Director: P. David Ebersole
Created by: Cher
Executive Producers: Cher, Todd Hughes, P. David Ebersole, Risa Shapiro, Tanya Lopez (Apis Productions)
Writer: P. David Ebersole
Makeup: Leonard Engelman
Hair: José Eber (remember him?) and Serena Radaelli
Costumes/Stylist: Paulette Howell
Assistants: Debbie Paull and Jennifer Ruiz
On Camera Band: Ollie Marland (keyboards from Farewell tour), Mark Schulman (drums from Farewell tour), Justin Derrico (guitar), Alexander (Sasha) Krivtsov (bass)
Aired: Lifetime (6 May 2013)
Ad for the special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTQKgzX_cLc

This was the second documentary special for Cher. Like 1998’s Sonny and Me: Cher Remembers, this was an interview and clip show, a sort of memorial for her mother while she was still alive, ostensibly to support the release of Georgia’s long-lost country album, Honky Tonk Woman. It was Georgia’s lifelong dream to release the album and her family helped her to do so with this special (Chaz, Elijah, Georganne, Georgia’s longtime partner Craig Spencer and Cher).

But looking back, the special is the perfect companion special to Cher’s 2024 memoir (part one) because it includes and expands on many of the same stories from the memoir about Cher’s early childhood and Georgia’s life story, but includes many, many more pictures.

I had this blog when the special came out and so I reviewed my notes for that while creating this page. In the 23 May 2013 blog post I comment that “I have to say, my two favorite Cher things in the world are Cher albums and Cher TV specials” and I talk about my “childhood excitement, a feeling of suspended time” while watching Cher TV specials (way back to 1979) “and then a slight sad fretting that the special would be over in one short hour.” I compare it to Proust’s madeleine experience in the novel, In Search of Lost Time. 

In the blog review I say I watched the special three times and really enjoyed seeing all the pictures and hearing the family stories. I got the psychic dream wrong with the blown-up great-grandfather. It was his wife who had the dream, not his daughter. I mention wanting to hear more about the family psychics, the family depression and the complexity of grandma Lynda. In the special we don’t hear about Georgia’s experience of almost being murdered by her father. I also wrote about wanting to hear more about Johnny Sarkisian, Sonny’s reaction to threats from Georgia and sturdier timelines of the childhood travels of Cher and Georgia. We never do hear the awful cat story. But all of this is elaborated on in Cher’s memoir.

I also express confusion about the spelling of LaPiere. Georganne’s name is labeled Georganne Lapiere Bartylak (no space, small p) but husband #5 is labeled Gilbert La Piere (space and a big P). Gilbert’s own obit spells the name LaPiere. Some Cher biographies have the spelling with two r’s: La Pierre.

Cher’s Childhood

The special starts with baby pictures of Cher with a live announcer saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the one, the only, CHER!” And Cher talks about feeling like a bumper car and how her mother influenced her in that.

Cher is seen with long hair, big, silver hoop earrings and a pink, zippered sweatshirt. In other shots (which look like they’re taken from Cher’s Malibu house), Cher has her knee raised up and you can see paisley casual pants. Georgia Holt is on a coach with a white jacket talking about being a survivor of some tough things but that Cher is braver and stronger. “I think I gave her the start.”

Cher then talks about the women in the family are all big criers and nervous and delicate but we’re tough.”

They show Cher winning her Oscar. (Wow, what a year of great female performances that was.) Cher says she didn’t have it together. Didn’t think she’d win and only something her mother told her held her speech together.

Cher talks about how supportive Georgia was when it didn’t seem likely Cher would ever amount to anything. She tells the “you’re not the most beautiful, talented, smartest but you’re special” story. You see Cher’s bed in the background.

They show a clip of Cher singing the Ray Charles song “Georgia” from a solo spot on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.

The Family Tells Georgia Holt’s Story

Cher’s sister Georganne starts by taking us back to the 1920s and Georgia not being able to attain the singing career she wanted “but then has a daughter who goes on to have a career that no one could even dream.” Georganne is in a black leather jacket and a white shirt underneath. Sometimes she’s interviewed wearing a lime green sweater.

Cher’s son Chaz talks about how beautiful Georgia is, how she’s “still hot.” Georganne talks about walking down Hollywood Boulevard once and Georgia being in a nice suit and hat and someone coming up to her and asked her if she was a movie star. Georganne talks about her mother’s carriage and her bearing. “She looks like she is somebody.”

Elijah Allman talks about how youthful Georgia is and how she is the “light giver” and the “light healer” in the family. “There is a clairvoyance about her, a wisdom I see in her…a deep wisdom.” He wears sunglasses throughout the interview.

Cher talks about seeing Ray Charles sing the song “Georgia” for the first time and they show a photo of Cher singing with Ray Charles on the Cher show.

Georgia says she was Jackie Jean Crouch (which she thought was a cute name) when she moved to California and the locals called her a “dumb Oakie.” So when she started drama school, she changed her name in honor of a best friend who had just died who was born in Pelham, Georgia. So Jackie became Georgia Pelham. The surname Holt came about because that man (who is given no first name in this special) was the surname of the last man she married. “Holt was the last man I married.”

Cher calls it a “strange American story” (but it’s probably not really all that unusual,) coming from nothing and struggling to “carve out a life.” (There are a lot of stories out there.) In the couch scenes Cher is wearing a patterned top or wrap with long hair and long turquoise earrings. The three women, Cher, Georgia and Georganne are sitting on the couch, quite far apart.

They start talking about Georgia’s family, her grandfather on her mother’s side. “He was quite mean.”  She starts to say he was crazy about animals and Georgia’s mother (his daughter) had trained a little kitten. Georganne exclaims this is a horrible story and Cher tells Georgia to start with another story instead and therefore the cat story is never told. But Cher tells a terrible cat story in the memoir. Maybe that’s the same horrible cat story. They all laugh when Cher asks her to tell the story of the grandfather blowing himself up.

These couch scenes are my favorite. Three girls having a funny and intimate conversation. An aside: there’s an amazing three-woman scene in The Mary Tyler Moore Show that this three-girls-on-a-couch reminds me of, an unusually long scene in the episode “Rhoda the Beautiful” which is on my mind, because I just saw the episode the week of writing this. The scene starts at about the 15.07 mark and lets Mary, Rhoda and Phyllis just have a wonderful, typical bedroom scene together. There’s a kind of magic that happens with three women. And the relationship between Mary and Rhoda itself (particularly in this episode and my favorite Mary Tyler Moore Show episode, “Some of My Best Friends are Rhoda“) is unlike anything else ever seen on television.

Anyway, Georgia starts in the middle of the grandpa-gets-blown-up story (which is an incredible, emblematic story) and doesn’t proceed with it so Cher takes it over. She starts by saying “Grandma Lyn” and her mother “had those dreams” and she’s talking about clairvoyant dreams. “Grandma Lyn dreamed I was gonna be born” and Georganne chimes in to say “they were psychic.”

Georgia says her grandmother told her daughter, (Lynda, Georgia’s mother), “I had a dream about your father and I dreamed he came down in little pieces in the air. Isn’t that strange?” The next day he was in fact blown up.

Cher explains they were dynamiting on the railroad and his job was to blow up stumps and he “misdiagnosed his dynamite. He blew himself up and came down in little pieces.”

Georgia says her grandmother “tried to run the farm by herself but couldn’t do it.”

Georgia starts to tell “another horror story” about when her mother Lynda was nursing her brother Mickey and her father Roy came in drunk. They joke about these stories and Cher says, “we can walk the narrow razor edge of white trash only so long.”  The story goes that Georgia’s grandmother was visiting when this happened. When the drunk Roy moved to hit the nursing Lynda, the little 5’2″ grandma told her son-in-law Roy, “if you come near my my child, I’m gonna hurt you.”  And he didn’t stop so “she cracked off this old ginger ale bottle…and shoved it into his face.” “My little grandmother was a tough cookie,” Georgia says, “and she wasn’t gonna let anybody hurt her kid.”

We learn Georgia’s birth day and place in 1926 in Kensett, Arkansas. Her father (Roy) was 21 and her mother (Lynda) was only 13.

Cher says there is “Cherokee Indian through her entire family” and that Cher didn’t meet her but Georgia loved her grandmother (Cher’s great-grandmother) who taught Georgia the Rabbit Dance and the War Dance. She was a quarter or a half Cherokee, Cher says. Cher comments about singing the song “Half Breed.” And they show Cher singing the song on TV in her Half Breed regalia.

Georgia talks about Roy being the smallest in his family and his mother would severely beat him for talking back. “So Daddy grew up to be a really mean alcoholic” but sweet and funny when he was sober. His idols were Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde. Cher says, “He was very much a bad boy” with a “cocky attitude.” But he maintained a childlike personality throughout a horrible life. Georganne and Georgia comment this is much like Georgia. Georgia says they are all three like that.

Georgia says Roy started her singing when she was five years old and she had to practice everyday before being allowed to play. Roy told her she was the best singer, that “Judy Garland can’t sing as good as you.” It was the depression and everyone was broke. They would make 16 cents at saloons and nightclubs and she would make lots of nickels and Georgia tells the story about her pants being full of nickels and falling off. All these stories are also in Cher’s Memoir, Part One, but Cher says that this is the first time she’s heard the nickels-in-the-pants story and Georganne agrees.

Georgia says her Aunt Zella wanted to adopt her when she was 12 when she had won the Arkansas State Championship for singing. (There’s a story in the memoir about Cher meeting up with Aunt Zella as teenager and Aunt Zella doing some really racist stuff that breaks Cher’s heart.) Georgia tells the story about how it was Bob Wills’ encouragement that sent Roy and Georgia to Los Angeles to make it big.

(Btw, there is a big mural of Bob Wills in my family’s home seat of Roy, New Mexico, because he lived there once.)

Roy and Georgia hitchhiked and a middle-aged couple took them to L.A., They show scenes from the movie Paper Moon and Georgia says that movie reminds her of her childhood, although Georgia was much more obedient. She said her Dad was fun and that the experience was fun but she would get sleepy a lot from singing all night.

Cher asks what part of L.A. they ended up in. Roy got a job at Clifton’s Cafeteria and Georgia spent a lot of time there because Roy was afraid to leave her in hotel rooms. They lived “down below Main Street and San Petro down to Central Avenue…It was kinda the slums and that’s where we lived. It was just awful. I cannot tell you. You just can’t imagine it. I had lice in my hair….and I remember thinking one night…I will not live this way.”

The Marriages Begin

We see Georgia pretending to record “Movin’ On” and maybe this was to kind of make a promotional video for it. The “on-camera” band is behind her. The album was recorded with Elvis’ backing band (the TCB band) a few years after Elvis died.

Cher and Georgia talk about how in Georgia’s day you couldn’t sleep with your boyfriends. You had to get married first. (Or at least Georgia did.) Georgia calls herself “a professional virgin until she was 18.” (I didn’t realize you should be getting paid for that. I have questions.)  Georganne kids Georgia that this is just meant to be for the first time, the first husband. “They didn’t mean every time!” Cher says she will let that be Georgia’s excuse only three marriages, “but that’s it” and they all laugh.

“You have to know that Daddy drilled that into my head because mother wasn’t there,” Georgia says in her defense. “Don’t you ever let a man touch you, ever, ever, ever unless you’re married.” (Did Roy and Lynda subscribe to this advice?)

Cher tells us that Georgia married her birth father, John Sarkisian (Johnny in the memoir), twice but never really liked him. “He was shorter than me,” she says. She didn’t like dancing with short men. (That’s too bad.) They met at a Harry James dance. Her blouse got stuck with his shirt and “I couldn’t get loose from him.” He talked her into a Reno wedding and then into “trying it” for three months. “He was a very good talker.” She left but then found out she was pregnant. Her psychic mother knew before she did. Her mother insisted she get an abortion.

The show “back alley” abortion statistics during the Great Depression, which killed 5,000 women a year.

Georgia recounts her feelings on that day and how she couldn’t go through with it so her mother sent her back to Sarkisian. “So…that’s how she’s here.” Georgia was 19.

Sarkisian, we learn, was a truck driver “from a first generation Armenian family.” Because this is Georgia’s documentary, we don’t learn much else about Sarkisian’s genealogy.

Georgia recounts the pressure to name Cher. Cher picked a mashup of her movie-star idol Lana Turner and her daughter’s name Cheryl and her mother’s name Lynda: Cherilyn. They don’t mention Sarkisian’s drinking, gambling and employment problems, but skips to being in Scranton with him and Sarkisian suggesting they put Cher in a Catholic home until they could get on their feet. Cher fills in the details in her memoir. Georgia tells of working at a dinner on the night shift for a dollar a day. After two weeks, she tried to retrieve Cher but the Mother Superior wouldn’t let Cher go with her and pressured Georgia to put Cher up for adoption. She had to get someone on the City Council to help her.

Cher and Georgia talk about how helpless women were in those days.  Georgia and Lynda ended up going to Reno together to get two divorces. There are more clips of Georgia singing “Movin’ On.” Georgia’s parents had never told her she was pretty but then her mother encouraged her to enter a beauty contest in Reno, which she won. She then won an L.A. beauty contest called Holiday on Wings and had her picture in the paper for 17 days.

She then started drama school on a scholarship. She felt like big things were coming.

She said she was married to Chris Alcaide “for twenty minutes.” He was an assistant manager of The Palladium and they were both in drama school. They skip talking about the wealth man Georgia was engaged to before Alcaide but that man wanted her to ditch the kid (this from Cher’s memoir). Alcaide was a 6’4″ guy who bonded with Cher immediately. But he was too jealous so…

At that time Georgia found a “big agent” and got some TV work on I Love Lucy and Ozzy and Harriet. Lucy liked Georgia, she says, because Georgia had dark red hair at the time. The joke of the modelling scene was that models in Paris were wearing outfits made of burlap. Georgia said she would get walk-on parts for Lucy’s shows every few months.

They tell about the Asphalt Jungle audition (“pad your bra”) and the career-breaking part Georgia had and then lost to newcomer Marilyn Monroe.

Cher talks about all the actors and models she grew up around and how beautiful they all were, how artistic. They show a film reel of all their friends which included Robert Mitchem and Stuart Whitman. Elijah tells us how she hung out with Lenny Bruce and Noah Dietrich, “all those cool, leftist fringe, hipster characters.” Cher tells us Georgia’s friends hit marijuana up in the yard tree. Georganne says nobody smoked pot in those days. Cher and Georgia talk about how square Georgia was. Cher: “For a wild woman, she’s pretty straight.”

Marriage #3 was to John Southall, who Cher describes in her memoir as her only Dad. It was love at first sight (first time) for Georgia and Cher related to Southall because he had dark skin and hair. Cher calls him wonderful and handsome. Cher talks about how hard it was for her when Georganne was born and how sympathetic Southall was to her lonely plight. They all agreed he was super-sweet but had a drinking problem and Georgia felt they were better off on their own.

Georganne talks about how great Georgia’s birthday parties for the girls were, tying balloons and lollipops in the tree and Cher talks about the time they had to live with their Grandparents while Georgia was getting back on her feet.

Cher says that for all the times Georgia was married, there were never really men around that much. Cher calls it a tribe of women. Georganne talks about there being no social programs in those days for single moms.

(I love all the photos of Cher and Georganne.)

Husband #4 was Joe Collins. He is explained more in the memoir. He gets no discussion here at all. But he was wealthy and had them living in Beverly Hills with a pool. They all liked him and the Beverly Hills lifestyle but he was not, as it turns out, sexually compatible with Georgia.

Husband #5 was Gilbert La Piere. He was another wealthy husband, a Wall Street banker and he took them to live in New York City. He then moves back to Los Angeles when Georgia wants to go home. Cher calls him very “Father Knows Best” and that Georgia was not in love with him (although they are together a long time and in the memoir Georgia is devastated when La Piere leaves her for one of her girlfriends). Cher loved her life in New York City and she talks more about it in the memoir. La Piere wanted security for the girls, Georganne says, and so he legally adopted them. Cher says in her memoir that she never liked the name Cher La Piere because it rhymed. But Georganne kept the name.

Here we go into Georganne’s acting career. Clips are shown with Georganne from Ozzie’s Girls (with Mark Harmon) and General Hospital (where she originated the mean-girl character of Heather). She also lists her other “cheesy TV” credentials on Fantasy Island, Welcome Back, Kotter, Happy Days, T. J. Hooker, Police Woman and The Streets of San Francisco (a clip is shown of being gunned down). No mention is made of her love life with Paul Stanley or Michael Madsen. (She could probably write a memoir herself.)

This is a section we will call Gee TV:

Georgia talks about Cher’s arrest when she is 13 and they they show a picture of Johnnies Pastrami in L.A., which Mr. Cher Scholar walks by and recognizes and says, “Johnnies Pastrami!”

Georgia wants to talk about Cher’s arrest. Georganne and Cher think Georgia is jumping around stories too much but Georgia thinks the story is funny. Georganne divulges that Cher was taking her for rides in the car when Cher was only 13. Georgia confirms that Cher would cruise down  Hollywood Boulevard with Georganne when she was only 13. Cher explains the arrest story and they show the famous fake Cher mugshot (not even the same era/age of pictures!). Cher tells us here (like in the memoir) about how her mother would freak out for minor infractions, but not major ones.

Enter Sonny

Cher tells the story of how she lied to her mother that she was living with a stewardess but was really living with Sonny. They show scenes from the TV movie And the Beat Goes On from 1999, which was based on Sonny’s 1991 memoir. (This seems odd since it wasn’t a very Cher-flattering movie.) Georgia dramatically re-enacts Cher’s reaction of the kitchen scene in the infamous surprise visit. “There’s nothing to find. You don’t have to sneak through my things.”

Georgia says she was bothered because Sonny was so much older than Cher was. Georgia’s doctor told her not make a big deal about the relationship, that this would only drive them together more, but Georgia ultimately decided to threaten Sonny with jail and she took Cher to Arkansas. This is all relayed in the memoir in more detail.

It famously didn’t work Cher says, “It was so dramatic. I kicked my window screen in….I wanted to somehow show some defiance….I walked out and went to live with Sonny. She kind of just accepted it.”

Clips are show from Sammy Davis, Jr. introducing Sonny & Cher on Hullabaloo in 1965 and scenes from Good Times Georgia talks about how proud she was when she visited the set of that movie. “I was so proud, so proud. Here my kid’s a movie star, you know….It was thrilling. That’s my kid.” They don’t show any other footage from the Sonny & Cher era. Nothing from the 1970s except the picture of them all together on the boat.

They then show scenes from Moonstruck, Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Silkwood and Mermaids.

Of acting Cher says, “you bring who you are completely to a character and then you try to slip inside of it and it’s like an outfit. You get inside and if it fits, it fits.” She says of Mermaids, “we did that movie after my mom.” They took pictures of Georgia’s outfits and modified them. Cher says for her Georgia was the inspiration for Mrs. Flax. “My mother was always kind of flirty and naive…and she decided what was appropriate for her… and didn’t care very much what people thought.”

They show a photo Cher talks about in her memoir, one of Georgia kissing the ground in L.A. after they moved back from New York City.

Cher says, “I feel the same way.” They show footage of Cher’s “Turn Back Time” video. “I kinda care what people think but not enough to change what I wanna do.”

Cher says she always tells Georganne, “don’t worry about mom; she always gets what she wants.”

Georgia Holt’s Latter-Day Careers

They start playing “Take Me Home” and show an alternate version of the Viking outfit that looks way less smooth, like its gilded with gold pipe cleaners. (What is this from?)

The skip over husband #6 completely (must be a bad story there somewhere) and jump to Craig Spencer and his appearances with Georgia on 1970s talk shows where Georgia is always introduced as “Cher’s mother.” The big story seemed to be that Georgia was 51 and dating a much younger man (30). So this older woman/younger man drama actually predates Cher. Cher calls John Southall and Craig Spencer the loves of Georgia’s life.

Chaz comments that Spencer is “the one guy she didn’t marry she was with the longest.” Cher says Spencer was young but Georgia always looked younger than she was. Georganne said to see them together was to forget about the age difference. Georgia said she got a chance to be a younger person with Spencer and did not always have to be ladylike. “And I laughed with him so much…we just had a ball together.” (She speaks of them in the past tense but apparently they stayed together until her death in December of 2022).

Spencer sits down to continue the conversation with the family on the couch. They say together that the story used to be older woman/younger man and that now it’s just older woman/older man. (These two are cute!) A clip is shown of the couple on one of Oprah Winfey’s shows and Georgia is saying the only issue with the relationship was that she couldn’t stay up until 1 or 2 am in the morning anymore like he could.

Spencer says it was “just something that clicked and it clicked really strong.” A clip is shown of him talking about meeting Georgia at the quilt shop she opened in Brentwood in the late 1970s called Granny’s Cabbage Patch. Georgia says the name came from the myth that babies came from the cabbage patch.

Geoganne and Cher talk about Georgia’s first grandchild Chaz. Cher said it was like a gift, “Christmas everyday…so much fun.” Cher talks in the memoir about Georgia not speaking to her around the time of Chaz’s birth but here Georgia says, “I was thrilled. She was so cute and so tiny. Yeah, we were all really tickled.” Chaz says he has always been really close to Georgia. “She’s always been there for me. She always accepted me. She was the first person in the family that I came out to” and how she didn’t have as much of hard time with Chaz transitioning as other people in the family. “She said I just don’t know a lot about it. Is there a magazine I can subscribe to.”

Elijah talks about his role in the family being “a little bit of an instigator and, you know, a challenger.” It’s interesting he verbalizes this as a role and not a core identity impulse. Georgia says, “Elijah was a pistol….someone who’s got a lot of fire and fun.”

They then talk about Georgia’s nightclub act. Craig and Georgia talk about the origins of the nightclub act. Georgia says it all started with her singing in the kitchen while cooking, Craig says it was her singing after sex (but you can’t tell if he’s joking here or not). Craig told her to start singing again. She thought she was too old (50). “You just don’t start singing at 50. You just don’t.”

I remember finding the referenced 1978 People Magazine feature on Georgia. It was one of the first Cher-related magazines at my local library in St. Louis (Thornhill branch, across from the high school) after I learned how to look up periodicals in those big green books. I still have the photocopy of the article.

Georganne says Craig gave her mom the courage, support and motivation she needed and it wouldn’t have happened without him, similar Georganne says, to the courage “Sonny gave to my sister.”

Cher says she didn’t think of Georgia’s nightclub act as a professional thing but also not quite a hobby.  They show Georgia on The Mike Douglas Show talking about her act and Cher calling in and how they previously discussed what Georgia should wear, Mike Douglas wants to know what advice Cher has given Georgia. Cher said it was “not to wear old lady clothes” and Georgia laughs. They discuss what Georgia ended up wearing and Cher says, “not that awful thing with the flowers on it” (it’s actually very pretty.) Someone asks Georgia if she sounds like Cher and Georgia quips, “well because I’m the oldest, she sounds like me.” Spencer says Georgia has the same resonance and register in her voice as Cher does.

Personally, I think if Cher sings like Georgia, Georganne talks like her, that fast-clipped speech they both have.

It turns out Honky Tonk Woman was recorded in 1980. [I thought it was earlier.]  It was recorded at a friend’s studio in Westlake with the Elvis band four years after he died. [I also thought it was sooner after Elvis died.]  The TCB band had been working as studio musicians. Everyone talks about how good they were.

Someone took the album to the L.A. country radio station KLAC who heard two hits on the album. Georgia was offered a 5-year contract where she would get 50% and Spencer wouldn’t let her sign it (Georgia’s words). He was afraid Georgia would be overworked. Georganne said it seemed like the right decision because they “all expected something else to come along.” But “that was the end of it,” Georgia said. Georganne talks about what a huge disappointment it was to both of them. Spencer still seems torn about the decision. “Whose to know,” he said. But then “fifty percent of something is better than fifty percent of nothing.”

“That dream went back to when I was seven or eight years old,” Georgia says and Spencer says it was “like history repeating itself. The second time around it was even more devastating.” Georgia says, “You get this close to your dream and then it’s gone.”

She couldn’t sing after that. “I just stopped. I lost all my zest for everything. I just became a royal pain.”  She couldn’t even go on having fun with Spencer anymore, she says. (But he must have hung in there.)

Georgia found the tapes 30 years later and miraculously they were usable. They had been sitting in three different Palm Desert garages, Georganne says where it’s 120 degrees in the summer and Cher says they shouldn’t have survived even if they were stored someplace cool.

For Georgia’s birthday, Cher had them remastered. Georgia says she was “tickled” to hear them again. They show Georgia lip syncing to “I Sure Don’t Want to Love You.”

Georgia had a friend who offered to “bake them” because they were crinkled. “I was back on cloud nine just to hear it again,” Georgia says. They talk about starting a career at age  86. Cher talks about the arbitrariness of “the cut off” age. You don’t have to grow up, Cher insists. Georgia says, “It happened the way it was supposed to, just the way it was supposed to.” She and Spencer talk about Georgia’s hopes when she was little.

Neither Cher nor Georgia remember recording their duet, “I’m Just Your Yesterday.” Cher doesn’t remember the song, how she got involved or doing the song. Georgia says to her the song is about a mother singing to her daughter. Georgia tells us she always told Cher she wanted her to “be somebody” and they show a picture of Cher and Georgia on the night Cher was getting her hands and footprints put in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater.  Georgia says her father always said it to her. Interestingly, in the Oscar speech Cher says that she doesn’t know if she is somebody but that maybe she’s on her way. Contrast that to the speech Cher gave at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in the fall of 2024 where she tells all the women in the audience, “you are somebody,” passing that idea out us like a mantra from Mama Cher.

Then Cher and Georgia lip sync their duet. (They may be also singing along. Cher alludes to this in the extra footage. But nevertheless, the singing maps to the record and you see them messing up the lip sync and laughing about it.) Cher looks great in her cowboy hat and turquoise.

Cher talks about her mother’s dream going from age 6 to 86.

Elijah tells Georgia he loves and is happy for her and Chaz talks about giving back and taking care of Georgia now. Geoganne says the women in their family are like cats with nine lives, “we just keep coming back.”

The special ends with Cher calling Georgia “a mover and a shaker. She was before her time.”

 

The Title Cards of Husbands & The Last One

 

Special Features/Extra Footage: There’s another 30 minutes on the DVD of Cher interviewing her mom in Woodshed Recording Studio in Malibu. It’s called Georgia: the 85th Birthday Video by Cher. There is more lip synching to “Love Me Tender.” There are more pictures of Georgia and the family.

Georgia says she cried for six months when the album “went down the tubes….it was the dream of my life.”

They delve more of Georgia’s story, how she started at 5 or 6 in Oklahoma City of WKY radio and in saloons and bars. Cher jokes, “so you were a six year old tart.”

Georgia says it was the deep depression, people were starving. Cher asks questions. Georgia says she was 9 or 10 when Bob Wills encouraged them to move to L.A., told Roy that Georgia would make him rich. They moved in the dead of winter. A Greyhound bus driver picked them up when they had no money and paid for a night in a hotel for them.  At age 12 Georgia sang with Jimmy and His Saddle Pals at KRKD in Los Angeles. She said she sang a lot of old songs, some Elvis songs, too. All her father knew how to do was to take Georgia to amateur singing contests. He really didn’t know how to break her into show business. “He was just a baker from Arkansas.”

Georgia’s singing strikes me as glamourous without Cher’s unique, kind of distant attitude. Georgia seems too measured where Cher is much more loose.

Georgia said it was really her “Daddy’s dream” for her to be a singer and that she would sing at school events.  Cher says she likes the song “I Sure Don’t Want to Love You.” Georgia doesn’t like it as much. “Movin’ On” is Georgia’s favorite.

Cher says that after Georgia’s friend baked the old tapes, Cher thought they needed more work. They talk about the difference between country today and Hank Williams. Cher says country has “moved on to make room” for other kinds of music. Cher says there are great performers now and that country goes “into rock and roll, into everything.”

Cher says she remembers falling off the stage once. (When was this?) Georgia says, “I can’t sing like I could” and Cher disagrees. “Trust me, I’ve been doing this for a long time.” She and Paulette (off camera) calculate how long Cher has been doing this. They decide it’s been 47 years.

They show Georgia and Cher singing “I’m Just Your Yesterday” again. When Cher puts her arm around Georgia protectively it reminds me of when Cher put her arm around Sonny on Late Night with David Letterman in 1987. Cher shows the same sentimental look. Cher does some mugging to the song. She looks very proud of her mom in another shot.

There are photos of Cher fluffing Georgia’s hair for the segment (very sweet), them laughing, Cher coaching Georgia. After the credits finish Georgia says of the making of the special, “It’s been great…one of the biggest fun times of my life.” Cher says “you’re gonna have to work now, mom” and Georgia says, “I’m gonna have to get in shape.”

 

Highlights: I’m not sure anything big came of the Honky Tonk Woman CD and this special for Georgia, like job offers, but this special is a real treasure to have for both Cher’s family and her fans.

More info:

Birth dates:
Georgia Holt: 9 June 1926
Cher: 20 May 1946
Chastity Sun Bono: 4 March 1969
Elijah Blue Allman: 10 July 1976