I Found Some Blog

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Stiller & Meara

October 28, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I was never a big Captain and Tennille fan but I have always liked Stiller & Meara, mostly separately but also together when I could catch clips and appearances of their old act from the 1970s. They were not like Sonny & Cher and yet similar in their comedic put-downs. They were both popular around the same time; however Stiller & Meara were more narrowly perfected and cerebral and Sonny & Cher more widely vaudevillian (singers as part-time comedians).

As I watched Stiller and Meara: Nothing Is Lost I had a notebook and pen out and ready to try to capture some other similarities; but by the time the credits rolled, I had not a single mark of ink down.

The Stiller/Meara family story is one unto itself. You could see them having overlapping struggles maybe with the Bonos, both couples being parents and on the road all the time, all their children having to deal with fans interrupting family moments in public spaces, parents always hustling for the next job. But these are a very different families and the couples had unique relationships (all three of them).

I remember thinking, there’s not really much fundamental emotional overlap here.

But then the credits rolled and from the very first few bars I exclaimed, “This is a Cher song! What??”

Not only were the credits rolling over a Cher song, but it was the only solo number from the debut Sonny & Cher album, Look at Us, and so although only Cher sings it, the song is credited as Sonny & Cher. It’s Cher’s cover of the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody,” which is such a classic. Why pick the very obscure Cher version? It wasn’t a hit. It wasn’t even a single. Mr. Cher Scholar wondered if it was chosen because the Cher version sounded more convincingly and innocently in love. But it’s also kind of rough. Cher’s vocal is at times out of control.

I hear the track as having been softened for the credits, her big note not so shrill and a fix put on the blip at the end.

Undoubtedly, this a great song, but still what an obscure choice for Ben Stiller’s movie about his family. I mean the lyrics kind of match the early love letters recited in the movie between Jerry Stiller to Anne Meara and maybe the couple did feel a kinship with Sonny & Cher as another showbiz couple of the day. Or maybe Stiller and Meara simply loved Cher’s version of the song? Or maybe the kids picked it because it reminded them of their parents, either their relationship with each other or the need the kids felt for more attention from their parents. There are a lot of ways to read this.

But wow. I was gobsmaked.

Beyond that, the movie did resolve for me what kept Stiller and Meara together in a marriage so long (until her death) and how this differed from Sonny & Cher and Captain & Tennille. The very obvious difference being that both Sonny and Cher and Toni Tennile and Daryl Dragon were in lopsided emotional relationships which faltered because one half (in each case the husband) wasn’t fully invested in it the marriage.

Jerry Stiller is another character entirely. He seems to have had much more self awareness, to me, than the other two men. For example, Meara had solo goals. She wasn’t as invested in their act as a couple. But what saved them was that they both had better communication skills. Just communication period, you could say, which is what the other couples struggled with. And both Stiller and Meara were committed enough to the marriage to go through years of couples therapy and one-on-one therapy to keep the relationship working. I can’t see Sonny or Daryl Dragon doing this.

One of my favorite parts of the documentary was at the end. Jerry Stiller is being interviewed for what seems like one of the last times. He’s in a chair and kind of feeble and he says, “I met Anne Meara. That was a big thing. She was the most unbelievable person in the world, Anne Meara. I never met anybody like her in my life.” The way he says it, too, that it’s still incredible to him.

Anne Meara really shines in the documentary, not only by her natural comedic timing but just her force of personality. She isn’t a typical Hollywood star. That Jerry Stiller could appreciate how unique she was, especially in a world where social pressure often discourages men from even acknowledging the value in that let alone choosing to love it, was very, very moving. It marks Jerry Stiller as extraordinary, too. And it looks like he was sure about the value of Anne Meara until the day he died.

 

Cher’s versions of “Unchained Melody”

Wigs and Courage

October 23, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Who took this picture? Why do I have a copy of it?

I have just spent two months wrestling with two wigs to make one of them presentable by Halloween.

This wasn’t my idea but I have been asked to put together the Cher costume. I’ve only worn it twice before and honestly I didn’t feel very Cherlike in it either time. In fact, I’d much rather be a cardboard TV box with knobs and a picture of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown drawn on the front (a costume my brother Randy made for me when I was 7) or a little devil (a costume my grandmother made for me when I was 8) or a dinosaur or a pirate or some other ridiculous thing. But the Cher costume was requested as part of a funny group idea and so here I am pulling out the dress my sister-in-law Maureen gave me, a midnight blue polyester gown from her 1970s-era Homecoming dance with my oldest brother. It’s the closest dress I’ve ever had to a 70s Cher gown.

And so I’ve been brushing and steaming these god-damn wigs for weeks, soaking them in fabric softener and all the things they recommend online but to no avail. They’ve been tangling into monstrosities in the costume box for many years now and they’re done.

Meanwhile, I could have just purchased a new one for 20 bucks. Sigh.

As I take out Maureen’s homecoming dress out of my closet, I am also reminded how I used to always look to her to see what milestones I would someday encounter as a girl: dates with boys, dealing with their parents, a prom, a wedding, babies. She’s been a real sister to me. (I’ve written two poems about watching her for life clues.)

Despite the forgiveness of polyester, I could now be too hippy for that old dress. Praise Cheesus for all the zaftig Cher drag queens who have gone before me. But I’ve had to purchase a “Believe” suit as a Plan B.

Anyway, the whole experience reminds me of the first time I threw together this very Cher costume for a date who took me to a Halloween party of young Kraft Food employees (where I was working as a Kelly Girl at the time) in White Plains, New York. My date went as a cow. The cow costume was very cute but it didn’t mesh well with my Cher, a character unlikely to fraternize with cows and I shredded long black hairs over him all night. I also now recall his complete lack of enthusiasm in helping me figure out how to get into Manhattan for an internship at Penguin Books. This was a few weeks after the Halloween party.

When I got to New York to start a graduate program at Sarah Lawrence College, I was full of fears. I was afraid of the telephone, for example, even though I was often sent out as a receptionist during many years working as a temp. What bad luck that was.

My first boyfriend in college, god bless him, had to get on the phone to try to resolve all my questions about birth control to the nearby Planned Parenthood office because I was afraid to talk to strangers on a phone. To their credit, they wouldn’t tell him anything (assuming he was up to no good snooping). But he rolled his eyes and tried.

And phones may have been my biggest fear but they weren’t the only one. There was my fear of cliff ledges, sinkholes, hillbillies, the parents of my young friends, and swimming pools with anything decorative painted on the bottom of them.

When I got my internship at Penguin in Manhattan, I had no idea how I would find the wherewithal to get myself on a train to the subway system and down a few blocks to the Penguin offices in lower Manhattan. That was too much new stuff to deal with, too many overwhelming opportunities for things to go wrong, too much energy to zap my delicate constitution!

I was renting a basement apartment in a Yonkers house owned by a middle-aged Italian chef and his wife who spent half the year in Italy (chef-ing) and half the year retired in Yonkers near their grown-up kids. The movie Moonstruck didn’t even make sense to me until I sat in their house with the plastic runners and plastic couch covers. Besides them, I hadn’t met many other friends yet at Sarah Lawrence. The only new friend I had so far was the aforementioned blasé cow. Finally, after much cajoling, he  did agree to accompany me from the Bronxville train station to Grand Central on the Metro North and then to walk me through the grand atrium (which always felt to me like walking through an exciting vortex) to the correct subway tunnel so I could at least see the token booth. (Yes, this was even before subway cards.) But that’s as far as he would go.

The internship turned out to be both parts frustrating and delightful. There was an endless flow of subsidiary rights paperwork that came in via faxes faster than we could deal with it, a basement contract file room that was a shambles of misfiling and the whole publishing industry that was a bit depressing tbh. But there was also getting as many free galley copies of books as my backpack would hold, being able to read the manuscript of Stephen King’s wife Tabitha’s first novel, which wasn’t very good, and best of all holding in my hands the original contract for John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath.

But how did I even make it that far? In the end, I had to make use of the baby-step method.

I had to get up in the morning and drive myself to the Bronxville Station. If I felt freaked out, I could turn around and go home. If not, I could get out of the car and buy a train ticket. If I felt freaked out then, I could turn around and go home. If not, I could get on the train and sit down, ride into Manhattan and get off the train at Grand Central. If I felt freaked out there, I could turn around and go home. If not, I could walk through Grand Central to the subway, (past the oyster bar I never did get a chance to visit), maybe buy an everything-bagel with cream cheese at the kiosks by the front door. If I felt freaked out there, I could turn around and go home with my bagel. If not, I could buy subway tokens from often-grumpy booth folk, get on the subway going across Manhattan and then make the subway connection going south. If I felt freaked out at any time on the subway, I could turn around and go home. If not, I could walk up the subway stairs and out of the street and  orient myself to the four corners of the earth. If I felt freaked out about that, I could turn around and go home. If not, I could walk into the Penguin offices.

And this was just for the interview!

But I did it.

I didn’t turn back.

I didn’t wig out even one time.

In 2023 I found myself reciting this whole ordeal to some old Sarah Lawrence friends who had, since the 1990s, become too intimidated to go into Manhattan from Long Island themselves. (!!) Baby steps.

And it turns out, I had an unforeseen support system. I was always surrounded, my whole time in New York, by helpful New Yorkers, not just people on the street but particularly the Italians I lived beneath, (the chef snored and my basement bedroom was right below theirs), and those Italians I worked with at Yonkers Contracting Company. My brothers often kidded me about working for Italians at a New York construction company. Randy (of the 1976 TV set costume) used to ask me if my co-workers used terms like “concrete shoes.” They didn’t. Instead, I gained a lifetime love of penne alla vodka from their big Italian retirement parties. They all treated me like a lost little bird (which I was) and were amazed I even wanted to go into Manhattan to begin with.

The beautiful women working there with their big 80s perms (it was the mid 90s) told me they hadn’t been down to Manhattan for over a decade, since their high school trips to the Statue of Liberty. (For a time in my life I was able to tell the difference between a Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn accent.) Those people watched out for me and gave me life hacks for managing the pitfalls of their city, from how to outwit a slumlord to where the couch sales were at the Cross County Mall. I still have that couch. That couch has been all over the country.

Soon I would meet Julie (and other SLC students) and we would go into Manhattan quite often by train and by car using some of Julie’s fearless life hacks.

In that bustling city, I was going anywhere fast, but I was moving forward and even that, in ever so small amounts, can build its own energy and opportunity.

Before I left St. Louis (and a summer in Boston), my own family had many, many, many doubts about my ability to move to New York as a graduate student. My oldest brother predicted that New Yorkers would eat me alive. Those were his exact words. And I remember navigating my first bank account meeting in downtown Bronxville one day fully believing I would be eaten alive that day. After all, meeting with strange bankers all by myself was something I would have been terrified to do even in the suburbs of midwestern St. Louis.

Sometimes I still can’t believe I did it. It was big. It was a big deal that I did it. And if I never did anything else in my life, I did that.

The insurmountable overwhelming.

Julie and me lifehacking our way out of a corn maze in the 1990s.

Cher Sounds

October 22, 2025 / / 0 Comments

The YouTubes algorithm recently served me up the Cher’s song “I’d Rather Believe in You” and I was thinking how much I love Jeff Porcaro’s drumming on the song, probably my favorite drum part in a Cher song (and one of my favorite Cher vocals, too).

And in the middle of procrastinating the writing of a twine short story, I went looking to see what the Internets thought of Cher’s drummers (and guitarists and bass players).

Guitar

While doing this I found a whole world of YouTubes of musicians-who-want-to-play-that-song and they make videos breaking things down.

Like breaking down…

Steve Lukather did a lot of Cher’s Geffen-era, 80s rock ballads. Here’s some internet info on Steve Lukather’s best, including “Turn Back Time.”

For example, Steve Lukather and Jeff Porcaro are all over the 1991 album Love Hurts: https://jeffsstamp.web.fc2.com/diskfile/cfile/cher6a.html

Examples of Steve Lukather on Cher songs:

I didn’t love Cher’s guitar sounds in the 80s, tbh. But then I can generally say I didn’t like the guitar solos from the 1980s. Cher’s seem much more subdued than most of them. But all of them, subdued or extroverted, were kind of predictably dull in their own ways.

For context, what I do like: I know there’s a lot of Lindsey Buckingham controversy (and I for one have checked out of Fleetwood Mac’s century-long drama) but here is an example of a solo that gives me feels. It’s always an unpredictable eddy with Buckingham and then I end up delighted at minute 3:42.

But anyway, we would be remiss not to mention Cher’s love of the guitarist and the Take Me Home song “Git Down (Guitar Groupie)” (1979) which had most of Toto on it, Steve Lukather (guitar), Jeff Porcaro (drums) and David Hungate (bass).

For a song about guitars and ahem, “living from lick to lick,” this guitar part feels a bit lowkey.

Maybe the solos are not allowed to upstage the Cher. JK.

Bass & Drums

Some breakdown examples of bass parts in Cher songs:

“The Beat Goes On” is, of course, the ultimate example, which reminds me why my favorite bass moments in Cher songs necessarily go back to Sonny and Carol Kaye in the 1960s:

And researching this I learned that the Wrecking Crew Facebook page claims the iconic drums in “Half Breed” (1973) were also Hal Blaine.

Some people also think Hal Blaine did the drums in “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” (see here) but there are no credits publicly available for that one and I don’t think it’s the most interesting thing about that song anyway.

But the drums and bass of “He Aint Heavy, He’s My Brother” (1971) and “Somebody” (1972) of that same year are quite another delicious example. There’s also the dramatic remake of “I Got You Babe” (1972, in no small part because of the drumming of Matt Betton) and the fabulous heartbeat of “All I Ever Need Is You” (1972).

And those uncredited players (likely the Toto) carrying Cher through the 1970s: “Living in a House Divided” (1972) and “Train of Thought” (1974) ….and “Take Me Home” (getting sultry in 1979 with Ed Greene on drums and Ed Watkins on bass).

Speaking of which I actually do like the guitar solo (and the drums) in “Love and Pain” (1979, with Tim May/Ben Benay and Ronnie Zito).

In other random facts, today I learned that Van Dyke Parks did the steel drum arrangements to the Jimmy Cliff song Cher covered in 1975 on her Stars album.

During all this exploring, A.I. kept trying to butt its big fat face into the conversation I was having with SERPs and it wants me to tell you “A Cowboys Work Is Never Done” (1972) has a “prominent drum roll” and I will concede to agree with A.I. there. It’s a very atmospheric effect all things considered.

Sonny’s Pollo Bono Recipe

October 16, 2025 / / 0 Comments

So let me just say to begin that being a Cher fan is incredibly fun. One week I can be writing about doll outfits (I have another doozy of an eBay doll story coming up) or food recipes or beauty and fashion ideas or makeup-head toys or teen magazine advice columns or memoirs or music or movies or TV shows…or creative things fans do like making little wooden Bulto-like wooden carvings of Cher’s outfits. It’s a grab-bag of fun.

And lately, as I’ve been doing the Cher food stuff, (which is quite an amazing mashup of obsessions, to be honest), I’ve been thinking about who could possibly care about this stuff but Cher fans, and maybe even who cares among Cher fans really…about all this minutia. I mean, who is really out there taking this crazy journey with me? Is this just more and more internet self-absorption?

But then I get a letter. And I’m like oh my God. Yesterday I received this email below from someone who is not a Cher fan at all but found something I had posted.

I asked her if I could share her letter on my blog and she said yes. First let me say this story has echoes of Cher’s own story about her sister finding their mom’s beloved cheesecake recipe in a stack of papers after Georgia died. (I made that recipe a few weeks ago and it was a big smash. And, aside from Shoofly Pie, the only other pie I’ve ever made.)

“Hi Cher Scholar,

I stumbled across your website this evening while I was searching for an old recipe my mom used to make frequently while I was growing up. It was titled “Pollo Bono” in my mom’s hand-typed and laminated binder of recipes, which I always thought was a misspelling of “Pollo Buono”. However, searching the phrase “pollo buono” didn’t return any comparable dishes, so I tried a search inquiry using the original spelling.

Lo and behold, the first result was your site! Specifically, the page wherein you compiled some of Sonny Bono’s old recipes, with Pollo Bono being among them: https://www.cherscholar.com/sonny-bono-recipes/

It was just how I remember: lightly breaded chicken breast in an herby sauce, topped with tomato and onion that come to life under the broiler for a fantastic, rustic finish. I’m not sure how my mom had stumbled across the recipe all those years ago. It would have been the late 90s, possibly even earlier, when she added it to her regular recipe rotation. She was never one for magazines or pop culture, but I suppose it’s not unthinkable that at some point, she’d gotten her hands on that February 1990 issue of Woman’s Day Magazine mentioned on the page and found the recipe interesting enough to keep.

I had this dish at least once a month growing up, but the recipe was lost years ago amongst my parent’s divorce, a family fallout, and several moves. I’m now almost 30 and married to a home chef (for whom I thank my lucky stars everyday!) who has kindly agreed to recreate the recipe for me someday soon, though of course he insists on putting his own twist on it. Whether his version will measure up to my nostalgia remains to be seen!

In addition to sharing my fun discovery, I wanted to thank you for maintaining this site and keeping it free to the world. Accessible information archives are a rapidly deteriorating resource in the age of paywalls and internet regulation. Your efforts are commendable and very, very much appreciated!

Sincerely,
Kara from Pittsburgh”

I told her I was so happy this recipe was making its way in the world though and I asked her what other recipes her mom made.

“There were a couple of other Italian dishes in the rotation, like veal parmesan and lasagna, but my mom’s specialty has always been southern comfort cooking. She’d make a great chicken and dumplings dish that I’ve never been able to recreate.

I’m glad to leave the cooking to my husband most days, but I do wish from time to time that I could have those childhood favorites again. I’ve only been able to find a handful of the original recipes online. I’m really glad the Pollo Bono ended up being one of them!”

 

And speaking of food, I finished my exploration of the recipes in Forever Fit (with the second and last spaghetti sauce recipe) and I made the spicy shrimp fried rice in Cooking for Cher this week.

Cherlato Lives!

October 15, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I was very comforted by the knowledge that Cherlato is continuing. For one, this is one of Cher’s modern business ventures I have not yet been able to try. Also, this gives me the opportunity to quality control one of my new food pages, the Cherlato Truck page (there were some mistakes).

The truck resurfaced again (or its sibling) in New York City! Repainted to match the installation! With Cher in tow talking about how her brand might end up in stores!

The Cherlato truck showed up in Manhattan as part of a new art installation in the courtyard of the West Chelsea hotel Faena New York. The installation transformed the courtyard into a free “retro” roller-skating rink and a Friday night roller disco party. People could roller skate on top of the art piece.

The truck was scheduled to be at that location all weekend.

The Square Sonny & Cher

October 14, 2025 / / 0 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the finger-hiding pose

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

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

Authoritarianism In Popular Music

October 13, 2025 / / 0 Comments

First of all, I’m in the process of re-reading a kind of diary notebook I shared with a friend in high school. In the 1980s, we did this all the time. That way we could look like we were doing homework in class but we were really goofing off writing letters to our friends. Passing notes was too dangerous. Between classes, you could easily trade notebooks. We were about 14 years old, living in St. Louis, reading “The Jungle” in history class (probably a banned book now because it’s anti-capitalist).

My friend and I are re-reading the notebook together and the process has been both painful and funny. And timely because I’ve been wondering lately if I’ve been exaggerating my childhood interest in Sonny & Cher and Paul Sand. This notebook disabuses me of that doubt, however. At one point my friend gets exacerbated with my Sonny & Cher obsession and later I tell her to be sure to catch Paul Sand on St. Elsewhere.

What a nerd! But we are talking quite often about music and co-existing with divergent musical tastes. (I have no record of what kinds of music conversations I was having at 14 with my other friends.)

And here we come back to cultural authority. Because I know what’s coming up in the notebook. We are about to get into an argument about Bob Dylan. I won’t go into any particulars about that or the rest of the notebook but all to say this was in my head this morning (and how our identities were forming around music) while I started reading the book No Respect, Intellectuals and Popular Culture (1989) by Andrew Ross.

Ross talks about pop culture as a tug between “distrust and hostility” on one end and “deference and respect” on the other, a very binary, polarizing arrangement. This has always been challenging for me because I just can’t see the world as black and white and binary. (I am convinced no one can, but it’s simply a very popular coping mechanism.)

Anyway, Ross says, “The struggle to win popular respect and consent for authority is endlessly being waged and most of it takes place in the realm of what we recognize as popular culture” which includes defining “what is legitimate…the patrol over shifting borders of popular and legitimate taste, who supervises the passports, the temporary visas, the cultural identities, the threatening ‘alien’ elements and the deportation orders and who occasionally makes their own adventurist forays across the border.” (I forgot how much Ross is my favorite cultural writer.)

How timely a metaphor this is for us today in the days of I.C.E. And you can also see how debates about ‘alien’ tools and styles play out these days, music that is different or threatening, technology often seen as the new target but is actually a very old foe. I’ve just watched hours of footage of Daryl Dragon in 1977 sitting atop his mountain of keyboards (and a xylophone) on The Captain & Tennille Show. As a great example just take a listen to the music of muskrat sex for a minute. You will either feel that this is sweet or a sign of the apocalypse.  Those aren’t authentic muskrats, for one…and then, just imagine for another minute those same muskrats getting ahold of autotune.

(I for one believe a chipmunk album or two could have been improved with autotune.)

Ross talks about elitism, anti-intellectualism, vanguardism, populism, paternalism and delinquency.  And to me there seems to be a strangely symbiotic relationship between paternalism and delinquency. I find people’s attitudes around authority change depending upon where they sit in the scenario: as the being-told-to or the teller-over-others. It’s that flip-flop paradox that always seems to happen around extreme positions.

Ross says the use of “categories of taste,” (like hip, camp, bad, sick and fun), serve as “opportunities for intellectuals to sample the emotional charge of popular culture while guaranteeing their immunity from its power to constitute social identities that are in some way marked as subordinate.”

That triggering feeling of subordinance.

People have choices when put up against the taste-authoritarians: they either can go along and become super-followers or they can trespass on that authority. Camp is one way to trespass. Ignoring the authority altogether is another. I like both of those strategies.

You can see, in the case of autotune, how copious amounts of criticism from one group (aging rock music snobs, even Spinal Tap had to weigh in recently) never serves to discourage the other group (young rap and dance-music snobs) from wanting to define their own identities within music. In fact I would argue criticism of autotune has actually only accelerated its use, as any kind of criticism from an old authority to an unempowered group will. It’s like their food and fuel. And all because of those structures of authoritarianism. Because young people aren’t going to be told what to do by the likes of…

Well…it’s now become a struggle of identities what could have been perceived as simply one tool in the toolbox. It has become the specific thorn that defines the big cultural struggle between competing groups over cultural authority.

When you step out of the matrix and look at it from a distance you can see that it’s the stupidest f**king argument you’ve ever heard in the history of anything. But on it goes.

Another thing Ross talks about is how authority works with identity and personality, who sings what and from what gender. His example is the most perfect example: Aretha Franklin wresting away Otis Redding’s song about “conjugal rights” and turning it into a feminist anthem. Well-played challenge to patriarchal authority, Aretha Franklin.

Respect! and no respect, and “respect my authority!”

And all this just in Andrew Ross’ introduction! 

Things Are Percolating

October 8, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Things are a bit crazy-making this fall. When I’m overwhelmed with projects, I tend to want to make lists, in this case all the things percolating at Cher Scholar. Everything’s coming along…if only in baby steps.

The Autobiographies

Soon I’ll finish out the 1970s with the two memoirs (Sonny’s and Cher’s). Then I’d like to go back to the food bios found in Forever Fit and Cooking for Cher. And then go back to the childhood, 1960s and 70s stories Cher gave us in The First Time. Rabbit Hole 1.

Food

I’ve been making a few more recipes from the Cher cookbooks:

Rabbit Hole 2. But I’m not going to make every recipe in the Cher cookbooks. I would like to finish out the pescatarian recipes in Cooking for Cher, like the Fiery Pepper Shrimp Fried Rice and the Shrimp Borracho recipes. In that cookbook, there’s also Georgia’s cornbread stuffing I’ll try this Thanksgiving. And I have one more spaghetti sauce recipe to try in Forever Fit.

Dolls

I don’t have much more to add to the Cher doll fashions breakdown (Rabbit Hole 3) except to say that it occurred to me this week that my fleet of Cher dolls have nicer clothes than I do.

Conceptualizing Cher

Rabbit Hole 4: Soon I’ll do a review of Anne Zaleski’s 2025 Cher book. I liked how she categorized Cher stuff. I’ll be organizing my own media studies notes for a long while for my own project. I’ve moved on from books about videos to fan theory to books on movies to camp and now I’m moving on to the books on pop-culture slumming (high vs. lowbrow) and then maybe I’ll organize the music or television stacks next. I like to do small category stacks first (low hanging fruit).

Along this vein, I’ve been watching Captain & Tennille variety shows on DVD, which is both illuminating (variety shows aren’t easy) and disturbing (that Daryl Dragon guy) and this has led to me purchasing Toni Tennille’s memoir from Thriftbooks to find out what was going on with that very un-Sonny & Cher-like musical couple.

And then Ben Stiller’s documentary on his parents Jerry Stiller and Ann Meara is coming out on AppleTV at the end of this month. This will be another fascinating look at the married showbiz couple.

If I had to put these three couples on a continuum concerning how best to navigate a backstage relationship within a married-couple showbiz act, it would be Captain & Tennille on one end and Stiller and Meara on the other, with Sonny & Cher somewhere in between.

Cher Dollphoria

October 3, 2025 / / 0 Comments

So as a consequence of moving and downsizing my parents in January, I inherited my mother’s New Mexico Christmas tree resplendent with southwestern ornaments. As a consequence of this I had to clean out some space in my garage (and downsize a few things myself) which led me to the project of cataloging all the outfits for my Cher (Doll) Christmas tree, particularly so that I wouldn’t buy an outfit twice in the future by accident (which I already did with Stepping Out).

So while I was making a handwritten list of outfits in the box, I decided to go ahead and make an Excel spreadsheet organizing them, and add outfits I didn’t have, discover which ones were legit. At the same time, I came across an outfit called Liberty Belle (what looked like a very lovely 1977 bicentennial Colonial American costume) from a series called the Boutique Collection. I had no idea really what that was even though I’ve seen it before in passing on eBay.

Soon, I fell into a two-week rabbit hole learning copious amounts of information about the Cher doll outfits. There was the aforementioned Boutique Collection and also the Designer Collections (in two box colors), a Montgomery Ward collection, blue boxes, purple boxes, green boxes, black boxes, orange boxes, pink boxes. And  WTF!?

I had questions, too. But nobody on Facebook, where Cher doll fans seemed to live, seemed to still be on Facebook anymore so my questions hit dead ends there. Luckily, the Cher doll outfit bible, Sandra Bryan’s book Cher Doll & Her Celebrity Friends, did help fill in some of the gaps.

The Dolls

Dolls on Cher Scholar: I’ve added a few new pictures and some links to fan experiences with Cher dolls, including a very funny video of every appearance the Cher doll made on Will and Grace (including the real Cher’s first appearance on the show and I think that’s makeup artist Kevin Aucoin sitting in Cher’s book booth).

The Outfits

The Doll’s Closet: This section has exploded! What sorry little cursory efforts I had made before!

There are new separate pages for the blue, green, purple, black and white box collections, images from the front and back of all those outfit boxes, ads for the series, better images of the iconic foldout brochure and I’ve added information about the accessory toys related to the outfits.

I also discovered some egregious information about how the outfits and toys were recycled after Cher lost cultural stock in the late 1970s (shocking!) and there’s an expanded section with links and better pictures about those outfits that have Big-Cher counterparts from her television shows.

I also found a video of a fan playing with outfits and Cher’s dressing room playset.

Other Cher Toys

Toys on Cher Scholar: It was time to clean up this page, to get better images for toys and see if new toys have shown up online. I’ve collected some early prototype images from Mego sales catalogs.

I also found this video of a real hairdresser playing with Cher Makeup Center.

New Paper Dolls!

While I was doing all that, I found out there’s a new Cher paper doll book coming out, Style Icons: Cher: A dress-up paper doll book by Elizabeth Weitzman and illustrations by UK artist Helen Green.

It’s about time we get a paper doll book for Cher. Growing up, my mother loved to tell me she didn’t have many real dolls as a kid and she loved styling her paper dolls. She was very disappointed when I didn’t like paper dolls as well (at all) and preferred my 3-dimensional Barbies. (Trying to make-believe paper-doll sex was very unsatisfying.)

The book’s summary calls Cher’s outfits “dazzling, fearless fashion…unapologetic glamour and trailblazing style” which includes “Mackie showstoppers of the 1970s….wild, punk inspired MTV moments…red-carpet reinventions…looks that pushed boundaries and redefined state and red carpet fashion.”

All that with only “ten of her most unforgettable looks,” 48 pages.

Release date: March 31, 1926

 

Bad Faith A.I.

September 15, 2025 / / 0 Comments

This is not a blog post I enjoy writing. I hate to criticize Cher fans or fans of anything actually. It seems so unfriendly. And we’re all in the same rickety boat here. But sometimes you have to talk about hard things.

I notice a fission forming between older fans and younger fans. And it’s going to be an issue with all fan bases before long, from Phyllis Diller fans to Madonna fans to Metallica fans.

Photos like the one below have been appearing on social Cher fan accounts over the last year or so:

It was attributed to Richard Avedon. But it’s a fake. It’s mimicking a series of photos Avedon took that ended up in Vogue and as the cover of Cher’s 1974 album Dark Lady.

Some A.I. Cher photos are so ridiculously not real, they’re almost funny. But these that replicate actual photo sessions are more concerning fakes because they confuse a fan’s idea of a real photograph Cher actually had taken and a deep fake.

Now if you are an older fan, one who has been staring at photos of Cher your whole life or maybe you are an expert in the outtakes of this particular photo session, seeing a photo like this will trigger cognitive dissonance. Is this really a lost outtake? What’s off with her arms there? Is that her real mouth? You can pick up on things that look “off” if you have more experience looking at Cher’s 1970s photos before this A.I. mess.

For this single photo I went to one of the Cher experts I know, Cher scholar Bruce who has seen the original contact sheet from this session. He agreed that the arms do not look like Cher arms here and the mouth is not a Cher mouth. He also said that Cher did two sessions with this dress. One was with a black cat with her hair pulled back and the other was with a black and white cat with her hair long and free. So the mashup of the black cat and the hair down is off as well.

This is an observable fake, but before long, A.I. will get better and smarter and come up with fakes where the arms and mouth do look like Cher’s and then only entertainment archaeologists or those who were there, people who “lived through it” will know the difference. And then eventually those people too will be gone and it will be a photo free-for-all.

I’ve seen fans point out A.I. fakes on social media and the publishers of those fakes responding with irritation. It’s not that they seem bothered by being fooled, but by being told they were fooled. There’s a “who cares” attitude among some younger fans. And I’ve seen older fans who’ve simply given up trying to keep the record straight. Already. And we’re only a year into this shit.

I think inexperienced fans get upset for two reasons:

First, people are not using their critical thinking skillz. (Look around you!) Social media and technology have eroded our thinking skills and then some of us are just lazy as a default-setting.

Secondly, people have stopped trusting expertise. There are two reasons for this. One, we all want to be the expert and are offended by the idea we’re not. Two, fascists want to lie so they throw shade on expertise (all the way back to saying “your grade school teacher was lying to you!”).

I can’t help but be reminded of Holocaust survivors here. Yes, I’m gonna take this back to the Holocaust. Everyone clutch their pearls.

There are already bad actors out there gaslighting survivors of all sorts of things, but particularly antisemitic, bad actors trafficking the idea that the Holocaust never happened. And as soon as all the Holocaust survivors pass away, these same bad actors will feel even more emboldened and they will gain traction with those who don’t know the difference between lies and the truth. They will more easily convince people it was just a story. And there will be no witnesses left.

In this situation, people in the future will not know who or what to trust and those people with lazy as a default-setting will trust any “strong man” who comes along. Fascism will gain even more traction to perpetuate even more atrocities. We’re actually living through it right now.

Deep fakes, even if they’re just photos of celebrities, encourage lies, especially in an environment of “who cares.”

Somebody either created this image for fun and it’s now fallen out of context or it was created in bad faith. Look around you! We’re already shooting each other in the streets over what is a lie and what is the truth.

And we’re all in trouble if you don’t care about the difference between lies and the truth…for all things great and small.

Here are some of the real things. The album cover (look at that mouth!):

One of the poster designs:

From Vogue:

Bruce also mentioned showing respect for the original artists “who put so much energy into creating an image” including the photographer, the make-up artist, the fashion designer and Cher herself. “A.I. takes away in one swift motion all that was put into it.”

This being one of the most iconic Cher images, it’s not hard to see why fans would want to toy around with it. But there are larger ramifications to doing so and then trying to pass it off as the real thing…just for fun.

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