Produced and Directed: Art Fisher
Production Consultant: Joe de Carlo
Original show directed and choreographed: Kenny Ortega
Musical Director: Garry (Gary) Scott
Cher’s Costumes: Bob Mackie
Costume Designer: Ret Turner
Hairstyles: Renata (formerly Renata Leuschner)
Impersonators: (uncredited) Kenny Sacha (Bette Midler) and J.C. Gaynor (Diana Ross)
Band: (uncredited)
Backup singers: (uncredited)
Dancers: (uncredited)
There could be some overlap with the band, singers and dancers from the Monte Carlo show.
Filmed at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada
Aired: Showtime (21 April 1983), credits say 1982
So Cher’s band Black Rose is over by this time. She had also finished her first journey into acting with the Robert Altman play, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, which ran 52 performances from February 18 to April 4, 1982, at the Martin Beck Theater. Members of the cast even came to see Cher perform one of her shows in Vegas.
Cher’s first movie, Silkwood, is also “in the can” by this time, having been filmed from September 7 to November 26, 1982 in New Mexico and Texas. When this special aired, the movie would have already premiered on 1 January 1983. So Cher was full-speed into her new acting career at this point, having garnered good reviews for both performances, better in some cases than the play and film received. Her sole Columbia album I Paralyze had also come and gone with little notice in 1982. She will never perform those songs in any special or live show.
She is three years past her last modest hit. “Take Me Home” (#8). Cher at this time is decidedly out of music fashion. MTV is where all the kids are now. Cher can’t pull off New Wave tunes or looks (see I Paralyze). You could say her music career was dead in the water during these early acting years until the first Geffen album Cher would arrive in 1987 at the onset of bombastic, big-hair rock. Until then, everyone assumes Cher will leave behind her music career for acting.
Which is all the more reason why this amazing concert is so special, It’s such a lost treasure. It’s a major crime that this special is not available in full outside of bootleg copies. Only clips can be seen on Cher’s own YouTube channel. Missing parts include the opening credits, the Laverne segment, “I’m Coming Out” with “Diana Ross” and “In the Mood” with “Bette Midler” and a few comedic and dance interludes.
This is a read tragedy because this is the best Cher concert special and the best evidence of the newly confident, more powerful, emerging CHER that we have now. In many ways, this show is a cleaned up version of the 1981 Monte Carlo show with all of the vestiges of “Take Me Home” removed.
The opening credits play spacey music and a backdrop of stars while a flat screen flips around showing clips of the show. We see the Caesars Palace sign and their marquee with Cher. Fireworks ignite and Celebration at Caesars is announced and shown with a pixelated font.
Could I Be Dreaming (The Pointer Sisters, 1980) (video)
Cher is shown immediately rising up atop a C-shaped white staircase. She’s wearing an amazing red gown with a gigantic feathered headdress framing her face. The feathers shake as she walks. The beaded fringe moves with her legs.
There have been a few iconic Cher outfits already, the fur vests, the Half Breed outfit, the Take Me Home outfit and a few other memorable outfits for fans from the variety shows that always show up in museums. This outfit is one of the first big outfits of the 1980s Cher, one of the first big concert dresses and it shows up often as the centerpiece of Bob Mackie and Cher exhibits (most recently here at the DIVA exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London) but it’s not well known outside of fan circles. The slim gown in contrast to the big headdress is stunning, her hair hanging down in a thick crimped ponytail piece in the back.
This is not a grandiose set. It has two curved staircases on either side (harking back to the C ramp on the Cher TV show and forward to the Believe tour) and also has a short tongue at the midway point of the stairs (reminiscent of the Cher show opening stage). Two young men help Cher down the staircase so she doesn’t fall over in her high heels. She starts stepping down at first chorus with the perfect timing of a hand out to a dancer. A dancer takes off the big headdress.
Dancers are dressed in white pants with suspenders and black shirts. The makeup is better, the shots are more professional, the vocals are practically perfect, the new confidence is stunning. “I’ve waited for this moment oh so long and now you’re mine.” She does a new glamour strut and a new point in combination with the hanging hand. She drops and grabs her wireless mic. Her arms and eyelids sparkle. She shows more visual muscle here than on her prior TV variety performances. She looks around, shakes her shoulders, lifts her chin, leans back, give us the Cher stare. These are all new pieces of performative flair picked up from Black Rose and Vegas and Hollywood and Broadway.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered (Stevie Wonder, 1970) (video)
The dancers help Cher make costume changes onstage for much of this show, which gives it a seamless flow later-day shows won’t have. “Hello my darling” she says to the dancer in the front of her as they take off and attach new parts of her dress. She pets his hair. He ostensibly rubs his face against her ostensibly bare torso. “Don’t do that,” she says, “If you’re gonna do that, please shave.” Like the Monte Carlo show, there are many vague sexual references (that took me many a year to understand while watching this show over and over again over the years (and the same can be said for live show jokes going all the way back to Sonny & Cher Live in 1971).
“And your roots are showing, too.” This is a very girl-to-girl comment indicating these dancers might be gay, which was still a scandalous concept in 1983 for the mainstream American cable audience. The dancers attach Cher with a glittery skirt made up of beaded strips. She then explains the show, how it’s “made up of little pieces, kind of schizophrenic. I made it up so sweets for the sweet.” (Cher quoting Shakespeare.) “If you don’t like one part, kind of relax and sit back and maybe something will come up that you really do like. And this is, uh, the beginning of the Cher show…right now.”
Here we are again with this delayed beginning announcement, which goes back to the 1978 TV special, this having an official beginning two songs in. What does it mean?
Cher has a new headdress on with crimped ponytails coming out of a sparkly space hat. The dress is skimpier than the live, shimmering Take-Me-Home glitter fit. The band is behind onstage, like in her Monte Carlo show. She does hand hanging, a kind of happy, hip rocking. When she sings “foolish things” she rocks her hand and drops and grabs her mic. She leans back, struts around and puts her elbow on the shoulder of the piano player. She twirls her fringe and does a knee bend. She does a new version of the tongue move. She impersonates May West at the end with “I’m yours.”
You Make My Dreams Come True (Hall & Oates, 1980) (video)
Remember, it was Hall & Oates who let Black Rose open for them. Everyone else Black Rose approached said no. We get a view of the tables in the audience of Las Vegas, a place Cher called the elephants graveyard at the time, where entertainers go to die.
Everything seems better in this show, more polished. The band, the backup singers. Cher really rocks this song and it shows how she can bridge rock and R&B. She does her strut dancing, the new pointing, some lip licks. It’s all very new and different but you can still recognize the old Cher in there. There are some great camera angles. She does a another knee bend and gives some new self-confident Cher faces.
Do You Think I’m Sexy (Rod Stewart, 1978)
I feel I got off to the wrong start with Rod Stewart with this song, to be honest. And Cher as Laverne performing it badly does not help. (I was kind of sorry he asked, all things considered.) Laverne comes on stage talking about being a bomb about to explode. She asks her own questions: “Does Eddie Haskell love the beaver?” (Racy!) Laverne dances badly, sings the song and says, “Charo would kill for these moves. Eat your heart out Rod.” Someone thankfully scratches the record to a stop.
Those Shoes (Eagles, 1979) (video)
While Cher does a costume change there is an interlude of dancers bringing out the big stiletto shoe, one of Cher’s great big state props (which also include a Trojan horse, a Venice canal boat and an African elephant). We see more audience shots. When the big shoe comes out we can see it’s also a slide! Cher can be seen at the top of the heel wearing a curly black wig and wearing a black sequined leotard. She writhes on the top of the heel and slides down while one of the singers does the first verse of the song. The dancer/singer gives Cher the mic and she does the second verse.
The dancers do simple moves but they are captivating nonetheless. The moves are erotic. Cher rides the male dancers, does sultry side bends. They’re wearing blue pants and suspenders now with black shirts. There are group hugs. Cher humps one of them. However sultry it gets, Cher calls all the shots. At one point, she grinds a heel into a dancer (ouch!), walks on him, knocks them over, and ties them up to the stiletto heel.
At the end the dancers slide into the toe. You can’t help but think, during this show, of modern admonitions regarding young women singers sexualizing their acts. Cher surely does this in the Caesars show but it’s complicated. There’s a balance to be had between self-exploitation and wanting to express power in sexuality. I feel Cher has always walked this thin line very well. (But I’m partial.)
Out Here On My Own (Irene Cara from the movie soundtrack Fame, 1980) (Video)
From the early 1980s, Cher has always had a casual outfit ballads as part her show. It’s where she sits on a stool and sings slower songs like this or “The Shoop Shoop Song” and “Just Like Jessie James” while dressed down in jeans and a top.
In this incarnation of the stool-song moment, Cher wears a shorter wig, not quite curly but with feathered volume. A shaggy looking thing. She wears a white sparkly, cutout shirt and matching white pants and short white or silver boots. This isn’t her most glamourous look but it does match her look as Dolly in Silkwood somewhat (with some bling added). The hole shirt is reminiscent of her hold fit in the Take Me Home tour, the same outfit that will make a comeback in the Heart of Stone and other 1980s and turn of the century shows.
She does some lip licks and really belts this one out. There is not a misstep or awkward moment. The band sounds great. This is no longer a 1970s torch song moment. She is reinventing her torch moment (although not completely because we’ll get another slow number later on with more of a torch feel to it). She’s giving the slow moment more muscle and yet still singing with vulnerability, Her look before the last “out here on my own” is powerful, as if to say “that’s the way it is” and the guitar ending is lovely. One of my favorite Cher performances of all time.
Take It To The Limit (Eagles, 1975) (Video)
Part two of the casual ballad segment, this is another one of my favorite Cher covers. She says, “this is one of my really favorite songs. It’s a song by the Eagles and we do it a lot differently than the Eagles do it so I don’t know.” She waves her hand in front of her sweating face. The song is actually not that different than the Eagles do it. But it is Cher perfection. She doesn’t yell all the way through it. She dramatically holds her hand up, lip licks, brushes hair from her face and emotes, “when there ‘aint no goddam thing to believe in.” She drops and catches the mic and sings back to the backup singers and the band.
The Male Impersonators
Again, like the lesser-seen Monte Carlos show, this was a very early drag performance for cable television. It was Vegas show but it was also middle-America television. Pretty remarkable.
The real Diana Ross has recorded the voice over. “Wait a minute. Hold on, Cher. Aren’t you forgetting about someone?”
Cher rolls up her white sleeves and squints into the spotlight. “How about friends?” Ross continues. We can see now that the back of Cher’s shirt is backless. Cher says, “I didn’t recognize your voice. I didn’t think think you were gonna be here until tomorrow.”
“That’s okay,” Ross says. Cher again, “If you’re coming out here, Diana. I’m changing my pants.” Ross quips, “That’s why I’m here.” Cher finishes with, “Ladies and gentlemen, my best friend, Diana Ross.”
Ross’ “I’m Comin Out” plays to big cheers as J.C. Gaynor comes out dressed as Diana Ross. Gaynor is wearing a similar dress as in the Monte Carlo show but a different color, white. Gaynor does all the Ross moves and lip syncs the song. Cher comes out in white dress with big feather at the back. Gaynor says goodbye with Diana Ross kisses.
Bette Midler’s “In the Mood” plays as Kenny Sasha does the voice over for Bette Midler. “You taught us women in the world of show business never wear a dress more than eight minutes and always show a new and unexpected body part each time.” Cher quips, “I am out of pants” and introduces Sasha as “The Devine Miss Bette Midler.” Sahsa comes out with the clipped walk and sass of early Bette Midler.
Cher comes back out in black, velvet gown with big winged shoulders and an open front down to the navel and pink satin underneath. Her wig is a curly updo.
Cher says, “No, no, I had a little velvet. My singer was available. I whipped it up. It’s nothing really. I had a few beads left over. I feel like Miss Philippines in this dress (she shakes her shoulder wings). I don’t know why. You know what? Diana, Bette and I have known each other for god eight years, nine years, something like that. And we have gotten into so much trouble.”
There is some comedy dialogue here cut from some versions of the show and I may have the order of the comedy, dresses and jokes mixed up.
“Midler” talks about the three of them sweating their tits off together. Cher asks “Midler” if she likes her dress. “It’s a gay drag,” Midler answers. Cher returns the shade: “How many unfortunate dalmatians had to do so you could wear that thing. Skinned puppies”.
“Midler” says, “Rumor has it you are a valley girl.” Cher says, “I am THE valley girl.” Midler quips, “Death valley girl. This crowd looks like it’s ready for a little bit of vulgarity. “Midler” goes into her Sophie Tucker story about being in bed with Ernie suddenly with new big boobs. What happened to her boobs, Ernie wants to know. They’ve suddenly got so large. Sophie says she has a magic mirror she spoke into that made her boobs a size 44. Ernie gets excited and goes to the mirror to “make my organ touch the floor.” Sophie says, “and his legs got shorter and shorter and shorter.” (That took me YEARS to get that joke.)
Cher comes out and begins to sing “Friends” (cover of Bette Midler, 1972) (video).
Cher sings the opening of the song, drawling out the word limousines. “Milder” sneaks up and pinches Cher in the ass. These two outfits do not go together well, but this whole segment is a real girlfriends moment. Bechdel test certified. The two of them hold hands, pull on each other, walk together, slow and fast, follow each other around. “Ross” comes out with the white fur and dress and they sing to each other and have fun. “Midler” and “Ross” walk up the staircase and wave goodbye.
As a reminder, the real Diana Ross and Bette Midler did not approve of this segment and it affected their friendships with Cher. Adding to the controversy was the fact that J.C. Gaynor was not an African American impersonator and this part of the act was basically blackface. This could be why the segments are not available online today.
The Cowboy Segment
Looking for Love (Johnny Lee from the Urban Cowboy movie soundtrack, 1980) (video)
The dancers are dressed as cowboys and cowgirls and Cher comes out in and over-the-top suede fringe ensemble, turquoise-trimmed halter top and silver and turquoise bracelet with a fringed pants. There are silver embellishments on her hat and a concho-like belt. her hair is braided up under her hat. Cher always looks great in a cowboy hat. She dances with a young cowboy, tips his hat. They dance hip to hip. Cher does a hand hang and plays with his scarf. They trade partners. There’s some jealousy at the end with another lady. Cher shrugs and moves on.
When Will I Be Loved (Linda Ronstadt, 1974) (video)
We go into more coordinated dancing here, hip rocking and, oh my, Cher on mechanical bull. “Ride ’em cowgirl” somebody shouts. The symbolic sex is hard to ignore, especially when the cowboy rides the bull with her.
Interlude
After a blackout, the dancers come back in purple pants and black shirts with white suspenders, very early 80s. Cher’s voice over singles out dancer Leslie, who finds herself alone on stage, Cher says she’s missing earrings and accuses dancer, Leslie insists Daryl has his ears pierced, too. Leslie decides this is a good time for a breakout moment to do “my song, my key” and she does a solo sultry dance alone. Then she walks up the stairs, looks around. Cher comes back as a voice over and says now she can’t find her brand name leather shoes (Margiela?). Leslie claims she just wanted to borrow them for a bar mitzvah and runs off stage screaming.
More than you know, (1929 from the musical Great Day) (video)
This is the show’s singular torch moment and Kenny Sasha as Bette Midler returns to introduce Cher as JPC or Just Plain Cher, a moniker she was using at the time somewhat ironically. Cher wears a violet gown and headcap with a big apparatus flowing to the side of the shoulderless gown. She wears violet gloves. Cher does the torch thing where she looks down and almost seems to be crying by the end.
This is a recurring song for Cher having done it previously on episode 6 of the Sonny &Cher Comedy Hour in 1971, episode 49 of the same show in the 1973/4 season, episode 21 of the later-day Sonny & Cher Show in the 1976/77 season and in 1979 in the TV Special Cher…and Other Fantasies.
Who does Cher think about when she sings this song?
Fame (from the Fame move soundtrack, 1980)
We begin with the interlude of the dance audition (video)
The dancers are all now in dance workout outfits and a Cher voice over calls them forward. They audition some complicated combinations to “Fame.” Cher finally says, “You can relax. You all got the job” and she tells them to report back tomorrow for 9 a.m. to start rehearsals. “One last question. What do you expect to get outa this?” Cher asks.
“Fame!” they all shout. They do some tight dancing on this show and the Kenny Ortega choreography always looks all of a piece.
Cher sings “Fame” (video).
Cher comes back out at the top of the stairs in a big skirt with an off-the-shoulder gold top and tall gold boots. She comes down and dances a while as she sings and the dancers take off her skirt and then they fly her over their arms. They dance together as a group, turn round as a group.
As an outro, Cher makes a final important statement (which is missing from Cher’s YouTube version as well):
“Now before we go I have to make two introductions and this is kind of difficult because these two people are really good friends of mine and they portray two really good friends also. But well, the ones that they portray are ladies and these guys are guys. So it gets a little weird but we’re adults. We can handle it, I’m sure. As Miss Diane Ross, the boss, Mr, JC Gaynor.” (Gaynor comes out from the top of the stairs and takes a bow). “Last but certainly least, the mover, the groover, the penicillin kid, as the Divine Bette Midler, Kenny Butch Sashsa!” (He also comes out, claps back and forth and takes a bow). ” What a man!”
“Now I’m gonna go but before I do I just have one little thing to say and that is if you should think about me…I mean, not that you spend your whole life thinking about me but if I should just, you know, pop into your mind, maybe you’ll remember that I wasn’t just the cover of the National Enquirer. Good night and God bless you.”
The dancers take bows and they form a line with Cher. Cher turns her back to gesture the band, (very Sonny & Cher concert-segment like) and they all take bows again. There is a short synchronized dance. As “Fame” plays, there are light pops. Cher sings, “Remember, remember, remember…. ” and a video of her rising up into the sky with her arms up.
She’s gonna live forever, see?
