Authors: Mark Bego
According to Bart Andrews, when Sonny & Cher first came to CBS, everyone thought that Cher was pretty, but one-dimensional, and that Sonny was a jerk who kept sticking his nose into the inner workings of their TV series. However, with success, all of that changed. Says Andrews, “Sonny became very involved in running the show when they came back on the air on a permanent schedule, without a formal production title. But he was very, very interested in the business end of it, because he had apparently structured their career. There were some people who got annoyed, I remember. But he was very well respected by the time that show was over” (57).
Cher’s own uniquely exotic physical beauty was enhanced by the growing number of gorgeous handmade beaded gowns that she wore on camera. She wore outrageous and silly costumes for the comedy skits, but when she sang solos and duets with Sonny, she was dressed in beautiful high-fashion clothes. Cher had, and has, a fantastically svelte body, and costume designer Bob Mackie made the most of all her attributes. Cher never had a big bust, but she had a flat stomach, great hips, and nice, exposable legs. After all those years of wearing bell-bottomed pants, her fans had no idea what her legs looked like when they were finally unveiled.
Mackie had a field day, outdoing himself as a designer week after week. Tuning in just to see what wild and outrageous clothes Cher would wear became half the reason for watching the show. Cher’s wardrobe was budgeted at $10,000 per show, and they used every cent of it to make certain that she was
the
top mannequin of television land.
“She was more of an innovator than anyone realizes,” says Bob Mackie of Cher’s importance in the fashion world.
She had established the look of the sixties bell-bottoms and all—and I just helped her establish a look for the seventies. We started off making her kind of glamorous, and then we went to
really
glamorous. But Cher wore my clothes like they were a pair of jeans. I know what clothes can do, and I know what they can’t do. If someone else had been wearing those gowns, it wouldn’t have been the same. No one else has Cher’s ease. And no one else has those armpits! Cher has the most beautiful armpits in the world. As much as anything else, I designed for her armpits (37).
With regard to wearing Mackie’s fantastic gowns, Cher explains,
The first time I ever worked with him was right after Chastity was born. We did a
Carol Burnett Show
. We worked with him for the summer season of
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
, which was 1971. He was really expensive. We could only afford him to do a few costumes for the show. . . . I think I had two beaded dresses the whole time [during the 1971 summer replacement series]. But he did lots of extra stuff because he was really excited about the glamour. In
The Sonny & Cher
[
Comedy
]
Hour
we had lots of clothes for sketches; we had the opening and the closing numbers. We had a concert, and we had my solo spot, so there were plenty of spaces to dress up. . . . The first summer we only did six shows. Once we really started the season we did have to have thousands of dollars, because each one of these gowns was four or five thousand dollars, even in those days. They were all beaded (39).
Then there was Cher’s incredibly versatile hair. During this era, she just kept letting her luxurious black hair grow longer and longer, until it was down to her waist. One of her trademark onstage affectations was brushing strands of her long, dark hair out of her eyes or shaking those trademark tresses.
With all of the skits that she was doing, and all of the characters she was playing, her hairstyle would change several times per show as well. So that she didn’t damage her own fantastic hair, she would also wear wigs whenever possible. To design and care for all of her wigs, Cher employed a woman who went by the professional name of Renate [Leuschner-Pless]. Says Cher,
We got Renate because there were so many changes in the show and it had to be done so fast, and nobody knew what to do with my real hair. So Renate had this special way of wrapping it when my hair was long, and she could just get it up there. That way I could do like fourteen changes a show. We’d shoot the show in two days, so that was a lot of changes to just whip in and out of. I would always start the show and end the show with my own hair down. I always wore my hair down to begin the show and to end the show (39).
Cher wasn’t a conventional beauty. She had a very angular nose and face. She also had a crooked-toothed smile. Her two upper incisor teeth were long and protruded. She had an exotic look that was very real, and natural. This was all before the cosmetic dentistry and cosmetic surgery that she would have performed on her face and body. The Cher whom television audiences fell in love with in the early 1970s looked very different than Cher of the late 1990s.
In 1972, Cher was on the annual “Best Dressed Women” lists. In Bob Mackie’s opinion,
There hasn’t been a girl like Cher since Dietrich or Garbo. She’s a high-fashion star who appeals to people of all ages. She’s a great influence on both adults and teenagers. It’s never happened before. She can stand there in the wildest garb and get away with it. It’s fun to watch a performer who is so connected with fashion. We never thought of any ‘Best Dressed List’ possibilities. She has a sense of humor about her clothes as well as a sexy, glamorous feeling. She used to be crazy—but funky. She switched to glamour and now it’s taken hold with younger people to be glamorous, well groomed. It’s a good influence (59).
In 1972 Bob Mackie observed, “Summer clothes worn this year are what we did for Cher on last season’s summer replacement show backless halters, slinky jerseys, et cetera” (13). Suddenly everyone was watching and imitating Cher and her clothes.
There were also several dramatic battles over costumes with the censors. Cher had such a great body that Bob Mackie would push the envelope more and more to reveal flesh here and there. Most controversial was showing her navel on network primetime television. Just ten years before, actress Barbara Eden was forbidden from exposing her belly button in her bare-midriff costume on the TV series
I Dream of Jeannie
.
Cher was constantly battling the censors. She knew she had a great figure, and she wanted to show it off.
You couldn’t do anything [sexual] on television [in the early 1970s]. All the stuff I wanted to do that was just a bit grown-up would be misunderstood by them. The censors were just so ridiculous. One time I did this beautiful solo on the show and they said they were going to make me go and change my outfit. Bob [Mackie] had made me this beautiful kimono, and underneath it was this long slip. It was really pretty, and they said, “No, no, you look like a hooker,” and I said, “I’m just standing in front of a window!” So [producer] Norman Lear was walking outside and I ran out and said, “Norman, come in here and look at this number and tell the censor what you think.” I was singing “Sunshine on My Shoulders” by John Denver, and Norman turned to the censor and said, “You must be really sick if you can find anything dirty in that!” So we got to keep it. I was the first person ever to show my belly button on TV. The censors didn’t like that at all, but I had already been doing it when they decided they didn’t like it. I was already wearing those clothes and people loved those clothes. Women just loved them (39).
Cher found herself addictively swept up in her whole glamorous transformation. “I took it all pretty seriously,” she was later to admit. “We all want to be sexy because it makes us valuable. I always wanted to be valuable, and before I became an entertainer, I was just not valuable to people” (13).
She recalled something that photographer Richard Avedon once told her in the 1960s. “He said, ‘Sweetheart, you’re never going to be on the cover [of
Vogue
magazine], because you’re not the “look.’ ” Well, one day they did put me on the cover—while
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
was on—and it was a huge success. I realized then that you have to make people change their whole idea. You have to convince them” (37). What Cher was doing in turn was convincing herself of her own personal worth.
To give a counterpoint to her glamorous image, Cher and her writing staff came up with a truly tacky recurring character for her to play in skits on the show. Cher called her Laverne. She was a little potbellied in the stomach (thanks to padding on Cher’s body), and she wore tiger-skin-patterned clothes that were inappropriately too tight. She wore cats-eye-shaped glasses, and her curly red wig was wrapped in a scarf, as though she was still wearing curlers underneath it. She was also always chewing gum in a most aggravating fashion.
Of the development of this character, Cher explains,
Laverne started when we did a takeoff of [the TV series]
All in the Family
and everyone liked me doing that kind of character, so they wanted me to come up with a woman in a laundromat. Slowly but surely Bob [Mackie] and I came up with the costume. It was my copy of a Lucille Ball hairdo, only we gave her terrible roots. The [exposed and drooping] bra strap was Bob’s idea; it was so perfect. The bra strap makes it. But I couldn’t come up with the voice. I tried doing it every which way. At the very last minute before we did her live in front of an audience, the prop man gave me some bubble gum—I can’t do Laverne without gum in my mouth and Laverne came out. She just had a life of her own (39).
Sonny & Cher became the hip new married couple for the 1970s. For a generation raised on situation comedies with perfect TV families, the newly glamorized Bonos seemed like the perfect couple for the “me” decade. Sponsors liked them, because although they looked hip, they had a squeaky clean and conservative image. In a cover story in the March 18, 1972, issue of
TV Guide
magazine, Sonny announced on behalf of he and Cher, “Our lifestyle has changed a lot. ‘Matured’ is the word I’d use. When we first hit we were looser, wilder. Now we’re more security minded. . . . I think the important thing is to have standards and rules. I want to make sure we display them ourselves and pass them along to our daughter” (47).
Life soon became very hectic for Sonny and Cher. Sonny loved the fast pace that their career was taking, and the idea of guiding the ship. Their television show was renewed for the 1972–73 season, and it aired at 8:00 p.m. on Friday nights from September to December. In December of 1972 it was moved to Wednesday nights from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. In the 1973–74 season it occupied the 8:00 p.m. Wednesday night slot. When they weren’t filming their television show, they were on the road doing their concert and nightclub act around the country.
On May 1, 1972, Kapp Records released the Cher solo single “Living in a House Divided,” which reached Number 22 in America. A beautiful ballad about the demise of a marriage, written by Tom Bahler, this set the tone of her latest album, the all-ballad set
Foxy Lady
. More of an adult contemporary album than a pop/rocker like the
Cher
LP,
Foxy Lady
is one of Cher’s most focused and beloved albums. All of the songs on the album are moody heartbreakers like “It Might as Well Stay Monday (From Now On),” “Don’t Ever Try to Close a Rose,” and “Don’t Hide Your Love.” Cher also covered Leon Russell’s “Song for You” and sang a slow, growling version of Three Dog Night’s “Never Been to Spain.” In September of 1972,
Foxy Lady
peaked at Number 43 on the album charts in America.
In addition,
Foxy Lady
was the only one of Cher’s four MCA/Kapp albums with Snuff Garrett to include any songs or any participation from Sonny. He is represented on
Foxy Lady
by his composition “The First Time.” Also, he was the coproducer—along with Snuff Garrett—on three of the cuts. One of the songs from this set, “Let Me Down Easy,” gives a great preview of the trademark “Cher vibrato” that her 1980s and 1990s recordings are now so famous for. Vocally, this was Cher’s new peak performance. Snuff was picking songs for Cher that were challenging
and stretching her vocal capacity, and it is especially evident on this album.
In June of 1972, Kapp Records released the next Sonny & Cher single, “When You Say Love.” The duo recorded their version of this warm, up-tempo, love song—complete with full background chorus—and took it to Number 32 on the music charts. The bizarre twist to this song was the fact that it was instantly recognizable to anyone in earshot of a radio or television that summer. That was because it was exactly the same song as the concurrent beer commercial being broadcast everywhere that year: “When You Say Bud.” While the song was a big hit, that summer everyone kept asking the same musical question “Isn’t that Sonny & Cher singing the Budweiser commercial?” Admittedly, it was a strange choice as a Sonny & Cher single, but it somehow sold records—and beer.
Watching Snuff Garrett get all the credit for bringing back Sonny & Cher’s recording career started bothering Sonny Bono more and more. Furthermore, Sonny didn’t like some of the decisions that Garrett was making for the duo’s musical identity. It wasn’t long before a rift between them exploded. Sonny couldn’t wait to depose Garrett.
Reportedly, Garrett had selected Cher’s new single, another story-song, entitled “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” When Sonny heard the song, he hated it. Sonny delighted in getting Snuff thrown out as Cher’s record producer. Meanwhile, Garrett was so convinced that “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” was a hit, that he gave the song to television actress Vicki Lawrence. Once again he was right in knowing a hit song when he heard one, and Lawrence’s version went straight to Number 1 in America in April of 1973.