Director: Don Mischer
Executive Producers: Don Mischer and Cher (for Apis Productions)
Writers: Stephen Pouliot and Bruce Vilanch
Aired: CBS (20 May 1998)

This was the first documentary special for Cher. All her other television specials were either variety-show-styled specials or concert specials. This was an interview and clip show, a memorial for Sonny after he died in a skiing accident on 5 January 1998. Cher does perform one song on the show, “Nature Boy” in tribute to Sonny but like the later documentary special Cher would do in 2013 for her mother, Georgia Holt, there would be less focus on music aside from clips and background music.

I, myself, was shocked at the public and media reaction to Sonny Bono’s accidental death. When the Sonny & Cher act finally discontinued in 1977, Sonny tried to become an actor but his opportunities eventually died up in the mid-1980s. He then went into the restaurant business with locations on La Cienega Blvd. in Los Angeles and one in Palm Springs. It was trouble with that location and arguments with city hall that inspired him to run for Mayor of Palm Springs, after which he ran for the U.S. Senate. Failing that, he successfully ran for U.S. Congress and his last years were working in Washington D.C.

He wasn’t quite washed up at his death but he wasn’t a popular name either. The Today Show ran the news of his death as the promo on the local morning news shows and it was the headline story that day. Sonny’s funeral was later covered live on various stations and all the major newspapers (at least in New York City area where I was living at the time) covered the funeral on all the front pages the next day. I called in sick from work to watch the funeral and I was flabbergasted that the passing of half of Sonny & Cher struck such a national nerve. It was amazing. As a Sonny & Cher fan, I found it amazing and moving.

Asked to give the eulogy for his funeral by Sonny’s wife Mary, Cher was at the time criticized for doing it, accused of being disingenuous and opportunistic. I’ve written elsewhere about this but Cher had called recently signaled a ceasefire in her public barbs with Sonny as far back as 1996 on The Rosie O’Donnell Show (see minute 13:16). Chastity Bono was at the time, however, not speaking to her father due to his anti-gay-marriage vote. So there was some turmoil in the family and his death left many painful feelings unresolved.

Cher produced this special, which aired on her birthday that year. It’s worth noting that soon after he died, VH-1’s Behind the Music whipped up a quick 30-minute special on his life. They followed that a few weeks later with an hour-long version. Cher’s Behind the Music episode would follow at an unusual hour-and-a-half in 1999.

Cher had been out of the limelight at this time. Her last record was in 1995 and the movie Faithful in 1996 (neither were successful) and she had been struggling with chronic fatigue syndrome. She had just started working on her Believe album when Sonny died and that would prove to be a massive comeback for her later  this year in Europe, not topping the U.S. charts until the spring of 1999.

The Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony

The special starts with Cher and Mary Bono (representing Sonny) at the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony for Sonny & Cher’s star placement. Their star has a television on it for their status as television stars, versus recording stars. I wonder why that is sometimes, considering Cher is now seen as mostly a recording star and sometimes actress and visitor to television. I think it’s because Sonny & Cher were much more famous as TV stars than they were as music stars so this is why they have the TV instead of the record with the needle).

This was a happier time between Cher and Mary Bono, before Mary proceeded to use Sonny Bono’s flawed autobiography and turn it into a bad TV drama with Jay Underwood, Renee Faia in 1999.

That TV-G marker in the upper left-hand corner is also covering up Sonny’s mother’s face. Boo. Jean was the butt of many jokes in the nightclub act and TV show but it seems Cher had stayed friendly with Sonny’s family. None of the jokes were all that serious behind-the-scenes. As Cher said at Sonny’s funeral, he invented the joke.

The Raymond Burr Blooper

They air most of the blooper footage, from the beginning up to Cher’s crane laugh. Cher talks about this blooper, how it represented “the way we were.” She says it was “her favorite thing we’ve ever done” because it showed the fun they were having behind the scenes. She and Sonny were “just being ourselves.” They laugh through the bloopers until Cher can be seen to cry. This marks the emotional tone of the special. We’re to laugh and cry as well.

CBS Studios

Cher walks through the hallways of the CBS Television City building and you can see the On Air sign in the foreground for Studios 31, 33, 41 and 43. She says she knows the halls like the back of her hand because she passed through them on her way to work every day in Studio 31, where the Sonny & Cher TV shows were recorded. She says she has photo albums, diaries and costumes to show us. She wears a blue-gray suit with her hair long with a small bun in the back. She says this special is about Sonny Bono “and all the people who loved him.”

Sonny  &Cher Childhood Pics

We’ve seen some of these childhood pics of Cher in prior specials. In her voiceover, she talks about how she was just “raw energy” with no focus and “no direction” until she met Sonny.

We then see Sonny’s childhood pics and Cher tells the story of his parents and their Italian origins, his birth in Detroit and the family’s move to Los Angeles. She notes that he was suspended from High School for bringing an all-black rock and roll band to prom. The special doesn’t identify the woman with Sonny at prom and by the car. It doesn’t look like his first wife, Donna (who was not mentioned, along with their daughter Christy, in this special, see photo to the right).

You can see the likes of Georgia in one of Cher’s young pictures and Chas Bono in one of Sonny’s early photos.

The Piano

In the studio, Cher shows us Sonny’s old piano. (Who has the piano now??) Cher talks about how Sonny came home one day with an $85 piano and how happy he was that the piano “only had three broken keys.” Cher says he soon wrote “Baby Don’t Go,” “Just You” and “I Got You Babe” on that piano. Cher said she “never saw him so happy as when he was sitting at this piano.”

Cher demonstrates how Sonny was “the worst piano player in the universe,” how he played chords with his right hand and finger-plucked with his left. We see footage of Sonny playing it in their Encino garage from footage of the movie Good Times. 

Cher in the Chair

Cher sits curled up in an overstuffed chair, like the ones she had in her Malibu bedroom. She says Sonny “knew his artistry wasn’t fabulous but his personality was so great…” She says it was his combination of artistry, personality and ambition that made him successful. They show a picture of Sonny (the episode of Sonny & Cher singing “I Got You Babe” with Sonny walking toward the camera with a look of that fierce ambition. They also show a clip from Hollywood Backstage in 1966.

Cher Meets Sonny

Cher talks about meeting Sonny at Aldo’s coffee shop. She has said this many times, how for her it was like when Tony and Maria met in the movie West Side Story, everyone turned to star filter around Sonny. They show pictures of Sonny and Cher, presumably in his apartment that she moved into. Cher says, “I annoyed him.” She was kicked out of her girlfriends apartment. (I’ve always wondered why this was.) Cher says this was because too many girls were living there. She says Sonny told her when she moved in, “I don’t find you particularly attractive.”

She talks about when her mother found out and how Georgia eventually came to like Sonny.

Phil Spector and Gold Star

She talks about how “Philip” was the wonder boy at the time. We see a picture of Sonny’s business card working for Spector. Sonny & Cher are seen on The David Frost Show of 1970 talking about how Sonny told Cher she could sing and so she did. She said she worked at Gold Star doing backup singing for a year.

She shows us the green emerald ring that she wore throughout the late 1960s and said it was the first gift Sonny ever gave her and how she thought it was “the crown jewels.” She says she never took it off. She says that twice. “I just never took it off after that.”

Caesar and Cleo

Cher explains why they called themselves Caesar and Cleo initially, Sonny had the Caesar haircut and he thought Cher looked like Cleopatra. There are some pictures of them performing as Caesar and Cleo.

Cher says that on the way to an Oakland show, the airline lost their luggage (with their stage outfits) and so they had to perform in their street clothes. Cher says, “We decided to be ourselves.” She says they were making their own clothes at the time. Cher was designing them and two girls in the basement, (you see these two girls on the back cover of Look at Us, see right),  were sewing them. Cher says the ruffle top outfit came to her in a dream. They found Sonny’s bobcat vest in a store window and Cher says it became his signature look of the 1960s.

Before they go to break they show a Sonny & Cher picture that is on the back of the Look at Us album. This is one of my favorite pictures of them, just laughing on the street.

After the commercial break, they show a Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour short joke bit.

The Sonny & Cher Style

Cher talks about her salute to the Union Jack outfit and how they were refused service in the London Hilton, how no one was dressing like that yet in 1965. Everything still was influenced by Doris Day, Cher says.

Cher then tells the story about being at Martoni’s with Sonny, which was a record business hangout and they were friends with the owners Mario and Tony. A huge guy picked a fight with Sonny and the owners asked Sonny & Cher to leave instead of the instigator. This really hurt their feelings, Cher said, and Sonny went home to write the song “Laugh at Me” that night.

I Got You Babe

Cher says Sonny wrote their first few hits on cleaners cardboard for his shirts. And because he was superstitious, she says, he kept doing that.

Cher says she told Sonny she wanted a song with modulation for her to sing in it. She says Sonny woke her up one night saying “I got it” and he played her “I Got You Babe” and she wasn’t impressed and went back to bed. Sonny said, “I’ve written it for you” and she admitted she did like the modulation in it.

They show The Ed Sullivan Show and Cher talks about all the amazing things she had watched on that show and exciting it was to be on it. But then very disappointing to have Ed Sullivan mispronounce her name. He introduces them as Sonny and Chir. Sullivan goes on to say S&C have 5 songs in the Billboard Top 50 and two albums, which is “just incredible.”  Cher corrects that to be 5 songs in the Top 20. Neither of them are correct.

They show a montage of “I Got You Babe” music show clips including the one from Shindig with Cher in her Union Jack pantsuit and Sonny in his bobcat vest. Cher really bends back to modulate in that one.

Good Times

Cher talks about how around this time Sonny had the idea to make a movie similar to A Hard Day’s Night, a spoof, she said, on movies like Tarzan, The Maltese Falcon and High Noon. They show a few clips of the Tarzan segment and the beginning of the film noir segment with the grapefruit bit. They also show the “Good Times” song. Cher says, “I wasn’t very good at it but Son was terrific.” (He was better than she was in this movie, for some reason.)

Cher said the movie took so long to come out (2 years) that by the time it did, “we were lo longer popular. So nobody came to see it.”

Nightclub Hell

Cher suspiciously omits the movie Chastity (or this is cut from the special) and says that after the movie, the good times ended and they owed the I.R.S. $250,000. This was actually due to spending their own money on the movie Chastity. “We hit the road,” Cher says. They show pics of some of the starting-over places. Cher was miserable, she said, but Sonny told her, “give me two years and we’ll be back on top.” She said Sonny never seem worried. “He was very optimistic. He had a great belief in Sonny & Cher.” They show some early video of the nightclub act, the new dresses Cher went out to buy to look more glamourous. I’m fascinated with those big-ass microphones.

The Sonny & Cher Television Shows

They play a montage of funny clips. I won’t screenshot them all here because I’ve done that elsewhere. I’ll just capture come of the images I didn’t previously catch, (like mid-era Vamp) or my favorites. The montage mixes up first and second show in the mix, (Laverne and Alvie at the bar, for example), one of my documentary pet peeves.

Cher talks about Fred Silverman, the head of CBS, giving them a summer replacement series. “We were terrified,” Cher says. They show a clip of their first guest on their show, Jimmy Durante, and his ad-libbing and making Sonny crack up.

Cher talks about how their opening-show banter began when there were being heckled by crowds and making jokes for the band just to get through it. The audience ended up liking the banter too.

Cher said her favorite parts were the sketches. They show the sketch early on of Sonny playing Superman. Cher said the Vamp sketches were a favorite, with her playing Sadie Thompson and Sonny as the preacher. They show the Vamp segment with Sonny playing the piano backwards (which always cracks me up). This seems like the mid-to-late era Vamp costume they’re showing. They do a montage of skits, my favorite being Raggedy Sonny and Raggedy Cher and any clip of Sonny in drag. The Halloween skits. Shirtless Sonny. They show another Tarzan skit, the Fatsos with Tony Curtis, Cher as Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Cher with Carol Burnett (impersonating Cher). Cher is wearing the white dress from the back cover of the All I Ever Need Is You album. They show some home movies of Chastity while “Chastity Sun” plays.

Cher says Sonny was a terrific father. “I was terrified.” Cher says Sonny could be making pasta with one hand “and have Chas in the other.” She talks about how Sonny was fun and weird as a father and how he made up characters like Ahg Ogleby (I could use some help in spelling that) and Princess Garbage. They show Chas dressed as the Vamp.

They show clips of Sonny’s solo show after the divorce, (which used the same opening music and graphic artifacts I’ve just noticed). Cher says they were still close because they were still working on the road together. (This was probably due to the fact that Cher owed Sonny money from unfinished contractual obligations as Sonny & Cher.) Cher says they still got along and that their relationship (as she has said before) was a strange mix of brother and sister, husband and wife, father and daughter.

As she struggled through her own successful solo show, Cher asked Sonny if he would come back, that it was easier if he were there. She admitted, “Ok, I begged him to com back.” They show a quick clip of their press event to announce their reunited show.

They show a montage of the later-show opening monologues, one where Sonny talks about rubbing Cher’s nose and they both break up.

Cher said it was hard for Sonny when they broke up initially and then when the final show ended. Cher says her last thought on the last Sonny & Cher Show was “who’s gonna take care of me now?”

Once the final live concerts were over, Sonny and Cher would truly go on to do their own things.

Restaurants to Letterman

Cher says they stayed friends. Clips are shown of Cher’s early acting clips and from Sonny’s restaurant opening in Los Angeles. (They didn’t show this but Cher came to the opening and talked about what a great cook Sonny was.) Cher said it would be 10 years before they performed again together. Was she forgetting the 1979 duet on The Mike Douglas Show?

They show the famous Letterman clips from 1987. Cher tells the story about how Sonny liked her friend Melissa and how disappointed he was in Cher’s bust size when she greeted him in a bikini for the first time. When Cher talks about their singing on the show, she says they “could hit stride” together immediately. She admits she didn’t want to sing that night. But then she thought “I don’t do it with anybody else. I only do it with him.” She said everyone was crying, the audience, Mary, Chastity, the show’s pages. “It was hard for me with everybody getting so emotional…Son had always been the strong one for me. I felt I had to be the strong one for him.”

She said people had no idea what their relationship was, that it was impossible to know from the outside. They knew the shows, the business side. They were popular. But they “couldn’t know what we meant to each other. If it was reversed, Sonny would be here doing the same thing.”

Nature Boy (cover of Nat King Cole, 1948)

Cher sings “Nature Boy” for Sonny acapella sitting in the studio. They show a montage of what I’m guessing are her favorite Sonny photos.

The Funeral

They show funeral coverage from Palm Springs and the breaking news of Sonny’s death. Cher says, “It was impossible for me. Too hard for me to hear. ” She said it never occurred to her the family would ask her to make the eulogy. She asked Chas what would happen if she got hysterical. Chas told her she was a professional and she would be able to do it.

They play the eulogy clip where Cher says she is proud of what Sonny accomplished after they separated and the family life he built and loved. “He was the greatest friend.”

For all those who believed Cher was performing fake sorrow, time has revealed the truth. Besides, she would have performed more attractive crying, that’s for sure. It’s one thing to invade people’s private moments and then criticize them for something they have or have not done that you probably shouldn’t have witnessed in the first place.

Because Sonny was a member of U.S. Congress when he died, he received an honor guard funeral.

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They play the final segments of the variety shows where they sing “I Got You Babe” and Sonny says “Goodnight everybody. God bless you” and Cher, alone from the CBS studio says, “Goodnight everybody. God bless you.” (That got me verklempt right there.)

The show ends by going back to the Walk of Fame footage that started the show.

Songs played:

 

Highlights: This was an emotional retrospective of Sonny’s life from Cher’s point of view. There were some weird chronological misplacements, but not nearly the amount in other Cher documentaries. And it bears repeating, I was a Sonny & Cher fan originally. So this was a moving TV special for me, a favorite behind the quirky variety-show specials and Celebration at Caesars. The show offered closure for Sonny & Cher fans. I have always thought Sonny & Cher were the most glamourous and beautiful-looking couple, particularly of the 1970s. It was a lovely tribute to them.