Season: 2 (The Sonny & Cher Show)
Episode: 15
Guest(s): Charo, Wayne Rogers, Carol Burnett
CBS Air Date: October 17, 1976
Also aired: Never re-aired
Opening Song: “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” (Audio)
Cover of Elton John and Kiki Dee (1976)
Sonny is in his classic black suit with a white tie. Cher wears a maroon and pink crumb-catcher dress. She says something to Sonny in the middle of the song.
Breakout: Yes, of course it’s Alvin and Laverne. Oy. They are at the bar watching The Sonny & Cher Show on TV. Alvin tells Laverne he has read in Teen Tiger TV Beat Magazine that Sonny is one of the richest TV stars. Bartender Ted Zeigler points to the TV and asks, “from doing that??” Laverne quips, “No, from collecting alimony.” Which was truth. Alvie says Laverne is not being fair and that Sonny “deserves every thing he gets.” Laverne says, “I’ll drink to that!” Alvie says big stars are people just like you and me and that money is one of their biggest problems. Laverne says money isn’t a problem for her and Harry. They just hate each other.
Opening Banter: Sonny tells Cher he likes her dress and that she fills it out well. He asks her if she likes his new suit and Cher tells him it’s okay, he fills it out OK. She says it makes him look taller. Sonny says, no that’s actually just his shoes. They’re higher this year. (That’s actually pretty funny.) He says, “I’m right up there with you” and she says Someday, which he doesn’t seem to take too well (the double-meaning of it, maybe) and he makes a nose joke and says it’s the first nose joke of the year. Cher plays with her dress tassel.
Sonny asks, “Where’s the other fellow? Is he around today?” Cher laughs and punches him in the arm. She doesn’t answer. He asks if her family is there today and she says not right now and he says, “mine isn’t either.”
They talk again about the upcoming election and how they don’t agree on who “the best man is.” Cher says she will be voting for Jimmy Carter (who just died two days ago as I type this, at age 100). Cher asks Sonny how his friend Jerry is. They mikght be talking about the then-current governor Jerry Brown. But Cher doesn’t seem to be a fan. Sonny refers to Carter as “the peanut fellow.” Cher talks about how Carter exemplifies the American Dream. Cher calls Ford a very nice man but uninspiring. Sonny give a dramatic Ford speech. Cher makes an Edsel joke. They don’t finish the song before the break.
Mother Goose: Cher doing her Mae West impression.
The song goes like this:
You may deduce, my name is goose.
I’m known by any cat and brat and muscat and moose.
I’m famous for all those tales I’ve told but here’s the suprise:
I confess that all those tales I told were nothing but lies, lies, lies.
But I swear on Anton’s glasses and Bette Midler’s too
that everything I say from here on out is gonna be the truth.
The truth. I mean the truth. I said the truth.
To note how great this Bob Mackie costume is, there’s a heart buckle hidden at the back of the hat!
+ Charo plays Little Bo Peep at a police station to report her missing sheep. Sonny is the cop filling out the forms and can’t understand her due to her Charo accent. Sonny gets frustrated and tells Peep to “chut up.” Sonny finally understands she’s lost a flock of sheep and wants their names, ethnic breakdowns and prison records. Oh dear. She calls him a turkey and accuses him of giving her the shaft.
+ Cher and Charo dressed as little girls sing “What Girls Are Made Of.” This seems like a song original to the show. It’s not very good and incorporates Charo’s coochie-coochie-coos.
+ Wayne Rogers is the Colonel (in a Kentucky Fried Chicken spoof) selling pea porridge to Sonny, claiming he has sold over 6 million pea porridges, all of them “finger lickin’ good.” Rogers does a good job with the difficult dialogue but the whole thing is not very funny. We get a Sonny Stare at the end.
The Prisoner: Sonny is happy because he gets a conjugal visit with Cher after three years. He predicts to the guard, (Ted Zeigler, who seems to be the only remaining cast member this season), that Cher will have only one thing on her mind when she comes in. Cher comes in and says, “sleep.” She complains she’s been up for 24 hours and Rocco says she should have gone to bed. Cher says she didn’t say she didn’t go to bed. Rocco again tells her he’s gonna kill her when he gets outa there. She talks about her “Jim” workout but mistakes his name for Ricky when she tells him he’s the only one she loves. She pulls out a sexy nightgown from her bag and says she brought his favorite nightie. “You are the one who likes it, aren’t you?” He oogles it and says it really shows off her shape. Cher says, “Aww, everybody says that.” She teases him with talk of perfume and cool sheets but then fall asleep. Rocco panics. He calls her a bimbo but she falls asleep and sleep talks to another lover about Rocco in jail. This is yet another skit that explores the idea of Cher as a promiscuous femme-fetal, but a new liberated incarnation of this character type who never gets any comeuppance.
Laverne: Back at the bar, Alvin says he read in “Teen Tiger Fan Magazine” that Sonny & Cher are only using their show as a stepping stone to get to the circus. Laverne quips that Sonny should be perfect working with high platforms but “can he sing without a net?” A drunken bartender Ted Zeigler interjects apropos of nothing that Annette was one of his favorite Mouseketeers. Carol Burnette walks into the bar as herself and says she is lost and looking for Hollywood. Laverne tells her to forget about Hollywood. Due to her looks, she’ll never make it. Alvin asks Laverne if she knows who she’s talking to. He tells her Burnett is a big TV star but he thinks she’s Vicki Lawrence. The drunk bartender think’s that is Steve Lawrence’s wife. Burnett identifies herself with a grab of her ear. Laverne is disappointed. Burnett is not a real celebrity to her. Laverne shows off her figure and says she doesn’t have to do anything to keep it. Burnett quips that if she had that figure she wouldn’t try to keep it either. Laverne then tries to get tickets for Burnett’s show. Burnett calls Laverne chicken legs and leaves.
Cher Solo: “Ain’t Misbehavin” (Audio)
From the Broadway musical Connie’s Hot Chocolates (1929)
Cher also sang this song on episode #15 of the Comedy Hour. In this version, Cher is set in the center of rows of cutouts reflecting on the stage floor and she wears a short blonde wig sprayed with reddish tint and a black gown with stripped sequins in the front and feathered, red sleeves.
Guest Skit: Roving Rogers interviews Milo Henderson (Sonny) who has just flown the Supersonic Concorde twenty times and flying so fast has given him reverse jet lag, meaning that he’s living two seconds into the future and can answer Rogers’ questions before he asks them. And they do the whole interview that way. Sonny then lists out the problems of being two seconds ahead of everyone in life. Unrelated, but when I was a kid I thought the only attractive person on M.A.S.H. was Wayne Rogers. I was also a fan of House Calls.
Skit: Charo and Sonny play honeymooners in a three-room house that spans three countries. They can dine in Austria, make love in Italy and bathe in France. But they can’t do any of these things because border guards at the doors of the kitchen (Austria), the bathroom (France) and the bedroom (Italy) and there’s a problem with Sonny getting in to all those countries. Ted Zeigler plays all the patrols. Presumably Charo is carrying on with the border patrol in Italy off camera. They play the old song for Sonny’s Pizza skit. Sonny says, “Honey, as long as you’re in Italy, can you bring back a cornflake pizza for breakfast?”
Concert: “Fooled Around and Fell In Love” / “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” (Audio)
Cover of Elvin Bishop with Mickey Thomas (1976) and Eric Carmen (1976)
Again the contemporariness of these song choices is kind of freaky to me. Not that S&C didn’t cover very contemporary songs on their other shows. It’s just that in my own mind I had organized two buckets of songs in this world: the songs during S&C and the songs after S&C and these songs were in the wrong bucket is all.
The backdrop is black for the first and they’re not showing the band. Their heads show in silhouettes within each other’s closeup shots. This is very unsatisfying. You can’t even see what they’re wearing.
In the second song, the backdrop is red. They’re still basically floating heads until their silhouettes walk toward the camera and we can see them in lovely maroon matching outfits. Cher is in a princess dress with a curly wig and Sonny is in a marron suit with pink shirt and pants.
Skit: Another “In the Beginning” skit where Ted Zeigler seems like an alley robber but he stops Rogers to explain banking schemes. Rogers says at the end, “Are you sure this isn’t a stick up?”
Operetta: “I Am the Hotel” stars with a spoof on Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs” (1975). During the roaring 1920s, Wayne plays Florenz Ziegfeld who checks into a hotel while starting his Ziegfeld Follies. There’s a spoof of a song I don’t know to “the most beautiful room in the place.” Sonny plays gangster John Dillinger (in what looks like the same costume as he used for The Walnuts earlier this season), Cher play a wealthy Mrs. Van Snootington and Charo plays Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady. What a mashup! Dillinger holds everyone in the lobby hostage because he wants to be in show business. Ziegfeld asks him if he can do anything and Dillinger says he can dance. They do the tango and Wayne Rogers dips with Sonny. Dillinger has been negotiating with J. Edgar Hoover and when Hoover finds out Ziegfeld is in the hotel, even he auditions remotely. Whenever Ziegfeld says his name, the lobby maids all break out dancing. He gets a telephone call to find out all his Ziegfeld girls have broken their legs, Cher pops out of the round couch as the old lady but rips off her coat to reveal a showgirl outfit. He makes everyone in the lobby the new Follies. They open on Broadway in two minutes with Ziegfield follies pouring out of an elevator to a medley of show and movie tunes with new lyrics like Anything Goes, Charo singing “The Rain in Spain,” “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” and “Can Broadway Do Without Me” and some other tunes I don’t know.
IGUB: Sonny and Cher thank their guests. Sonny says it’s nice to thank the guests but “we never thank ourselves and we do the whole show.” Cher says this is a good point and she takes the opportunity to thank “someone who’s really a good performer and the greatest pleasure that show biz has ever seen. Let’s hear it!” The audience responds and Sonny gives her a light punch on her shoulder thinking she’s referring to him. He says “thank you very much, pal. That’s really nice of yo uto say.” and Cher says, “I know. Now let’s see what can we say about you?” They laugh and trade fake punches back and forth. They sing the closing song.
Laverne and Alvie: They fade in once again in the middle. Zoinks! Cher shows off her blue purse and references the new book “All the President’s Men.” Sonny’s hair is getting really long.
The finish up the song and when Cher grabs for Sonny’s hand, he refuses it! “Watch your hand Cher,” he says. He must be mad about something.
Thanks to Jay for entirety of the run-down on this episode, especially since it hasn’t re-aired and there’s no guide for these later-day episodes.
Highlights: The liberated Prisoner sketches.
