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God, this thing took forever to do! Weddings, illnesses, injuries, moves, dispair….printing issues….
Author: Cher Scholar (Page 54 of 102)
Ahhh, the sweet smell of almost-respect.
Entertianment Weekly's September 2nd issue includes a review of music-photographer Bob Gruen's new book of rock icons.
The snapshot review is titled "Legends on the Loose" and the five examples of representative legends chosen to showcase are Debbie Harry on Coney Island in 1977, The Ramones on their way to CBGB's in 1975, KISS posing for an album cover in 1974, John Lennon in Yonkers in 1975 and…wait for it…Sonny & Cher in the picture to the left taken on Lexignton Avenue in New York City in 1973.
Melissa Maerz calls the book "a disarmingly natural look at icons like Blondie and Cher before the era of the posed rock-star portrait kicked in."
Don't they look groovy?
But what a list of heavyweights to be included with. In the last decade, Cher's been making it into more and more of these lists of "legends." Like the theory of Starstruck, The Business of Celebrity suggests, it's all about who you're seen with.
One of my favorite Cher covers of all time is her 1975 Cher Show cover of Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy."
Sad news was reported in the September 2nd issue of Entertainment Weekly. Glen Campbell is embarking on a true farewell tour (and final album). He's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
Campbell had a rennaisance in 2008 with his album Meet Glen Campbell. His last album, Ghost on the Canvas, was just released this year to good reviews.
As you recall, Glen Campbell was a member of The Wrecking Crew, the studio musicians in LA who recorded with everyone involved in the Southern California sound, including Sonny & Cher (I wish that documentary on those guys would come out on DVD already), and Cher performed with Glen on both The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour in 1969 and on The Sonny & Cher shows of the 1970s.
Although now polar opposites in political speak, those crazy kids once had real duet chemistry!
One of their best from 1977 (stick to the end for the duet).
"And offers comin over the phone"
Glen: I got three offers today.
Cher: Just three, huh?
Glen: That's all.
The second favorite movie from Cher’s TCM session was Hobson’s Choice. John actually watched this one with me and this was his favorite. (He watched all of them except Lady of Burlesque.)
The movie was directed by David Lean, famous for his big epics like Lawrence of Arabia, A Passage to India and The Bridge on the River Kwai and Doctor Zhivago….all of which I’m ashamed to say I have not seen.
Robert Osbourne labels Hobson’s Choice one of Lean's least known films. Lean made “this small overlooked film” in 1954, the year before he directed Katharine Hepburn in the very colorful Summertime, which I did see. That was the movie where Hepburn fell into that Venetian water and got an eye infection that made her eyes look very watery forever after.
In the TCM introduction, Cher talks about her favorite actresses: Ginger Rodgers, Ingrid Bergman, the Hepburn girls, both whom she met, saying Katharine was “tough.” She felt Bette Davis was transfixing but "so stylized."
About Hobson’s Choice, Cher says fabulous a few times and is particularly mesmerized by David Lean’s unique shots…from the first shot of the boot shoe sign to the scene where Charles Laughton is drunk and entranced by the moon in a puddle. She says the movie is about hope and remarks on the cast. She quotes Robert Altman as saying if you get the cast, you are 80% there. She also says the movie is a story told through hairstyles. Maggie’s hair goes from severe to soft as she falls in love. She describes Willie as having Alfalfa hair until he goes through his Maggie makeover.
John said it was like a Fiddler on the Roof story where a father loses control of all of his daughters. The father, played by Charles Laughton, acts like an ass and looks strikingly like Humpty Dumpty. I saw his character as funny but vaguely threatening as severely controlling fathers can be. But Willie was 100% adorable. He gets the rare male-makeover in this movie and his lines gave us the most laughs as he transformed from the messy and illiterate shoemaker into the sophisticated architect of his own business. Even his accent changes.
And the shots were beautiful to watch. I would also give a shout out to the lighting.
My only criticism would be that our heroine, Maggie, didn’t meet a single challenge until the final scene when Willie argues with her over the name on the store sign. Every single scheme of hers worked as planned. Am I too tainted by the formulaic movies since the 70s? Give that runner a hurdle please.
By Gum!
There were a tons of tweets in June and July.
June:
Cher earned the Connnector(50) sticker on @GetGlue; she continued to work on her duet with her mom and the three mom solos: “we were able to spin straw to gold,” “Love Me Tender” and “Moving On” are songs she mentions; she says she is “high (as the sky) maintenance, "can’t kid myself! –got some good & some wicked little Bitchie-ie! NOBODY’S PERFECT”; she adores Lady Gaga; says “I wish I had a penny 4 every time I f’d up! I’d b up to my ass in pennies! I am So Not a Role Model”; she angrily defends her tweets, her sense of humor and her dyslexia (all of which are not worth the time and energy to defend…all tweets are hieroglyphics); she admonishes her tweet critics: “U want some cheese with that whine U babies” (That’s more like it); she talks about her cat Mr. Big found on the Believe tour under a truck, “Some hotels don’t take animals” (Not even for Cher?????), she shows off her claws & paws; she’s still talking about her olive sandwich recipe; she finds the Mike Douglas clip of her appearance with her sister and mom on YouTube; she says “Fk u” to a mean poster; asks Kathy Griffin to pick her up some bath oil in London; she talks about her album Not.com.mercial being the stories of her life and observations; when she played “ Sisters of Mercy” her mom cried; says Tea Baggers are killing the spirit of the country; is willing to donate her social security back to those who need it saying “This country has made a poor girl Rich”; says she is not a good Buddhist but will grow; calls Elijah Lijah; is nervous at parties; loves both versions of a “Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harem and Annie Lennox; when asked how she gets confidence, she says “pray x my fingers & jump”; tells someone they are unkind and 2 try Buddha; later apologizes to them: “please accept my Apology! I need 2 try Buddha! Guess I am the unkind Biatch!”; it looks like Chaz’s dog Shorty might have passed away—Cher expresses sympathy; jokes with Kathy Griffin: “I’m Cher”; takes pics with Zimmercan and his suit for her party (which was this month after all); says that at her party people cried and the food was amazing (Moroccan BBQ shrimp), loves jammiejams.com and Moonstruck Marmalade; says Obama is “breaking my heart and his promises”; calls Exon scumbags and asks that “Dems grab your collective balls and stand up 4 your people”; asks about her tweet haters: “Why are these people following me? I wouldn’t follow someone I didn’t respect” (because you’re a big celebrity); says has been alive through 12 presidents and “If I don’t have the right 2 speak about my country now, when will I?” (good point); says the 14 year-old violinist at her party was amazing and the 9 year-old pianist was cute; is editing her mom project with Peter Honess who did LA Confidential, Fast & Furious, If These Walls Could Talk; set up editing bay in her court-yard bedroom; she struggles with iPhone technology… “I’m in Tech Hell”; calls Michele Bachmann a Tea Bag Pinup girl … “someone call Bellevue and ask if they’re missing several million SEVERELY SICK ATIENTS!”; she admits they didn’t film the Caesars Palace shows; says Vegas audience was too old “U know…almost my age ha ha”; she plays wii; says “ I’m not amazing. I’m good bad selfish selfless bitch angel, piss everyone in my family off and am there when they need me; says “I thought I was madly in love every 11 mins from the time I was 12 till I met Son!” says when she’s upset “ I spin my wheels cry’n throw myself on my bed like the Drama Queen God made Me”; she likes Babs (Streisand) and Jim (James Brolin); says “if it’s not chocolate it’s not worth it”; talks about working in See’s Candy Store when she left home at age 16. “It was Heaven! Ahh air scented w/Choc 24/7”; hates Michele Bachmann’s husband's anti-gay speech…says her Gay-Dar is going off! “GAYGAYGAYGAYGAY… without Style.”
Whew…now on to July:
After her Bachman rants she says “I’m not calm but I got so upset I tired myself out!”; gives show biz advise: “Talent is raw! U must sweat & cry & never give up! B able 2 leave home and those you love”; asks “Can I do this on my iPad? God! I knew tech would be the death of me!! I just didn’t think it would look like a little cute bird”; says Hillary is “Very sweet! I’m sorry that part of her doesn’t come Across” (it really doesn’t); gets visited by her singing teacher and goes into the recording studio July 7-9; says she doesn’t do marathon recording sessions and that “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me” took 2 hours a night to record for 2-3 nights. (Does she have bad memories of the marathon Sonny sessions?); says to Kathy Griifin “I’m sending a ghost to haunt your house”; hits her ankle on the step to her bed (if she didn’t insist on having a bed sitting on a platform like a princess, that probably wouldn’t happen); dreams of grilled cheese and hot fudge Sundays and See’s candy; worked at the Sees in Beverly Hills with old blue haired woman. “They were 100!”; she specialized in Easter baskets; there was no party after the Zookeeper premiere (“You can really hear me sing More Than a Feeling at the end”); says “The republicans would step over the bodies of old people & children to get tax exemptions for the rich and Excon”… “btw $$$ doesn’t fkn trickle down, plus who wants a trickle?”; then she feels rant guilt: says to @Bitch Magazine, “Don’t regret or take back one feeling but I don’t need to lay them on your doorstops”; (We’re coming to your door, lady…goodly,the moratorium on the ranting doesn’t last long); on July 13 finished first track of the new cd, Lady Gaga’s “You Are the Greatest Thing To Me” which is not duet yet; invites Kathy to celebrate her emmy nom, says is “not a dem INDY”; talked tour with Roger & Lindsay, including ideas, stage songs, adding "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" (YHSTHOM), recreating “Welcome to Burlesque”….but feels touring is too lonely; asks for our top 10 fav songs (methinks she would never do mine); laments about the stopping of teaching cursive writing, says she sang “Save Up All Your Tears” during a breakup, “remember the song but not the guy!” (Richie Sambora?); says “No one believed in me cept my mom & Son” sang “After All” and “Remember the song & will never 4get the Guy!”; says Peter Cetera couldn’t harmonize on the chorus; someone might have asked her why she’s a gay icon when she replies “Because we feel like outsiders. I think people that like me know that we’re all flawed together and it’s ok”; says “I’m sure most of u don’t like this CD BUT doesn’t Anyone like “THE FALL” (why is she assuming we don’t like that cd?? I thought most fans liked it); talks about writing the songs at a Gothic castle with 30 people, no phones or TV and how they wrote the songs in the day and sang them at night; goes to Paris, Austria and Istanbul; Gaga to put her voice on “The Greatest Thing”; her phone gets NO SERVCIE, “ I hate those 2 words!”; goes to a Buddha center/monastery; after which she comes back and says “Yes I did miss u lovielies! Bet u missed my crazy tweets huh?”; promises “I’m going 2 try 2 tidy up my act…But I love swearing & I’m old so I should be able 2”; when someo
ne tells her they have kidney stones she says, “Son had bad kidney stones, almost lost a kidney”; she’s looking for old Vogue magazines she was in; says the Time Magazine dress was in Vogue first; she laughed a lot watching Get Me to the Greek.
Got all that?
My cousin alerted me to the fact that Cher will be the star of a new comic book before the end of the year. Look for it from Bluewater Productions.
See what their Madonna comic looks like.
You can also peruse hilariously captioned screenshots of Sonny & Cher's early 70s appearance on Scooby Doo here: http://glitterrock.org/scoob01.html
Cher and Sonny running from The Shark God pictured above.
So you're aware Cher co-hosted Turner Classic Movies last week with Robert Osbourne. She, dressed in all black, curled up in one of the red chairs and talked about her favorite movies. She said she started out with list of 60 films that needed to be pared down to four.
I watched the first three movies that night. I had to catch this last one two days later, after going out with some friends of ours visiting from LA. But I want to start with this one because it was my favorite. Even Cher licked her lips when talking about it. Cher said this 1943 movie Lady of Burlesque was off the radar for many Barbara Stanwyck fans. Cher calls it hysterical and noted that it was written by Gypsy Rose Lee. Gypsy Rose Lee also wrote the movie TCM followed Cher’s set with, the musical Gypsy (a connection to both Cher and Rose Lee). I had never seen Gypsy and unfortunately my new Direct TV cut off the film half way through. After whining to John about it, he said "she grows up and becomes a stripper, her sister gets married and the mom gets pissed off."
Robert Osbourne and Cher talk about the “tootsie” aspect of Lady of Burlesque. I misunderstood this to mean there would be cross-dressing involved. Then they clarified this to mean “dolls and dames.” Oy, the generation gap. Cher calls the movie "fun…a perfect storm for happiness" and admires the Edith Head costumes for Stanwyck. Therefore, it's interesting to note here that Bob Mackie was once an assistant to Edith Head and you can see the line of influence.
Cher also enjoyed the movie as a story about strippers backstage, especially old tyme ones. Other Stanwyck films Cher likes: The Lady Eve and Christmas in Connecticut.
Barbara Stanwyck plays the headline burlesque performer Dixie. The club is in New York, off "The Great White Way" and this is the second film in Cher's set with performers working toward or on Broadway, the third film in the set about stage performers.
The burlesque show lives in an old opera house and is soon bu sted by the cops. Then two murders are committed–a bitchy stripper named Lolita La Verne and a former employee named Princess Nirvena. Twice Dixie is targeted. The whole time you wonder if the comic who has a crush on Dixie, Biff played by Michael O’Shea, is the culprit. I was very distracted by Biff because he looked a lot like a piano player I dated back in 2005.
I love interrogation scenes. So I found this movie's two interrogation scenes hilarious; both times the detective interviewed all 30 show people in one room.
The four films Cher selected are very different but there is a small thread about upward mobility and chaffing class conflicts among them all. In this movie, Dixie startes out wanting to get outa this burlesque and move on to something better. She also feels she's too good for no-good comics. However, by the end of the movie she decides she’s “not so snooty anymore” and she stands by her burlesque show.
This movie held my interest and was full of Interesting and likable background characters. There's lots of stagy, show-biz stuff going on and Stanwyck walks around looking glamorous and acting feisty. Two things right up a Cher-fan's alley.
The movie also reminds me about the need for classic film preservation. When I freeze-framed a portion of the movie, I could see a tear in the film that had been spliced together. Other scenes had damages to the print as well. How sad that the best TCM copy of this film was left to decompose this much.
Spoiler alert: Mark Twain did it.
These are my favorite Cher tweet pics:
1. The Cher's eye view — ex: Cher watching Rachel Maddow on TV with her cat.
2. Cher posting pics of herself and friends like any mortal human would –ex: Cher with Kathy Griffin, Glam-a-Cher
Here is a summary of paticularly interesting tweets in April and May (if I do these two months at a time, I can catch up).
By the way, I was listening to John Fugelsang last week on talk radio. He had a particularly astute comment to make about Twitter. He said twitter helps one get in touch with all the people who hate you. It’s the place to spew hate anonymously.
April:
Cher doesn’t think she’s beautiful; she loves living in Malibu; when she was a poor kid, she had to eat 
beef stew for a whole week; she might marry again; says she is immature like her mom; it was heaven working with “Little Johnny” Nicholson; for fun she likes to travel, watch movies, and paddle board in Maui; she intended to contact the Missouri Governor over the puppy mill issue; she confirms the next album is a dance album (phooey): “country must come after” (sure it will); she asked Lucy’s advise about leaving Sonny; she got butter on her iPhone eating popcorn; she was very excited about a video she was directing from interviews and a duet for her mom's 85th birthday; she calls Elvis and her twins separated at birth (this is very true); she calls Donald Trump a pompous asshole (also hard to argue with that); she loved the singing show The Voice (I liked the only episode I saw, the season finale) and thinks American Idol is mean to performers (I missed last season–can't stand J-Lo); she gives sporadic show biz advice and relationship advice: "don’t lose ur dignity or disrespect theirs"; she never sees herself as a powerful, great person, she has “courage not confidence”; she had tooth drama.
May:
Her assistants, Deb and Jen, work long hours; Sugi is her chef; she's selling pilots with Zimmerman 
which is allowing her time to do the snoopy dance; she calls album producers “so fkng radical…I can’t believe they want to work with me"; she's proud of Chaz for her Emmy nomination; she likes keeping vampire hours; is frustrated people wont tell her how to fix her tweets, "fkn tell me ONCE & 4 ALL…pls tell me what am I doing wrong?" (She needs to let go of that…she's Cher, she can tweet however the fk she wants); she thinks older equals wiser is "Bullshit" (well, I don't feel wiser but I sure am a lot more comfortable in my skin now that everyone is either my age, younger, or nearly retired — I'm not nearly so intimidated by everyone anymore); she says in Zookeeper "my part is smaller than Sarah Palin’s IQ" and she threw a party for young Israli and Palestinian musicians, hosting 100 big wigs for dinner and music. She posted lots of pics and it was a Moroccan theme. My LA friend Julie was driving by Cher's house the day after this party and she contacted me to alert me to the plethora of trash barrels outside on the curb. It looks like Cher had a party, she said.
This Is Cher, Cher Zine 3 is being photocopied in a very underground, zine-like manner even as we speak.
Some (new-to-me) Cher blogs just hit my radar!
Cher News at http://chernews.blogspot.com - your go-to for the latest news on Cherabouts.
Cher is in the air at http://cherisintheair.blogspot.com/ - great pics and alothough it's in another language, there are translation features.
