I was going to wait until I watched the Ann Meara and Jerry Stiller documentary before talking about the Captain & Tennille. But I have just gone into the weeds with them and I already have plenty to say.

For the last week or more I’ve been finishing the watching of their TV show DVDs, the DVDs I started watching about 15 years ago when I received the DVD collection as a Christmas gift. I blogged about watching one show back in 2009 and I agree with pretty much everything I said back then except I like Daryl Dragon considerably less. This round there was something obviously wrong with Daryl, something wrong between Toni and Daryl. Well, for one thing, they have since divorced and Daryl passed away in 2019. So that brought some of the shows discomforts into high relief.

Watching the show again turned out to be much more disturbing for Mr. Cher Scholar because he remembers watching the show as a 10 year old and really loving it. Now, we could see the show has plenty of problems, not the least of which is Daryl looking so uncomfortable not only talking but with Toni’s affection. Then there’s the writing, the costumes, the choreography, the sets. But there are also some great segments with Toni and Daryl at their respective keyboards and some great duets between Toni and their guests.

But more than a few times, Mr. Cher Scholar or I said, “what’s wrong with that Daryl guy!” And I even said this a few times, “That Toni Tennille would have been much better off without that Daryl guy.” But since Daryl Dragon’s death, we haven’t heard a peep from Toni Tennille, except maybe on social media years ago. Although Toni said she was retiring from public life after her memoir, she seems to have disappeared entirely.  It’s like her public life pretty much began and ended with Daryl Dragon. It reminds me of the end of the movie The Truman Show where I started to feel an awful complicity in my interest in famous lives. So that kind of blows my theory that Toni Tennille would have had a better career without Daryl Dragon. Maybe, like Cher likes to say, there would be no Toni Tennille without Daryl Dragon.

She did do some solo things over the years, a talk show, a traveling musical and a big band tour visiting local orchestras. But her personal life stayed locked in with Daryl Dragon.

It’s a sad story. Toni Tennille loved Daryl Dragon and he quite possibly suffered from undiagnosed autism. I was so flummoxed by watching Daryl on the TV show, I ordered Toni Tennille’s memoir and read it in under 24 hours (it’s short). Tennille never mentions autism but alludes to an abusive Dragon family history instead and issues with mental illness (a bi-polar mother who suffered a bad lobotomy, a sister who committed suicide and a brother who may have also died by suicide). But there is plenty of evidence in her memoir of autistic-like behavior. This is not a diagnosis but it puts us in the ballpark. Something unusual was going on with Daryl. (This is also not a diagnosis but this person reviews the symptoms listed in Tennille’s memoir.)

Now just to preface, I am not a Captain & Tennille fan. I did just recently buy a Toni Tennille doll (which I didn’t know even existed before I bought it and only because it was dressed in a rare Cher doll outfit). I had their greatest hits on vinyl (bought used) and I still have one Greatest Hits CD (with songs I like on it) but I had never previously watched any of their shows, specials or TV appearances.

But I do want to say I really do like Toni Tennille. And all through watching the variety shows, I argued with Mr. Cher Scholar about this. But I have even more sympathy for her now than I did before watching them.

Yes, she’s gangly and manic on that show. We joked that she was definitely an Omega-Mu ( a reference from Revenge of the Nerds). She was actually a Delta Delta Delta but didn’t fit in there. She admits she’s every bit the intense perfectionist she appeared to be. But those things have never been deal breakers for me. In fact, they just make me like her even more, especially after hearing stories about how Toni and Daryl’s peers at A&M shunned them for being unhip for the times. A&M! That’s the label with The Carpenters. But that reminds me I love Karen Carpenter for all the same reasons. Gawky, quiet girls, you have a place in my heart.

Plus, she’s also beautiful and has a great voice which I enjoy most when she’s singing a ballad at a piano. I love her sexy songs too (“Do That Too My One More Time” and “You Never Done It Like That“) and I muchly prefer her latter-day hair.

And I still love the Dream album photos (which the memoir says were taken at Salton Sea).

And when I got to reading the memoir, I found Toni Tennille had much more in common with Cher than I could have ever guessed, aside from people calling Captain & Tennille the square Sonny & Cher. When I first read that I was delighted because it implied for a second that Sonny & Cher were thought of as cool somewhere. But unfortunately I think there were more people who thought of Sonny & Cher as the square Sonny & Cher. But when you contrast them with Captain & Tennille, they do take on a sheen of hipness.

There were so many similarities between Cher and Toni, I started making a list:

  1. In each duo there was a quiet one (Daryl and Cher) and an outgoing one (Toni and Sonny). And the yin-and-yang of that fact became part of their respective schticks.
  2. They both worked with Hal Blaine at one time or another.
  3. There was a previous marriage for each couple: Sonny’s and Toni’s.
  4. Each of their record labels distributed false marriage stories because none of them were married when their first hit landed on the charts, for Sonny & Cher this was the lie they previously married in Tijuana in 1964 and for Daryl and Toni it was the lie they were married on Valentines Day in 1975. Both Cher and Toni claim they didn’t know their record labels were going to do this but afterwards they felt they had to go along with the story.
  5. Both women used the word “unromantic” to describe their real weddings. Both described the marriages as a practical exercise.
  6. Both had a ‘song of the summer,’ Sonny & Cher with “I Got You Babe” in 1965 and The Captain & Tennille with “Love Will Keep Us Together” 10 summers later in 1975.
  7. Both women were the doe-eyed partner in their relationships (clearly shown in that rare photograph or during early duets). relationships where the men seemed checked out (for the end or the whole relationship). Cher puts it this way, “the sun rose and set on his Sicilian ass,” while Toni says the love was “achingly real on my part.”
  8. Both lived half-what platonically together during some or all of their relationships: Sonny and Cher started out in twin beds and Toni and Daryl always had separate bedrooms.
  9. Cher and Toni are both square in some respects. Neither of them drink or do drugs and in both cases this is due to having fathers and/or father-figures who were addicts or alchoholics. They both tell similar stories about their naïveté around drugs: Cher tells a funny story about Redd Foxx asking her for coke and her telling him they only have another kind of soda, and Toni tells a story about how everyone left her Halloween party because she didn’t have a coke room. Both express the fact that they’re totally fine if others want to imbibe; they don’t judge. They both just want to be in control themselves.
  10. Both tell the same story about having trouble getting backstage because security didn’t believe they were with the performing act. Tony had this happen while with The Beach Boys (they had never had a girl member) and Cher in the 1960s when her army of lookalikes confused security.
  11. They both talk about how exhausting it was to do a television show while also making appearances and recording albums, how all they wanted to do was sleep when they could.
  12. Both describe touring as hard. In her memoir, Toni described struggling through the run of Victor/Victoria. Her “wise director” told her “Toni, there are two kinds of actors who want to be on the road: the ones who look at the entire experience as a traveling party and the ones who are usually running away from something.” Toni says, “it wasn’t long until I figured out which one I was.” In Cher’s case, Sonny often laments in his book how Cher hated touring so it’s ironic she did one of the longest tours by a solo artist in history (The Farewell Tour at 325 days).
  13. They both talk about being outsiders in show business even after they hit their peaks. Toni Tennille tells a very sad story about how the Captain & Tennille were invited to the A&M after-Grammys party only after they won record of the year. They realized they hadn’t been invited beforehand and Toni says they never made many friends with industry people who thought their music was square (and there was the issue of Daryl hating to be social). Sonny & Cher (and Cher solo) were also maligned, dismissed and uninvited in all the same categories even after Cher conquered the world. Both duos were made fun of by Rolling Stone Magazine.
  14. Both groups were accused of being kind of lightweight, overnight sensations, regardless of how long they had been working in music.
  15. Both of their husbands produced their albums although Toni had much more input than Cher did and even wrote some of their songs, many of which were about her struggles with Daryl (he didn’t notice). I’ve always wondered what kind of songs Cher would have written about Sonny. But even Toni acquiesced by saying “producing was Daryl’s territory” and how if there were conflicts during recording she didn’t want to “rock the boat.”
  16. They both tell stories of the perils of performing for British royalty. Toni talks in her memoir about the cramped situation performing for Queen Elizabeth and Cher talks in her memoir about the disaster of performing for Princess Margaret.
  17. Toni says that when Sonny & Cher divorced in 1974 and their first variety show ended, “the search was on to fill the void,” to find the “next quirky couple.” Both duos were hired by television guru Fred Silverman (Sonny & Cher while he was at CBS, The Captain & Tennille while he was at ABC) for their respective variety shows. Toni and Daryl refused to do the material written for them in the vein of Sonny & Cher’s disparaging banter because they found it too belittling. “No put downs,” even for fun, Toni said.  That’s too bad because a little sparing is a little fun for healthy couples (or a little healthy for fun couples). But it doesn’t sound like Daryl could have accommodated this kind of fun/stress.
  18. To film their TV show, the Captain & Tennille Show rented the old soundstage at CBS where Sonny & Cher filmed their variety show.
  19. Both made the shortcomings of their males stars part of the variety show character of their male stars: Sonny’s refusal to learn his lines and all his flubs, Daryl’s discomfort around talking: both of these things became part of the show.
  20. Both Sonny and Daryl were described as controlling. Daryl wouldn’t let Toni kiss Robert Reed (Robert. Reed. ??) during her appearance on The Love Boat.  Sonny wouldn’t let Cher kiss Stephen Whitaker in the movie he wrote for her, Chastity.
  21. Both were faking perfect happiness in their relationships for their fans, either all the way through the relationship or at the end.
  22. Both attributed lack of intimacy as a factor in the end of their relationships. (Guys!)
  23. While they were married to their husbands, both women probably accidentally overheard someone saying “she could do better” and they both were probably offended by this.
  24. Both Cher and the Captain & Tennille were given recording comebacks by the label Casablanca. Both women ironically did not imbibe in the label’s famous party scenes.
  25. Both Cher and Tennille talk about their love of shopping.
  26. Both describe themselves as conflict avoidant.
  27. Both describe themselves as homebodies.
  28. They both have a prominent mention of “I’m On My Way” (Cher / Toni Tennille)
  29. Both women needed a lot of time to realize their marriage wasn’t working (years for Cher, decades for Toni). Tennille’s final straw was when Dragon called her a “fucking bitch” and Cher’s final straw came suddenly after years of exhaustion and no socializing and deciding she wanted to hang out after the show with her friend Paulette and, basically, the band Toto.
  30. The public both blamed both women for their divorces. They were both accused of being the cold party. Cher’s side has long since been backed up by family members and the cast and crew of her variety shows. I would be curious to see what people who worked with Toni and Daryl have to say, but you don’t really need to know. It’s obvious. Just look at his face when Toni loves on him. (It’s heartbreaking to see.)
  31. Both of their fan bases probably date photographs of Sonny & Cher and Captain & Tennille by a system of hairstyles the women had and when their husbands grew their mustaches.
  32. There’s also this:

The Differences: Bill Belew was no Bob Mackie. His costumes did not flatter Toni Tennille and seemed kind of cheap and unimaginative. Maybe if they had continued on with more seasons, the gown budget would have increased. We’ll never know.

Tennille talks about the struggles over the formula of their variety show. The producers wanted 40% music and 60% comedy. But Daryl and Toni were uncomfortable with that because they weren’t comedians; and to be fair they hadn’t spent years developing a comedy act like Sonny & Cher had in their early 70s nightclub act. Daryl and Toni wanted the formula reversed with more music. They finally agreed on 50/50, but it wasn’t until Dick Clark was brought in as producer (after the holiday break) that music was prioritized on the show.

I’ve thought sometimes about how sad the Sonny & Cher ending is but maybe Toni’s story was even more tragic: both of these women were willing to stand by their men through thick or thin. In fact, both of had put up with more than many partners would have. In Cher’s case, she describes Sonny as losing interest in her. “He made it end,” she contends. But in Tennille’s case, she had all the right intentions and all the wrong tools to deal with Daryl’s condition but she spent 38 years trying. In both cases, the women may have stayed in the relationships if the men could have turned it around. Both describe their mates as cold hearts. “How Can You Be So Cold?”

While I was researching this I came upon a reddit forum where someone asked, “Can someone explain to me how the Captain & Tennille were so popular in the 1970s? How did a man in tacky boater wear and a woman who stole Bonnie Franklin’s hairdo become a huge hit?…and WTF with that Muskrat shit?”

Those hairdos were contemporaneous, but okay. (That was one of the Vidal Sassoon looks of the mid-70s.) The answers were all great, but here are the best ones:

  • “Um, because Love Will Keep Us Together is amaze-balls”.
  • “Do That Too Me One More Time is a master class on how to write a song about sex without the tawdriness of most modern songs about sex.”
  • “Acts like C&T provided a cultural bridge between generations.” [Someone else likened it to what The Fresh Prince of Bel Air did for rap music.]
  • “Media moguls saw an opportunity to water down rock with soft rock for the older folks.” [Except, I would argue, lots of kids liked them, too] “Thus began a long parade of soft rock acts featuring camera-friendly faces for TV.” [They weren’t so camera-friendly, actually, which is why, I would argue, those soft rock faces all but disappeared when MTV arrived.]
  • [This answer is the whole theory behind the book In Perfect Harmony, Singalong Pop in ’70s Britain by Will Hodgkinson]
    “We’d been through the very politically fraught 60s, a horrible war and just coming out of a really bad recession. The vibe was very much ‘I just want to work a decent job, have a drink or roll a doobie, and relax with lady/dude and not have to think about things.'”
  • Someone else said immediately after that comment, “boy i can see that coming back soon.” [Like for-reals-balls.]
  • “I was a kid but I played that album over an dover before I turned into a jaded youth.”
  • [Another favorite response] “A lot of incredibly well crafted and performed songs are given the Comic Book Guy ‘worst song ever’ treatment. There’s no objective reality to this. It’s just a style you don’t like.”

Toni’s memoir begins by describing a violent childhood accident in a garage that severed the tip of her finger at the joint. After years of surgery her finger was reconstructed so she could keep playing piano; but she said she was so traumatized how other kid responded to her mid-surgeries, interim-fingers that she always hid that finger (both socially and in performances). Mr. Cher Scholar and I were intrigued by this and started to look for that finger in the variety shows. And sure enough, we never saw the finger for longer than a blur of a second. The hiding makes her seem very formal when she stands talking to audiences and the camera, her left hand always folded over the right fingers.

the finger-hiding pose

I find that when a person has something small to hide, unfortunately it takes over their whole body. And it’s here, in their respective body languages, where Cher and Toni Tennille exhibit their biggest difference. Cher is fully at ease with her body and Toni is not.

And I will always wonder if Toni Tennille could have gone much farther in music (and lurve) without Daryl Dragon. We will never know. Could this have easily been Cher’s story too?