I can’t sing.” Cher says, “Don’t let that stop you.” This is part of the schtick of Sonny & Cher, Sonny’s bad singing voice. They’ll carry this trope into the early 1970s skits of their own variety show. This is one of my favorite quotes from the movie, because why should one have a beautiful voice to enjoy singing?

One of the revelers exclaims, “Skip de do Irv!” (another one of my favorite lines but Robrt Pela says he’s not saying that) and the song begins…

Good Times: Lee Gambin says to note the musical scene’s crane work and that some critics called the scene “crane happy” but Gambin believes Friedkin does a good job showcasing the dancing and the full bodies of the dancers.  Gabmin notes that the choreographer was one of the Sharks from West Side Story and also a dancer from the TV show Shindig!. We do get long shots of the dancers and it reminds us of the frustrating dance shots in a similar club number from Cher’s 2010 movie Burlesque. Gamgin says we lose full body shots in the 1980s with MTV videos. I think movies like Flashdance and Footloose also played a part in this as their dance numbers were shot to obscure the identity of the real dancers.

We see Sonny singing at the piano (foreshadowing his V.A.M.P. numbers on the Comedy Hour), dancers on a closed Y-shaped bar doing the can-can and somersaults, dancers on flowered swings. Cher is showing off her ring again. And she fires a gun during her solo, indicating she might be the real gunslinger in this show.

This is intercut with George Sanders as the villain, Knife McBlade, heading toward the town in a stagecoach, his heartless cold-stare as he loads his gun. We come back to the high kicks and drop-splits of the dancers and the ironic tension of the happy cluelessness, Sonny at a slot machine, Cher spinning a roulette wheel.

Suddenly Sonny is aware of his impending duel with Knife McBlade. The next scene is The Calling of the Deputies: “Luke, Sam, Pete.” We get more good foley of boot spurs, creaking leather and the clop of badges on suede as all of Irving’s deputies all quit. “Sorry Irv, I’ve got bad eyes,” says one. Another says, “It’s my gun hand. It’s my gun hand gone bad” and the joke here is that the deputy’s gun hand is still strong enough to knock Irving backwards. Another one cries, “I ‘aint got no guts!” and a pouty blonde comes up to say, “I didn’t want to be a deputy anyway, Irving!” Cher is suspicious and asks, “When’d you make her a deputy” (a bit of an uncomfortable association with Sonny’s penchant of cheating on Cher with blondes). Sonny leaves the bar all alone as they all slap him on the back and say platitudes like “Good luck!” and “Don’t let ‘em get ya down!” One of the throwaway jokes is that even Rover his horse turns in his badge.

The town is named Broken Elbow and George Sanders arrives as a classic black hat. He shoots up a Raggety Andy doll in the street to indicate how ruthless he is. Sonny takes the long walk down the center of town. We see holes in his hat from the silly way he fires his gun (and apparently often misses). One of the recurring images is Sonny losing bullets from his holster. This happens again at the end of the segment and as he scrambles to pick them up, the wind rises up and Sanders shoots him dead.

Seemingly Sonny has been defeated by the big black hat. We’re back in Los Angeles, however, and Sonny isn’t dead. He’s just lost the shoot-out with a ten year old. No matter.

S&C Get in Their Mustang: Sonny snaps back to reality, the duel with the little boy, and realizes he hasn’t fired his gun and so the boy wins. Cher says he’s not much of a cowboy (already Cher is unimpressed with Sonny’s visions of grandeur). She looks uncharacteristically frumpy in that red suit. Sonny and Cher leave in one of  their convertibles parked streetside. Would they really park a custom George Barris Mustang on a LA city street? Incredible. They drive home. You can see the full front of the house.

Sonny in the Kitchen: Sonny, wearing a white helmet, is cooking something in a sauce pan. Their silkie terrier dog, Scoonge or Scoongie, runs in with a spoon for scraps but turns his head at the food Sonny holds out on the spoon. “Come on you’ll love it. It’s delicious. Just try it one time,” Sonny says and when the dog refuses, Sonny laments that “everyone’s a critic today.” (Sonny’s family members insist he was a very good cook and made many Italian family recipes). I’m reminded here looking at their pots and pans that Cher would buy two of everything when she first came into money, so sure was she that she’d be poor again soon.

Sonny takes the spoon through the house (check out the  art on the walls) to find Cher laying on her bed in a pink jacket of boa feathers. In Lee Gambin’s words, Cher shows here her “wild, other-worldly presentation…she owns her presentation.” Sonny says they shouldn’t fight in front of their fans (Scoongie). Cher is mad because Sonny has purchased a motorcycle without asking her first. Sonny tells her he looks sexy on the bike. Cher suggests if he wants to look sexy he should wear a bikini instead. Here is the Cher-of-the-wise-cracks.

They have a fight about meeting Mr. Mordicus to discuss their upcoming movie and shortly afterward the mogul’s mob-like agents arrive. Sonny is again not intimidated by these seemingly thuggish people. Mr. Mordicus “requests your presence,” the agents say. Sonny talks Cher into coming and Cher warns Sonny, “I think you’re bending.”

The Movie Studio Office and Soundstage: Cher walks through the office making irreverent comments about how the room reminds her of the show Batman: “Where are the bat poles? I’m serious, I have to find the bat room.” They pass through some doors to the soundstage. We get a big closeup shot of Cher’s mascara’d eyes as she looks around enthralled. We hear Mr. Mordicus say, “These are not the clouds I ordered….strike the sky!” about a background and someone responds, “Atrocious sky, Mr. M” and Cher innocently asks, “What’s wrong with the sky?” Mordicus changes the subject by asking Cher about designing her own clothes (you quaint rock-and-roll people, designing your own clothes!)

Cher wears a fake white fur with black spots. The studio people make over Sonny & Cher and someone tells Sonny “this nose will have to go.” Interestingly, on the Comedy Hour TV show it will be Cher’s nose that gets the brunt of the jokes, Sonny, by that time will have gotten a nose job. But we never heard about that during all the scandals of the 1980s and 90s during Cher’s alleged and admitted plastic surgeries. The particularly ridiculous removed-rib scandal had a kind of accidentally feminist Adam-and-Eve edge to it.

Modricus talks about interviews upcoming with the radio, television and press people and then says to clear the set,” Sylvan lock that door.” Sylvan is then heard off-stage saying, “Clear the set! Everybody out!” (These hilarious cast-offs lines stand out in my memory because at age eleven I memorized the whole movie from a cassette recording like it was a radio show.)

Mr. Mordicus talks about the “new” script with the writer. They discuss the length of the script by its weight in ounces, not the quality of its content. Mordicus wants to rush filming and release, which is ironic because this movie itself would languish for a year before its release. Sonny reminds Mordicus that Sonny & Cher reserve the right to hear the script and it is decided the screenwriter will tell the story to the group.

Like any mogul would, Mordicus sits on a literal gold chair and we’re surrounded with movie-stage paraphernalia: set pieces, racks of clothes, makeup tables with round lightbulbs, fake drops. Looking at soundstage props and furniture pieces, I forgot how guilded the 1960s were. Gambin notes how the camera keeps moving throughout the script reading, which turns out to be a cliched story about two hillbilly kids like Sonny and Cher just trying to make it in the music business.

“You’re gonna love this!” screenwriter Mr. Garth says in that overly enthusiastic way of show-biz salesmen. He also says things like, “It’s progress, see?!” The movie characters are “nice kids, but nowheres. Real tapped out cats…they’d rather stay slobs then let the government own ‘em.”

Sonny & Cher give each other a dubious look at that comment and it’s hard to tell whether it’s the political content or the melodramatic overtones that are annoying them. Sonny is smoking a cigarette through this entire scene. In the script, a radio DJ gets “bombed and their record gets played by mistake.”

Interestingly, Sonny & Cher’s first hit “I Got You Babe” was the B-side of their first Atco single. Ahmet Ertegun was pushing the single “It’s Gonna Rain” which he felt had more potential (hard to believe). But Sonny used his record promotion contacts to push the B-side instead and Sonny was right.

“They’re a smash! The hit of the world!” Garth continues, “The kids zoom to the top. Nothing but loot! But they’re all heart. I mean they’re real!” Garth emotes. By this time, Mordicus has fallen asleep in his gold chair. At the end of it, Garth asks, “Is that  custom made?” Cher laughs out loud. This laugh, which wakes up Mr. Mordicus, is a great example of Cher’s shy subversion of the period. The movie thugs stand up to intimidate Sonny & Cher but Sonny doesn’t back down and says the script is junk. Garth says, “Taylor and Burton’d do it in a minute!” “No doubt,” condescends Mordicus.

As this scene reminds us, this is a film about filmmaking and storytelling. The bad script is the core issue of the scene.

At the end, Sanders challenges them to write their own script in 10 days or they’ll have to use this crappy one. “For a genius, 10 days is an eternity. The world was created in 7. You have 3 extra days and all of this to work with. Make of it what you will.” We come to see the script is irrelevant to Mordicus. It was always worthless. But let the music stars write one if they think they can.

The Sonny & Cher Mythology: Another big theme of the movie is the origin story of Sonny & Cher. Their mythologizing goes back to the early interviews and those stories about how they broke through in London (after getting thrown out of the Hilton Hotel) and came back to America as part of the British Invasion. It also goes back to the story about how they met and when they were married. The mythologizing would continue and evolve through the skits of all the variety shows of the 1970s . The stories weren’t always completely factual. This movie is also concerned with their origin story, as Lee Gambin puts it in the commentary, “their fabricated sense of how it happened.”

Whatever the story is, Sonny wants to control it. This probably made it hard on Sonny when Cher started doing solo interviews in the mid-1970s. Although she never outright contradicted his origin stories.

Going as far back as this movie, Cher (and Sonny) have always been a text of self-invention and re-invention (which is why they might have been criticized for being inauthentic).

Sonny fights for his story here (even this movie-version of the already fictional version). In the movie, Hollywood is trying to turn them into something they’re not, a commodity. Sonny & Cher are insisting they’re not commodities (unlike what their 1960s critics would say). Being turned into something you’re not is the trap of show business, Gambin says in the commentary and, “the smart ones survive this.”

Identity Issues: As Robrt Pela pointed out in our conversation about the movie, this is a story within a story within a story. Sonny & Cher play multiple versions of themselves. At the core is a fake script and their own imaginative vignettes about themselves. This lies within a story about Sonny and Cher trying to make a movie. That story lies within an actual movie which lies within the career of two people playing public versions of themselves.

It’s also interesting that they don’t want to do a “rags-to-riches” story (when their own personal trajectory as a couple was literally rags to riches). They don’t want to think about where they’ve been; they want to see themselves as wide-open, fantastical, heroic.

Trust Me: After the movie goombah’s depart, Sonny & Cher wander around the soundstage with their dreams in flux. Cher is worried but she’s trying not to make any waves. Sonny calls her on it: “That’s a yeah that doesn’t mean yeah at all.” When pressed, Cher says, “Are you sure you wanna get mixed up with those creeps?” Sonny rebuts, “He should know what he’s doing. He owns half the world.” Cher: “Yeah and I think he want’s to own you too.”

Sonny: “Have I ever steered you wrong yet?” Cher: “No.”

And then they start to sing “Trust Me,” the sequel to which is called “Cher Enterprises” The song is both sweet and discomforting if you know how it would end with Sonny & Cher legally. Maybe she trusted him a bit too much.

But in any case, Cher is dressed like rock star here in those leather pants, black shirt and long earrings.

At this point of the commentary Lee Gambin talks about Friedkin’s deft craft in his “transition to song,” how smoothly the movie movies from dialogue to song in this scene. Gambin also talks about the segment’s tenderness and somber tones. Gambin talks about these quiet, intimate shots before the tempo of the song changes.

And it is a sweet song: Cher sings about her blind confidence in Sonny, “Hey my friend, I don’t know where you are. But I’ll be there. I’ll help you find your star.” (This seems like the peak time of Sonny & Cher affection). She continues, “There’s not a face that can take your place by far. So hey my friend, I’m always where you are.” We get another glimpse of the jade ring here.

Then we break into the bustling activity of Sonny & Cher trying on different costumes they discover around the soundstage. Sonny puts on Napoleon and helms a ship’s wheel. Cher rides the carousel as a clown. I just learned a reason why we rarely see female clowns. Clowns are meant to appear asexual, which is harder for women to pull off. They’re meant to be out-of-this world, plastic, elastic creatures. But Cher makes an adorable clown. At the end of the movie in flashbacks, we will see alternate takes of Sonny & Cher on the carousel.

Sonny tries out Aladdin, Cher plays Snow White. The uptempo part of the song exudes the early playfulness of Sonny & Cher, as much as skipping around Watts Towers or running through flower fields.

Friedkin uses more light and color swishes intercutting the action. Not sure what is going on with those trippy-hippy proto-psychedelic flourishes.

Gambin comments that some critics of the movie felt the music was a drag on the story’s momentum, which is a common critique of musicals overall, Gambin reminds us. He feels musical breaks give a story “air to breathe” and in many musicals these moments work like a Greek chorus. In this part of the story, Cher is having her own catharsis, he says. Music is the part where the character can no longer speak. And when the character can no longer speak, Gambin says, they must dance. These are emotional elevations.

The Jungle Sequence: (Jungle Morrey & His Companion Zora)
Here the famous fur vets of Sonny & Cher become organic to the story. Sonny swings in on a vine and wipes out in his landing. “I lost my balance,” he laments and Cher quips, “how can you lose what you never had.” This is very early evidence of their bickering banter, completely pre-dating the night-club act where, the story goes, Cher’s wise acre act was developed. “Stop with the king of the jungle jazz,” Cher says. (She’s still a hippy, after all.)

They also play on their act’s trope of Sonny’s sub-par singing. Sonny gives his Tarzan yell and the animals hate it and we see scenes of suffering and annoyed safari animals. Sonny: “Who says it’s awful?” Cher (adorably) says: “Everybody in the world.”

Like in the Western sequence, there are sight gags, the elephant “car wash” has a lane for “compacts” only. The jungle neighborhood has a traffic light. There’s a bit with Sonny drawing a sundial in the ground to tell time and then just checking his watch, their treehouse balcony has 1960s-era patio furniture.

Sonny throws Cher around (like he’s a caveman, I guess) and Cher looks annoyed every time. The baby elephant (the “compact”) plays with her.

Sonny & Cher really interact with animals in this sequence. Since this was filmed, horrific stories of animal abuse with movie-set handlers has made these kind of scenes much more questionable. It’s not quite a comfortable experience watching Sonny wrestle with a female lion cub or seeing Cher ride an elephant. These images foreshadow Cher’s ride on the Farewellephant and her charitable wildlife foundation, Free the Wild,  and their high-profile rescue of an elephant depicted a bit more respectfully in Cher and the Loneliest Elephant (another story of persistence).

I do love Westerns. I was raised in a house of boys who discussed them at the dinner table. But I have never liked Jungle movies. So this was always my least favorite sketch. Looking back however, I do appreciate the treehouse with it’s Barbie-townhouse elevator, the joke of the tiny house exterior and a huge, luxurious interior (befitting a Jungle celebrity such as Morrey), the modern furniture and the art on the walls. We see Cher again relaxing on their double bed (second image of this), reading a fashion magazine. And Cher makes one of my favorite quips in the movie, “You knew when you met me I wasn’t the domestic type” (I say this a lot because I like to keep expectations low).

Sonny starts watching television, a show he feels is a rip-off of his own identity, Jungle Gino (played with high camp by Mikey Dolenz of The Monkees). The TV version even has a faithful monkey named Jerome.  This is Sonny & Cher doing normal people things: reading magazines, watching bad TV.

In this sequence, unlike the Western sequence or even the ostensibly “real” parts of the movie, Cher shows how unimpressed she is with Sonny’s antics. She rolls her eyes when Sonny complains, “he’s not even using a real vine!” Sonny complains as Cher brings him his panda bear and then she mumbles, “Such a jerk.” Is she talking about Morrey or Gino?

Foreshadowing the Future: There are lots of foreshadowing elements in this movie. Sonny & Cher do a lot of television watching, the satirical sequences foreshadow the future vaudevillian skits on their Comedy Hour variety show,

Sonny is working on his characterization of the clown or fool, Sonny & Cher are working on early bickering banter, Cher’s wise cracks at their Encino house, at the jungle home and in the detective bar, showing signs of being unimpressed with Sonny. Her characters are all a pain in the ass and Sonny expresses indulgence.

Cher designs her own clothes and doesn’t like the business of show business. It’s all on Sonny to work out,

The Samantha song in the Detective sketch predicts Cher’s famous variety show torch numbers. The sequences are about imaginative reinvention.

Sonny and Cher wait for their delivery order from Jungle Delight to come (it comes seemingly overcooked). This is probably a joke on the once-popular fast-food chain Chicken Delight. While they wait we cut to a gang of monkeys on the treehouse patio gambling with dice and smoking. This scene does not age well. It was always a confusing scene for me anyway. Who were these monkeys? Sonny was seen calling for his “faithful companion” named Pizza, but it wasn’t clear yet he was a monkey (although his likeness Jerome was a monkey in the Jungle Gino cutaway). The monkyes have dialogue dubbed by crusty old 1960s TV actors. One says, “Encroyable!” and another exclaims, “Those are new dice!” Predictably, their game devolves into monkey business by the end.

We return to the treehouse and Cher has done an outfit change. The monkey Pizza enters and Sonny decides to abandon their bad dinner in order to play a game of checkers with Pizza. Cher does a little bit of stress eating. (In real life, Sonny’s antics would cause Cher to stress stop-eating in 1972 and her weight would plummet.) Cher joins Sonny and Pizza at the coffee table and second-guesses Sonny’s bad checkers moves. “Don’t kibitz,” Sonny says, a Yiddish term I had to look up a few years ago.

There is a hairy arm reaching for checker pieces in the closeups. Sonny does have dark hair on his forearms but they don’t seem nearly that hairy!I At the end, Sonny loses and throws the board over. He’s a sore loser.

Cher asks Sonny to talk to their son. The next scene is with this son played by the older actor Hank Warden. Lee Gambin lists Warden’s more memorable roles in Red River, The Searchers, The Alamo and Fort Apache. The skit is a spoof on parents harassing their children for having long hair and hair fads. Sonny puts his shoulder on a completely bald Hank Warden and says, “Why do you have to wear it so short, Son? It doesn’t look clean. It looks like you’re rebelling against something.”

Sonny is then compelled to protect the Elephant’s Graveyard from George Sanders playing The Great White Hunter. Sanders is riding to the graveyard to poach elephant ivory and Sonny intervenes. This bit hits all the wrong notes considering the tragedy of large game poaching. (By the way, I’m beginning to think Sonny loved to be shirtless.) Sonny makes another failed attempt to call the animals with his wobbly voice. They respond with great indifference.

But Sonny does a great run through the jungle. The scene ends with Sonny at his clowniest swinging on a vine and falling into a pit of quicksand.

Sonny has failed but he has also escaped. At the end a tiger comes up to lick him affectionately on the head and paw at him. “What a day,” Sonny says. The jungle animals don’t hate him. They just think he’s silly. Sonny will live to yell another day. This is Sonny in show business just as much as it is in the real jungle.

Sonny & Cher In Their Natural Habitat: Cher wakes Sonny up in bed. They’re wearing adorably similar pajamas. Cher is upset with Sonny because he’s been mumbling about a girl named Zora in his dream. “Who is Zora!”

I’ve always been intrigued by images of Sonny & Cher in their natural habitat. These appeared through the years on album covers, in press and in variety show videos. Sonny did state a belief in one interview that showing celebrities behind the scenes solidifies the fan-star relationship. This theorizing predated reality TVs and Truth-or-Dare-like-documentaries. Most fascinating to me were those occasional images of Sonny & Cher in bed. This movie has a few, as does the back cover of their final record album, Mama Was a Rock and Roll Singer, Papa Used to Write All Her Songs.

“Why’d you have to pick a name like Zora?” Cher laments. “I didn’t,” Sonny says, “It came with the dream.” Sonny is obfuscating here and Cher lets him. The end result is that he gets his bike keys back at the end of the scene.

This seems a big quaint today, the wife hiding her husband’s motorcycle keys. But in a relationship with such a big power deferential, it’s not hard to see this happening. Cher has very little control in this fictional/real relationship. This is a small stand she’s making here. It’s almost cute, but kind of also sad and it probably reflects more on relationships back in the 1960s (although one hears stories of this sort of thing making a comeback in neo-reactionary now). Cher’s entourage and those working for Sonny stated he was definitely a chauvinist and somewhat of an authoritarian. And these are the kinds of behaviors you see wives resorting to in these situations.

In any case, Sonny has his bike keys. We see him get on his bike and ride off without taking the helmet in Cher’s hands. We see the front of the Franklin Avenue Encino house, complete with desert xeriscaping.

Don’t Talk to Strangers: Cher can be seen in a matching white-lace bellbottom outfit. This is the Cher-skipping era. This song is full of Cher-love. There are good shots of water reflecting the leaves and Sonny & Cher in the water’s reflection. Intimate Sonny & Cher. We see Cher in what looks like the Sepulveda hills or ambling through same garden or zoo. At the end of the song, I can see Chaz’s mouth in Cher. I always thought Chaz had Sonny’s eyes, but he has Cher’s mouth.

Some people also said Cher had tunnel vision when it came to Sonny. This image in the song is particularly good in showing that, Cher looking at Sonny through a glass coke bottle while Sonny is cooking.

There are also good shots of Sonny riding his bike through undeveloped areas of Encino.

Lee Gambin says Friedkin lets the chord progression of the song tell the story. Cher is worried about Sonny, both on his bike and in his business dealings. Not worried enough to take over but…

Back in their Habitat: Cher is watching TV with their terrier Scoongie. She’s wearing a matching stripped bellbottom outfit. Cher’s hanging-around-the-house outfits are so coordinated. Way different from her claim these days to wear only jeans and t-shirts when she’s not working.

Sonny walks in and Cher tells Sonny the terrier Scoongie thinks Sonny should be a detective. Sonny asks her why and she says because “He thinks you can do anything.” Aww!

Sonny goes out to their backyard pool area and thinks to himself, “I got the looks for it!” (He doesn’t though).

Their pool was the subject of some of the best pictures they took in the 1960s.

Sonny would go on to play a few more detectives. In 1976 he played an aging Sam Spade on The Sonny & Cher Show and then in a 1979 TV movie, Murder in Music City, Sonny plays a green detective named Sonny Hunt.

The Film Noir Sequence: (Johnny Pitzicatto and Samantha)
We cut to Sonny in bed smoking a cigarette while having sex with two women (a blonde and a redhead).

The interesting thing about this “film noir” satire, and I didn’t notice this until Lee Gambin pointed it out, is that it’s in full-color, 1960s color-palate. It’s not noir at all and yet it still captures the flavor. Gambin notes similarities with the 1968 Frank Sinatra movie, The Detective.

The visual gags are here too: Johnny comes back to his dreary office and takes off two detective coats. Later there’s another coat joke when he opens his closet and he has only detective coats. He has an inordinate amount of guns.

There’s a trope about time and Johnny having trouble telling time, “With a cheap watch you can’t tell.”

Cher arrives in a blonde up-do doing a Mae West impersonation. (Gambin loves her as a blonde and says she’s “so gorgeous. Look at her!” He calls her statuesque and notes the famous “Half Breed” video from the Comedy Hour.)

Of all the sequences, you can only see her future acting traits here in these detective-office lines. Johnny calls everyone “baby cakes.” The grapefruit in the face is a tribute to the James Cagney movie, Public Enemy. While I was re-watching the movie, Mr. Cher Scholar said he felt Cher looks like her mom, Georgia Holt, in this scene.

The bad guys arrive and Johnny advises Cher to hide in a closet. But then Johnny rats Cher out. When the bad guys peek in the closet and the girls are seen primping, I’m reminded of the seedy brothel scenes in Sonny and Cher’s next movie, Chastity. Johnny throws the bad guy out of a window and says, “That’s my third window this week.” Har.

Another bad guy arrives and Cher gets shot in the back. We get Cher’s first death scene. There are only two, the other being the bloody death in If These Walls Could Talk. It’s not pleasant watching Cher die.

Johnny then goes to a nightclub named Samantha’s Place. The next few scenes are disturbing. They’re intended to be a spoof on the character of the asshole detective but there’s something off about them. Johnny punches the doorman in the stomach. When the cigarette girl says, “Hello Johnny, I called you last night” Sonny as Johnny says, “Don’t call me. I’ll call you, frog legs” and then he violently knocks her cigarette tray up into her face. Dude! That looked like it hurt!

I want to believe after William Friedkin called “Cut!” Sonny went over to see if the cigarette girl was okay. But we don’t really know. Later he spits at a waitress. It’s too much. I think there’s a conspicuous mod at the bar.

I’m Gonna Love You: While all this is happening, Cher, as Samantha in a blonde flip wig and a sparkly gold dress, is singing a torch number. There are more clips of swirling colors. I want to like this song but every time I concentrate on it I keep losing the thread. It’s dull, muted, low key for Cher and the more bombastic torch performances she would later give. This song would be perfect for a redo, Cher re-interpreting Sonny’s songs. I think another problem is that the song sequence isn’t shot very well.

Banter in the Booth: Cher has some great wiseacre lines in this banter, jokes about their age difference (a real 11-year thing), and something they will never again joke about, Cher’s status as underage girl when they met (Cher was 16 and Sonny was 27).

Johnny insists, “Next case solved, bang we get married…what’s the hurry, Sam, you’re only 19.”

Cher retorts, “Yeah, but we’ve been engaged seven years. People are beginning to talk.”

Johnny says, “Not as much as they talked when we first got engaged.”

There’s a lot more of Sonny smoking through the sketch. Robrt Pela notes that in this scene we can also see the Jade ring that Sonny once gave her. We find out Johnny’s own uncle is thwarting him.

The bad guys instigate a shoot-out in the nightclub and Johnny kills everyone save Samantha and the gangsters which leaves a big pile of bodies behind. This is the most violent of the sequences. As Johnny leaves the club, the bad guys knock him out. He collapses with the cigarette still dangling from his mouth.

Back at bad-guy headquarters, the gangsters, led by George Sanders in his most forgettable of all the roles, hypnotize Johnny, which is always a disappointing story line, and the sequence moves to its final bummer ending. Cher, holding a cigarette but never inhaling it for some reason, is coy at the police station as Johnny arrives with a bomb strapped to his body and puns ensue. Johnny’s uncle says things like, “Will you hang up that phone before I go to pieces!” and “Another minute of this and I’ll really blow up.” When he asks Johnny, “Where can I find him?” Johnny responds, “Several places. It depends upon which part of him you want to find.” Everybody get blown up by the end. Again, Sonny can’t defeat the bad guys (they’re everywhere) but he stands his ground.

Sonny’s Thought Montage:
Sonny is thinking back over all his ideas. The pressure is building and we get a climax of the sequence climaxes. It feels very meta. We also get a montage of Sanders-villains over ominous music, ending with a pan up the exterior or the movie-studio office building. Hollywood: one of the villains.

Back to the Movie Studio Office: Good foley of shuffling papers and Sonny’s Beatle boots on white floors. There is a image of Sonny and Sanders facing each other from opposite ends of the room, shot like a showdown.

This is an interesting scene. Sanders is working late into the night, dressed like Hugh Hefner. The crisis of the script is at its peak. Sanders’ condensation is also at its peak. “Only ideas?” he bellows at Sonny. “Nothing concrete? No script? And we shoot tomorrow at dawn.”

Here we realize, Sonny has been given an impossible task. Sonny says, “I’ve got some funny characters and some good situations” (this movies in a nutshell, all imagination). Sanders accuses him of stage fright. Sonny is not cowed. “I don’t have stage fright. You have a lousy script!” Sonny threatens not to show up.

And here we get the scary Sanders show-biz speech:

“Well then you force me to be unkind. You both will be taken with a permanent case of laryngitis. There will be writs, restraining orders and injunctions. You will not record or perform in any way until this contract has been fulfilled. And the contract calls for you to appear as rustic wonders in this delightful tour de force.”

In a desperate moment, Sonny tries to buy back the contract. Sanders exerts his power prerogative and refuses, “Out of the question. We will make this picture. It will make money and that, my boy, is what it is all about.”

Sanders walks up the stairs followed demurely by a voluptuous secretary. Ew.  Left alone by the door Sonny makes a hand gesture here that is a very good bit of acting and then he turns to leave.

Argument in the Garage: I call this alternatively the Shit-Rolls-Downhill Scene. Cher in a light blue outfit comes out to the garage to find out why Sonny’s piano playing sounds so sad-sack. This is another part of Sonny & Cher lore, they kept the piano in the garage or basement and his best compositions were rendered by the water heater, which you can see there in the background.

(In all my LA house rentals, I never had an indoor water heater. All my LA water heaters were outside in little water-heater sheds that would flood whenever it rained. But anyway…)

“You only play like that when you’re depressed.” Cher says. Sonny tells her, “We gotta make that movie.” Cher challenges him and he explodes, “You know nothing NOTHING about business.” He does have a point. Cher has avoided the business. Sonny will benefit from this someday, like in the millions of dollars benefit from this.

Gambin notes here that this is not a deep story about drug abuse or alcoholism or a mysterious deathly illness. And it isn’t. It’s about the Faustian Showbiz Deal. Less glamourous but entirely as common and possibly interrelated.

The Faustian Showbiz Deal: Mr. Mordicus nefariously tries to manipulate Sonny and Cher with flattery. Regarding the script, he asks the writer to “Put their names on it…in GOLD.” At the script reading, the writer plays up the ideas of sudden success and fame: “They were nice kids, but nowheres. Real tapped out cats!” and then later suddenly, “They’re a smash! The hit of the world! The kids zoom to the top. Nothing but loot! But they’re all heart. I mean they’re real!”

When Sonny and Cher resist losing control of their story, the writer tries to manipulate their innocence, “Taylor and Burton’d do it in a minute” (they wouldn’t) and pressure them with their disposability, “We’ll get the next teenage idol who comes along.”

This is a bad deal made for a dreamy grasp at movie stardom. Sonny & Cher will regret signing it and they will have to give up something to escape it. Interestingly, it will not echo at all Cher’s struggles to break into acting. No one wanted to take a chance on her so a Faustian bargain was never offered. But if it ever was, you’d have the sense that Cher would have refused it, having been trained well by Sonny (and also having lived through the movie version of it).

Sonny angrily requests his bike keys. Cher petulantly slams them on the piano. You just know Sonny’s getting the Cher Stare right there. I know this scene by heart. Sonny zooms off on his bike.

Just a Name: Cher wanders around their dining room with its poof-ball curtains (I would have an entirely poof-ball house and wardrobe if I could, TBH) as she cries and sings about Sonny. We get more closeups of their customized wedding rings. Cher fondles Sonny’s sculpture (hey, now) and she fingers his fur vest.

Cher wears a blue pantsuit and carries a green coat and we see her skipping along a promenade with her coat in her hands. Is Cher going to skip all the way to Sonny?

Next she has the coat on and is catching a ride from what looks like a flatbed truck, one day to become a real video-filmed-in-Los-Angles trope.

More good shots of Sonny on his bike at nighttime. More color swirls.

They both head to Music Center near the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The big office building is shot from below revealing each lit level floor by floor.

Sonny does more flashback thinking, including alternate shots of Sonny & Cher on the carousel.

He sings this line that always cracks me up, “She’s not so hot. I mean what’s she got” followed by “She’s got all I want and even more.” (You just said…ok, never mind.)

A close-up of their holding hands at the reconciliation.

The F.U. Scene: The soundstage is a bustle with activity. Mr. Mordicus tells the crew to treat the stars “gently but firmly.” Sonny arrives wearing an odd blue jacket over a mustard-yellow shirt predicting things Duran Duran will one day wear. He looks shlumpy in it. He tells Mr. Mordicus and the crew that he and Cher refuse to do the movie. When Mordicus threatens the end of his career, Sonny calmly says, “Then my career’s gonna have to end.” (He mentions nothing about Cher’s career; maybe this is why Sonny always negotiated unique and separate solo contracts for her. A loophole!)

“Bravo!” Mordicus says, “excellent performance.” (It’s all jaded performance to these mogul types, see?) Sonny throws the script at Mordicus.

Mr. Garth says with distain, “we’ll get the next teen age idol that come down the pike. There’s hundreds of ’em.”

For some reason, the one-note villainous Mordicus suddenly refrains with a glint of what looks like respect in his eye. He says, “don’t be uncouth, Mr. Garth!”

Yeah! Don’t be uncouth, Garth!

Sonny & Cher In the Wild: Cher wears a paisley pantsuit and hands a small ice cream cone to Sonny. She jokes, “Still wanna make a movie?” and they laugh, not quite Cher’s crane laugh but another interesting chuckle.

Sonny & Cher’s slow version of “I Got You Babe” plays as we see scenes of Sonny and Cher just hanging out around Los Angles eating their cones and holding hands.

They walk down a street with pink awnings and flowers. Really lovely.

There’s a closing montage of scenes from the movie, Cher-as-clown and Sonny-as-Napoleon again on the carousel. This time Sonny has the hoop and Cher reaches for it (my favorite version of the carousel clips).

Friends of mine who have seen the movie say this is the most memorable part for them.  Cher skips up to the gate of a corral and rides it while Sonny pushes it open. They spend the last frame skipping across a hill under a big sky. The camera pans back to a little Sonny and Cher and I can always hear Cher’s doe-eyed question in my head from early in the movie, “What was wrong with the sky?”

More trivia bout the movie in Cher Scholar’s conversation about Good Times.