Season: 4 (The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour)
Episode: 55
Guest(s): Vincent Price, The Temptations
CBS air date: Date: December 5, 1973
Also aired: Never re-aired.
This is one of the lost episodes. Notes are courtesy of Cher scholar Jay from an audio recording.
Subway Intro: Chastity boards the train and jokes with guest stars.
Opening Song: “Love Me Do”
Cover of the Beatles (1964)
Breakout: Vincent Price is the spirit in a séance.
Banter: They talk about Sonny’s astrological sign, which is Aquarius.
Vamp:
– Edith Bunker: Another All in the Family spoof Cher is a sex-starved Edith. Vincent Price plays Archie (I would love to see this!). Sonny is a repairman at the house.
– Tinkerbell: Cher is Tinkerbell and Sonny is Peter Pan and Vincent Price is Captain Hook (a character Price had done in a live theatrical performance of Peter Pan in 1965). Peter and Tinkerbell is on her way to Never Never Land to become Mrs. Peter Pan and Hook tries to foil the plans.
Chastity sings on the piano.
– Sadie Thomason: Vincent Price plays actor John Larrymore (in a spoof of John Barrymore).
At the Launderette: Laverne and Olivia talk about face lifts and plastic surgery. Laverne talks about reading in a magazine that Telly Savalas is having a hair transplant. This is interesting in light of the struggles Cher would have with similar rumors in the late 1980s and 1990s about having a rib removed. Olivia asks Laverne if she would ever have a face lift and Laverne asks why mess with perfection?
Guest spot: The Temptations sing “Let Your Hair Down.”
Skit: Cher is Barbara Nauseous talking to network executives about new shows for 1974, including Saturday morning shows for little people “like Sonny Bono.” Vincent Price plays a children’s host named Uncle Bud. There’s a minority news program named “The Really Big News” starring the cast in fat suits, like Huge Rudd (Vincent Price) and Sally Chin (Cher). Sonny is a sports announcer Hayward Whale Blue. All the stories deal with being heavy. I wonder why being fat is equated to being a minority? Do I ask that naively from 2020? The final show is “The Watergate Hour.”
Fortune Teller: Chastity is the Fortune Teller and she tells Sonny and Vincent Price their futures.
Concert: “My Music”
Cover of Loggins & Messina (1973)
Solo: “All I Know”
Cover of Art Garfunkel (1973)
It would be great to see Cher do this version, prior to the one she did on the Cher show with Jimmy Webb and Art Garfunkel.
IGUB: No song.
Highlights: Serendipitous foreshadowing of rumors of Cher’s plastic surgery.
