Cher (39 page)

While taping a
Fantasy Island
episode Sonny started to reassess his career. When he was insulted on the set of the show by diminutive actor Herve Villechaize (“De plane, De plane”), he began to wonder whether or not he really wanted to remain in the television business. While the cameras rolled that particular day, Sonny’s line, which he addressed to Villechaize, was supposed to be “It’s a nice day, Tattoo.” By mistake he said, “It’s a nice day, Pontoon” (153). The next thing he knew he was being berated by Villechaize. “I have eight Gold records, and here I’m taking all this crap from a midget,” he was later to complain (154).

However, roles he was interested in playing would surface from time to time. He went to Greece to film the 1979 movie
Escape to Athena
. It was a World War II film that costarred Roger Moore, David Niven, Claudia Cardinale, Stefanie Powers, Richard Roundtree, and Telly Savalas. It was about prisoners of war not only trying to escape their Nazi captors, but attempting to pull off an art heist as well.

In 1982 Sonny landed a small role in the satirical comedy film
Airplane II: The Sequel
, which was filmed on the Paramount Pictures lot on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Every day that he drove to the film studio, he passed the intersection of Melrose and La Cienega. Heading east from that intersection, Sonny passed an odd-shaped triangular block with a single-story restaurant on it. It had once been a hamburger joint, and most recently, it had been painted in pink and turquoise and called Chicken Olé. Now there was a very prominent sign on it that read “For Lease.”

For some reason, Sonny was curious about the space, and on one of his trips past the block, he stopped to examine the building. He was later to confess that he had no idea what prompted him to stop in, but he felt compelled to do so. He tried the doors, looked in the windows, and did his own informal building inspection. He phoned the owner of the building, only to find that a woman was thinking about turning the place into a French restaurant. He told the owner that her plan would never work, because he envisioned the space as an Italian trattoria.

That night after his wife, Susie, went to bed, Sonny sat up sketching his idea of what the restaurant could look like, if he were to take it over. Whenever company came over to his house, it was Sonny who did the cooking, and garnered the compliments. He became obsessed with the idea of becoming a restaurateur. He signed the lease, repainted the place off-white, and accented it in Mediterranean colors of terra cotta and dark green. He changed the whole look of the place.

While he was busy making plans for his restaurant, in late 1982, Sonny decided that he really wanted to make amends with Cher. They had managed to divorce each other and still remain cordial. However, Sonny had this nagging feeling that they had not made amends for the breakup of their once-strong union. Cher was about to open her Las Vegas act at Caesar’s Palace, and she agreed to meet with him. According to Sonny, she was still quite frosty toward him when they met in her suite. He sensed that she was very much on guard, even being in the same room with him. He told her that he wanted to put all of that behind them and move ahead. He also apologized for anything that he had done that had upset her or made her feel any animosity toward him. He anticipated that she would also tell him that she was sorry for anything that she had done or said that had upset or hurt him. She did not. However, he claimed that he felt better for having had that little meeting with her, and at least having extended the olive branch of peace.

In February of 1983, the doors to Sonny’s new eatery opened, having been christened “Bono’s.” On the rainy opening night, several of his friends and supporters came to drink champagne and toast him on his latest venture. The guests that night included Donna Mills, Tony Curtis, Dick Van Patten, Valerie Perrine, Bert Convey, and Cher. There were also several press members and photographers. Cher reported to them, “When we were together, he made all the food” (35). Apparently, their meeting in Las Vegas had cleared the air between them enough to have her attend the opening of his restaurant, and wish him well.

For the first three months of operation the restaurant was a huge hit, booking reservations weeks in advance and turning down business. It appeared that again Sonny’s instincts were absolutely correct, this time in getting into the food business. According to Sonny at the time, “It’s like Rick’s Cafe in [the film]
Casablanca
to me. Every night I drive to the restaurant, I visualize myself as Humphrey Bogart, and I see my friends” (155).

Not long afterward, a Houston businessman came into Bono’s and convinced Sonny to open a Texas branch. The idea instantly appealed to him, and in 1984, the Houston version of Bono’s opened its doors. Unfortunately, at almost exactly the same time the restaurant opened, the oil-based economy in Houston went belly-up, and Bono’s/Houston went under.

Just as the second restaurant failed, Sonny’s marriage to Susie Coelho also came to a crashing end. Susie had aspirations of becoming an actress and getting into show business, while all of Sonny’s time was absorbed by the original Bono’s and its short-lived Houston counterpart. In June of 1984, Sonny and Susie officially separated.

The following May, Sonny was in his restaurant, when he spotted a young woman sitting at one of the tables, having champagne with one of her friends. There was something about the woman that made him want to meet her. She turned out to be Mary Whitaker, and she had recently graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in art history. Although Sonny was now fifty years old, and Mary was only twenty-two, within weeks of meeting, they were dating regularly, and seriously.

In September of 1985, while in Palm Springs, California, Sonny proposed marriage to Mary. He was getting his life in order, and onto a new path, at this point. However, there were several loose ends that needed attending to—notably his relationship with his two adult children,
Christy and Chastity. Since he had divorced his first wife, Donna, in the 1960s, he had very little contact with their daughter. One day, not long after he and Mary became engaged, out of the blue he telephoned Christy to tell her how sorry he was that he hadn’t always been there for her, and to assure her that he loved her very much and hoped that he could make it up to her in some way.

While making plans to build a new house in Los Angeles on a lot they both loved, Sonny and Mary decided to stay at the house he owned in Palm Springs. However, it was a good two-hour drive from Bono’s restaurant in Los Angeles. Finally, they decided to open a Palm Springs version of Bono’s and simply take up residence there permanently. With that, Sonny found a perfect space on the north side of Palm Springs, where there was a tennis club. He leased the restaurant from the owners of the tennis club, and instantly plans were underway to open Bono’s there. To fully make his break with Los Angeles, he closed the original Bono’s on Melrose Avenue and invested a hundred thousand dollars in the Palm Springs site.

In February of 1986, Sonny and Mary were married in a family ceremony in Palm Springs. Later that year, Sonny was offered a role in a grade-B horror film called
Troll
. It was set to be filmed in Italy. He realized from the very start that this movie was not going to represent a career milestone for him, but it did come with an all-expense-paid trip to Italy. With that in mind, Sonny and Mary packed their bags and headed off to Europe.

Troll
was about a cherubic child who is possessed by an evil troll. Under the demonic troll’s spell, people turn into giant seed pods that sprout into new trolls. It was kind of a low-budget
Gremlins
meets
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
. The lively cast—which was obviously all game for an all-expense-paid holiday in Italy—included Michael Moriarty, Shelley Hack, June Lockhart, Anne Lockhart, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. In other words, at the same time that Cher was filming the brilliant
Moonstruck
, Sonny was filming the completely forgettable
Troll
. What different paths their acting careers had taken.

When Sonny and Mary returned to Palm Springs from Italy, they were disappointed to find that the tennis club they were leasing the restaurant from had gone bankrupt, and they either had to purchase the entire property or lose all of the money they had invested. As the saying goes, “in for a penny, in for a pound,” so Sonny purchased the entire property, tennis courts and all.

Meanwhile, Sonny and Mary also wanted to make improvements in their living accommodations, and they purchased an older home in a once-grand neighborhood. Between construction improvements on the house and work on the new restaurant, Sonny was given a negative taste of what the local government was like in Palm Springs. The city forced work on the house to come to a halt because Sonny didn’t have the right permit. Then he couldn’t add a second floor to the house because of some other ordinance, even though other homes in the neighborhood had second floors. Then he wanted to put up a new sign by the front entrance of the restaurant. Again, he was denied permission, due to another ordinance.

Finally, tired of fighting city hall, Sonny decided that the only way he could make positive changes in the city ordinances was to run for mayor. While he made plans to begin his political career, another movie offer came in out of the blue. It was from avant-garde filmmaker John Waters, who at this point was famous for his series of cult classics starring rotund drag queen Divine. Among the most famous Waters/Divine collaborations are
Pink Flamingos
and
Polyester. Pink Flamingos
is most famous for one of the closing scenes, in which Divine is seen eating fresh dog excrement.

Sonny was to confess that when he first received the script for the film entitled
Hairspray
, he had no idea whom John Waters was, and he had to ask the young man who was managing Bono’s restaurant whom he was. Sonny loved the script for
Hairspray
and thought it would be fun to appear in it, as the husband of Debbie Harry. However, when he was told about Divine’s final meal on camera in
Pink Flamingos
, he became concerned that being in
Hairspray
might hurt his bid at becoming the mayor of Palm Springs.

Before Sonny gave John Waters an answer about
Hairspray
, he decided to phone up the director to make certain that there weren’t any hidden elements of the script that might prove embarrassing to his upcoming campaign. Waters assured him that not only would no one be consuming poodle droppings in the film, but there would be no dogs allowed on the set. With that, Sonny agreed to accept the role.
Hairspray
was a significant film for several reasons. First of all it marked the professional debut of a talented new actress, Ricki Lake. Unbeknownst to everyone at the time, it was also to be the final screen appearance by Divine. And, most importantly, it was to be the first time Sonny Bono was the star of a hit film.

Hairspray
—like all of John Waters’s films—takes place in the director’s hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. It centers around a 1960s TV dance party program—à la
American Bandstand
—and two teenagers vying for attention on it. The protagonist was played by teenage Ricki Lake, and her mother was none other than the over-the-top Divine. Sonny played the role of Ricki’s rival’s father. One of his most amusing scenes in the movie comes when he attempts to conceal a bomb in the gigantic beehive hairdo of his wife (Debbie Harry).

John Waters is known for the bizarrely creative casting of his films, and
Hairspray
was no different. Sonny’s costars in this hysterical movie included Pia Zadora, Ric Ocasek of the group the Cars, Jerry Stiller, and soul legend Ruth Brown. According to Waters, he wrote the role with Sonny in mind and was ecstatic that Bono accepted that part.

Although Sonny may have made peace with Cher, their divorce, their legal battles, and everything else in their lives as a couple, Cher obviously still had not. Like a spoiled girl complaining about her parents, during this era she was still taking potshots at him in public, and in the press. In 1986 she stated her opinion of Sonny by exclaiming, “I don’t like him. I don’t like what he became and I don’t really like who he is. Maybe it’s not who he is, but who he is with me. It’s hard for me to say it, too. I don’t hate him. I went through that for a while. But I don’t really want to be around him now” (62).

Sonny, on the other hand, proclaimed,

What upsets me even more is that I’ve always been unaware of the awkward way she felt about me. When I did the [
Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
], I put the whole focus on Cher in order for her to attain the career she’s desired. She has wanted a lot of things. She’s wanted to be a rock & roll star, a TV star, a movie star. She’s gotten all of them. It’s so painful when she gets on national TV and says things like, “I always wanted to become a movie star, but I was too controlled by Sonny.” I hocked all of our furniture and the valuables to write and finance a movie for Cher to star in [
Chastity
]. I practically went broke trying to prove she had the talent that everyone now knows she has. She’s an incredible actress. I always knew that. I think it’s because she has that tremendous drive. She keeps seeking and attaining. She has a kind of power. She has a source all her own and she knows it. I wish her well, but I just wish she would enjoy it and leave me alone (156).

According to Cher at the time, “I’m a woman who’s found herself, and who’s a better person because of it. I’ve made some awful mistakes, but I
think I’ve profited from them” (13). It was the most creatively fertile period of her cinematic career—three films in one year, two of them breaking the million-dollar asking price for her services. She was at the top of her game, and she was doing everything that she could to maximize it.