Season: 2 (The Sonny & Cher Show)
Episode: 31
Guest(s): Anne Meara, Peter Graves, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Shields & Yarnell
CBS Air Date: February 25, 1977
Also aired: Never re-aired
Opening Song: “Swearin’ to God” (Audio)
Cover of Frankie Valli (1975)
Opening Banter: Sonny asks Cher how her family is doing. Cher says, “fine.” Sonny asks, “how’s the little guy….how’s the big guy?” Cher says the little guy is fine…and really big. Sonny tells her he’s always been interested in her family and asks about her mother. Sonny wants to know what Cher’s mom said when they split up, “didn’t she say anything?” Cher says no, she probably didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth.
but Sonny says he and Cher’s mom are actually great friends, (which was true, Sonny was getting along better with Cher’s mom at the time than Cher was), even though Sonny and her mother didn’t get along at all in the beginning (when Cher was underage, living with Sonny and Georgia was trying to physically separate them). Sonny and Cher are interestingly candid about the situation in this monologue, admitting Cher was only 16 at the time but had lied to Sonny and told him she was 18.
Sonnytone News:
+ Jack Frost Visits Miami Beach during a cold snap. Sam (played by Sonny) tells his wife (Anne Meara) to loosen up and sunbathe in chilly Florida because the trip is already paid for. Anne says “no one wants to be here” and asks if Sonny heard the woman at the airport yelling, “I hate Florida. Get me out of Florida. I’m through with Florida.” Sonny asks who that yelling woman was and Anne says Anita Bryant. (She was the spokesperson for Florida Orange Juice and an anti-gay activist. Which is very interesting foreshadowing considering Chas Bono will become a gay activist in the 1990s and 2000s.) Anne Meara says dogsledding would be more pleasant than this. Sonny accuses her of “going through the change” because she’s so grumpy. Anne says she’d be happy for a hot flash right about now. She tells Sonny, “they don’t put a Sears radial tire through what you put me through.”
+ King Kong: We’re back to putting King Kong in the Sonnytone News segment.
King Kong is depressed. Fay Wray tells him, “when you’re faced with a problem that is bigger than you are, you’ve got to get outside help.” Dr. Joyce Brothers arrives. Fay tells Brothers King Kong is upset because he wasn’t invited to the premiere of the Dino de Laurentis 1976 remake of his own movie. He wasn’t even asked on the talk shows. Brothers tells King Kong to talk about his hurt feelings and that no one can help him if he doesn’t communicate. King Kong vocalizes some displeasure at this idea and Brothers scolds him to take his thumb out of his mouth.
Today was bad, Fay says, because he was turned down to sing “I’m Sitting on Top of the World” on The Tonight Show. “It’s kind of his theme song,” Fays says. Brothers tells Fay King Kong is going through a neurosis based on feelings of inadequacy. His perceived rejections are triggering his self doubt. She attempts shock therapy by calling him a big jerk. This gets him willing to communicate,
Brothers tells Fay to reassure King Kong with her love. Fays says, “Aww King, I don’t care about the money or the fame or the success, the bright lights or the good times. King, I love you even if you are a failure.” This backfires and upsets King Kong so Brothers steps in again to tell him that when he’s afraid of something, it’s good to get it out in the open. Then she tells him there are other plenty of other remakes he’d be perfect for, The Benny Goodman Story, Gone with the Wind. Fay says he’d be a handsome Rhett Butler and he likes that idea.
+ Coffee prices are high and coffee drinkers are trying to kick the habit. At a Coffeeholics Anonymous meeting, Harvey Preston (played by Peter Graves) tells everyone what it’s like to be “off the java.” Two months ago he was a happy man with 2.5 kids, 1.6 dogs and .85 of a pussycat. But then the price of coffee soared and he had to sacrifice his lunch for coffee. Then he used his mortgage payment for coffee, sold his kid’s bike and then he sold his kid. Then he realized he had to choose between his family or coffee. He quit cold turkey and began having erotic dreams about Mrs. Olsen (of the Folger’s Coffee commercials). When he hit rock bottom everyone he passed on the street looked like Danny Thomas (of the Maxwell House Coffee commercials). But he says he made it thanks to this very support group. Now he’s a “happy, hopeless wino.”
Shields & Yarnell: They mime shopping at the supermarket. Jay remembers this as one of their classic mimes.
Concert: “You’re Not Right For Me”
Cover of Sonny & Cher (1977)
Sonny says he and Cher have an announcement to make. They’ve “just done something we haven’t done for over three years. We cut a new record.” Cher says, “That makes two things we haven’t done in over three years.” Snap. Sonny continues, “It’s our first record together since 1973 and it’s a great song with a great title and, if I may say so, by a terrific, really sensitive, marvelous songwriter…me.”
Well, it’s none of those things. Sonny did have his moments as a songwriter, a few good peaks, but sensitive and marvelous are not words that come to mind. Still…wow! Because this is the only performance of the rarest of Sonny & Cher singles, the depressing disco number “You’re Not Right for Me.”
Sonny and Cher do a little Who’s On First with the song title, (Cher: tell the folks the title; Sonny: you’re not right for me; Cher: you’re not right for me either, but just tell them the title….) Sonny says the song is available at our local record stores and I bet it was only there for two minutes. Because I started looking at those record bins about this time at The Record Bar at Chesterfield Mall in St. Louis and Sonny & Cher didn’t even have a plastic slot card (much to my despair). Cher’s own bin slot card would only last through 1979 and then, too, would disappear until 1987! This so scarred me as a child that for years one of my favorite things to do in L.A. was to visit Amoeba Records just to enjoy the Sonny & Cher bin card there in the oldies section. It’s gone again. Sigh. Life is hard. Cher says if you can’t find it in record stores you can find it “in Sonny’s dressing room.”
The b-side is the gimmicky hot mess “Wrong Number.” Whenever I listen to the song I keep trying to track the plot but keep losing the thread.
They’re really not good songs. I had read about them in a Cher biography and spent all of the 80s trying to track one a copy down at the used record stores across the area. It wasn’t until eBay came along that I snared one. (I used to sneak out of meetings at Yonkers Contracting to close out bids that first year of eBay. Good times.)
I had no idea they ever performed the single on their show. There’s no audio online for the performance, unfortunately. Which makes this episode a rarity as well.
These were the last two studio recordings made by Sonny & Cher. And on Cher’s Warner Bros. label no-less, a label with most of Cher’s rare 45 experiments of the 1970s, including “A Woman’s Story” (1974) “Baby I Love You” (1974) and “A Love Like Yours” (1975) with Harry Nilsson, all of which were produced by the gun-waving-version of Phil Spector. Allegedly the Nilsson song made when Cher was tooling around during the John Lennon sessions for the album Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Prisoner: Cher is very tired and Rocco asks her if she’s been fooling around. She says she just got a new job at the police department. Rocco is very upset by this and asks her how she can do that? He says, “they’re the cops and I’m the robbers! You should be on my side.” Cher says “that shows how silly you are. If I was on your side, then we’d both be over there and we wouldn’t have any visitors!” Rocco asks what Cher has been doing as a police officer and she says she’s been a police decoy. It isn’t easy making out at three in the morning in the back of a Plymouth, she says. Rocco then says he’s gonna kill her when he gets out and Cher says, “you’re not jealous are you?” Rocco says of course he is but he wants to change the subject. Then Cher admits she was in the backseat of the Plymouth with the detective that put Rocco behind bars.
Cher Solo: “Reason to Believe” (Audio)
Cover of Tim Hardin (1965)
Cher recorded this on her 1968 album Backstage. It’s good to hear her revisit this one.
Operetta: Sonny, Cher, Peter Graves and Anne Meara play in Rootless, a spoof of the popular 1977 miniseries Roots. (I remember my parents watching it.) This version traces Cher’s Indian and Armenian lineage. Sonny plays Little Dipper and Cher plays Princess Alimony. Divorce jokes.
IGUB: No song. Just a walk-off.
Thanks to Jay for the official run-down on this lost episode.
Highlights: Sonny & Cher promoting their very last single. Some monologue honesty. A skit encouraging King Kong to seek therapy (and thusly us all). Cher’s new version of “Reason to Believe.”
