Season: 2 (The Sonny & Cher Show)
Episode: 12
Guest(s): Rona Barrett, Ruth Buzzi, Charo, Barbara Eden, George Gobel, Bob Hope, Don Knotts, Wayne Rogers, Shields & Yarnell, The Smothers Brothers
CBS Air Date: September 26, 1976
Also aired: TVLand
This is the second season opener (Video).
Sonny & Cher play a non-Sonny-&-Cher couple watching The Sonny & Cher Show at 8 o’clock. (Which, by the way, was also unfortunately my bedtime in 1976 and so this was the season I received special dispensation to stay up an extra hour so I could watch the show).
Sonny is wearing sunglasses to bed and is heavily bejeweled. Cher is wearing a high, blonde wig. Sonny says he likes Sonny but Cher thinks the couple are “kind of strange” and she goes through S&C’s tangled marital history. Like for real! They admit here that Sonny had a previous marriage and daughter (Christy). Blonde Cher says she is not sure she approves of these people. The camera pans over to Dick Smothers who is also in the bed and is actually her husband. Dick says this show puts him to sleep. Then we pan again to Barbara Eden who says she couldn’t show her navel on I Dream of Jeannie so it must be lax CBS censorship here. We pan right again to Tommy Smothers who argues that he and Dick never got to show their navels either on their CBS show.
Then we pan to the show’s announcer, Jack Harrell, dressed as Fidel Castro. Next to him is Wayne Rogers who isn’t interested in Sonny & Cher at all but would prefer to watch the tennis tournament with the man who’s had a sex change and is now a woman, (“She’s playing mixed-doubles with herself.”) He also says he wishes the bed had a vibrator machine (and I believe they mean the coin-operated kind) and we pan again, this time to Charo who insists the bed does have a vibrator and she does her coochie-choocie thing. Charo claims the vibrator machine is the only way she can get Xavier Cugat’s heart started in the morning.
Ted Zeigler is next in line playing Henry Kissinger and he says he once got into bed with Egypt and Israel at the same time. He turns it over to Bob Hope (a surprise cameo) who starts doing his stand-up routine about Cher’s new baby. Staying up all night with the crying and screaming, “Man, it must be like living with Sonny again.” Bob Hope admits he’s a fan of Sonny & Cher (quite the endorsement at the time) and the show’s announcer (as himself this time and at the end of the line) who claims that Sonny and Cher are both wonderful people, but then he admits he has to say that as their show’s announcer. He proceeds to announce them.
This whole opening might be spoof on the poster for the 1969 movie, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.
What I find very interesting about the opening is the fact that the show is trying to get ahead of all the negative publicity and commentary they were both receiving since their divorce and discomfort over season one their second show. They acknowledge all the nay-saying, which seems very smart. In this episode, Sonny & Cher play various “other-Americans” watching Sonny & Cher on TV and commenting on them. It was kind of a brilliant tactic. (“We understand you, Middle America.”) It completely didn’t work. But it shows their self-consciousness about themselves in the last few months of their career as a duo.
Opening Song: “Silly Love Songs” (Video, 3:12)
Cover of Wings (1976)
Sonny wears a brown suit and Cher wears a tight gold dress that shows a more curvaceous figure. They’re cracking up. Sonny says to not look at him when she sings, “I love you.” The realization that Sonny & Cher were singing something as contemporary as Wings really blew my mind when I found out about it.
Breakout: Laverne returns to this show with a new foil. She is still with Harry (although not for long) and is now a barfly who has befriended Sonny’s new character Alvin. Ted Zeigler plays the jaded bartender. Often in these skits they watch The Sonny & Cher Show on the bar’s television and gossip about them. Laverne says she thinks the show’s outfits are tacky. We will of course find this ironic coming from her. Alvin says he has never seen so much sex appeal in one person, Sonny. Zeigler makes a joke about Nielsen ratings. Alvin says his wife Myrna won’t let him watch the show at home because Sonny & Cher encourage sex and violence.
Opening Banter: Cher says Sonny sang pretty good considering he has a cold. He asks, “Can stars have colds?” Cher makes a short joke and Sonny says he can see how she’s starting in already this season. They shake hands.
He asks Cher if she did anything special over the show’s summer break. Cher innocently says no. That previous July she gave birth to Elijah Allman. Sonny asks, “Elijah Blue?” and then admits, “Come to think of it, you named Chastity, too. What do you have, a book of funny names?” Cher retorts that Salvatore Phillip Bono sounds like an appetizer or a drink at an Italian restaurant. Sonny quips, “As I recall, you once had a Salvatore Phillip Bono and it didn’t agree with you.” She laughs and punches him in the shoulder.
Sonny asks Cher to say her full name and she says “Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPierre Bono Allman” and he quips that it sounds like stops on a Hungarian railroad. (She pronounces it Sar-key-shan, by the way.) At the end, Sonny says, “Elijah is a pretty name and a pretty baby, a gorgeous baby, really cute” and he says he and the “folks out there” join in to give Cher their heartfelt congratulations.
Sonny Solo: “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me”
Sonny sings to home movies of the Chastity, birth pics and the rooms and yard of their Carolwood House, at dance lessons, skiing with Sonny (they both fall). Chastity claims to want to be a TV star.
Shields & Yarnell (Video, 2:15)
Sonny & Cher introduce prototypes of their new Mego dolls on a prototype of the toy stage in a skit called “The Sonny & Cher Little Theater.” Robert Shields & Lorene Yarnell do a mime routine as the dolls. Yarnell is in the Vamp skit’s pink cut-out dress. Shields does the Sonny hand-on-hip thing and Yarnell hangs her hand and punches Sonny in the face and shoulder. Shields pulls off her hair. Yarnell rips off his mustache and puts it on herself. This is pretty much awesomeness.
Allegedly, this was also the television debut of Shields & Yarnell.
King Kong: This skit has popped itself out of Sonnytone News. Probably because it was the best part. Fay Wray (Cher) accuses King Kong of having a roving eye. “Who is she!?”
Laverne: Laverne and Alvin are back in the bar. Here they’re talking about how tall Sonny & Cher might be and they admit Cher looks good after the baby.
Skit: Barbara Eden plays a court clerk who is dealing with a long line of people claiming to be heirs of Howard Hughes. He had just died of kidney failure in April of 1976. Tom and Dick Smothers are the first ones in line. I’ve starred this one.
Skit: Rona Barrett introduces the idea of bionic congressmen so that the living congressmen can leave Washington, D.C. in order to campaign for re-election.
The Bionic Woman had just began airing in 1976. The Six-Million Dollar Man had been airing since 1973 and Sonny was a guest star on that show in October of 1975. Sonny’s not-yet-third wife but current girlfriend, Susie Coelho, was also on that episode.
Cher Solo: “Desperado” (Video) (Better audio)
Cover of Eagles (1973)
Cher continues her love affair with the Eagles. She first recorded “Witchy Woman” on the Cher show in the first season (episode #23) and she will go on to sing Eagles songs in upcoming concerts. The dress is still big, this one in blue, kind of a take on a wild-west dress (I guess) but with a purple headband. (This whole ensemble I can make neither head nor tails of). The stage is lit mysteriously dark. Cher also wears turquoise drop earrings that look like they came from her personal collection. Lots of hanging hand. She really Chers it up here. But somehow it’s always pleasant to hear Cher cover Eagles songs because her Elvis drawl moonlights as a kind of glittery country twang. She accidentally sings about feet getting cold in the summertime. (That damn neuropathy.)
Cher also allegedly sang the song a few rare times on her Heart of Stone Tour.
Skit: Football, Football!
+ Sonny & George Gobel play commentators talking about O.J. Simpson and the Buffalo Bills. You can really hear Sonny’s cold in this skit. They say O.J. was so expensive they had to sell the rest of the team.
+ Ted Zeigler, Sonny, Charo and Cher talk about watching football with women. I’ve doubled starred this one.
+ Don Knotts plays a business coach discussing plays with Sonny.
Operetta: The wonderful spoof of “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman!” Cher does a great job impersonating Louise Lasseter as Mary Hartman. This is one of my favorite bits of all the shows. Sonny plays her husband Tom and Ruth Buzzi plays the neighbor Loretta. Cher as Mary whines and complains that grandpa is a masher (1970s slang for creep) and her husband is a drunk. There’s a Norman Lear joke.
IGUB: They sing the song but there’s yet another Laverne and Alvin breakout in the middle! Too much. My notes say, “over their singing!!!” (although the blackouts are always over singing so I don’t know what makes this worse, that it was IBUB? In the skit, bartender Ted confuses Sonny & Cher with honeymooners.
Thanks to Jay for the official run-down on this episode.
Highlights: The season opener was a big attempt to start with a bang, a fleet of stars and some new regulars Shields & Yarnell have arrived. King Kong has been upgraded. Laverne is back flirting with Sonny’s new character Alvin. Both the opening bedroom skit and the Laverne and Alvin skits are very meta reflections on the show and Sonny & Cher as celebrities. Cher’s very excellent Mary Hartman impersonation.
