Season: 2 (The Sonny & Cher Show)
Episode: 14
Guest(s): Bob Hope, Jim Nabors, Bernadette Peters, Dinah Shore, The Jacksons
CBS Air Date: October 10, 1976
Also aired: TVLand, GetTV, TimeLife (S&C Vol. 1 and Vol. 2)
Opening Song: “You Won’t See Me” (Video)
Cover of the Beatles (1965)
Sonny wears a black suit and bowtie and Cher wears a flowered halter dress that refrains from showing her belly button (because things have become much more conservative on television than they were in 1974).
Breakout: Alvin and Laverne are at the bar again watching the show. They say they only watch the show when they’re drunk.
Opening Banter (Video)
Sonny looks over Cher’s dress and searches for her belly button (as do we all). He quips that he heard it had been removed. (Eerie foreshadowing to 1980s and 90s plastic surgery jokes). More election banter about Sonny supporting Ford and Cher supporting Carter. Sonny pretends to not remember Carter’s name. Cher says, “Don’t worry, you’ll have four years to learn it.” Cher makes a joke about Ford tripping when he gains momentum in the polls.
Sonny claims the network is upset about their political jokes. They’ve been getting letters. Cher says if they don’t like it, they can go get Bob Hope. Bob Hope appears on stage to lighten things up with his jokes. He calls Sonny Tony (pretending to confuse him with Tony Orlando) and says Sonny’s mustache is older than Donny & Marie. We’re seeing lots of Tony Orlando and Donny & Marie jokes because they are the popular variety show competition right about then. Hope says he no longer reads the National Enquirer. Are they still married? He says he heard Cher just had a baby and Cher says she named him Elijah Blue. Hope says, “And I thought Bing was a silly name.” Cher really laughs at this. Cher makes a joke about how old the songs are that Bob Hope sings (there’s been a lot of songs written “since Lindbergh landed”). Sonny chastises Cher for her lack of respect. He asks her if she knows who she’s standing next to? She says, “Bob Hope and no hope.”
Skit: “Great Lovers of History” is the new thematic framing device for Sonny, (or was this a recreation of one of his Sonny’s Comedy Revue skits?). In front of a 1940s big band, Sonny plays a white-tuxedoed crooner.
+ Sonny plays the Red Baron and Michael Jackson plays a German soldier. Cher does a Marlene Dietrich impersonation. There’s a cross dressing joke.
+ Sonny plays a very funny King Arthur. (Video)
Cher is Guinevere and Bob Hope plays Sir Lancelot. I’ve starred this one. Bob Hope tells Bob Hope jokes. They do some double entendres and puns. Cher mostly just bats her eyes. There’s a Dean Martin joke and one about Sir Milton of Berle being a joke thief. “Last week he mugged the Duchesse of Diller” (Phyllis Diller). At the end Guinevere kisses Sir Lancelot and his armor starts smoking. “That’s some little lady you got here, Artie. You can kiss her and dry clean your underwear at the same time.” After King Arthur storms out, Hope tells Cher they should “take off this Tupperware and sort it out.” They close the scene dancing to “Thanks for the Memories” played on a harpsichord.
Guest Spot: The Jackson’s sing “Enjoy Yourself” (Video)
They have ceased to be the Jackson 5 since the group moved from Motown to Epic Records in 1975. They also lost Jermaine Jackson who was by then married to Berry Gordy’s daughter Hazel and stayed behind with the family business. Randy Jackson stepped in to replace Jermaine and the new group was legally forced to change their name. You can tell Michael is an older teenager now, a little more self-conscious than he was on the Cher show appearance in 1975 and far away from the little boy he was on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour in the early 1970s.This is the intermediate Michael Jackson of the upcoming 1978 movie, The Wiz.
Laverne: Back at the bar, they’re having issues with the TV and Alvin is telling Lavern about his job. He tries to make it sound like he’s doing underground government work. But he’s really a letter sorter at the Post Office. There’s a Spin-the-Bottle joke. Ted Zeigler is playing the bartender as more of a drunk each episode.
Cher Solo: “I Honestly Love You” (Video)
Cover of Olivia Newton-John (1974)
Cher is in a pretty white satin dress with big sleeves. She’s singing next to a bed with a white spread. She is framed in orchids. She really elongates the vowels when she sings “kiss” and “feeling.” My notes says Cher wears Josephine hair. Wth? I might be referring to the Napoleon and Josephine 1987 TV miniseries with Armand Assante and Jacqueline Bisset. Because after watching it, I became obsessed for a few months with both of those hotties. I probably thereafter started associating this hair style with Bisset’s Josephine coiffure. Cher’s performance is sweet and sincere. Strangely this was cut from the TimeLife DVDs. But it did air on TVLand. “So I guess we’ll just be leaving it at this.”
Laverne: Sigh. We are back with Alvin and Laverne discussing Cher’s outfit from the previous solo spot. They speculate Sonny must buy his outfits from Mickey Rooney’s estate. They talk about getting their information from the fan magazine “Teen Tiger Beat TV Fan Beat.” This skit was cut from GetTV.
Guest Spot: Bob Hope sings “Autumn Leaves” (Video)
Leaves fall on him as he sings, at first pleasantly and then with greater and greater frequency. Afterwards, Sonny complains about the mess. Hope tells him not to worry, that he will just sing the song backwards to clear the leaves up. There’s a Poseidon Adventure joke. This was also cut from the TimeLife DVD. But it aired on TVLand and GetTV.
The 1976 Bozo Awards: Blonde Sonny (he keeps having wig issues), Cher (who seems to be doing a Farrah Fawcett impersonation) and Bob host the awards. Sonny & Cher play their over-the-top presenters. They make fun of Bob Hope in his movies with Bing Crosby. You can see Cher’s old solo show set pieces. The award statue has gotten uglier (it looks like there’s now a big boob in it). There’s a joke about the political scandal in 1976 involving Elizabeth Ray. There’s a Grecian Formula joke. They call Donny & Marie the Sonny & Cher of the Ovaltine set. There are jokes about congress, sex-on-the-job and taxes.
+ The Political Bozo goes to all of U.S. Congress.
+ The Most Beautiful Bozo goes to a pregnant Bernadette Peters. Cher as Barbara Nauseous gives the award to Peters and calls her Miss Congeniality.
+ The Unsung Bozo goes to Jim Nabors who has invented a car than never breaks or runs out of gas because it runs on water.
They sing a medley of songs for past awards to the tune of Mary Hopkins’ “Those Were the Days.” Dinah Shore sings “See the USA in Your Edsel,” a spoof of her 1950s commercial for “See the USA in Your Chevrolet.”) Sonny quips a very vain “Is the camera on?” and makes Cher laugh.
IGUB: They sing the full song and there’s yet another quick Alvin and Laverne skit where they talk about how cute Sonny & Cher are. Alvin talks about how he and his wife Myrna often pretend they’re Sonny & Cher and he admits he’s just walked out on her. Is this a big character reveal or a cheap divorce joke? (If you know what happens with Alvin and Laverne by the end of this series you may know the answer to that). And is this the Alvin and Laverne show or what?
Thanks to Jay for the official run-down on this episode. GetTV cut one of the Laverne and Alvin skits but what’s up with an official DVD episode cutting so much? Bob Hope’s guest spot and the Cher solo! Sacrilege!
Highlights: Plastic surgery foreshadowing in the opening banter. The King Arthur skit. Lowlights: No concert again. Too much Alvin and Laverne.
