Producer: Jørn Winter and Ernest D. Glucksman
Director: Jørn Winter
Writers: Sandy Baron, Neal Marshall
Created by: Sandy Baron, Neal Marshall, David Winters
Musical Director: Don Randi (a member of the Wrecking Crew and he played piano their album Look at Us)
Choreographer: Joe Cassini
Makeup: Carol Davidson, Pat Burrows
Wardrobe Consultant: Joan Sutton
Wardrobe Fashions: Fashion Council
Hair: Michael Kluthe Salon, Adrian Hoffman, Alex Hayward
Aired: sometime unknown in early 1971. Some online sources cite the year 1970 but the date at the end of the credits is 1971 and Sonny references the year 1971 in the special. Unknown network, but likely CBS.

Supporting Cast

  • Billy Van
  • Suzanne Charney
  • Sandy Baron
  • Geralyn (Holmes?)

Some mention this special as a pilot for The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour that aired later in the year as a summer replacement series. Others consider this a free-standing special. It’s not as connected to its counterpart as the 1975 Cher special was it its related series. Only Billy Van makes it to the later-day series.

The DVD has some useless and annoying features like silly pop-up video-like trivia subtitles, but it also has more material than the previously released VHS video.

Opening: “We’ve Only Just Begun” (Video)
Cover of the Carpenters (1970)
Sonny & Cher walk toward each other from separate parts of the stage, which is pink floor overlaid with a circular pattern of white lace. Behind them are blue stairs and a blue background with a pink hearts projected behind them and two round bonsai-looking trees in the background. Was this a Valentine’s Day special? Mr. Cher Scholar quipped that the big doily stage looks like it’s in need of a giant teacup.

Sonny wears a black tux and the bowtie he’s been sporting lately. Cher wears thick German braids and what looks to Mr. Cher Scholar like an Eastern European wedding dress. She still looks like a teenager still. Sonny wears his hair combed to the side instead of bangs.

In this special, Cher is on the left and Sonny stands on the right. I asked Mr. Cher Scholar, a former improv stage director, to explain to me why this felt so off-putting. Was it because all the other shows got us used to Cher standing on the right? Mr. Cher Scholar didn’t really know but proffered up the theory that because we read from left to right (even on stage), we land our look on the right. He said it’s good to land finally on the person who is more interesting to look at (i.e. Cher) so she should be on the right. Maybe the Comedy Hour producers figured this out before that show began. And if Sonny and Cher had to switch sides at that point, was that awkward after so many years? Quickly perusing through YouTube stills of 1960s performances, Cher is often, but not always, on the left. But in early videos it’s much less noticeable, which leads me to believe it was the influence of the later-day variety shows on our ideas about how 1970s-era Sonny & Cher should be configured.

Sonny says this special is about the Battle of the Sexes. Sonny & Cher then bicker about billing order in the title and as they do, the titles change from “The Sonny & Cher Nitty Gritty Hour” (says Sonny) to “The Cher & Sonny Nitty Gritty Comedy Hour” (says Cher).

The do some banter from their live album, the bit about Sonny wanting to sing alone, promising not to upstage Cher, Cher saying she’s not worried. The do the “You’re gonna get it tonight” (Sonny) and “You’re not (Cher) joke which Mr. Cher Scholar says is shockingly blue. I forget how sexual the 1971 Live album was because most of it went over my head when I was nine.

Sonny says, “Cher sings. I’m the sex symbol.” They argue about how to introduce the guests and Sonny keeps mumbling the name of the actress named Geralyn so we have no idea what her last name is. The cast isn’t included in the closing credits either. Boo.

It talks a while for the audience to warm up to their jokes. The act is rough here and their comedic timing is still a bit slow.

I Got You Babe (Sonny & Cher, 1965) (Video)
Sonny and Cher sit in round, white modern chairs with red leatherish seats. Cher wears a white Indian-style dress or pantsuit and her hair in a braid to one side. Sonny wears a  turtle neck and a gray suit (is that jacket fur trimmed? I can’t tell.) There’s a joke about them being more Abbott and Costello than Romeo and Juliet.  They’re seated like its the Elvis comeback special, surrounded by people behind them. Some audience members have pink balloons. They show fake candid photos promoting the new Sonny & Cher mythology.

Pictures include recreations of Sonny & Cher:

  • with their respective dates in a car,
  • with their dates at dinner, complete with Sonny’s anachronistic mustache and Cher eyeing Sonny while ignoring her date,
  • coming back to an apartment laughing with groceries
  • Cher pouring a cup of sugar as Sonny claims he moved into an apartment in the same building as Cher and he would go over to ask for a cup of sugar as a flirting strategy.  He says “after a few weeks she finally went out with me.” This is egregiously not what happened.
  • Sonny and Cher out on a romantic dinner.

Sonny claims he was the “suave continental type.”

We also see legitimate photos of Sonny & Cher at their St. Cloud house in Bel Air, including Sonny’s piano (in the garage or basement, does anybody know?).

These are some of my favorite pictures of Sonny and Cher.

Already this “behind the scenes” feature is developed for them. After the photo reel, they start to sing “I Got You Babe” but Cher misses her cue. She grabs Sonny’s hand. Sonny maintains his interjections to Cher to “talk about it!” They laugh and deconstruct the song with their hand gestures. Although this isn’t a great example of the Sonny & Cher act, this special does show Sonny & Cher at their most interpersonal. You can clearly see their affectionate connection here.

Cher Solo: “Alfie” (Video. 10:06)
Cover of Cilla Black (1965) although Cher’s 1966 version was one of the originals connected to the movie Alfie.

The whole concept of this solo spot is to highlight the conflicts a modern woman faces, which was incidentally a big theme for Sonny in his 1960s songwriting. The background is blue. Cher wears a 60s-era halter top and long skirt. Her hair is long (the best hairstyle of the show so far; Rena Leuschner is not yet on the scene.) Sonny does an introduction about the tough decisions young women now have to make between the Puritan ethic and “today’s morality” (should I be a slut or no?) and how Cher is the American Girl for 1971, somewhat caught between the two.

Two dancers illustrate this while Cher stands like a statue in shadow in the background. The blonde dancer does a ballet dance of innocence to an instrumental of the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” She wears a white young girl’s dress. The brunette does a much more liberated modern dance in an orange minidress. She is the girl of experience (the loose one, we guess).

After that, Cher rips off her wrap skirt to dance in the resulting bikini,  halter top and tall boots (which is a weird public look but somehow a foreshadowing of the Cher variety show openings). After watching Cher in a decade of pseudo-revealing Bob Mackie dresses on three variety shows, I can state with some authority that this is probably the most provocative outfit of them all.

Through dance Cher’s examines the options the other two women have presented her. The whole thing is more awkward than sexy. Cher hasn’t found her way to really move yet. It’ll get there.  She ends up coming back to “Alfie” and looks down at the end like she would in her other 70s-era solos.

Improv Skits (Video, 17:00)
When this started Mr. Cher Scholar, formerly involved with the Chicago improv show ED (with actors including John Lehr and Carlos Jacott), said “Oh no, not improv on live TV!” Well, I don’t know how live it was but Sonny plays the master of ceremonies in a blue jacket and red shirt with huge-70s lapels, and Geralyn (if that is her name), Suzanne, Cher, Billy Van and Sandy Baron play the improv actors. The scenarios are as follows:

  • Shy school teacher on vacation (Suzanne) with a Mexican tour guide (Sandy). The joke revolves around the slang “far out.”
  • A traveling salesman (Sandy) and the lady of the house, (Cher, wearing a black pantsuit and a big leather belt with a big butterfly. She is adorable.)
  • A millionaire industrialist (Billy Van) father talks to a hippie who wants to marry his daughter (Sandy). The joke revolves around the term “dig it” this time.
  • A blushing bride (Suzanne) meets her husband’s possessive secretary (Cher)

So far Sonny has not called on Geralyn for some reason.

  • Lifeguard on the beach (Billy Van) and a girl asleep on the sand (finally Geralyn). This skit is wordless.

Cher makes funny cracks while the actors hear their improv setups, like a denture joke teasing Sonny about his mess-ups and a quip about her hopes that Billy Vans daughter doesn’t look like him.

Cher Solo #2: “Danny Boy” (Standard) (Video)
I was explaining to Mr. Cher Scholar how exciting this was when I saw it in the 1990s, to see clips from the long-lost 1969 movie Chastity appearing in this segment, how fans like me who had never been able to see so much as a single frame of it could now see portions of two whole scenes (the endless running opening and the church scene) and were left to ponder wtf this movie was about. Mr. Cher Scholar quipped it was like scholars putting together Aristotle from fragments in other works.

(Serves me right for forcing Mr. Cher Scholar to watch these things).

Cher sits on a flower wallpapered dais, trimmed with lights under the dais. Her hair is long and newly brushed. She wears brown pants and an orange long-sleeved shirt. Her makeup is spartan but with big mascara’d eyelashes. The performance is rougher and not as good as the recent one on the Live album but it’s still interesting.

Concert: “The Beat Goes On” (Sonny & Cher, 1967) (Video, 29:28)

The background is pink. Pink and white balloons float in the background, some swaying. Mr. Cher Scholar says it was brave to have helium balloons up under those hot lights. But if any of them pop, we don’t see it. Sonny is in a black suit and Cher in a long red dress with big sequins. Her hair is up in a twisted bun with curls on the sides. She is standing on the left again.

The banter is mostly their live album material. Sonny again wants a solo, “the spotlight.” Cher says “sock it to ’em.” The solo spot goes nowhere and Sonny finally decides to give Cher back her spotlight. “I’ll open my big Italian heart.” Cher’s dancing to “The Beat Goes On” gets slightly sexy and Sonny stands in front of her and stops the song. He tells her not to mark the beat with her hips, to use her feet instead. “I haven’t got any rhythm in my feet,” Cher says. “She only moves like that onstage,” Sonny tells us. “After the show nothing goes on.”

“I get headaches.” Cher fans have this little bit memorized. You can see a balloon from a fan offscreen in the foreground and they’re tugging on it to the beat of the song. Their mics are tiny and Mr. Cher Scholar says it looks like they’re holding nose hair trimmers.

Missing: The boxing sketch which we see was written by Mike Stratton in the credits.

 

Highlights: This show is pretty rough and Sonny & Cher are pretty green here. The “Danny Boy” video shows two clips from the, at the time, long-lost Chastity movie. Lots of affectionate glances between the two. The seed of the shows to come.