Book Review: Cher Speaks — Part One

By John R. Killacky

Now 78, Cher has written a compellingly candid chronicle of her early life and showbiz career, up until her move into the movies, which will be told in Part Two.

CHER: The Memoir, Part One. Dey Street Books 413 pages, $40

For over 60 years, Cher’s expansive talents have not only blazed multiple trails, but been amazingly resilient. She has garnered Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy Awards and is the only artist to chart number one records in seven consecutive decades. Last month, Cher was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Now 78, she has written an autobiography, The Memoir, Part One. The initial installment covers her family history, including an itinerant childhood, attaining international success as part of a singing duo with Sonny Bono, and surviving that partnership’s demise. Further reinventions from the ’80s onwards — as an infomercial queen, serious actress, and über-goddess — will have to wait for Part Two.

Her mother, Georgia Holt (born Jackie Jean Crouch), was a former model and retired actress/model of Irish, English, German, and Cherokee ancestry. The family led a hardscrabble life. When a child, Jackie accompanied her parents in the fields as they picked cotton. Dad brought his young daughter along to sing for nickels at local bars. When she was eight, the pair hitchhiked from Oklahoma to California, imagining that she might become the next Shirley Temple. As an adult, Cher’s mother continued to pursue a quest for stardom, occasionally winning walk-on parts in television shows, including I Love Lucy and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

However, her early career aspirations were chaotically derailed. Jackie was married seven times to six husbands (wedding Cher’s biological father twice). In her memoir, Cher calls Jackie “a serial monogamist.” Given that each relationship only lasted a few years, Cher and her younger sister Gee (from another husband) were continually uprooted — sometimes her mother returned to Hollywood in order to purse her elusive dreams of stardom. Predictably, there was a lot of intergenerational collateral damage, especially centered on men. Still, Cher waxes lovingly of her mother and sister’s early life together.

It didn’t start out well. Jackie was 18 when she met Johnnie Sarkisian, a handsome Armenian-American who was struggling with heroin and gambling disorders. They were married and gave birth to Cher. In Scranton, Pennsylvania, Jackie worked as a waitress and singer at night to support them. Dad abandoned the family, dropping the baby off at a Catholic children’s home on his way out of town.

Cher’s young mother was deemed “unfit” by the Mother Superior. It took considerable time to regain custody. Cher doesn’t remember being at the facility, but “it must have been several months,” she writes. “As I arrived as an infant barely able to crawl and when I came out, I was walking.”

Cher took care of her sister when her mom was off on casting calls. Left to her own devices, she often rebelled and went out on potentially dangerous adventures; she hopped on a freight train when she was nine and “borrowed” her mother’s car at 13. Eventually she dropped out of high school and moved in with Sonny Bono when she was 16. He was 27.

Bono was “Wall of Sound” music producer Phil Spector’s assistant. Before long, they were doing backup singing for The Ronettes and The Righteous Brothers, eventually morphing into their own act as Sonny and Cher. In 1965 the folk-rocking duo had five songs in the Top 20 charts. Bono produced a slew of other pop hits and two (unsuccessful) movies for the couple.

All was great with the Svengali and his young muse until it wasn’t. They lost their record contracts and owed $270,000 in back taxes in 1969. “Just give me two years and I promise we’ll be bigger than ever,” Bono reassured Cher.

They went on the road playing supper clubs and casinos, slowly reinventing themselves, creating a wisecracking glitzy lounge act that would appeal to an adult crowd. “They didn’t come for our singing, they wanted to hear our jokes,” Cher recalls. CBS gave them a summer TV pilot that was a hit: The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour aired from 1971 to 1974.

They may have been America’s favorite couple on television, but all was not copacetic at home. Bono was controlling; he never wanted Cher to go out socially and he booked performance tours whenever they weren’t filming. Cher chafed at having to work constantly, wanting more of a life for her and the couple’s daughter, Chastity.

Bono always slept around, and that marital tension was diffused when his girlfriend moved into their 12,600 square foot mansion. “Strange as it seems,” Cher explains, “we all got along.” Their variety show and touring continued, and the couple enjoyed performing together. “We were always Sonny and Cher even when we weren’t Cher and Sonny,” she remembers.

Cher began to date on her own and eventually settled in with record mogul David Geffen. When the producer asked about Cher’s contractual obligations, the singer couldn’t answer him. She discovered that she was an employee of “Cher Enterprises” with Bono owning 95% and their lawyer the other 5%. Confronting Bono about why he arranged to take in just about everything the act made, he responded, “Because I knew you’d always leave me someday.”

She filed for divorce in 1974, citing involuntary servitude. Bono moved to ABC and failed with his own variety show. CBS invited Cher back for a successful solo series. However, she tired of carrying the program alone and invited Bono back in 1976 — now as a divorced couple, joking and singing away. Things were further complicated because she had by this time married heroin-addicted Southern rocker Gregg Allman. And she was pregnant. Allman and Cher divorced and the show was not renewed.

So, with two kids in tow, Cher returned to a performance regimen in Las Vegas. The Memoir, Part One ends with director Francis Ford Coppola visiting her backstage asking, “Why aren’t you making movies?” He gave her this advice on moving forward: “The problem is that until you do something, nobody will believe you can. The worst thing that can happen is that you fail, but at least you’ll have tried…. So, what are you waiting for.” Details to follow in Part Two.

John R. Killacky is the author of because art: commentary, critique, & conversation.