I just need to say this again: if you had told me when I was six or seven or eight years old that one day I’d be reading Sonny’s memoir alongside Cher’s memoir, each discussing their days as Sonny & Cher, I would have fainted across my Raggedy Ann bedspread. It was inconceivable to me that such an amazing thing would happen someday in this world. That’s how much I loved Sonny & Cher.
I now think either Cher eventually read Sonny’s book or one of her ghostwriters did because their opinions, even minor ones, seem so point-to-point. And why would they not read everything, just for research. I guess it could be an amazing coincidence, like Sonny’s image of Sonny and Cher connected to the same umbilical cord.
Anyway I’ll try not to replicate Cher’s book here because you should go out and buy it. The paperback is out now with an additional story. But let’s continue…
If you want to go back:
The Nightclubs
So Sonny admits it was Joe DeCarlo’s idea to try out nightclubs. This is big. Cher and the world usually give that idea to Sonny. Sonny calls the period a “bumpy road personally.” Cher says they actually got back on track as a family during this period. And Cher calls it Supper Theater. The Supper Club circuit. Places like the Flamingo in Las Vegas and the circuit of hotel and casino dinner theaters.
Cher remembers she was “relieved to be working” and they traveled with Chas in a wicker crib and their nanny Heidi, “the sweetest woman in the world.” Chastity’s first two years were on the road and her first milestones all in motels and hotels. Cher says Chas was our early entertainment and “such a gift.” The band and hotel staff held her all the time and her “feet never touched the ground. Cher says, “she was the sole focus of our long road back to who we once were. “ Even though they had no money or house and had hotplate meals, the three of them hung out together and “no matter the circumstances, Sonny could always make me laugh.” Cher is unequivocable: “struggling again helped revitalize our relationship…being poor narrowed our focus—how to best spend our time, made us feel three of us against the world.” (This is the “backs against the wall” era.) Cher says Sonny was a big kid, very creative, and she could happily watch him play with Chas for hours.
“Our world consisted of the three of us.” This sounds very happy but Sonny portrays it all unhappy and remembered only the struggle.
He says, they “struggled to find chemistry off stage” and he says he took some of the act’s barbs personally. He does start to worry he is being too bossy and that he lives too much in fantasy land. He admits he was “obsessed” with Cher’s “steamy love scene” with Steve Whitaker in the Chastity movie. He worried that his jealousy meant they didn’t “get it on film.”
Later in the book Sonny will claim that Cher’s unhappiness came out of left field. But here he acknowledges their fights over the busy schedule he arranged and he admits they “worked their asses off” in the summer of 1970 and that may have “cost us our relationship.” He mentions making the Dick Van Dyke TV special (he doesn’t mention its name, The First Nine Months Are the Hardest) and how it was hard to be on the road again and playing two shows a night. “We were up and down on planes…packing and unpacking…walking through smelly kitchens late at night…not connecting well.” He says Cher saw it as “a treadmill going nowhere.” He also says, “our enthusiasm for life was too low to pick up” and “you feel miserable.”
Cher does say ”every night was like a war” but she’s talking about with the audience.
Only Cher mentions the Love American Style appearance in January of 1971. Cher talks about how kind Sonny was during her panic attacks and his “odd” experiments like having her sing Puccini’s “Un bel dì, vedremo” from Madame Butterfly.
Cher explains how the new act developed from drunks in crowds and how she started talking to the band and making them laugh. She didn’t get the side eye from Sonny because it was working and at least they were entertaining each other. Cher calls it “always hit or miss” and that very “slowly we developed a [20 minute] act people would line up to see.” She notes it was “not our singing. “They wanted to hear our jokes.” Cher talks about her heritage of wiseassery. But that “never in a gazillion years did I imagine that I’d become a standup comedian.” Cher explains the type of jokes they told: about Sonny’s mother, his height, his singing, his hopes of becoming a sex symbol, her nose, her body type. Cher says it was accidental and “We got excited again.” They both tell some of the jokes they did. Cher says, “Timing was everything” and she could “make Sonny laugh so much he couldn’t sputter out his lines.”
Sonny’s version: “We gradually developed a humorous and fairly sophisticated repartee.”
Cher again says their stage personas were the opposite of their off-stage relationship. Cher tells a story of trying to confide unhappiness in Sonny and his explosion and threat to divorce her.
Cher does talk about the discomfort of it, how that “felt horrible.” They would be in motels across the street from venues and casinos. Train whistles would keep them up at night. Bad plumbing. Mildew on the walls. Paper thin walls. Sonny would make them hot-plate pasta for the family and the band because they couldn’t afford restaurants. Cher admits sometimes “I wanted to curl up and die.” Cher says they’d take the service elevator and then navigate their way through the busy kitchen trying not to slip on any grease or wok into a waiter flying past carrying five plates and standing by the swinging doors and trying to keep out of the way, listening for their cue. Then walk out smiling.
She says her sister was traveling with them, too.
Sonny admits that although they were feuding, they were also other’s best friends. He says there are talks of a TV show but nothing came of it. Cher talks about the Century Plaza comedian night and working on The Nitty Gritty Hour special, which she says felt formulaic and nothing came of it.
Sonny’s August 26 1970 diary entry admitted Cher was complaining that he was pushing too hard. He says that during weeks in New Orleans they barely spoke unless they were fighting. (Later he will say he had no idea she felt this way.)
Cher says, “I felt permanently tired.”
Sonny says they would dress up to play to 12 people, where they used to play for tens of thousands. He says they were “not concerned with putting on a good show” but “how can I get out of this situation?”
Cher says it’s a “thousand times harder to come back than become, almost impossible.” And she concurs that they were used to 30 thousand screaming fans and were lucky now if they had more than 100. One of the midnight shows at the Elmwood there was only 4 people. Some “real dives.” They were used to kids who “knew every word of our songs” and now played “to people who didn’t know us,” people who were coming for dinner and drinks, not to see a show.
At this time Sonny said he felt Cher’s “admiration for him was zip” and that he was worried about the survival of Sonny & Cher but she was only worried about her own survival. It’s in the middle of this, (not at the massive tax debt episode where Cher puts it) that Sonny says he asked Cher for 3 years (not 2) to get them back on top.
They both agreed they communicated better in Sonny’s diary.
He shares his September 11 diary entry (paperback, 1812) which has similar verbiage to the one Cher mentions in her memoir (hardback, 207) , the one that talks about Cher being “my stability, my generator. I need you to believe in me Cher” and Cher responds: “I am you. That’s scary to me. Even if you left me, you couldn’t rid your body of me. I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud.” Maybe these are two different entries they’re talking about. They don’t read the same in each book. This also wasn’t one of the ones Mary Bono republished in People Magazine.
But in hindsight Cher felt she did believe in Sonny because “Sonny believed in us…he kept pushing,” getting them TV appearances and shows.
Sonny says they were “popping” and “generating heat” and selling out shows and “drawing” in Las Vegas, where they shared a bill with David Brenner and Frankie Avalon. They didn’t even have a hit record, Sonny marvels. He says the true benchmark of their worth was “how hotels received us.”
Both end chapters before they start to talk about their new TV show, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.
The First TV Show & Records
Sonny says TV executive Fred Silverman, a “genius programmer at CBS Television” saw them at the Waldorf Astoria.
Cher says it was around 2 years to the day that Fred Silverman saw their performance at The Royal Box Supper Club in the Americana hotel. Cher says by this time their act was “razor sharp.” Then they were sub-hosts on the Merv Griffin Show.
Sonny says, “Silverman arranged for us to serve as guests on the Merv Griffin show and they went over big. Silverman sent a congratulatory letter.”
Cher says Silverman wanted younger viewers. He sent producers Bearde and Bly to the Fairmont Hotel where they saw some raw talent and all hit it off. On their way back to LA on the plane, they sketched out the show. I remember Bearde and Bly saying the same thing on some Cher documentary, maybe Behind the Music.
In the meantime, Sonny says, a friend from his record promo days, Johnny Musso, signed Cher to Kapp Records and Sonny says, “he was taking a risk.” Musso “didn’t want me to produce.” This is the second time Sonny is asked not to be producer. “He wanted to use Snuff Garrett. I was bored by the studio and Snuff was a friend back to Liberty Records.”
Because of the TV schedule, Cher says, they had one week to finish this first record. Cher “loved Snuffy” because he was funny and great at his job, a “get it done” kind of guy. Sonny was busy with other things, Cher says, like arranging the tours.
Silverman arranged for a replacement series of 7 shows, Sonny says, and their ratings were good.
Cher calls it a summer of 6 shows and their show led into the miniseries about six wives of Henry VIII, every night a different wife. Fact check: there were 6.
Then in September the single “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves” was released and 7 weeks later it hit #1. Sonny counts every chart position and he gets them right. Cher tends to get them wrong. Cher talks about the cover, the accent on her name, how it was her first top ten solo (“Bang Bang” went to #2 and “You’d Better Sit Down Kids” to #9). The album went gold and the song was nominated for a Grammy. She was working so hard she doesn’t remember how it felt. She only remembers being on the road, country fairgrounds and “huge crowds for us” but also being exhausted.
Sonny is frustrated with this. “Cher was sleeping” he says disparagingly at ever milestone of good fortune. He feels he is the only one enjoying it. Then he fires Joe DeCarlo because he’s taking 20% (the combined 10% each that 1960s managers Stone and Greene were getting). Besides, he has his road manager Denis Prognolato who he says was doing all the work anyway.
Remember Denis was the spy in tennis-lesson-gate, friend to Sonny. Not so much to Cher.
Cher says around this time Sonny changed. He hires lawyer Irwin Spiegel and is always in meetings with him smoking cigars.
The album Sonny & Cher Live comes out and goes to #35.
The “All I Ever Need Is You” single goes to #7 and the album to #14. The single “When You Say Love” goes to #32. This is all Sonny recounting.
But we could have used more of Sonny’s view about his own songs here, just like with “I Got You Babe” and “The Beat Goes On.” He had three songs on All I Ever Need Is You. He says nothing about “A Cowboys’ Work is Never Done” except that it was a top 10 song in April of 1972 (#8).
Things are going good, Sonny says. The Comedy Hour got a greenlight. Their Vegas shows are sold out with “traffic backed up nightly.” But he feels deflated when Cher says she “wished they were really big, like the Rolling Stones or Dylan.” They are selling seats for $500. He says he feels invalidated and Cher is always the victim. (Which is neck-breaking projection in one paragraph). He thinks Cher is tired of S&C and hates sharing the spotlight. Cast and crew of the variety show, including Bob Mackie, the producers, the first hairdresser, just don’t back this up. There is the famous story about how Sonny would say “jump” and Cher would say “how high,” plus the fact that he said himself Cher had anxiety and hated performing without him, and in the 1970s would prefer to perform through him.
Sonny sees they are drifting apart. He wants you to know he sees and yet he also reserves the right to be completely taken by surprise later. He feels they are still connected, intwined, “still drew life from the same umbilical chord and to think of severing ties seemed suicidal.” (Which shows he was thinking about it.)
Cher agrees and says they had a strange relationship as husband and wife, best friends, parents, partners and strangers.
Sonny says they went “from hasbeens to hot stuff “ and that he reinvested most of “our salary” into show, which had a 35k weekly budget. Which he said was “peanuts in prime time.” How’d they afford The Big House then? Because they were broke at the start of this decade. Sonny talks about their nose jobs and Cher’s breast reshaping and the infected scars that resulted.
The both agree they loved their televisions show. Sonny says, “the show was a blast to do. Even on our bad days we had fun.” He says Cher had her dream gowns of Bob Mackie.
In Cher’s version she had to fight for Bob Mackie. Ret Turner was already assigned to the show. She got Mackie to intervene and persevere. Cher became friends with both men. Cher says the small budget gave the show a family dynamic in the beginning.
Her first favorite dress was the red one with the open stomach, but that she loved the beautiful beaded shimmery gowns, which later came to cost 5k per dress. Cher says she was a size 6 at 108 pounds and her body type had come into vogue. (We could argue she helped it get there with her TV show.) Cher talks about John Wilson, the set, their coordinated outfits, how they both walked on stage with interlocking fingers, and her feeling “this is what I’m supposed to do.”
Cher has much more room to talk about the details of the show, what they did on which days, who the guest stars were, the role of Chastity, the innuendos and the lack of censorship, about the audience feedback. She said she could look back at the script Sonny wrote (“virtually by himself”) for Good Times and suddenly see it was “way ahead of its time.” She talks about the first taping, the issues with her skin and hair.
Cher said Silverman was like a father figure. She talked about the difference between their written lines and their improvisations, how Sonny didn’t memorize anything and relied on cue cards, whereas she would memorize the scripts “on first sight.” She said she “let him flounder,” go along and then get him with a one-liner. She said the show was set up for Sonny to be the straight man. And they encouraged him to be silly. “He knew I had his back,” Cher says. She felt they were more equals on the show. “Sonny learned his own style of comedy and was hilarious. People loved him.” Cher says when they went to work, they got along. “I don’t remember a single show when we were angry with each other.”
Sonny says they had “top-notch writers” but he doesn’t mention any names of the cast or crew. He says Cher still had stage freight and worked to the cameras and through characters. But it gelled, was “hip and kooky.” Sonny talks about his “Fair Cher” poems and Cher’s impeccable timing” but he says now Cher is “impossible to read.”
Cher says they had a great crew and the producers did a great job. She says the reviews improved and they were renewed for 13 more shows. Critics said they were “endearingly mismatched” and they liked the screw ups and ad libs and the married-people affection like Sonny brushing hair from Cher’s face. Cher talks about director Art Fisher’s pioneering chroma key/blue screen, her iconic Vamp and Laundromat skits. She mentions Ted Zeigler, Freeman King, Peter Cullen, Murray Langston and Steve Martin “who went out tour with us after shows.” She talks about singing the old songs. She says she needed Sonny for those solos and couldn’t have done them without him. (This doesn’t sound like a woman who had been trying to distance herself from him.)
Cher says they were a Monday night institution and a top 10 hit with millions of viewers at a time. Market research found Sonny loveable and Cher beautiful with her array of clothes. Cher then talks about recovering on weekends with Chas. After a show wrap, she would “go home, go look at the baby, wash face, brush teeth, watch TV, go to sleep.”
She remembers their days at their house at Oxnard Beach which were “some of our happiest days.”
Sonny agrees that at that time they felt like “a cozy family unit.”
Cher talks about being TV famous and how work was a safe zone, that they never fought on the set. [Charo tells a story of overhearing fights on the set and there were those Battling Bonos rumors.]
The Big House
Architectural Digest reported in 2019 the house was on sale for $115 million. More history (considering the short time they lived there, all tenants considered, it’s interesting that the house is still referred to as the Sonny & Cher house/estate) and updates through the years.
They were living in the 34-room mansion known as the St. Cloud house and it was 8 weeks into season 1 of their show and Tony Curtis, ever the opportunist Sonny says, sold them another house known as The Big House, now known as Owlwood or sometimes Carolwood Estate. Curtis said to Sonny, “You’re stars. You should reside in heaven!” The house was $750,000. Both houses seemed like a trophy, Sonny says, and that the Big House was 54 rooms and 30,000 sq ft. [Wikipedia says the house is 12,000 sq ft.]
Sonny says the purchase was a grave mistake and there were lots of misfortunes associated with the house and it was too big for a tiny family. He said the house had cold, bad vibes and was only good for hiding troubles. You wonder then why he later wanted to fight for it. He says Cher furnished it in three days.
Cher says “I don’t think anyone ever sat in the living room.”
Cher admits she broke down in tears asking Sonny if they could buy it. Cher says she rarely cried or asked for anything.” She says, Sonny wanted the house too because it was “a gargantuan symbol of our comeback,” their “castle on the hill” and that it would change things. Cher admits she had the house decorated with antiques from Europe. She says, “it was stunning” and she lists the outdoor buildings and describes Chas’ bedroom, although notes that Chas preferred the tack house to her bedroom (famously depicted on Sonny & Cher’s last duet album). The kitchen was her least favorite, Cher said and that the paneled library was her favorite space and one of the smallest. Cher correctly notes the 12, 200 sq ft of the house with 9 bedrooms, 10 baths. Sonny never wanted to throw parties, she said, except for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Chas’ birthday. Sonny stopped her friends like Joey from coming over.
Busyness & Las Vegas
Cher says Sonny was “turning into one of ‘the suits.'” He wasn’t happy being an entertainer but wanted to be a mogul. She missed the old pasta-making Sonny with Chas on his hip. Now he just spent hours in meeting with lawyers. Cher talks about “The Benevolent Army of El Primo,” the jackets, all which was kind of a joke but kind of not a joke. Cher feels herself disconnecting, shutting down in fights. The CBS family “kept me going” she says but she longed to have own opinions and make friends. She felt closed in. They had no dinners out, no concerts, no movies. Their relationship was all work. Outside of that she had shopping and Chas.
Sonny feels Cher is ungrateful. Cher says Sonny was on a mission never to be poor again.
Sonny acknowledges it was a hectic calendar. “If there was a break in the TV show, I booked out of town concerts…That’s where the big money was.” He said they made 50-60k on a good night. They made 4 million that way, he says and that “Cher’s complaints were a broken record.” [But during the breakup story below, he will act dumbfounded.]
Cher’s defense: “Work was hard on me” and she said she had a more demanding TV show schedule than Sonny did. Sonny also wanted them to be recording new [solo and duet] music and doing shows on the road. “We have to make the most of this second chance…this is our time,” Cher remembers Sonny saying. Everything became “a big blur,” all the TV work, fittings, photoshoots, interviews, tours, recordings, being a mom. She said they did 50 shows that year and Sonny arranged it so they would have to tape 2 shows a week sometimes, film two shows in 3 days show so they could spend 9 days on the road. It saved the producers money but Cher felt she had no time to catch a breath and it was double work for everyone on the show. She said they did that about once a month. She quotes producer George Schlatter as saying, “If Sonny & Cher were driving into Hollywood from the valley, Sonny would take a gig on Mulholland to break up the trip.”
Sonny says he was “building our savings” and he understood that “she hated the grind” and how she never could play in Vegas without getting sick, which Sonny took as “an excuse to cut the run short.” Sonny loved Vegas. “We were huge there…broke house records.” Sonny loved the “Disneyland for adults” aspect, what he called “the dark artificiality” of it. He admits Cher hated “everything about it” and that she hid in hotel room with room service and the TV. He pictured her as reclusive as Hugh Hefner, which is a tragic misreading of a person desperate to go out and have some fun for a change, just not in anyway like the way Sonny wanted to have fun.
Sonny went to see Elvis with Denis. He’d never seen Elvis but they often played Vegas at the same time. Sonny was fascinated by his power over an audience. It’s interesting to compare how Sonny and Cher each describe seeing Elvis perform. They are both mesmerized by it.
Elvis invited Sonny and Denis backstage “I’d never seen anyone like Elvis,” whom Sonny said had the charisma to transform a mediocre show. Sonny said Elvis “didn’t give a shit” and like Cher he would probably rather trade handshakes for money than perform. Sonny doesn’t mention this but like Elvis, Cher would also become a mesmerizing and hypnotic personality.
Sonny is actually great at explaining Elvis in his book, though. He said Elvis told him he liked the S&Cs version of “What Now My Love [Sonny mis punctuates the title] and that he listened to it before recording his own version (which sounds more like the original French version to me).
Sonny said he and Cher had a private plane and would be mobbed at airports, and that they had packed shows. But that Cher was “absorbed in needlepoint” on plains and in dressing rooms and always looking bored and disinterested.
Cher says she needlepointed herself half to death from the stress.
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Sonny pretending to needlepoint in the Battle of the Sexes skit.
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Cher needlepointing post-Sonny
Sonny says romance became a commodity. Both agree they were suppressing their relationship troubles.
Cher felt alienated, not allowed to have friends over or “fraternize with the band.” By this time her sister was busy working as an actress. Cher tells about the Tupperware story and this is one of the final straws.
The Breakup Story
Sonny begins his breakup chapter with two diary entries that look back on the implosion, his November 4, 1972, entry where “Everything has exploded. Chastity doesn’t know mom and dad are on the ropes.” He says he’s been so worried about their careers, he’s never worried about their relationship. [Sonny, even your own diary begs to differ].
Then a few days later on November 11, “Cher wants to run like a racehorse but she can’t find a track. I used to be the jokey. She shoved the saddle up my ass.”
[This is a terrible analogy because it kind of proves Cher’s point. She’s not a horse. WTH.] He says Cher was “admittedly miserable.” He talks about the worst time in his life, when he was married to Donna and lost his job before Christmas and then his car broke down.
They both take time to tell this story.
Sonny introduces the day by talking about Cher being antsy and unhappy (for no reason he can understand).
Cher introduces her version by talking about her breakup catalyst, not Bill Hamm (Sonny never obscures his name), but her soon-to-be best friend, Paulette, who was a 21-year-old worldly Armenian, sophisticated and dating their road manager, Jerry Ridgeway. They’ve been best friends for over 50 years now, Cher says. And Cher was initially allowed this friend because for some reason “Sonny never saw her as a threat.” [And he never acknowledges Paulette’s role in their breakup in his own memoirs.] Cher enjoyed listening to Paulette’s life stories. They each wanted the other’s life. By that time Cher says she wasn’t eating or sleeping. (In Forever Fit Cher Cher says she was suicidal and down to 94 pounds, only eating a few bites of egg a day.) Cher says she feels the TV show changed Sonny completely but that she still loved him. “He didn’t notice me anymore” because he was trying to be a mogul. This is a consistent Cher story in interviews (from at least Believe-era on). Cher felt she couldn’t trust him anymore and she was needlepointing herself “to death.” She is candid that she had no desire to have more kids with Sonny although she admitted he was a great dad and that he and Chaz had a special relationship that “didn’t include me.” Chas was El Primo, Jr.
Cher says that they had back-to-back shows in Reno and Las Vegas. At the Sahara they had two shows a night in the Congo Room. She was feeling trapped. Paulette was starting to help her as a gofer and a dresser. After shows, Paulette would hang out with the band smoking pot, drinking beer, playing guitars. Cher was envious of her stories.
Cher says she was exhausted and asked Sonny for a vacation to Europe and he rolled his eyes. He called her selfish. Cher says she was crazy with loneliness and had been sitting on the balcony rails of hotel rooms ready to jump “five or six times” (!!!) But “one morning everything changed.” Between shows that day she figured she could just leave Sonny. Paulette was oblivious to Cher’s condition and told her about Bill Hamm’s crush on her. There’s a story with the Etch-a-Sketch and the song “Superstar.”
Sonny says It was a Saturday night. “Cher and I were breaking attendance records while ignoring our personal differences.” Between shows, Sonny remembers that he, Cher, Denis and our guitarist Bill Hamm went over to the Hilton to see Tina Turner. They then went back to Flamingo and did their late show and received three standing ovations. David Brenner was their opening act and jokes about “the dough we were making” and “our opulent suite.”
Cher says it was The Righteous Brothers that the band wanted to see at the Hilton Hotel and that Cher went with Paulette and Ridgeway. Not Sonny. Everyone acted like she was crazy for doing something without Sonny. She sat next to Bill and he put his hand on her knee. (I can’t wait for this movie.)
In Cher’s version, she returned from the Righteous Brothers and had to ignore Sonny’s fury. She left for her dressing room, ignoring him. After the show she told Paulette she wanted to hang out with the band and they hung out in Jeff Porcaro’s room. None of this is in Sonny’s book. Cher said the band was “nervous as hell.” Bill and Cher left to go look for cigarettes. They ran into David Brenner. Cher says David and Brenner were close and Brenner was nervous about seeing Cher out and about without Sonny, too. Bill asks Cher how she can live this way. Some kissing happens. They go back into the room. Sonny calls pissed. Cher says she’s just hanging with the guys. “You could have heard a pin drop in the room,” Cher says. Cher says she told Sonny on the phone that she was bringing Bill up to their room.
Sonny says they were exhausted after the second show and there was strained conversation at the elevator. On the road, Sonny says, they had a truce to engage in “shallow chitchat” because they were “forced to share close quarters.” (How does he not see a train wreck coming?) Anyway, Sonny says he is looking forward to sleep. [This must be one of the nights he wasn’t out with other women.] Cher shot me a pained look. “Bill Hamm is coming up,” Sonny remembers Cher saying. He figured they were working on songs together. [How was that allowed? Working on music without Sonny?] When they get to the hotel room, Sonny has Cher saying, “I’m in love with Bill Hamm. I want you to leave.”
Says says he wanted to talk about it. “Let’s talk, okay.” Sonny says he “never suspected” was “shocked” and felt “flat-footed.” He admits he thought of killing Bill Hamm or hitting him. Sonny says when Bill came in to the room, he was oblivious but soon figured it out. (Sonny is always more sympathetic to Cher’s boyfriends and husbands than he was to Cher somehow.) He said Cher had a “fearless nerve.”
Cher says the nerve was all Bill Hamm’s who must have had “balls the size of something huge.” (That’s how much everyone was afraid of Sonny.) Cher doesn’t have Sonny asking to talk about anything. She has him in a chair staring her down and she remembers shocking herself by saying she wants to sleep with Bill in their room. She says she didn’t mean it but it seemed like an expeditious was to escape The Sonny. Cher says Sonny returned silence (not a plea for dialogue) and that he asked her “how long to you think you’ll need?” Cher said two hours and not another word was spoken and Sonny left the room.
According to Sonny, he fantasized about breaking whiskey bottles over their heads or perhaps destroying the suite (which would have been a real rock star move for him). But he just left, felling defeated, like a “zombie.”
Cher acknowledges that she had put Hamm in jeopardy. She said they just spent the night talking. Cher appreciated his friendship and sympathy and she cried on his shoulder.
Sonny says he went to play Blackjack (which is kind of odd) and that Bill’s girlfriend tapped him on the shoulder looking for Bill. Sonny says he told her what was going on. Sonny said, “let’s go to your room” and “she did not hesitate.” Wow. They had retribution sex which was unsatisfying. Sonny says, because they “bumped into each other with the enthusiasm of two people who had just been mugged.” (Very good metaphor though.)
Sonny says Bill returned in the morning. Sonny and the unnamed “girl” where still together in bed. “He brushed by me as if I was not there.” When Sonny returned to the opulent S&C suite, it was 5 am and Cher was asleep in bed. Sonny says he took off his wedding ring (and you wonder if he had it on all those times he was cheating on Cher) and had a “disturbed” sleep next to Cher.
In Cher’s version, Sonny returns at 5 am. They agree on this.
But Sonny says he wanted to talk to Cher when they both woke up and he remembers telling her it wasn’t too late to change things. Cher asked him what he did last night and he said “I screwed Bill’s girlfriend.” And Cher said, “that’s funny, we didn’t even go to bed together.” Sonny said he wanted to ring her neck. (You have to admit, he was easily played into that situation. In his own version of it, anyway.)
Sonny says they then talked the entire day about everything, how the love was gone and he says Cher was “calm and casual.” Sonny says he tried talking to her because he says he knew she didn’t love Bill Hamm. “He was a pawn in her game,” the last “straw to break my back…he was her way out of Sonny & Cher.”
This is all very strident projection because there is no outside collaboration and Cher denies ever wanting to “escape Sonny & Cher,” although she did want to escape the schedule and the loneliness.
Sonny admits he was “also stark, raving mad…the closest I’ve come to real craziness.”
According to Cher there was no conversation. He treated her very coldly when he came back and by then she knew he didn’t love her anymore. She says while she was half asleep Sonny pulled off her wedding ring. (which is very creepy). She says she woke up in the afternoon and Sonny was gone and she knew there was no way she could perform that night. It was then, Cher says, that Sonny sent Chas and their nanny back to L.A., “another of his unilateral decisions.”
Sonny says Cher insisted on her love for Bill during that day-long conversation. Their next showtime was approaching. Sonny says he asked Cher to have Bill come up and they all talked in the dressing room but the “discussion was a futile waste of breath.” Sonny admitted he couldn’t perform until there was resolution to the drama. Their manager had been calling them all day on the phone and leaving notes under their hotel door. At 4 pm, they cancelled the remaining shows that night and for the rest of the run. Unfortunately no one told their opening act, David Brenner, Sonny says, and so he showed up for his cue at 8 pm.
[It was due to the cancellations that rumors started in the press about Sonny having assaulted Cher. See the Rolling Stone interview of 1973.]
Sonny says, “Denis went off to kill Bill.” (I should watch that movie.)
Sonny says Denis spoke to Cher, saying she wanted to leave town. Dennis agreed it was a good idea. They feared CBS would hear the news. Cher wanted to go to San Francisco with Bill. “Dennis made the arrangements.” He also hired a P.I. to follow her but the P.I. lost Cher at the San Francisco airport.
Sonny says he booked Chas and the Nanny on a plane to L.A. (making it sound like he did that after Cher left town). Sonny says he was “too numb” to function and when he got back to L.A. he stayed in bed depressed for two weeks and got down to 130 pounds.
According to Cher, her exit day happened differently. That day she went walking on the strip alone, but she was sent back into the hotel by autograph seekers. She found Sonny sulking in his dressing room. She asked him for $500 in cash. He gave her the money without saying anything except that America would hate her for breaking them up.
Cher says she left for Paulette and Jerry’s room as a safe hideout. Bill was there getting ready to leave for Texas. It is here, Cher says, when she found out Sonny slept with Bill’s girlfriend in revenge the night before, not from a conversation with Sonny earlier that morning. Cher asked Bill to go to San Francisco with her instead of back to Texas. All she could think of was going to Sausalito. Cher says nothing about Denis Pregnolato arranging anything with Sonny’s blessing. And it’s doubtful she would trust Denis (after Tennis-Lesson-gate). According to Cher is was Jerry Ridgeway who loaned Cher his rental car and he was worried about it, afraid of losing his job. Hamm and Cher then took separate cars from the San Francisco airport but got lost in that fog. Cher knew the P.I. was behind them and they got lost too, she says. They all ended up back at the airport hotel.
But then Sonny says Cher called Denis a day after they left saying she wanted to come home but that she feared Sonny’s reaction. Cher came back to their bedroom but Sonny says they were “strangers, zombies, enemies.” Luckily, Sonny says, they had 54 rooms to spread out in.
In Cher’s version, she says Denis found them at the San Francisco hotel and called to threaten them, saying it would be “really bad for Bill if you don’t come home.”
Cher says within a week they were back filming the TV show. She confirms Sonny looked bad when she arrived home, exhausted. She said he had the demeanor of being beaten and looked gaunt. But immediately she was pulled into a meeting with Irwin, the lawyer, about breaches of contracts and costings of millions.
Sonny says this all happened right before taping the 1972 Christmas show. And that the producers knew but they kept it a secret. At the end of November, Sonny says he went traveling for two weeks to clear his head. He went to France, England, Nassau and Miami but he had no fun. (If only he had only consented to this trip with Cher when she pleaded for it, maybe none of this would have happened.)
In his December 1972 diary, Sonny talks about how they look like a “warm and loving” couple but the situation “felt cold and hateful.” Sonny admits that his next conversations with Cher were about keeping the business together (and that begs the question of why she would agree to that if she was trying to get out of the act). He says he did most of the talking “in a familiar repetition” of past conversations. (So how did he ever know how she felt about anything ever?) He says Cher agreed they were in a “lucrative business” and they agreed to have separate personal lives.
(So either Cher wanted out of the act or she didn’t. It doesn’t sound like she did. She was willing to keep it going.)
A later Sonny diary entry talks about how neither Cher nor Sonny had any kind of family life and that Cher used to worry about that, according to Sonny. “I would tell her we would build our own. Now again I have no family.” Sonny does seem to feel victimized but likes to attribute that to Cher. But it is a sad diary entry, nonetheless. Sonny’s diary gets a bit melodramatic (understandably): “She’s not mine anymore. Nothing has any meaning.”
Sonny claims Cher was a changed person (too) but that he wouldn’t trade those ten years because “they were the best of my life.” (I do feel Sonny is being honest here but that he has serious blind spots in hindsight.)
Sonny says they each moved into one half of The Big House. Sonny claims they did the same thing “with our money, our daughter and everything else.” (Except, stay tuned, they never did divide the money.) And, he says, they attempted to separate without disaster. He understands by then that Cher wants freedom. “I thought I was teaching; she thought I was intimidating.” [But then so did the whole band think he was intimidating.]
Cher says she had no money and never did receive her share. Leaving Sonny was losing all the money. (That alone makes you believe she would have stayed if she could). Cher says she was given $5,000 a month (no chump change) while they were separated and a rented condo in Malibu near Moonshadows where she spent a lot of time sleeping. Bill Hamm came to visit there (and you get the sense that here is where she learned what a good relationship could be like) but they weren’t allowed to go out to dinner or to movies and she was never allowed to be seen in the company of other men in public. Sonny had no such stipulations it would seem.
After the Breakup
By the summer of 1973 Sonny says he was no longer trying to get back together with Cher. (Which is a strange thing to say but Cher has reported in the past that there was a period when he was doing that, trying to get back together.)
It seems like pretty soon he moved their secretary, Connie Foreman, into the Sonny wing of the Big House. Sonny mentions Cher didn’t seem upset by this. Sonny calls Connie a former cigarette girl at Pips (that club where Lucille Ball would show up and they would all play backgammon) and I’m reminded here of his violently slapping the cigarette tray into the face of the cigarette girl in their movie Good Times.
Cher says Connie was their assistant and agrees with Sonny. She liked Connie and says Connie would get tired of Sonny’s rules and come over to hang out in Cher’s wing to listen to music and smoke cigarettes.
Cher says she became friends with Sonny again, that they could enjoy each other again. Sonny tells her he thought about throwing her off the balcony back in Vegas and says he would have pleaded insanity. Then getting a book deal and TV show from it. (Yikes!) Cher said living with him made her want to jump off the balcony. They laughed.
Sonny says friendliness on his part was an act “deserving an Academy Award.” Ouch. At home, he says they were two strangers. Sonny says he still saw Bill as her pawn. He thinks the same, he says, about future boyfriends Robert Camilletti and Richie Sambora. Neither of these men have said they felt like pawns and have pretty much only good things to say about their time with Cher (Sambora commenting pretty recently). Gregg Allman’s worst comment about Cher was to say she wasn’t a good singer. (Imagine!) Sonny says Cher “wears men like ornaments.” Then he goes on to admit he went out to party at the clubs after they broke up, “hitting on chicks right and left.” (I think this man has previous sentence amnesia, but we can all see his stripes, right?) Anyway, he says Cher and Bill broke up after several months and she started dating their keyboard player David Paich. Then Bernie Taupin.
This all happened around the time of her hit “Half Breed” and what Cher calls a “grueling summer tour.”
Cher talks about “pianist David Paich,” whose father Marty was their orchestra leader. (Sonny doesn’t mention this.) Cher said this only lasted during the grueling summer tour. Cher says it was during this tour that Cher, Paulette, Paich, the Porcaro bothers, Hungate and Lukather (I will now start calling them Proto-Toto) were hanging out in a playground on the swings after which Sonny via his loyal guy Denis called each member of the band individually to threaten to break fingers and blow up cars for hanging out with Cher. The band and even Paulette stopped talking to Cher upon threat of being fired. Only David Brenner would talk to Cher and even he was afraid, according to Cher. But Toto ostensibly could weigh in on this if they would ever admit to working for Sonny & Cher.
So Cher started singing with her back to Sonny. This was around the time of their second Live album at the Sahara in Las Vegas. Cher notes that Sonny’s comments and stories during that show were designed to make her feel guilty. But she maintains that “he was the one who caused it to end.” Cher says she always thought he would come to realize she “was the one who was always there for him, who loved him” and that she knew “he loved me, just not enough to be faithful or kind.”
Sigh. Did he come to realize that?
Sonny says their lawyers did all the real fighting and he moved on thinking about how to survive without S&C.
Cher tells her Lucille Ball story and adds she used Lucy’s lawyer, Mickey Rudin. Sonny calls Paulette “our secretary” and accuses her of spreading rumors that Cher wanted to get back together with him. Cher has Paulette telling Cher “good for you.”
Sonny talks about a “bad” trip to Paris. He doesn’t mention Cher being there but Cher says around this time she went to Paris with Sonny. They stayed at the Raphael hotel and this is where Sonny’s was taking a bath and Cher is telling him modern girls won’t put up with his bullshit anymore. Cher talks about Sonny’s M.O. of gift-buying to placate the cheating. Sonny doesn’t mention any of this.
They go to the 1973 Golden Globes together to give the award for Best Musical or Comedy Series. Cher mentions a fox coat she wore and multicolored skirt which she says is one of her favorite looks of all time.
Cher talks about Captain Spike Nesmyth, the captured pilot who was a Sonny & Cher fan and the POW/MIA bracelets they wore. Sonny doesn’t mention this. Cher talks about Chastity’s 4th birthday party. [There’s a magazine article depicting one of those birthday parties. I’ll try to dig it up.] Cher talks about going to the 1973 Academy Awards with Sonny in the gold dress to present the award for best song, “The Morning After” from The Poseidon Adventure.
Cher tells the therapist story and Sonny’s interloping. He doesn’t tell this story. Cher admits going to Joe DeCarlo again for friendship and advice. DeCarlo tells her about Sonny’s infidelities with all the womens, including hookers, waitresses and dancers, how he would book an extra room. Women started telling Cher these stories too, saying Sonny claimed he had an open marriage with Cher.
Cher tells the Jack Benny/Johnny Carson party story where she went with Sonny and got kicked out for laughing at Lucille Ball’s irreverent political commentary. Sonny doesn’t mention this story.
Cher talks about feeling liberated and independent and adventurous, dressing how she liked, learning how to shop for food and sign checks. Poignantly she talks about not having to worry about whether she was laughing too loud. The laughing-too-loud thing. This is always a sign of an uneven relationship and I’ve witnessed it with couples within my own family and in song.
One page 214 of the paperback Sonny talks about the Mother Nature skit and the tension on the set. They both talk about this skit. They both agree Cher ad-libed telling Sonny to go fuck himself. Sonny has nobody laughing and the director suggesting they try it again and Sonny saying “not without our lawyers.”
Cher talks about the skit on page 288 (hardback). She said it was a Chiffon Margarine commercial spoof and it was a few days after leaving Sonny. “What’s the secret of life?” Sonny asks. “Go fuck yourself,” Cher responds. She says Sonny collapsed in hysterics and she did too, along with Sonny’s comment “not without our lawyers.”
She says later Sonny called her act of leaving him in Vegas her “Nagasaki moment,” words he had printed for her on a gold dog tag. In disagreement with Sonny (who feels he should get an Oscar), Cher maintains they weren’t acting affection after they separated. “You can’t fake that shit,” she says.
But in any case, they both agreed they could easily be Sonny & Cher professionally. Cher says she liked working with him but didn’t know “how to read him” anymore. They say the exact same thing about each other.
By December of 1973, she was seeing David Geffen.
David Geffen Susses Out Cher Enterprises
Sonny says Cher turned suddenly into “an ice maiden” and was testy to the whole crew, less of a team player, less approachable and kept saying things like “I have to talk to David.” Sonny thought she meant Proto-Toto’s David Paich but it was this producer fellow. The irony of all ironies is this Sonny comment: “I wrote him off as a little wimpy guy.” (First off, it’s totally wrong and second it’s almost verbatim what the mayor of Palm Springs wrote off Sonny as in the 1980s at his first running for mayor). But Sonny quickly admits now he misjudged the man who would become “the most powerful, respected, wealthy and feared man in Hollywood…one of my great misjudgments.” That must be his second biggest misjudgments after thinking he could mistreat Cher for so long and keep a golden rainbow coming out of his ass. (Too much?)
Anyway, Cher says Sonny was uneasy when he found out about Geffen being as smart and powerful as Geffen was, “much more than himself.” Cher starts hanging out A-listers now: Bob Dylan and his wife, Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Houston, Warren Beatty and his girlfriend Julie Christy, Lou Adler.
Cher says it was Sonny who began to change. At work, things had been friendly but he stopped being friendly. Not his goofy fun self on the set. (Someone from the show needs to weigh in here.)
Sonny saw Geffen as in a conspiracy to get Cher a solo CBS show (and solo record and movie deals). Cher denies this. Sonny admits Cher denies this but he believes it anyway. Cher says that Sonny & Cher’s agent pitched the idea to them once at Geffen’s house but that they asked him to leave and never spoke to him again because he was ostensibly Sonny’s friend.
But Geffen was exploring her existing contracts. David and Cher then learned about Cher Enterprises and how Cher had zero votes, rights or stake in the company and was entitled to none of their income over the last ten years. Sonny owned 95% and their lawyer owned 5%. Cher was an employee and she received the noblese oblige of Sonny plus 2 weeks vacation. She also has no way to make money outside of this enterprise without Sonny’s permission.
(Just the name of it sounds demeaning and exploitive.)
Sonny talks about contracts. He says their TV contract had 3 more years. They had just finished year 2. Cher agrees with this. She says she was was locked into the contract for 2 more years. She says she had stayed during the bad times, Sonny’s movie dramas, the tax fiasco and was heartbroken and “so mad” and “thank God I had David.”
They each represent each other as cold. And Sonny, we have seen, has a tendency to project. Not that Cher was probably the best communicator there ever was at this time.
Sonny has Cher saying he and Geffen should get into a room together and whoever wins wins. Cher has Sonny refusing to renegotiate during her attempts to talk it over and being met with Sonny’s cold eyes and his smoking cigars. She had a child to raise, her sister and her mother to worry about, she says. She couldn’t work for nothing.
By January of 1974 Sonny says he is tired of faking a marriage and that Cher was refusing to work anymore “for our corporation Cher Enterprises.” (Our.) A few pages later he says “Cher and I were employed by Cher Enterprises. Cher and I were 50/50 partners. That is not only how the corporation was set up, that is the law of community property in California.”
Then a page later Sonny contradicts himself and says, “when Cher wanted out of her contractual obligations, when she wanted to split Cher Enterprises 50/50, I said no.”
Sonny has the gall to say about himself in the third person, “Cher decided to shoot Sonny in the back.”
Anyway, his reasoning was that he had managed them all those years for nothing. Plus, he feared Cher would step into all those deals he worked so hard to make, leaving him out (just as he was leaving Cher out now). That he did all the backstage work was not an insignificant or untrue claim. Cher admits he did all the heavy lifting behind the scenes. A fair deal would have been to pay him out for what would have been a manager’s salary.
But listen to me, trying to figure a way through for Sonny & Cher.
No biographer of Cher disputes that the contract was 95/5 Sonny and his lawyer. This doesn’t seem like a situation of Cher’s word against Sonny’s. But I suppose former biographers all could have taken Cher at her word and not researched the actual contract.
But here’s the thing: Cher received no money on the corporation’s earnings after its demise, leading us to believe…she did not, in fact, have an ownership stake in it. She finally got The Big House (no small thing but she says she had to buy it from Sonny) and a portion of the publishing royalties off Sonny & Cher songs, which Sonny will soon express disgruntlement about.
Cher says, “Sonny undoubtedly was responsible for making us who we were…[but] he could never have achieved that without my voice….He made me leave.” No Cher without Sonny. But also, she says, no Sonny without Cher.
And it does sound like Sonny brought about the disruption he insists he feared the most. Sonny says their act had contracts out for 10-15 years (at Caesar’s Palace and on MCA). And, I think, it would have been amazing to see if they could have survived very bigly into the era of MTV. I doubt they would have. But in any case, Sonny says Cher told him she refused to honor the contracts.
Cher did call Fred Silverman and ask him not to pick up the TV show for another season, later insisting to him that she would never leave to do a solo show on an another network (there had been rumors), which is kind of an implicit negotiation to do a solo show on CBS. Cher told him she couldn’t work as an employee with no salary. This was around the time of their opening number “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” and Cher noting that his smile did not quite reach his eyes.
Sonny says, “I was not going to be the one to end it. But Cher refused to work anymore.” (For nothing, he forgets to say.) Two paragraphs later he says, “the week of the final episode of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, I filed for legal separation from Cher. I’d absorbed enough. I wanted it over.”
So much for “I wasn’t going to be the one.” Cher says he filed for divorce on 18 February but I think Sonny is right and that it was legal separation. Some editor should have looked that up as public record?
After the Friday taping, (Cher says it was in January 1974 and everyone was crying, her mom, sister and the crew, but Sonny doesn’t mention it), Sonny says they took separate jets to their final Houston Astrodome concert. Sonny says they earned $150,000 that day. He says they were the biggest, hottest act in the country at that time and they were playing what was the largest indoor venue in America.
The both agree the show was miserable, a rodeo venue that smelled like shit. Cher says it was a working rodeo with Elvis and the Jackson Five on the bill too. This is where her hair got caught in her dress’ zipper and Sonny had to cut it free with the scissors. Sonny says Cher left the venue without a word to Sonny or their crew and he was left to say all the goodbyes and farethewells. Cher says all the people they worked with were loyal to Sonny.
Sonny says Cher filed for divorce on February 20 and claimed involuntary servitude. Sonny calls her a “characteristic victim” (says the complaining victim) Cher doesn’t dispute the divorce filing and says Sonny countersued for lost earnings and sued Geffen for interfering and asked for a temporary restraining order against him.
Cher says the news was “brutal” against her but Sonny continually complains that he was the one Cher successfully made out to be the villain. At the same time, Sonny was suing Cher for 14 million and Geffen for 13 million. Cher is just suing for divorce and contract freedom but Sonny keeps claiming for Cher it was all about the money.
The Big House, Part 2
Sonny also says Cher changed the locks on the house. But Sonny doesn’t mention that he kicked Cher out first and Cher no longer had the Malibu lease so she was homeless and moved in with David Geffen. (This was the era of Joni Mitchell being there all the time too while making Court and Spark).
Here is where Cher contradicts her own story when she says, “he never wanted that house. It was my dream house…” But back on page 268 (hardback) she says “Sonny wanted the house too.” And he did at least want to keep it from her. But by the time of his own memoir, he never liked that house. Cher was advised to return to the house and she says at that time she did change the locks and Sonny & Connie had to move into the St. Cloud house which “he made me sign over to him.”
In his diary, Sonny says “I have no good feelings left for Cher.” He finds it all confounding because “Cher is not a fighter” and he doesn’t believe Cher and Geffen are in love, that it’s a relationship of convenience and Cher has made him her pawn.” He sees Cher as, and I quote, “either a subservient Geisha girl or a killer.”
Wow.
Cher eventually sells The Big House fully furnished (a few months after Elijah’s birth) at a price “too low” and to a “carpet baron.” But she doesn’t say why she sells it.
Parenting Chas
Sonny says Chastity is confiding in him that she feels neglected because Cher has become a surrogate mom to Tatum O’Neal. Cher barely mentions Tatum O’Neal aside from one dismissive sentence. Cher says she and Sonny are civil when discussing Chas on the phone but Sonny says “Cher, in true passive-aggressive form, forced me to deal with Geffen in order to spend time with Chastity….So I wound up negotiating with Geffen over when I could and could not see my daughter.”
Cher says Chas was friendly with Geffen at first and then something changed and she took Sonny’s view of Geffen. Later, Cher said, they both decided not to trash each other’s lovers to Chastity (if not in memoirs). Sonny said he applied for full custody, which Cher said “shattered me.” She had taken Chas to Hugh Hefner’s to play in the pool and Sonny used this as the reason. Cher says Hugh Hefner had known Chas her whole life. And it’s true, Sonny even booked Sonny & Cher on his Playboy show and had been pictured as a family at his house. So WTF Sonny.
In the end, Sonny got even less time from the judge than Cher has planned to give him. But they worked out a cordial deal between themselves.
In Chas’ three books, he has not weighed in extensively on this time period.
The Solo Shows, The Settlement & Gregg Allman
Now here is where reading Sonny’s memoir the first time I completely lost confidence in him as a reliable narrator. Sonny claims that in the summer of 1974 Cher announced The Cher Comedy Hour. No other Cher biographies mention this and neither does Cher in her memoir.
Sonny says Cher immediately went to work on a new series and it was “an instant smash,” that she was on the covers of People and Newsweek (it was Time, Cher wasn’t on the cover of Newsweek until the 1980s), and “women embraced her as a role model and everything I knew she was capable of began happening. I had no problem with Cher’s success.”
I actually believe this part. I think in some ways Sonny was Cher biggest fan and her worst friend and lover. And, as a big Cher fan (and a big Sonny & Cher fan), it makes me feel very torn about Sonny.
Sonny continues to lament that Cher cast him as the bad guy and that Cher basically “walked off with the franchise” and with it took away “his whole sense of identity.”
I believe that too.
But here’s where I lose sympathy with Sonny’s chronology. He says his friends, manager, agent and just general people said ‘look at Cher’s successful solo show. There’s no reason why Sonny Bono cannot have a hit TV show, too.’ So in the summer of 1974 he says he presented a solo show to ABC with the pitch “if CBS was having success with the Cher variety hour…”
Sonny’s show debut was on August 14, 1974. He excerpts his diary to say “I have been knocked down more times…and now I’ll have to be judged all over again.” (No victim here.)
The big problem is that his show premiered and was canceled after 13 weeks in 1974 and Cher’s solo show didn’t even begin airing until February 1975 and this is because Sonny’s lawsuits kept Cher from working on anything new for almost the entirely of 1974. There was the Dark Lady album on MCA, her last album on that label, and some modeling work with Vogue.
So his whole long story is false. Cher’s show did not happen before his. How could he misremember that?
Of course Sonny’s solo show didn’t succeed, although it had the majority of the cast and crew of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and the same formula. It was just missing that one magical thing that was maybe worth at least 50%, the star power.
Cher said it was “a copy of our show” and had rotating female guests to stand in for her. She expresses sympathy that the network put him in an impossible timeslot at ABC, on Sunday against Kojak and Disney and that she didn’t want him to fail. She says she was backstage with Chas for the first taping of the show.
Sonny says, “It didn’t work for a lot of reasons.” (Another example of Sonny knows; he wasn’t caught not knowing.) “It was the only game in town, so I played it.” (A far cry from ‘why can’t Sonny Bono have a hit TV show like the Cher show that’s only happening in my head.’)
Cher said while Sonny’s show was on the air, CBS announced her new show would air on 8 pm Sunday’s against Sonny’s show which Cher thought was cruel to them both. But his show “was cancelled before mine began.” Which is the truth. And how Sonny could have published a different story is mind-boggling since it was an easy thing for any editor or fact checker to look up in any library’s reference section. (I was doing that in the late 70s, so I know how easy that was.)
This also confirms a childhood memory that I’ve always had that I could never explain, that for a minute the public thought they might have to choose between watching a Sonny show or a Cher show.
Anyway, then Cher tells the Average White Band overdose story. She said Sonny was furious about it. But he doesn’t mention it in his book.
Sonny laments that at the cancellation of his solo show he was “alone now” and “it was a bitch.” He says by now Cher’s show was in its second season and that the first had done well. (But it hadn’t even started yet.) Connie is gone by the end of 1974 and he’s very down about his situation, says his diary. But then he tells a story about going to David Geffen and Cher’s 1974 Christmas party where he meets Raquel Welch and they leave the party to go to a movie together. They saw The Towering Inferno and left early because they both hated it.
Let’s pause to consider Sonny’s comments about Connie. “I was trying to get Con off my back. The only thing she did well was fight.” He blames the relationship on rebounding. He admits he’s still friends with Cher, (which is why he was invited and went to her Christmas party).
He then tells about his PR man Jay Bernstein (who “was better at launching Farrah Fawcett’s career than mine”). He takes his variety show on the road with Richard Lewis because David Brenner wasn’t available. Later Tim Conway opens for him and they become friends. But the show didn’t do well. He says Cher kept bashing him in the press. He says he’s not the dictator Cher said he was but he never mentions the whole El Primo thing and his own 1960s diary entries about “keeping her in line.”
And interestingly, it’s here where Sonny brings up the big fight they had after going out to see The Dirty Dozen. This is the fight Cher mentions occurring in the 1960s. He said it was their worst and funniest fight. He says the fight was about whether Cher had a killer instinct. Sonny thought she did. Cher didn’t think so. This led to a shouting match where Sonny commanded Cher to let him out and she did and then drove off “leaving me to walk 10 miles home.” His guy Denis picked him up. That was “the extent of his irate machismo she found necessary to criticize.” Oy vey.
In Cher’s version she let him out at Dead Man’s Curve (on Sunset Boulevard) and he was upset that she liked the movie and he accused her of being “sexually frustrated.” Cher attributed the fight in hindsight to Sonny’s tendency to force a riff so he could leave and go out on a date with someone else.
Sonny contends Cher never complained (except he has spent pages telling us that she always complained, that ingrate). He blames her for not communicating her unhappiness to him, (after complaining that she was always telling him she was unhappy). He admitted he knew she hated Vegas. But still Sonny chalks it all up to Cher’s villainization and lies.
He then goes into his own victimization: his ego was shot, he felt sorry for himself. But then he meets the model Susie Coelho in Palm Springs via Jay Bernstein.
He then talks about Cher’s new “peculiar relationship” with Gregg Allman and how “nothing attracted Cher like a mean, tough and potentially dangerous rock and roller.” (Uh…well, Sonny…err…are you describing yourself here too inadvertently?)
Another funny thing is that pages back Sonny says, “Geffen was exactly the kind of man Cher was attracted to—a powerful guy who took charge of her life and made things happen. To me he was a ruthless cutthroat.”
So…yeah. That’s how Cher likes ’em: dangerous and powerful and Sonny. Yeesh.
Cher says she and David Geffen had stopped living together in January of 2025 although they were still dating when she met Gregg Allman at the Troubadour one night.
Sonny and Cher kind of do describe her relationship with Allman similarly though in its “ups and downs.” Sonny says it was “red-hot” to “non-existent” and that’s not too far from how Cher defines it too. Sonny admits Allman is a “gifted blues man” but also a “coked-out druggie” and a “southern cracker.” He uses the same hyperbole he used about Geffen to say Allman was “one of rock’s most volatile personalities.”
Cher has always insisted Allman was very gentle and sweet. So they disagree about that. But Cher admits “I had never been with a bad boy and he had a reputation as one quintessential bad boy.”
Sonny says Allman was “bent on self-destruction” and mentions the suicide of Jenny Arness, (a topic Cher avoids in her memoir). Sonny reminds us that Cher is not a drinker and was “as antidrug as I was.” He makes fun of her use of the name “Gregory” instead of Gregg. Sonny thinks there’s some connection between “Greggory” and Cher’s father, John Sarkisian, who Sonny claims Cher did not say goodbye to before he passed away even though her biological dad had “cleaned up by then” because she “never forgave him for deserting her in childhood.” (Cher seems pretty ambivalent about Sarkisian in her memoirs but maybe there’s some kind of psychological connection there.) Sonny says he was happy that the new relationship pushed aside his “nemesis David Geffen.” With Geffen gone, Sonny says the two of them started chatting again and Cher was always asking him for advice.
Cher agrees that she would reach out to Sonny in a crisis and he knew how to handle the press.
Cher says Sonny called her up to invite her to appear on The Tonight Show hosted by George Segal as a surprise guest and they fell into their usual banter. This appearance helped Cher’s bad press around her Gregg Allman troubles. Sonny also helped with Chastity when Cher needed to spend time with Allman in a Buffalo rehab.
“As far as I was concerned, Cher and I were equal partners.” Sonny says he still “resented she was able to go on with her career, capitalizing on our past success and continuing to make millions while I was slogging my way across dime-sized stages for gas money.” That is a great sentence but it’s also ridiculous because he had the chance to keep making money with Cher if he let her actually make money on the act. He says he was 50% responsible for her stardom.
So is he saying he should get 50% of all her earnings in perpetuity? Now he’s all 50% guy.
The divorce breakdown according to Sonny: Cher got the 54-room Big House (although Cher claims she had to buy him out for that). Sonny got the 32-room St. Cloud house, which he says he had been renting out until he needed to move back into it with Connie. Cher was allowed to void all existing Sonny & Cher contracts but in exchange had to pay Sonny $750,000 in cash or work it off performing as Sonny & Cher, a combination of which she did in 1976 and 1977. Also, “she received 50% of all publishing royalties from the songs I wrote, checks she still cashes,” Sonny says as if that’s incredible.
But to think about it, the only money Cher received from 10 years of performing as Sonny & Cher (aside from gifts Sonny gave her when they were together, houses they lived in and shopping she did with their money), was nothing. The company structure put her in debt for 750k (according to Sonny; Cher says it was higher). The only money she ever made for herself from ten years of working as Sonny & Cher was from the publishing royalty agreement in the divorce, the very same one Mary Bono tried unsuccessfully to null and void a few years ago by arguing that a divorce agreement should die with the death of the spouse. Cher ended up having to sue for unpaid royalties (so at some point she stopped cashing those checks) and it’s unclear whether that was before or after Sonny died. He had no will and his estate was divided up between Mary Bono and his four children.
Here are two articles on the Mary Bono lawsuit:
The divorce was finalized on 26 June 1974 and 4 days later she marries Gregg Allman. From Cher we find out this was because she was pregnant but Sonny doesn’t know that yet. Sonny says her marriage and filing for divorce 9 days later was a “public joke.” Sonny says she confided to him in tears that Allman was mostly upset that she worked so much and was “no fun” and “never there.” This tells us more about the situation than we see in Cher’s memoir which kind of hedges around their issues.
Interestingly both Susie Coelho and Gregg Allman get not-nearly the ink you would expect they would as the next Sspouses to follow Sonny and Cher.
Sonny said Allman and Cher would come over and use his pool, which was more private than hers and that Cher would suntan there nude, which shocked Sonny. Sonny says, “Cher had become very liberal.” But then he admits he doesn’t really know her anymore and gets more information about her from People Magazine.
Sonny says Cher’s show took a dive in the ratings. Cher agrees with this and explains what happened. In the beginning Cher was a bigger hit than the Comedy Hour, according to Cher. The premiere had 21 million viewers and the show finally beat out The Wonderful World of Disney, which CBS had been trying and failing to do. But the show also had 2 censors that the Comedy Hour didn’t have, which made work difficult. But during the summer break, CBS played Joey & Dad in her timeslot and it bombed. So when she came back, her ratings fell from 23.3 to 7 and suddenly she was competing with The Six Million Dollar Man (which Sonny did a guest appearance on.) Also, Cher admits, David Geffen had left in aggravation over her relationship with Gregg Allman and without his contacts, they couldn’t get the A-list music acts anymore. Plus doing a show solo was too much.
Reuniting as Sonny & Cher
Sonny says Cher pitched a reboot of the Sonny & Cher show and he was incredulous but that Cher and Denis talked and worked things out. Sonny seems like he did it for opportunist reasons. He said Primtetime Network TV was “the kind of exposure I needed.” He said neither of them had made it solo (except Cher had kinda made it solo and would go on to make it solo, she just hit the first bump in the road). He said their friendship was like American and Soviet spies sitting on a beach; they could kill each other but they liked each other.”
Cher agrees that she asked Sonny back and he “instantly” said yes. She said Sonny negotiated with CBS the new deal and that it allowed Cher to repay Sonny for those cancelled contracts by way of the new show plus “road gigs.” He also had to square the pregnancy situation with CBS but Cher admits that Allman was “otherwise out of my life” at that time. Later, during show opening dialogues, they would mention him from time to time (as if he was backstage). Allman was at that time upset by the show’s press and that Cher was again working with Sonny. He told her he felt “heartbroken” and “made a fool of.”
Sonny talks about the the CBS press conference which he says occurred at Television City. Cher says it was the Beverly Wilshire.(It happened on 4 December 1975).
The new show premiered on 1 February 1976. Cher said it was one of the most watched programs in TV history at that time, up there with Who Shot J.R. (I remember hearing that statistic in other bios too but unfortunately there is not much online about this fact of TV history.) Cher says she thought the show was sharper and more relevant. They lost the mother-in-law jokes. She’s right. The second show is better. She said Sonny persuaded Harold Battiste into becoming their musical director. Cher said there was a lot of discussion about what songs they should sing as divorced people.
During the second show, Sonny said they got along better and he was sympathetic about Cher’s problems with Allman. He said their ratings were in the 20s but then CBS switched their time slot, which is what led to lower ratings and cancellation of the show. “Both Cher and I wanted to continue with the show.”
Cher agrees with this and talks about the last episode with a retrospective of 1960s Sonny & Cher singing “Baby Don’t Go,” which Sonny said he we wrote for her. Cher says they were on the road when they heard CBS wasn’t renewing the show. During the tour Cher said Sonny took pictures of Elijah learning to crawl down hotel hallways (just like Chas). Cher used a lot of Sonny’s photos and footage of Chas and Elijah on her first solo tour for Take Me Home and her Vegas/Monte Carlo shows. She has always always maintained Sonny was a good father and very good to Elijah.
Sonny says the show cancellation freed them to do concerts in huge arenas but Cher hated the road and got bored and sick, depressed and “insular.” She missed Elijah and at the halfway mark called off the rest of the tour and paid Sonny cash. And that was the end of Sonny & Cher, according to Sonny. Cher agrees she cut the tour short and paid her debts from her own pocket. She says she ended up paying him 1.4 million in cash, not $750,000.
Cher says after the tour, Sonny moved to Palm Springs where he would host BBQs and Cher would go sometimes with Chas. Sonny never ate, Cher said, just tasted things. Cher says he went through girlfriends and cheated on all of them. After one breakup he came to Cher tearful and gave her an apology in her kitchen. Sonny and this woman got back together, Cher says, and married and Chas was their bridesmaid. Cher calls the woman “Sarah” which, interestingly, is the name of one of Sonny’s girlfriends on The Love Boat (it’s that Deacon Dark episode where his girlfriend is deaf and he sings a sweet song to her at the end.) But Sonny’s next wife was named Susie.
Sonny says Cher was supportive Susie in Sonny’s life and he blames her for that, too, saying that “given her track record” he shouldn’t’ have listened. He says Susie and him were with each other for the wrong reasons and he was just lonely. (I’ve read Coelho’s book; she has nothing but good things to say about Sonny in it.)
Sonny comments on Cher’s albums around that time, Cherished (“a flop”) and Allman and Woman, Two the Hard Way (failed), and he dismisses her attempt to suppress her name on the Allman album cover as “something wrong” because she “hates to share the spotlight.” (Why would she even do the duet album then?) Those two albums were probably the nadir of Cher’s 1970s output by they are the only post-breakup Cher albums he mentions: not Half Breed or Dark Lady (both which earned #1 hits), Stars or Take Me Home (which had another top 10 hit). We’ll see later if he has anything to say about her 1980s comeback records.
Cher says it was her idea to drop her name because she wanted people to focus on the music and not her life in the tabloids.
Sonny says they became neighbors when Cher purchased the “Moorish mansion” (the Egyptian house) on Benedict Canyon Drive. Cher and Susie were friends and Cher would again sunbathe at their pool (nude again). It was here where Sonny first saw Cher’s large butt tattoo of the butterfly. He attributed that again to Cher trying to generate shock value and create controversy so she could then tell critics to “stick it.” Which, Sonny says in a moment of honesty, was “a trick she learned from me and I learned it from Phil Spector.”
Cher talks about going on tour with Allman in Japan and Europe but after he had a relapse she left the tour to return home to do final shows with Sonny in Hawaii. There Sonny had invited Bill Hamm back to the band to “mess with me,” Cher says. But they ended up reconnecting. It was here the Sonny & Cher act ends in Cher’s story. Of her experience with Allman Cher says she has to “learn things the hard way.”
Sonny talks about Chas’ school problems and finding out she was grades behind and this triggers his feelings of neglect (and particularly his neglect of Christy). But he doesn’t yet mention the dyslexic diagnosis.
In Cher’s version of the story, the principal called her to talk about Chas’ emotional problems and bad grades. Cher was shocked because Chas was always “level headed and responsible.” A teacher took Cher aside and told her to get Chas tested for a learning disability and they discovered Chas had dyslexia. Cher then suddenly understood her own learning disability.
And that’s the end of Sonny & Cher in the 1970s in both of their memoirs. Neither of them mention the Mike Douglas Show reunion they did in 1979, but there are two more public reunions ahead: Cher at the opening of Sonny’s La Cienega Italian restaurant Bono and their iconic reunion on Late Night with David Letterman in the fall of 1987. Sonny will still be with Susie Coelho when his restaurant opens but that relationship will end and he will meet 22-year-old college student and restaurant customer Mary Whitaker there. Those two had a 26-year age difference but can you remember anybody ever talking about that? No. Because they didn’t.
I forgot how much Sonny villainizes himself, unintentionally, in his book. Cher is the “killer” and he is the perpetual victim, taking very little responsibility for what he does. But, it all kind of came to roost for him anyway, as it often does. If he had been fun to work with (and if you read Murray Langston’s testimony, maybe only Cher thought he was fun to work with) then he would have continued to work in Hollywood, despite his divorce from Cher. Cher said extensive CBS audience research showed the public liked him. I don’t think it was evident that Cher’s comments to the press were the biggest issue for Sonny and his show-business career. Two record labels requested he stop producing Cher and he didn’t go on to become a TV or movie mogul despite all those meetings. By Sonny’s own admission, Cher wasn’t involved with any of that so how could she have ruined it?
That said, Sonny did a lot of brilliant things for Sonny & Cher and he did turn a raw, anxiety-ridden teenager into a glamourous superstar with an iconic career trajectory. And that’s not chump change either.
This level of detailed Sonny & Cher obsessing was immensely pleasurable. My little 7-yeard old self can die happy now.
Helen Mirren
