Sonny and Cher: TV’s improbable superstars

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32958, 3 July 1972, Page 4

Sonny and Cher: TV’s improbable superstars

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LOS ANGELES. It was at the first Newport Pops Festival in 1968 that Sonny and Cher knew they were dead. "We were so far out of it,” recalls Cher. “We were singing ‘I Got You Babe,’ and everybody was spaced out waiting for Led Zeppelin. It was like putting Rudy Vallee and The Grateful Dead on the same bill.”

“We walked out of there stunned,” adds Sonny. “It was candid evidence that we weren’t there. Times had changed and we were gone. The squares thought we were radicals and the liberals thought we were squares.” After only a couple of years at the top of the poprock hierarchy, Mr and Mrs Salvatore (Sonny) Bono were finished.

But in the curious way that fate toys with show-business success, the disaster at Newport turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to the diminutive Sonny Bono and his tall, exotic and vampish-looking Armenian - Cherokee wife, Cher.

For the jolt decided them to launch their career in new

directions, and the result — which is seen by some 30 million television viewers every week — is the “Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour,” a successful hour of songs, skits and deadpan put-downs. It is the hottest new variety show of the year and it has made superstars of the unlikely Bonos. In their 28-room mansion, they are surrounded by all the trappings of Hollywood stardom: three Mercedes, one Ferrari, a couple of motorcycles, a housekeeper, a cook, a chauffeur, a male secretary and a massive bodyguard named Big Jim, who is a relic of the Bonos’ previous career. REASONS FOR SUCCESS “When my hair was long, it meant a punch in the mouth every time I went out,” says Sonny. “I wasn’t very big and I felt I had to get someone to help out. I don’t need Big Jim any more, but I like him, so I keep him on.” Sonny and Cher’s new success stems from a combination of personal evolution and calculated, professional expertise. After the Newport fiasco, Sonny decided to become a film producer. He promptly lost every nickel he had — about $500,000 — on a movie called “Chastity” which was supposed to be a female version of “Easy Rider” but, according to Cher, ended up as a bad imitation of “Heidi.”

And so, to survive, the Bonos took to the nightclub circuit, gradually shedding their hippie image and developing a glib, sarcastic and fairly funny comedy style based on the portrait of the 31-year-old Sonny as a bumbling, obtuse, goodhumoured straight man, and the 25-year-old Cher as the needle-sharp, svelte and cynical cat-woman.

A sample of their patter has become a favourite on their new show. About their seven-year marriage Sonny says innocently, “It’s getting better all the time.”

Fixing her bedroom eyes on him, Cher says flatly, “It’s time your mother got a bed of her own.” The new look attracted enough attention to get the pair invitations on several TV talk shows and — what became their big break — a one-night stand as substitute hosts on “The Merv Griffin Show.” UNIQUE COUPLE Fred Silverman, director of programming at C. 8.5., saw their act and liked it so well that he offered them a sixweek summer - replacement TV series. But Silverman was wise enough to know that Sonny and Cher couldn’t handle the show on their own so he brought in two young producers named Chris Bearde and Allan Blye to put the show together. “We saw in Cher a very glib and glamorous woman,” says Blye. “We saw in Sonny a stumbling, natural guy who was very lovable.

They were unique.” The fact that they were married in real life also brought realism and a certain freedom — especially in the area of bedroom jokes — to their act. Ever since then, the Bonos have put themselves completely in the hands of Bearde and Blye, allowing themselves to be alternately wheedled, cajoled and bullied into slick performances.

“Sometimes I lecture Cher right before the show,” says Bearde. “I tell her that if she doesn’t want to have to go out on the road again, she better do it right. People have been adulating her to death. But I know that chick.”

Not many other people do, because off the air the Bonos are remarkably modest, private people. Although they’ve recently acquired an even bigger house—Tony Curtis’s former Hollywood mansion for $B5O, 000 — they almost never entertain and have few close friends (“Playboy” entrepreneur Hugh Hefner is one). One of their favourite restaurants is Pink’s Hot Dog Stand where, Sonny says, “We used to go to survive. You could get a lot to eat for $2.”

They don’t drink or smoke — anything—and they spend most of their free time at home with their three-year-old daughter, named Chastity after the film that flopped.

“We’re so square we’re sickening,” says Cher. “We’ve matured, we’ve mellowed, we’re wiser,” adds Sonny. “But generally speaking, we never were the radical libs everybody thought we were. We haven’t changed, really. We always believed in morals, standards and rules — quite contrary to what people think.” — Newsweek Feature Service.