a division of the Chersonian Institute
Two Cher scholars sent me interesting Cher advertisements last year and I thank them.
The first was an article of star "hair-dos" of the month which dates back to the 60s sometime. Anyone want to take a guess at the actual date?
As Aunt Mabel might say, “What in heavens name is that on her head?
The next ad below. Well…I don’t know what to make of it. I’m quite speechless actually. If anyone knows what to make of it, please let me know.
“It’s that kind of book.”
While I was waiting for someone at the bookstore to come out and help me find a book on the city of Redondo Beach, I picked up a copy of the new Tony Curtis autobiography American Prince. I leafed through the index to find Cher references.
I never really liked Tony Curtis, ever since I saw him on The Tonight Show years ago when he stated he thought his current hot, young girlfriend was even prettier than his daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis.
On many levels — a dipwad, I thought.
But anyway, Curtis talks about Sonny & Cher on one page of his new opus. He talks about Sonny wanting to buy his house (but which one? Didn’t they end up buying two of his houses? One on St. Cloud and one on Carrolwood — see pic above, both in Bel Air?). Curtis also talked about being a guest on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour when S&C were in the process of splitting up (remember his “Detective Fat”?). Curtis casually sympathizes with Sonny and says the breakup was basically over Cher’s ambition and her not wanting be part of the act anymore, 'cos it was holding her back. And if I remember correctly, this was Sonny’s version of events as well. But not the version many Cher biographers put forth.
Curtis taking this side is not surprising since I recall him appearing occasionally in Sonny’s post-Cher social circle lists. And it’s somewhat disappointing that Curtis plays that down in this book, like he was some disinterested bystander an all.
And dude, you title your book American Prince? Could the book be that credible? Okay, I admit my tastes veer more toward Tony Manero than Tony Curtis. But in any case, this all reminds me of that old James Taylor/J.D. Souther song, “Her Town Too”:
She gets the house and the garden
He gets the boys in the band
Some of them his friends
Some of them her friends
Some of them understand
Lord knows that this is just a small town city
Yes, and everyone can see you fall
It's got nothing to do with pity
I just wanted to give you a call
It used to be your town
It used to be my town, too
Maureen McCormick’s book about life as a Brady Bunch kid, among other subjects is now available. Cher Scholar Robrt sent me the excerpt where McCormick writes about meeting Cher.
The setup: the group The Brady Kids had their first musical appearance at a music industry show at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Sonny and Cher were there and met the Brady’s backstage.
I was enamored of Sonny and Cher. I couldn’t take my eyes off Cher. It was the first time I had been around a woman who thoroughly mesmerized people, who commanded your attention with her looks. We were introduced to her backstage. She was with her daughter, Chastity, a tiny blond cherub with her mother’s expressions. Eve (Plumb) held Chastity’s hand and sweetly asked, “Can you say ‘elephant’?”
Before she could respond, Cher cracked, “She can say a hell of a lot more than elephant, that’s for sure.”
First of all, in my fantasy version of this episode Cher says “She can f*#king say a lot more than elephant, that's for sure.” I don’t know why but that’s more believable to me for some reason.
Secondly, this brief exchange is interesting on many levels. For one, it shows how caustic and coarse Cher could be even among teen celebrities and her own kid. I’m not judging that; but I can attest to being jarred by it the first time I read Cher's language peppered with the f-bomb all through that People Magazine article of 1979. I was nine years old and sick with the flu at the time and my parents brought me home a milkshake and this Cher gift (Cher gifts becoming somewhat of a rare occurrence after it started to occur to them that I wasn’t outgrowing this Cher fetish). And this was right when my illusions of Cher being the classiest, vulgar-free princess were first shattered. I f*#king got over it but it took a while.
Secondly, it also shows how even the most lusted after teen blonde icon of the early 70s, Marsha 
Brady, #1 on every boys ToDo list and #1 on every gals ToLookLike list, was actually enamored of Cher who she saw as fully commanding with her looks; and meanwhile Cher is coveting the look of blonde princesses such as her mom, sister and Marsha-Brady-types. It’s insane, absolutely the stuff Dr. Seuss Sneetches fables are made of and evidence that our collective insecurities cause us to chase our own tales like idiots.
And not only could Chastity say the world elephant, she had probably already ridden one in that parade by then.
Sonny has been gone ten years now. Can you believe it? Seems like just a few years ago when I bolted out of my Yonkers bed during Matt Lauer’s Today Show intro. As soon as he said “Sonny Bono, Congressman from California…” I knew Sonny was dead. How? Because, Today Show anchors Matt and Katie only introduce people trailing a somber title like that when someone was dead. I was half asleep and I knew right away. I ran to turn my VCR on. That’s what a Cher freak I am. I also excused myself from work for a few extra hours to "attend the funeral on CNN." I couldn’t believe the amount of coverage that story got and how obsessed everyone was with finding Cher (who was in London at the time). The tabloid pics of the funeral were heartbreaking, actually. It was an amazing story. Although the butt of some jokes for the way he perished, most people were affected by the story which goes to show there’s more to Cher’s popularity (and unpopularity) than most people yet believe.
1998 was also the year I started working at Ape Culture.com and newly discovered eBay. I was getting Cher-mail everyday and learning all about zines. My favorites were 8 Track Frame of Mind, Bust, Beer Frame, and The Curmudgeon’s Home Companion (which stopped publishing this year, sad to say). I just realize I’ve been gone from New York City for almost 10 years myself and I’ve been in LA for six years already! Jesus, it’s probably time to move. 😉
I finally got around to viewing this Cher interview from Norway posted by YouTube Master Tyler many moons ago. The picture quality is very fuzzy but the content is pretty interesting.
Cher talks about shopping for clothes in Oslo. I wish I had such a passion for shopping for clothes. Anyone who sees me knows instantly I have no passion for looking put together.
Cher talks about “Believe” being her biggest song to date and how funny it is that the lyrics are so sad but the track so upbeat. Did she really say track? Like it’s karaoke? This reminds me of the Poco song that always bothered me, "Call it Love" – a song that makes you feel very happy until you realize you should be depressed instead.
Cher again comments that her year 40 was her best year – a year when work, love-life and still having the kids at home all aligned in a pleasant manner.
The Norwegian interviewer asked what bores her. A very unusual question. She answered that she has a very short attention span and likes to make everything into a game, that she tends to be childish that way and doesn’t like doing grownup things, like “business crap.” She says she has a rebellious teenager in her and can be very stubborn. Her whole she has fought for the right to do things, she says, and it’s hard for her to know when she’s being obstinate and bull-headed. I wonder if maybe this is why so many projects fall through.
She talked about her first David Letterman appearance, how she needed to pay a 28k hotel bill and the show only wanted to pay scale ($600). They relented only to have Cher call Letterman an asshole on camera. Cher said she was reluctant to appear before because Letterman had a reputation of being mean to his guests. Old story but I find her note of someone else’s meanness suddenly interesting in this interview.
The interviewer talked about her movie If These Walls Could Talk and called it “the anti-abortion” movie. What? That movie tried to show multiple view points and I don’t quite understand how it could be construed as anti-abortion…even by Norwegians. In any case, Cher states that none of her actresses wanted to do the script and she asked them to trust her, not as a director but as an actress. She said they could say whatever they wanted to as long as they got the feeling across and Cher admitted to them “I wouldn’t say that crap.” Ouch. That might sound kinda mean to the writer who wrote that script.
Cher also delved into the very real harrows of being famous, having to ensure photographers can’t film through her house windows, having to shred all her trash and papers. One anecdote had Cher visiting Olivera Street in downtown Los Angeles with Chastity and autograph hounds holding them up. Chastity apparently said “I hate going anywhere with you.” I had that same conversation with my mother once but it wasn’t over paparazzi; it was over her chiding me for not having more passion in shopping for clothes.
In any case, another sucky thing about being a celebrity, Cher says, is having interview comments misconstrued and how the media is often mean-spirited. Hmm – that mean word again.
Then Cher called Bill Clinton’s paramour, Monica Lewinsky "a very ugly girl." I don’t think Cher would get many guests if she hosted a talk show either. She can be plenty mean.
Cher did however give a brilliant explanation regarding how annoying America can sometimes be:
“We’re a strange country…we have aspirations that we cannot meet…we’re like a bad teenager, too many hormones raging a lot of the time. We mean well and we have great energy…we’re just not quite soup yet.”
Also of note, Cher talked about the Oscar, about once seeking revenge through fashion after being criticized for the way she dressed and dating men too young, and about the night she won the Academy Award for Moonstruck in 1987, about meeting Audrey Hepburn that night and feeling light on her feet as a result, and about how she lost her earring and said ‘shit’ inappropriately. An inappropriate shit? I wonder what she thinks about her use of the word Fuck that has caused so much brouhaha lately with US media and courts.
Speaking of Oscar, in an LA Times article on November 7 entitled “The Oscar Jinks” Cher is listed in a small group of actors who have not lived up to the promise of winning a statue. An Oscar implies you are the best, the article states. Problems with some post-Oscar careers include:
a. Some actors play the same roles over and over again (Olympia Dukakis and Joe Pesci were cited for this). I think Cher plays tough chick way too often – which is why I like Suspect so much – but I really don’t think Oscar-watchers sense this about Cher. I don’t think it’s a huge issue. I just personally would like to see her take on more vulnerable characters.
b. Some actors have earned a reputation for being difficult and so are not sought out for better roles. All the messy Mermaids press rings a bell here…and Cher’s admission of being obstinate often.
c. Sometimes the parts themselves win the Oscars (F. Murray Abraham as Sallieri in Amadeus, Patty Duke as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker and Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoos’ Nest were cited as examples). I definitely don’t think this is an issue for Cher. If anything, I think she won the Moonstruck-era Oscar for her accumulation of great performances in the previous years, her most beloved role being in Mask. I’d almost say it was a delayed win for Mask as much as for Moonstruck. And the character didn’t overshadow her performance in either case.
The article admitted it might be better for one’s career to be simply nominated than to actually win a trophy. In most cases I guess. Wins surely didn’t derail Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep or Katharine 
Hepburn.
Other disappointing winners according to the list: Liza Minnelli, Roberto Benigni, Whoopi Goldberg, Mira Sorvino, and Kim Bassinger with added mention given to Halle Berry, Helen Hunt, Kevin Spacey, and Cuba Gooding Jr.
A few weeks ago, my bf won a bet with me that he couldn’t hand sew his own frontier pants. He threw a party to celebrate the making of his pants. At right is a picture of him at his pants party looking like Kevin Spacey.
So you know I reviewed Teri Garr’s book and basically said it was sketchy (as in merely a sketch of a tale). Then she goes and says something really juicy (and true) on Today THV regarding The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour joke-writing machine. Asked about the new musical version of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, Garr compares the jokes between Brooks’ movie and the jokes from her day job.
Garr says you can find "musical qualities to the phone book if you have the right writers." Garr says even though the humor in Young Frankenstein is juvenile, it seemed "like Shakespeare" compared to the jokes she was having to say on "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour" at the same time in 1971. She says that was "cheap joke city."
Garr is so "hit and run" with her candor. Why not just spill it all out. It would be like therapy.
Why was the writing so bad? The Carol Burnett Show skits were so much better. My non-Cher-fan friends will watch the TV show DVDs and come right out and say what Cher-fan friends can’t bring themselves to say: the jokes suck rotten. They’re not even bad in a fun way.
The production values – bling! The costumes – bling! The songs – bling, bling! So why couldn’t a practical army of writers come up with better jokes? The only jokes worse than S&C Show jokes are Cher Show jokes.
And I’d like to ask Steve Martin why? Steve Martin was a writer on early S&C shows. Then he goes on to one of the smartest, most successful stand-up comedy careers ever. He could have written a brilliant show all by himself. Was he hoarding all the good stuff? Or were the egos in the writers’ room that humorless that they passed up his brilliant material? I just don’t get it. The mark is so far between that variety show and his soon-to-break material.
It’s unfortunate he wasn’t a bigger influence on the comedy quality because that show is mostly sketch-comedy, sprinkled with music. The weakness of the comedy will keep the show a kitsch/memory favorite (mostly due to the musical sequences) instead of a true classic like Carol Burnett.
Who knew? The Belefast Telegraph reports that "Dead Ringer For Love" is a song you can really work out to.
Some interesting links this week…a bootleg from the Love Hurts tour (which I have not seen in its entirety). Those dancers kill me…they twirl around forever, Cher shouts out "Love is a Battlefield" and then the shirtless kilt guy…WTF?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJoyvEKgLN0
I actually had a discussion this week with a friend about who had the best 80s, female rock voice: Pat Benatar or Ann Wilson. (And don’t complain that I didn’t say Cher. We were talking about best voice for that 80s sound. I think Cher’s voice is larger than that.) My friend saw Heart over the weekend and said Ann Wilson was amazing. But Pat’s voice is operatic and her songs seem harder to pull off to me.
Our Cher friend Tyler has a fantastic assemblage of Cher video history on his You Tube page:
http://www.youtube.com/user/cherstyler
Don’t forget to check out the his playlists, either. Tyler is the Cher video master! His latest playlist is full of all the commercials and infomercials:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3054469F9514C82A
Tyler reminded us all recently about when we all used to stay up all nite enduring endless infomercials to get Cher’s latest infomercial taped onto our VCR. I taped the first 5 seconds of twenty or so infomercials on the Ionic Breeze because I didn’t want to miss a second of Lori Davis exposing the benefits of her hair tonics. By the way, I LOVED those infomercials. Uninterrupted Cher, faux-science seriousness, clubs and kits. Loved it! Why everyone got so upset…I’ll never quite understand. Look for an essay on these infomercials in the next Cher Zine.
This also Reminds me, I posted my All I Ever Need is You essay from the last zine a week or so ago.
Tomm, the owner of the Yahoo! Cher list created a very fun Cher quiz online. You have to register to get your answers and results but it’s a quality test…and I’m not just saying that because I missed three.
http://www.flixster.com/user/eurotomm/quiz/cher-and-cher-alike?invitorId=789121415
Some cool links came along while I was on vacation: Cher fan Tyler posted links to the John Wilson cartoons from The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour that he found on You-Tube.
Tyler’s compilation includes one I haven’t seen, "Love Song" a remade Randy Newman song.
Other John Wilson videos are here.
They may seem crude today, but back in the early 70s these toons and the slick transitions between S&C skits were really cutting-edge hot stuff for variety TV.
Tyler also passed along a memorial site for Patty Darcy Jones. I’ve seen so many spellings of her name (even a variety on IMDB). I’m sticking to the version on the Cher albums.
I found a new type of celebrity news aggregator that had linked to this blog. You may find it handy. I’m a little overwhelmed (err….aggravated) with information aggregation at the moment so I’m not sure if I’ll use this or not. http://www.boxxet.com/Cher/best.box
July is the month of movies in LA! Not only is LACMA having a Katharine Hepburn festival, but the Cinematheque is hosting a festival called Mods and Rockers…full of 60s and 70s music movies. This is why I love living in LA – rare movie screenings framed with nerdy talks by movie participants. You get rare opportunities to see filmmakers talk about their movies. Two years ago I saw Peter Bogdanovich talk about the director’s release of Mask.
Backstory: a month or so ago I was in a store on Main Street in Santa Monica and I came across a coffee table book mentioning Harry Nilsson and I thought about the duet he did with Cher in 1975, the one I blogged about as being part of Cher’s Phil-Spector oeuvre. I turned to my bf and one of us said ‘Who is Harry Nilsson?’ I mean…in the scheme of things.
So it kills me that I’ll have to miss this Saturday’s feature: Who is Harry Nilsson (and Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)?
Get this: one of the speakers after the movie includes Jimmy Webb! I have so many questions I would ask! Aaargh and double-aaargh. Webb produced Stars. I would ask him how the recording of that album that year was affected by the Nilsson single on the same label and what does he know about how that duet came to be, how it went and what Cher thought of it. It’s a perfect cross-hairs of Cher Scholarship and I’ll be missing it! *sob*
You might think I’d be having goiter surgery or something for missing this. But no: just hard-made dinner plans with some good friends I rarely see.
People first. Before obsession.
But on my birthday, (Harry Potter’s birthday too, btw), there’s another good movie regarding Cher history: Atlantic Records: The House that Ahmet Built. Which reminds me, my neighbor has a very kewl Atlantic Records coffee table book with some nice Sonny & Cher photos in it: What’d I Say: The Atlantic Story.
You can see a list of all the Mod and Rocker movies here:
http://www.americancinematheque.com/pressreleases/2007/ModsNRockers_2007.htm
http://www.modsandrockers.com/schedule.html
Toodle-loo
My Cher Friends, you will be getting four posts this week. This is because I’m leaving Saturday for nine days of vacation bliss in Amish country, Pennsylvania. The bf and I are visiting my family there for small-towney 4th of July celebrations in Lititz, which is near Blue Ball and Intercourse. You’ve all heard the joke; now I’m living the dream. Actually, Amish country is very interesting, not just for the Amish, but for the other old, alternative religious orders that flourished there in Pennsylvania during the early American centuries. Read previous Ape Culture reviews about Amish country.
Cher Site of the Month
I have been remiss in doing my Cher site reviews for months. But someone on Chergroups found this one recently. It has a Myspace feel but a great catalog of pictures:
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MID=367137231&MemberId=3668384741
Anniversary of an Ending
Tyler from Chergroups reminded us all that June 26, 32 years ago, was a sad day in Cher history: it was the day in 1975 that Sonny and Cher’s divorce was finalized in a courtroom in Santa Monica, California. Happy day for Cher who was preparing to marry Gregg Allman…but what about us???
Songs Cher Should Cover
If Cher were my bf, she’d say "Don’t should on me!"
However, I’d really love to hear Cher go spiritual. Her songs of late, like "Human" and others from her last three Warner Bros albums, indicate Cher’s picking of more introspective material. She’d do a groovy gospel (1971s "Somebody" is a testament to that). She could even give it a California twist. Two songs would easily accommodate: Allen Toussaint’s’s recent gem “We Are One” and a song from the last Norah Jones album, “Humble Me.” Not quite the wailers you’d hear in church, but contemplative little pieces about brotherhood and humility. She could still sing them in a unitard with sequins. God can get jiggy with it.
What’s taken over Cher mentions on the blogosphere is the latest news from the courts on blasphemous, indecent, potty-mouthed words spoken on prime-time television.
As you might guess from my adjectives above (slight but prejudicial), I support the ruling; and yet I cringe to read over and over that Cher has again become the poster child of bad taste. Not that there’s anything wrong with swearing (I freakin’ say more than freakin’ off-blog) and not that there’s anything wrong with bad taste (it’s a hellavalot more interesting sometimes than good taste and it is surely the yin that feeds that yang of better taste); but it’s just that one image of bad taste (potty-mouthing) plus another image of bad taste (plastic surgery) plus another image of bad taste (dating younger dudes) or whatever freakin thing it is that family values hates (all arguably okay in my book…we could spend time defending them or claiming they go without defending or who really cares)…but in any case, those images reflect on the image of the product and feed the fire of those who say Cher music, movies, etc., are also examples of bad taste. And that makes me crazy.
Here’s a headline from The Boston Globe: "Swearing Cher 1, FCC 0"
I swear because I’m trying to counteract the way I look, which is like Mary Richards. It doesn’t work but I’ve never been fined for doing it.
Here is a link to one super-clueless blog speaking against the court decision. They whine: "if you can still call Cher and Nicole Richie celebrities?"
What the f^*k?
Elsewhere this week, Cher scholar gypsy90028 sent me an email about an chapter of The First Time, Cher’s auto-bio of sorts. Gypsy90028 very adeptly puts it as "written, well sort of, by Cher." He refers us to page 134: "My First Fall From Grace" and asks this question:
What if Cher had not listened to Sonny and went with the Drug Culture not just personally, but professionally???? What would the outcome have been? For her? For him? For the Pop World at large and all us "dyed-in-the-wool" fans? And I wont even get into the Gay Thing concerning Drugs, Partying, Freelove, and Miss Cher. Or should we? Please pontificate if you will.
Gypsy90028 also said:
Its TOOOO HOT in Oklahoma. May I move to CA and live with you and be your Guy Friday/Man Godfrey???(I’m a Gemini,OK???) I promise to cook, clean, fetch and tote fer ya! All I need is a small cot on a backporch, as I will be spending all my free time "smoking, coking, toking and shopping" on the BEACH.
This is very tempting for Cher Scholar because I am swamped this month with deadlines and demands and minor annoying illnesses, not to mention my impending mental-breakdown after which I will probably need fetching and toting. I even have three tote bags for this very chore.
But alas, I already live with a Gemini. Geminis never finish anything. In fact, the bf and I just made a bet that he can’t learn how to sew a pair of frontier pants by September 10 as he is now inspired to do based on our weekend in Prescott Arizona visiting frontier museums and saloons. One of my brothers was a Gemini too and I was able to observe him not finishing things he was once inspired to to. My other brother was a problem-solving Aires and finished everything. His room was full of finished airplanes hanging from the ceiling. The Gemini’s room was full of half-finished projects like make your own moccasins of which there was only ever one sitting lonely in the corner.
But what if Cher and Sonny had gone psychedelic (personally and musically)? This is a very interesting question and I enjoy pondering it. I don’t have my copy of The First Time handy so I’ll have to wing it.
My ponderings have two aspects: could Cher have done it and could Sonny have done it.
Admittedly Sonny’s heart wasn’t in it. I don’t think he could have written drug-culture material for Cher. Inner Views didn’t work out so well as it is. He could have tried to produce her material but without any great sympathy for it, I don’t see success there.
Could Cher have gone on alone without Sonny? What if S&C had ended right there. This would have helped Cher only in the sense that the backlash from Sonny’s drug film and the failure of the movie Chastity might not have happened. The TV show buffoonery and quiet backlash towards Cher as a actress might not have happened. From a rock credibility standpoint, this might have been the best time to split off, the best pre-baffooned image of Sonny to leave. But what a disaster for me! I would never have discovered the beloved TV show as a toddler.
I believe Cher could have pulled off a career in any musical idiom. Yet she’s never seemed very interested in taking in detail about her musical choices. So some people might have thought that direction to be an inauthentic or orchestrated one for her. But there are many famous legends in psychedelic, blues and current legends in rock music that come across as insincere or inauthentic when interviewed about their music. Cher seemed inauthentic often in rock music precisely because they missed the boat on that late 60s musical trend and never quite recovered in the eyes of the rock establishment. Had that not happened, she might have pulled off a groovy late-60s music career. And professionally she might have more credibility today.
A personal involvement with the drug culture might have resulted in more creditability as well, sad to say. My feeling is a drug history always buys you kudos in pop music. There’s that ridiculous idea that succumbing to any kind of decency or weakness means you’re "strong enough to survive" it. Self-reliance is significantly harder to do and yet somehow less respected.
A continued solo career might not have necessitated a TV Show come-back; and that you could argue catapulted them into a much larger fame-o-sphere.
People often ask me how I think Cher would have done on American Idol, as if to say truly original singers never do so well there. But every night of the 70s on a Cher related show WAS American Idol. Everyone tuned in to see what Cher would she sing and wear next and that’s exactly what we say on American Idol. The show is even complete with Simon/Ryan banter and car commercial sketches; it’s a modern variety hour.
Do I wish instead that we had more Jimi Hendrix covers and a cocaine habit? Not really. I’m perfectly happy with the way things are and came to be. Let’s take stock of what we do have: the Jackson Highway album by the producers of Dusty in Springfield where Cher did the last few of her 10 Bob Dylan covers (can you name them all?) after he went electric himself, Dr. John’s "Walk on Guilded Splinters," which is sorta groovy; and we even have Hendrix’s own "Hey Joe" recorded a few years earlier. And it didn’t take a shot up the arm to record that.
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