Season: 2 (The Sonny & Cher Show)
Episode: 25
Guest(s): Jim Nabors, Don Knotts, Debbie Reynolds, Farrah Fawcett Majors
CBS Air Date: January 14 1977
Also aired: TV1, TVLand, GetTV
Jay notes that their show has just moved from 8 pm Sunday nights to 9 pm on Friday nights with this episode. Although this situated them outside the family hour, it wasn’t a great endorsement of confidence from the CBS network considering that on Friday nights fewer people were at home watching TV in 1977. It also forced my parents to create a bedtime exception for the 8-year-old me that was even an hour later than the previous exemption.
Opening Song: “All I Really Want to Do” (Video)
Cover of Bob Dylan (1964)
Sonny & Cher come out of the same panel this episode for some reason. They sing a very happy, up-tempo version of the song. Cher does a big hair flip. The back-up singers are awkwardly unnecessary. Cher’s dress reminds me of the Carol Burnett spoof dress of Cher in 1975, but in yellow this time and very sparkly. Although their are thin criss-cross panels across her abdomen, we can make out a belly button! Sonny wears his bling with a tannish shirt and brown suit. They keep to the original lyrics this time. They previously sang this song on the Comedy Hour episodes #34, #52, #54, the Cher show #11 and #27.
Opening Banter: There’s no breakout with Alvin and Laverne. I guess now that they’re married, we can dispense with them. Sonny likes Cher’s dress and he calls it “spiffy.” Sonny jokes that’s he’s practicing for an acting part in a movie.
I did a deep dive with reviews of Sonny’s movies and a partial congressional record for Cher Zine 3. These movies include his 1975 rock-star role in Murder on Flight 502 in 1975 (you can catch it on Amazon Prime for two bucks), a homicidal airplane television movie also starring Farrah Fawcett which foreshadowed Sonny’s more nebbish role in Airplane II in 1982. In 1979, Sonny would star in another televised movie, Murder in Music City, a unintentionally funny detective mystery set in Nashville, stuffed with country star cameos and directed by Leo Penn (Sean, Chris and Michael’s Dad), previously impossible to locate but now available on YouTube and also the feature film Escape to Athena, a star-studded World War II romp also available on YouTube (with ads).
Jay feels this part of the banter was unrehearsed judging by their laughs and smiles. Sonny & Cher talk about the show being on at a later time slot, (outside of the “family hour”), and how they can have more adult conversations now. They say it won’t be a family show anymore. One of them jokes, “I wear English Leather or I don’t wear anything at all!” They can show Cher’s belly button now. There’s a Hefty Bag joke. They talk about not being able to see Cher’s panty lines. Sonny wonders if those are the seamless panty lines he’s been “reading about on TV.” Cher teases him, “you read TV?”
Cher tells Sonny to be careful because “you know who is backstage tonight” (Gregg Allman; could he be here to meet Farrah Fawcett Majors?). Sonny asks, “Is he backstage?” Cher jokes about Vitamin E in Sonny’s pepperoni. Sonny says he can be very provocative late at night. “You blew your chance,” Cher retorts. Sonny proposes a nude Hamlet sketch or a topless concert segment. He sings, “I’ll be Sexy In All the Familiar Places.” He says people at home want something sexy.
Battle of the Sexes: Don Knotts and Sonny kvetch about life as househusbands. Cher and Farrah come home drunk from a bar. It looks like Cher’s wig is longer. She’s still in a gray three-piece suit. Whereas Cher looks smaller in suits, Farrah looks bigger in a suit. Sonny is in purple pants and a pink turtle-neck. There’s a joke about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. (In interviews, Cher used to joke often that after she separated from Sonny, people used to assume she slept with everyone including The Mormon Tabernacle Choir). When she gets home, Cher says, “There’s my little man.” Farrah slaps Sonny’s ass. There’s a Jimmy Carter peanut joke. We get a Cher stare at one point. The girls talk about their sexual exploits. They disregard the jealousies of Sonny and Don Knotts and heartlessly leave to return to the bar.
Skit: Cher does her Barbara Nauseous character in a Hee-Haw spoof with a string of joke-telling from a cornfield. GetTV cut this skit.
Guest Spot: Debbie Reynolds sings “Havin’ a Party.” GetTV cut this, too.
Skit (Video)
Glamorously dressed and bejeweled, Farrah Fawcett (in a yellow gown and boa) and Cher (in an orange gown and white fur wrap) are living on a deserted island after a ship wreck (à la Triangle of Sadness) and they talk about how lucky they were to have shipwrecked with their “complete fall collection. of designer gowns” and cosmetic bag. Unfortunately they couldn’t save their husbands Reginald and Buster. Thankfully they can start a fire due to the survival class Farrah took at Vidal Sassoon. Farrah is caught not rationing the mascara. She is upset that they’re out of Dippity Doo.
Sonny (in rags) washes ashore after being lost at sea drifting from island to island for three years without seeing another human being. Sonny immediately exclaims “By golly! Two beautiful women!” and then “Those are wonderful coconuts!” The girls flirt with Sonny and insinuate that they’re ready to give him something very special he hasn’t had in a long time. He excitedly thinks they’re talking about cold beer.
Concert: “Baby Don’t Go” (Video)
Sonny & Cher (1964)
Sonny & Cher have never sang this song on any of their variety shows until now. They sit with their current musical director, Harold Battiste, and talk about creating the song, all three of them together back in 1964. Sonny & Cher are wearing their 1960s garb, the fur vests. Cher is wearing a wig with bangs. Sonny wears a bowl-cut wig. Sonny looks at Cher’s outfit and tells her she looks dumb. (Ouch.) Sonny says Harold and he have been together longer than Sonny & Cher. Sonny talks about him and Battiste starting out as producers together and how Battiste arranged all of Sonny & Cher’s early records. Sonny talks about being backup singers for the Crystals, the Ronettes, The Righteous Brothers (interestingly, they refrain from mentioning Phil Spector), their last backup performance being on “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” (listen closely).
Sonny admits he only knew 3 chords. Battiste puts up two fingers. Sonny talks about how they had no money when they needed Harold Battiste to arrange and play the clavietta on “Baby Don’t Go” but Sonny needed him to do it for free and claims Battiste was “a sucker for sweet talk.” Cher rolls her eyes and adds, “Aren’t we all?” (Someone once said Sonny could talk a fish out of water.) They also didn’t have money for the studio or the engineer. Cher then talks about how Charlie and Brian (Greene and Stone) their “strange,” old managers hocked their office typewriter, adding machine and dictaphone for $185 to book studio time. This $185 has become mythical in Sonny’s every retelling of the creation of this song and “I Got You Babe.”
Sonny says he wrote “Baby Don’t Go” for Cher to sing but she was too shy. Sonny decided to “bail her out” by singing along with her and so that became their first record as Sonny & Cher.
We see Sonny (on piano) and this cuts to Harold Battiste (on clavietta) in a black suit and Sonny & Cher dressed back in their 1970s-glamour-fits performing the song like it’s a typical concert segment, with Cher in tight black pants, high boots and a lose sparkly brown top. More invisible backup singers, The change in Cher between the two segments is pretty remarkable.
Vente Nove (Video)
The Italian director is interviewed by Cher regarding his new movie, “Planet of the Nose Glasses.” Look at Cher’s nails! Sonny comes in wanting lip stick on all the sharks. Cher wants to talk about the supposed musical about sharks. He doesn’t want to talk about that. He wants to talk about his new science fiction movie. He says the title, “Planet of the Nose Glasses” and Cher gets up to laugh. You can hear her doing her crane laugh off stage. She can’t seem to stop laughing.
Don Knotts plays an astronaut. He radios Houston like a trucker on a CB. There are purposefully bad special effects, bad acting and bad script lines. Everyone wears Groucho Marx glasses. Cher wears doctor garb and her hair is up in a bun. Cher and Don sing “For Me and My Gal” (from the movie For Me And My Gal, 1942). Cher runs off with Don Knotts (I love how Cher keeps getting paired romantically with Don Knotts in these variety skits). Chasity even arrives in the nose glasses too. Vente Nove makes his cameo.
IGUB: No song, just a walk-off.
Thanks to Jay for the official run-down on this episode. GetTV cut the cornfield, Hee Haw homage and the Debbie Reynolds spot.
Highlights: The great historical segment with Harold Battiste, another poignant Battle of the Sexes contrasted with the deserted glamour girls, another Vente Nove. Lowlight: no Cher solo. Sacrilege.
