Cher (42 page)

Rita Kempley, reviewing the film for the
Washington Post
claimed, “
Moonstruck
is a great big beautiful valentine of a movie, an intoxicating romantic comedy set beneath the biggest, brightest Christmas moon you ever saw. . . . Norman Jewison, whose last movie was
Agnes of God
, creates his comic masterpiece with this infectious ethnic romance . . . Cher creating a fairy-tale realist, captivating yet cautious” (167).

When the nominations for the 1987 Academy Awards were announced, Cher’s portrayal of Loretta in
Moonstruck
was at the top of the Best Actress list. Also nominated in the Best Actress category were Glenn Close for
Fatal Attraction
, Holly Hunter for
Broadcast News
, Sally Kirkland for
Anna
, and Meryl Streep for
Ironweed
. Meryl Streep
was so instrumental in helping Cher become a serious actress in
Silkwood
, and now she and Cher were competing for the same award.

Meanwhile, by tossing his hat into the Palm Springs mayoral race, Sonny Bono had opened himself up for all sorts of ridicule in the press. But, by now he had developed a very thick skin against negative criticism. Like Clint Eastwood and Ronald Reagan before him, he was trading the task of actor for that of politician. During his campaign in the lush desert resort town, he inevitably ran into comments about Cher, his most famous show business identity being that of being Cher’s ex-husband. He dealt with these comments with a great sense of humor.

At this point in time, Sonny and Cher had very little contact with each other. If it were not for their daughter, Chastity, keeping each of them informed of the other’s activities, each wouldn’t have known what the other was up to—save newspaper coverage of their latest endeavors. Sonny was genuinely startled in early 1988 when he received a phone call from one of the producers of the TV show
Late Night with David Letterman
. Usually it was Cher who appeared on such shows. After chatting Sonny up on the phone for a few minutes, the producer asked Sonny if he would consider appearing on the program, with Cher. The producer then told him, if he had any reservations about appearing on the program with his ex-wife, would he please consider what such an appearance could mean for his political campaign. He considered it for a moment, and then agreed.

A week after saying “yes” to the
Letterman
appearance, Sonny received another call from out of the blue, and this time around, it was the diva herself—Cher. She immediately cut to the chase and announced to him that she was very concerned about the upcoming appearance, confessing that she was slightly freaked out with anxiety about reuniting with Sonny, live on-camera, with half of the world tuning in to watch this uncomfortable moment.

She told Sonny that she knew his sense of humor, and she knew David’s, and it left her slightly worried, especially since the last time she was on the program, she called Letterman “an asshole” on national television. He did his best to calm her down, and between the two of them, they decided on a game plan that Cher could live with: he would go out and test the waters of the interview and talk about his bid for mayor, and then she would come on the program after Sonny had broken the ice.

A few days later, Sonny received still another surprising phone call, again from the producer of
Letterman
. This time around the conversation
was another out-of-the-blue request. This time she asked Sonny if he would consider singing with Cher on the program. He was a bit dumbfounded, and even tried to put off the question. He suggested that perhaps Cher would be happier doing a cut from her latest album instead of a duet with him. The producer then rephrased the question “If Cher will sing with you, will you sing with her?” (35). Again, he agreed.

Sonny’s wife, Mary, was seven months pregnant at that point, but gladly accompanied him on the first “Sonny & Cher” event she was to witness in person. With that, together they flew from Palm Springs to Los Angeles, and then on to JFK Airport, where they were chauffeured into Manhattan. All along the way, Sonny thought about this odd reunion with Cher, which was to be televised before millions of onlookers.

The following morning, Chastity came to visit her father at his hotel room, very excited about seeing him and that afternoon’s TV taping. Like all dutiful daughters, her big concern involved what Sonny was going to wear for the appearance. With that, Sonny and Chastity spent hours shopping for the right outfit for him, finally deciding on a pair of black baggy pants, and a hot-looking patterned silk shirt.

When Chastity, Sonny, and Mary got off the elevator at NBC Studios in Rockefeller Plaza and were immediately mobbed by a wall of press photographers, it started to sink into Sonny’s consciousness just how big an event this was going to turn out to be. It turned out to be an emotional event for everyone involved, the brief but touching reunion of Sonny & Cher.

Cher hadn’t sung in front of a live audience in six years, and hadn’t been seen on camera with Sonny Bono in nine years. Her backstage entourage that night included her boyfriend Robert, her girlfriends Paulette and Deborah Paull, eleven-year-old Elijah Blue Allman, and her long-time hairstylist, Renate Leuschner-Pless.

Cher greeted Sonny backstage, and after a few seconds of awkwardness, they picked up where they had left off, like old friends who were reunited after an altercation. Sonny said hello to Robert, whom he had met once before, and Cher acknowledged the upcoming birth of the newest Bono baby. Cher was also enthused to have Sonny hear a tape of her latest single, and had someone in the sound booth program it for her. Cher then rehearsed with bandleader Paul Shaffer, and it was time for the show to start.

As planned, Sonny was the first one on the program. David Letterman introduced him as the writer of ten Gold records, and a candidate for
mayor of Palm Springs. Amid thunderous applause, Sonny came out onto the set and began chatting with the ever-unpredictable Letterman. After a brief bit of bantering about politics, Letterman got down to the subject on everyone’s mind: Sonny & Cher.

“What happened?” Letterman asked Sonny, “Where did it all go wrong? You were responsible. You molded her. You had the look, the sound. You wrote the songs. You had the idea for the television show. . . . And then, one day—Bingo—it all goes south on you” (168).

Sonny thought for a few seconds and replied, “I ask myself that every day. No, no really. It’s just too hard for two people to have a marriage and to be in show business. Comes a time when you lose the relationship and discover you’re a business. I look at Sonny & Cher almost as two other people. I love them, like any other fan” (168).

When David Letterman introduced Cher, she came out and performed one of the songs from her 1987
Cher
album, “I Found Someone,” and then joined him and Sonny at the interview desk. Cher was wearing a micro-mini dress, black fishnet stockings, pointed black high heels, and a white jacket festooned with chains and metals. Around her waist she wore a metal belt that clung to her shapely hips.

When she sat down to be interviewed, seated between Sonny and Letterman, David started right in, poking fun at her costume and making jokes about her tattoos. Irreverent Letterman immediately began sparring with Cher regarding her life and her career. When he asked her how she felt being back together with Sonny—on this show—professionally for the first time in ten years, she snapped back at him that she felt “nothing” (168).

In his 1991 autobiography,
And the Beat Goes On
, Sonny claimed that he froze when she flippantly said that. “She quickly recanted and said she was joking. But I didn’t know. Cher had an icy, unemotional, calculating side to her. I hoped she felt something, but then experience had taught me better” (35).

Then Cher replied, “We have a very strange relationship that no one will understand. I don’t understand it. Sonny says that he doesn’t understand it either.”

“Do you ever think of getting back together again?” Letterman asked.

“In what capacity?”

“Married.”

“I don’t think Mary would like that, she’s pregnant,” Cher replied.

After zinging comments back and forth to each other like two tennis
players in a dead heat, volleying one-liners, finally Letterman asked the question that everyone was anticipating would be asked. “Is there any chance that you two would sing for us?” (168).

Cher tried to get out of it, by claiming that she had a sore throat, but Letterman still pushed. “None of this has been discussed,” David claimed.

Although her comment was “bleeped” by the censors, Cher zinged back at him, “You’re full of shit.”

“I can’t believe the way she speaks,” Letterman said to Sonny.

Bono laughed and replied, “This is a dirty show, I’m leaving” (168).

Sonny got up from his seat to move over to where the band was cued and waiting, and as a wave of deafening applause, whistles, and shouts from the audience cheered them on, Cher—almost reluctantly—agreed.

As a duo, since the 1960s, Sonny & Cher had sung the song “I Got You Babe” to each other hundreds of times. Yet this night, for the first time in ten years, and for what was to be the last time ever, they sang the song that made them both household names. Cher, in her own autobiography
The First Time
, recalled looking out at the audience, and she noticed that half of the crowd had tears in their eyes. Then she looked at Sonny midsong, and he too was misty-eyed. According to her, she thought to herself, “I’ve got to hold myself together—I don’t want to do this publicly” (25).

The brief minutes that Sonny and Cher spent together singing “I Got You Babe” provided millions of viewers that night with one of the most touching experiences on television in whole decade of the 1980s. For the time that it took them to warble their way through this—their signature song—they touched the hearts of their fans. They were once again the act the world over knew as “Sonny & Cher,” and standing next to each other singing that one song, they made time stand still. After the applause swelled, and the television show cut to a commercial break, it was over. Once again Sonny Bono, and the singularly named Cher, had made TV history.

Right after the taping of the
David Letterman
show, it was an oddly askew group who was gathered backstage, for the first and only time. “Well, that was kinda exciting,” Sonny was overheard saying to a passerby in the green room backstage (22). It was a truly awkward moment. There stood Sonny Bono, age fifty-two, with his new bride, Mary, who was twenty-five. And with them was Cher, forty-one, with her new boyfriend, Robert, age twenty-three. The two men shook hands, and—oddly enough—the four of them had almost nothing to say to each other. Afterward
they all went their separate ways. What the television audience saw that night was almost the entire extent of Sonny and Cher’s relationship with each other at the NBC Studios. Like two comets in the night, they passed for a few moments in the stratosphere, and then went off in different directions.

Cher and Robert left the studio and were whisked away in their waiting limousine. Chastity said goodbye and left to meet some of her friends. And Sonny and Mary grabbed a cab and went out for a steak dinner at Smith and Wollensky. As quickly as it had happened, the historic reunion of Sonny & Cher was over. That night, when the program was broadcast, ratings went through the roof, and once again the duo was big news.

It was shaping up to be a big year for Sonny and Cher, together and separately. The same week that the Academy Awards were announced, the Palm Springs mayoral election was held. The day of the Academy Awards, Sonny telephoned Cher to predict that she was going to take the trophy that evening for her work on
Moonstruck
. When she arrived at the Shrine Auditorium for the awards presentation that evening, there was a huge traffic jam, so Cher and Robert had to jump out of their car and walk from the street in a hurry so they didn’t miss the beginning of the show. The first award to be given out that evening was that of Best Supporting Actress, and Cher didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see if her on-screen mother, Olympia Dukakis, was going to win in that category. Cher was thrilled to witness Dukakis take her trophy for portraying the role of Rose Castorini in
Moonstruck
. That evening,
Moonstruck
’s screenplay writer, John Patrick Shanley, also took an Academy Award for his work on the film in the category of Best Original Screenplay.

This particular year, the producers of the Academy Awards moved the category of Best Actress to the very end of the show. Cher spent much of the evening squirming uncomfortably with anticipation. On the telecast, she and Nicolas Cage gave out the Oscar for the Best Supporting Actor, to Sean Connery. When it finally came time for Cher’s category, it was Paul Newman who was awarding that particular trophy that year. He read the nominees—Cher, Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Sally Kirkland, Meryl Streep—and Cher recalls that at that point, she had lost all of her sense of reality, the sounds she heard and the sights she saw were suddenly surreal.

Paul Newman ripped open the envelope containing the name of the winner of the award, and he took a deep breath. In those few seconds, Cher was later to explain that by taking that breath, she was convinced
that she had lost, because it doesn’t take very much breath at all to say her one-syllable name. Time seemed to be moving in slow motion in her head, as Newman announced, “Cher for
Moonstruck
.”

Robert, her date for that evening, leapt up out of his seat, and with him, the entire audience rose from their seats, applauding and cheering with delight. Cher immediately stood up, kissed Robert, hugged her children, turned to walk up to the stage, and promptly tripped on the shawl of her elaborate outfit, stumbled, and lost one of her earrings.

When she reached the podium and held her Oscar for the first time, all thoughts of her much-practiced acceptance speech went right out of her head. She forgot to thank the Academy, or director Norman Jewison, but managed to thank—by name—her makeup man and her hairdresser, and Meryl Streep for all that she had taught her.