The Cher Episode

Cher is an icon, with hits spanning an unbelievable SEVEN decades. So kick back as we laud the singer/actress/legend. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, And this is stuff you
should know. Stuff you should know.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Is that your auto tune?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (00:28):
I told you turn that off?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
It's stuck on on. It's stuck on.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Awesome, Yeah, it's And this wasn't even intentional, but here
we are doing another biography of another gay icon.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Another Well, she's not gay, she's an icon of the
gay community.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Chuck, Well, that's what I meant.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
I know. Yeah, I'm just being contrarian already. Yeah, I know,
I'm really feeling it. I'm full of pee and vinegar today.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Oh we say P and V at our house for
our dog Gibson. He's full of P and V all
the time.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
That's awesome. How's he doing.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
He's good. He's a lot to handle, but he's an
awesome sweet boy.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
He's got to be pretty big by now. His paws
were huge as a puppy. He is.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
He's pretty large. I mean he's a full, full, full grown.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Doggie like Clifford large.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
No, no, no, he's not oversized, but he's a big boy.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, shout out to Gibson and shout out to Share.
We're doing an entire episode on right now.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
As you said, do you mean Sherilyn Sarkisian?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yes, I do. I do. And when I saw that,
I was like, I knew she was Armenian. I never
thought about it up until this moment, but I just
knew she was Armenian in heritage.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah. Well, I mean I think one thing Share sort
of played with over the years was some kind of
ambiguous ethnicity.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
That's one way you could put it.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Sure, But yeah, she's a Her father, John Paul Sarchizian,
was Armenian. He was a horse breeder and a truck
driver who had addiction troubles. So he got divorced from
her mother before Chare was a year old, which would
have been nineteen forty seven, because cher was born in

(02:17):
El Central California in nineteen forty six.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
That's right, you were studying me. Yeah, I read Chuck
that her mother, Georgia, and her father, John Paul, got
married two more times, so they were married a total
of three times.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah. And I think her mother, Georgia Holt, who was
an actress, she was married like eight times.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Eight times from what I saw. Yeah, I think Georgie's
mom had her when she was thirteen or something like that,
and so they had a very share had a very
interesting upbringing, and I had never seen it compared to Mermaids,
but it really strikes me from some of the interviews
and articles I've read about her that her upbringing was
a lot like Winona Ryder's upbringing.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
And Mates, which is a movie Share was in in
case you're wondering, Well, right, I was even brought up.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
But man, that movie is so good. I saw it
for the first time, just like last year, and it
is a really good movie.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah. You know, Cher is one of my favorite actors.
When I look through her filmography. Mm hmm, it's just
like it's a murderer's row of great parts and great films.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah, for sure, and we'll talk about those. Apparently, as
it turns out, she wanted to be a performer from
a very young age. I saw something like four, she
saw Dumbo and was like, I'm going to be a
performer like Dumbo. Yeah, and she actually kind of put
her money where her mouth is at age eleven. I
love precocious kids stories like this. She put on a

(03:42):
production of Oklahoma and apparently could only get other girls
to be in the show with her, so she just
went ahead and played all the male parts herself.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I know. That's a great story. And just a few
years after that, Warren Baty would be sleeping with her.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, like just a few years when she was like
six and he was twenty five. Right, yeah, what is
it with powerful men in that?

Speaker 1 (04:06):
I mean, Warren Beatty had a long history of dating
teenagers back when, you know, back when I'm not going
to say it's like it was super cool to do that,
but back when you could do that and get away
with it without being you know.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Without having to kill al or something the guy who
knows about it while he's in prison exactly.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
They very famously, she was driving in Hollywood when she
was sixteen. He almost hit her with the car and
she got out and was like, are you crazy? And
she was like, oh my god, you're Warren Batty and
he was like, why don't you come back to my
place and have dinner, And that's what happened. She came
home at two in the morning. Her parents were not thrilled,

(04:48):
but apparently Warren is very charming and called up Georgia
Holt called up her mom and made his case, and
she was like, okay, date my sixteen year old.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
I know that was back then when you could just
pick up the phone and be.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Like come on right exactly.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
So Share dropped out of high school. Not a lot
of great performing opportunities while you're in high school, So
she dropped out and she tried to make it in
the show in show business. Initially she wanted to be
an actor, but she met another guy who would have
a much bigger impact on her life than even Warren Batty,
a guy named Salvatore Bono, better known as Sonny Bono.

(05:28):
He was twelve years older than her, rather than just
the traditional nine that Warren Batty had established, the traditional nine,
and she was sixteen seventeen something like that when they
met in Los Angeles, and both of them swear that
their relationship was platonic at first. That she had moved
into a group home with some other women, and apparently

(05:50):
that housing opportunity fell through or ran out, and she
met Sonny Bono and he's like, why don't you move
in with me and clean my house? And that's supposedly
how it was at and then of course it did
not last very long, and they got married within two years,
I think, although it wasn't legal for another seven for
seven years, five years five is just as good an

(06:14):
ustimate as seven.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, she was eighteen when they got sort of fake
married in nineteen sixty four. They did have a ceremony,
but it wasn't a legal wedding, and it became legal
like you said, in nineteen sixty nine, and Sonny was
working for music impresario Phil Spector at the time, who
was like, Hey, this kid you got has got an
outstanding voice. Also love Shehar's voice, by the way, and

(06:39):
she started singing back up for Phil Spector on like
some really big songs like You've Lost That Love and
Feeling by the Righteous Brothers and Be My Baby by
the Ronettes.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, so in two years she's met Warren Baby and
dated him, met Sonny Bono, moved in with him, and
is singing back up on Phil Spector songs by age seventeen.
Have to start it happening for really quickly, And from
that point on things started happening happening very quickly because
Sonny Bono was making things happen, Like you said, he

(07:10):
was working for Phil Spector, and so he was. I
guess he and Phil were both like this, she needs
like her own career. Apparently there's an anecdote where when
she was singing back up on some of those songs,
Phil Spector kept telling you to like, back up further
and further away from the mic because she was overpowering
the other backup singers. So it was very clear that
she needed her own to go out on her own.

(07:32):
Although apparently Phil Spector opposed it at first, Sonny Bono
was like, no, we're gonna take this girl to really
great places, and we're going to do it by giving
her the pseudonym Bonnie Joe Mason.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Yeah, that's right. Her first single was released. It was
called Ringo I Love You as Bonnie Joe Mason. Not
a great song. And you know schera has a share
has a low I guess is it an alto?

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, it sounds like this. If I could turn back
to her.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
I meant to look up what her voice technically is,
but maybe baritone, I don't know, but it's that lowe's
She's got this great, fantastic, powerful low voice. And apparently
there were some radio stations that thought it was a
man singing and it was a love song DURINGO star,
so they refused to play it in some markets, but
she was like, you know, it's not a very good song,
not a big deal. But very shortly thereafter, in nineteen

(08:28):
sixty four, would sign with Imperial Records, which was part
an imprint of Liberty Records, and had her first really
big hit in sixty five with a cover of Bob
Dylan's amazing song All I Really.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Want to Do is roller Skate in parentheses.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
She did a great version too. I love the production
style and the recording quality of those of like the
mid sixties and earlier. It's really good.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, for sure. So she hit like number fifteen on
the Billboard charts with that single, that cover of Dylan.
That's pretty I mean, seriously, think about this. She just
is like, I'm gonna go make it on my own,
and then it just happened. I'm really impressed by how
condensed like her first series of like big exposures were,

(09:14):
you know. And so in addition to her performing or
carrying out I guess her solo career, she also was
performing with Sonny too, as they would become very famous
together performing, but at first they went under the name
Caesar and Cleo, apparently as an homage to Sonny's haircut

(09:36):
at the time, which she said was somewhere between Caesar's
and Napoleon's hair. I don't know what Napoleon's hair looked like.
He had like that big old hat he liked to wear. Yeah,
Cleo was a nod to her ambiguous ethnic looks. People said, like,
you look like a more glamorous Cleopatra, So that's what

(09:59):
they went with, and they scuttled that pretty quick.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, I mean she kind of played that up too.
She had. That's when when she was wearing the dark
mass scarra was sort of the cattails coming off the
side and just super super cool, looking like very tan,
and she had that beautiful long black hair like. I've
been watching a lot of Share stuff and Sonny and
Chair from that era today and I got a big
old man crush on her all over again. That reminded

(10:23):
me of when I had one on her when I
was six years old.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
That's cute. From watching the Sonny and Share show and
all that.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah, So, you know, they had some songs together that
were not popular, like you talked about, but in sixty
five they rebranded as themselves as Sonny and Chair with
that huge, huge number one single I Got You Babe
that the Rolling Stones, who are always champions of them yeah,
said I take it over to England, the l'vievode there.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah. Apparently in America they weren't getting much love. Share
says that they were basically hippies before the word hippie
was even around, and they dressed like hippies, they acted
like hippies. In America wasn't ready for hippies yet, but
England was like, hey, we're swinging over here, so come
on over here. And yeah, that's just so bizarre that
the Rolling Stones were the ones who like helped get

(11:14):
Sonny and Share their big break, because you just do not.
That's like Led Zeppelin helping out Donnie and Marie in
my mind, I don't know what I mean, it's very
similar to that.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Oh boy, I would argue Sonny and Share were two
percent cooler. Oh yeah, Marie.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Definitely, but it's certainly in the same ballpark.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
And totally it's funny. That single I Got You Babe,
which is the song they're most known for as a
duo still I think sold more than three million Copies
was number one for three weeks, and the album was
number two for eight weeks and probably would have hit
number one had it not been for the fact that

(11:53):
The Beatles Help was released at the same time and
held down that number one spot.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Right, Yeah, if you're gonna be number two to anybody,
that's a pretty pretty good album to be number two
too at the time.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yeah, for sure. But they had ten top forty singles
and five of those were top tens.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Not too shabby, No, not at all. The other thing
that they were very much known for was banter, comic
banter in between. Apparently Sonny was the comedic writer between
the two. But Cher said in her eulogy of Sonny
Bono when he died of from a skiing accident in
nineteen ninety eight that he, like people just kind of

(12:32):
saw Sonny Bono, especially during their early careers, like the
butt of the jokes. He's like the dip wat I
guess is a technical way to put it, but that
he knew that that's what made the most sense with
their their duo. It made sense for her to be
the sharper, more sardonic, smarter one and him to be
the butt of the jokes, but she's like, the big

(12:54):
joke was he was the one writing the joke, so
he kind of had the last laugh in that sense.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Did you watch any of the the actual variety show
Banter Today, Harry Yesterday?

Speaker 2 (13:05):
You know? Weirdly, I just read a synopsis, a very
detailed synopsis of one of their episodes on share scholar
dot com.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Yeah, it's I encourage you to check it out and
anyone out there who's like, what was their chemistry like,
because it is it's really good stuff. I mean, I
watched the second iteration of their show that was out
later on, which we'll get to in a sec. But
they're just so funny together and you could tell they're
having a good time, and while it is scripted, it

(13:37):
comes across as very natural and it feels like they're
and they may have been improving some of it, but
it was just they just had fantastic chemistry. And he
would she would make short jokes because he was five
to five and she was. She seemed giant compared to him,
but she was only five seven, but I think they
put her in heels and stuff like that, and he
would make jokes about her prominent nose and but she

(13:59):
usually got the best of him. But they were just
it was a very cute pairing together. Yeah, you know,
kind of a cute historic comedy pairing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
All you had to do is put them on TV
and let them do their thing and people would fall
in love with them. That's what happened. They were guest
stars on Kerl Burnett back in nineteen sixty seven. They
guest hosted some MERV Griffin Show episodes, and just from
that they introduced themselves to America, their TV chops, I guess,
and they head of CBS Programming Fred Silverman, who would

(14:29):
go on to executive produce Diagnosis Murder. He gave them
their first show in August of nineteen seventy one. It
was a summer replacement, and I feel like such a
slack researcher that I didn't go see what that replaced.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Oh yeah, I didn't either.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
But then when December came around and it was time
for like, okay, what's the real deal shows, it got
its own slot and it became like a really big hit.
They were pulling in like thirty million viewers a week.
I mean, this was I don't think there were thirty
million people in America at the time.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, it was kind of the early heyday of the
variety show, which if you're of a certain age you remember,
but if you're not, you know, variety shows were these
comedy half hours, usually an hour where they would they
would come out and they would do like an opening
monologue and joke around or probably open with a song
which would lead into the monologue, and then it was

(15:21):
you know, it was sketches, it was music. They would
have musical and comedy guests. It was called the Sonny
and Share Comedy Hour, and it was just there were
a lot of these great shows back then, and I
pined for those to come back, and I think they
could if they did it right. Really yeah, I think
if you had the right the right people, and especially
like a couple like this is kind of a fun
way to do it. H I think it could work.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
I mean, they have some that are like skirting the
genre for sure. Yeah, they're terrible, Like America's got talent
and the voice and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
That's that's not the same. It's not street see.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
But some of those are like there's so many different
acts or different types of acts, but it's close. It's
just missing like the people who host the show, like
having like a larger main role in it, you know
what I mean?

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Like I get that, like take away the competition aspect,
get a couple of cutie pies like us to host it.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Sure, I mean, I guess my point is, be careful
what you wish.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
For right now, you're right, because what are the chances
they would do it right?

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Right?

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Probably not good.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
So, Sonny Bono is very very much tied to Share
and vice versa in most people's mind and a lot
of people's mind, especially older people. But there's another collaborator
that a guy who wrote for The New Yorker. His
name's Michael Shulman. He said that Bob Mackie, the very
very famous fashion designer, was probably arguably surpassing Bono as

(16:47):
her defining collaborator because one thing people know about Share
is that she will wear any over the top outfit
that Bob Mackie would make for her. And apparently they
were very close collaborators. It wasn't like Bob Mackie would say, here,
I designed this, put this on. She would go back
and forth with them, kind of push him to go
even further, and just just from the fact that she

(17:08):
was willing to try on or where in public. Anything
he came up with I think really inspired him too,
So those two were as much a duo as Sonny
and Share were.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, and to be clear, like this was started on
that TV show. It wasn't just the sort of iconic
things she would wear on the red carpet later like
they've they've been together since the beginning basically.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah. I think their TV show would have something like
twenty different costume changes per episode, and Bob mackie was
there designing everything. So yeah, they're they're very close, I think. Still,
I'm pretty sure Bob macki is still around.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
All right, Well, we're gonna go check and see if
Bob macki is still with this and take a break
and we'll come back with the with the breaking news
right after this.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
We los so much stuff from Josh and shuck stuff fui,
all right, Chuck, so lay it on everybody. Is Bob Mackie,
known as the Sultan of Sequins, still alive.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
I'm glad to say, sir that he is. He's was
born in nineteen forty, so Bob McKee is eighty four
years young, very nice, still going.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Okay, so back to Sonny again. Sonny's spirit is out there, like, Okay,
that's enough about Bob mckew. Let's get back to.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Me, right, Okay, So should I take over here?

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Right? Well, they had their they're a very popular TV show.
Romantically with their marriage things weren't as successful. Sonny started
stepping out and then Cher started stepping out on their marriage.
They had some financial issues, which we should be like,
how in the world with these huge stars have money trouble.

(19:06):
One of the reasons because Sonny was he controlled everything
in their relationship when it came to the business, so
he was controlling their money. One of the big things
that happened was in sixty nine he financed a movie
called Chastity, putting most of their money into it for
share to you know, star in her first movie vehicle,

(19:27):
and it was a big flop. It's one of the
big rules of movie production is you never put your
own money into your own movie. Just not smart to do. So.
It was actually the same year that Chaz Bono was born,
which is their son who very famously transitioned in two
thousand and eight because Chas was assigned female at birth.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Right and That's another thing that Share would become very
famous for is championing trans rights in large part because
of her experience with Chas or So. And she's become
a real as we'll see I think, as you mentioned
at the outset of a gay icon, and also a
huge she has a huge following in the trans community too.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah. Absolutely so.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
By nineteen seventy three, Sonny and Share show are still
going on, still going pretty strong, and for all intents
and purposes, Sonny is married to a former cigarette girl
in a club called named Connie Foreman. But for the
public's information, they were still together Sonny and Share where

(20:33):
finally they're like, Okay, this isn't sustainable anymore. And they
started to get divorced in nineteen seventy four. And you
said that Sonny had total control over their finances, right, Yeah,
he had even more control than she realized. Like I
think she just thought like he handled that stuff. But

(20:54):
as they were getting divorced, her own lawyer was like,
you know, the company that was built on your talent,
it's actually called Share Enterprises. You own zero percent of that.
Sonny owns ninety five percent, and the lawyer that runs
the thing owns the other five you own nothing. And

(21:15):
she's like, oh my god, really that's crazy. And the
lawyer's like, no, it gets even worse. You've been signing
contracts that you haven't been reading, haven't you. And she's like, yeah,
I guess this is a paraphrase, by the way, or
an imagined conversation. And he said, you signed a contract
that said that you would not work outside of Share enterprises,
So you can't record music, you can't be in movies,

(21:37):
you can't be on TV. And we don't know what's
going to happen with this because this is essentially an
ironclag contract.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Right, which, of course there is no such thing, thankfully,
because so many entertainers signed bad contracts that they can
in fact get out of. And that's what happened when
Shares was like, wait a minute, saying that I can't
do anything except for make entertainment for a company that

(22:06):
I owned no part of, and he said yeah, and
she was like, all right, well, let me ask my
boyfriend this. Her boyfriend at the time was another music impresario,
David Geffen, and he said, I'll get you out of that,
don't worry about it. So he gets her out of
that contract gets her a two and a half million
dollar deal with Warner Brothers, which you know, it's a

(22:27):
lot of money now, but obviously in nineteen the early
nineteen seventies, it's a very big record contract. And that
would be followed very shortly thereafter by the canceling of
The Comedy Hour in nineteen seventy four. But Chaer was
always she still liked Sonny. She wasn't like this guy
took advantage of me. She was like, you know, I

(22:48):
really love Sonny. I would have done another show if
they would have split it fifty to fifty with me.
He was a terrible husband, but a great mentor and
a great teacher to me.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Right, anytime I hear about the Sonny Share show too,
I'm reminded of that Simpson's little bit where they talk
about a man who woke up from a coma after
twenty years and he's being interviewed in his hospital bed
and he goes, do Sonny and Share still have that
stupid show? And Kim Brockman goes, no, she won an
oscar and he's a congressman, and that guy goes good night,

(23:21):
and like dies. Right, there's some like girls out of
his mouth.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yes, Sonny Bono would become a congressman.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, a Republican congressman. No, less was he Yeah, Oh.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
I couldn't remember. So in nineteen seventy five, she got
her own variety show, just called Share and it was
sort of like the rest of them, It was not
as popular. You know, they had a certain chemistry together
that made them famous, and so they would bring back
the show, this time not as the Comedy Hour but
just the Sonny and Share Show. And that one didn't

(23:54):
last super long either, because by nineteen seventy seven, and
this was the version that I saw on TV when
I was but six years old, they broke up professionally
as well.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
So that was it for her and Sonny Bono from
that point on, aside from in the public's collective memory, right, Yeah,
Like I said, she was still carrying out or performing
like she had a solo career that she was also
doing all this time while she was doing other stuff
with Sonny, and it was very successful. Very early on.

(24:26):
She had her seventh album was in nineteen seventy one.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
She was.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Twenty four I think at the time, twenty five maybe,
and she that was her seventh studio album. Initially it
was entire it was titled Share with a little accent
over the e, just to make it fancy. But instead
they're like, no, no, we want to be way more
offensive than that. Let's name it after the title track,
Gypsy's tramps and thieves.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
That's right, that's a word that is not used anymore,
which we learned when we did that episode many many
years ago. So we're all still learning, everybody. She also
had a song on there that hasn't aged too well.
It was called half Breed and it was about it
was like from the perspective of a half Cherokee woman

(25:15):
and chair or you know, a faux headdress and performed
that way and claimed to be of Cherokee descent on
her mother's side. And it seems like none of that
is actually true. And I'm sure that stuff Share is not,
like you know, puts at the top of her CV
these days.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
No, But interestingly, she still rocked a head dress in
her Vegas residency in the twenty first century. When did
she really Yeah, when she would do a medley of
her hits for that song, she would wear a headdress still,
so she's still doing half Breed, Yeah, all right, Yeah,
so I read that somewhere. I didn't see it with

(25:52):
mine own eyes or anything.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Well maybe that is at the top of her civ then.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
So it was about this time. Can you imagine, that's
the number one thing she lists out of her entire career.
So about this time, early early seventies, she starts becoming
known for like really wearing just totally revealing clothing, and
she and Bob Mackie just put it into like overdrive

(26:17):
and start taking off from there. And one of the
outfits that she first got wide public notice for was
her naked dress that she wore to the Met gal
in nineteen seventy four, and Bob Mackie escorted her and
it is a naked dress. It's an amazing, beautiful gown
that seems totally see through but it's not. And it

(26:40):
was a it was a big deal. It made a
huge splash.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Yeah. And if you know, you can't go to the
Met Gala these days and throw you can throw a
rock and hit five naked dresses with that one throw.
But that was I tried to find examples of anyone
to pioneer that nude look in public before her share
and I couldn't find any, so I know, Mackie and
Chair kind of put that that well worn look on

(27:03):
the map.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Yeah. Yeah, from what I saw, she was widely cited
as the first one. She also wore it the next
year on the cover of Time, and that just kind
of sealed it as an iconic dress. But that was
far from the last dress. As we'll see. We're gonna
talk a little bit more about our dresses soon, but first,
let's take a little side trip over to the Allman
Brothers band literally and meet up. Yeah, and meet up

(27:27):
with Greg Alman, one of the founders, and they got
married apparently within a few days of Sonny and Shar's
divorce being final. Cher I guess had met Greg Alman
at some point and was like, let's go get married
in Vegas, and I think nine days later they were
married in Vegas.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah, and they had a I mean, her relationship in
marriage with Greg Alman is as famous as it was
to Sonny Bono because of I mean, her marriage to
Sonny was a little boring in comparison, I think, Yeah,
and I think I think it was either share or
maybe it was Greg. One of them described their marriage

(28:05):
as being on LSD at Disneyland, so they had a
lot of fun. But this was a bad time, I
mean good time professionally for Greg Almon in the mid seventies,
but he was really not doing too well with his
consumption habits. He had heroin issues and cocaine issues and
alcohol issues, and they had a volatile, I guess four

(28:30):
or five year run getting back together, remarrying, stuff like that, reconciling.
So it was sort of an up and down wild marriage,
rock and roll marriage, which got a lot of press.
But it also bore her other son, Elijah Blue Almond,
who was born in nineteen seventy six.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah, and I don't remember if I brought this up,
and if so rare, but I ran across this somewhere
and I remembered it when I was reading about Elijah
Blue Almond. The balloon arch, which you might see at
like a wedding or something like that, was invented for
Elijah Blue Almond's third birthday by legendary balloon artist treb Heining.

(29:12):
The new dress, isn't that amazing?

Speaker 1 (29:15):
The balloon arch, the nude dress, what else? Auto tune
as we'll see.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, I mean, she was a huge pioneer in a
lot of well Share had a really large pop cultural impact,
more than she gets credit for, for sure.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
I think so. As I said that marriage was trouble.
Greg Alman was not much of a father. Elijah Blue
has had struggles in his life and his health, drug problems.
I know he struggles with lyme disease and they're very
sadly still have a troubled He and Chair have a
troubled relationship. She I remember reading this last year. She

(29:50):
tried to file or she filed to try and get
a conservatorship over him just late last year but was
denied it. And it's just I think anyone who as
a fan of Shared is really behind her and hoping
that she and her son can resolve this.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
Yeah, apparently she went through a really rough patch with
Chaz as well, but that's kind of been resolved over
the years, she said in I think a twenty ten
interview in Vanity Fair. Right. Yeah, so by this time,
by nineteen seventy eight, she and Greg Alman are about
to split up for good, and she decides to finally
just change her legal name to Cher, which is an

(30:28):
enormous reduction in the number of letters in her full name,
because at the time her full legal name was Cherylyn
Sarcasian La Pierre Bono Almon. And she's like, just call
me Cher from now on, and that's what the law said.
They stamped it and said, okay, we'll call you Share
from now on.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Another thing that Share was very well known for was
her myriad boyfriend She had over the years, many times,
including up to two day dating men that were younger
than her, sometimes much younger than her, but usually famous dudes,
very high profile relationships. She dated Gene Simmons for a
couple of years, the bass player from Kiss and more

(31:11):
than bass player obviously. She dated Val Kilmer. She dated
Tom Cruise. She dated Eric Stoltz, who played her son
in the movie Mask, which is a little strange, but yeah,
she loves loves men and loves dating men.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
She believes in love.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Right, and she believes in life even afterward too. Yeah.
A little side thing on Eric Stoltz that I found
out recently. Apparently he was the original Marty McFly and
back to the future. Did you know that?

Speaker 1 (31:43):
You didn't know that?

Speaker 2 (31:44):
I'll stop sharing this anecdote immediately, but.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
No, I'm sorry. That was just one of those that
I thought you would have known, Like you can see
the like they shot some of the movie with him
and you can see those scenes.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
I did not know that part. I did know that
they wanted Michael J. Fox originally, but Family Ties was
like no, so they went with Eric Stoltson. Like this
kid is playing this way too seriously. He would not
goof it up at all. He's too serious of an actor.
So they were like, all right, we're like a third
of the way through shooting. We're just gonna bring in
Michael J. Fox on nights and weekends, which is why
a lot of the stuff that a lot of the

(32:19):
scenes Michael J. Fox is in are at night. Said it.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
No, yeah, you should check out some of the scenes.
It's very brain breaking to be someone of our generation
and see Eric Stolt's playing Martin mcflyin.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
So what like that scenes that made it into the movie?
You mean or the outtakes? No? No, no, okay, just.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
I mean they had shot at third of the movie
and that that exists online.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
I see, I got you. I didn't know if they
were like this this scene was actually too good. We're
just gonna pretend like that's Michael J.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Fox, I gotcha, so like he's got his back turn
to the camera.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
You can still somehow see his freckle.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
In the eighties is when Chaer finally broke out as
an actor. This is something that or actually, should we
take a break there?

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Or no, yeah, we might as well.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
All right, we'll leave a cliffhanger though, and when we
come back, we'll learn to see if Share ever acted again.
Right after this, we loss.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
So much stuff from Josh and shook stuff. Fui.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
All right, We've got to the bottom of that one too.
Share did finally get into acting in a genuine way
in the nineteen eighties. She was on Broadway and The
I Guess In the same year. In nineteen eighty two,
Robert Altman did a Broadway version of Come Back to
the Five and Dime Jimmy Jimmy Dean and a Movie.
She was in the movie and won a Golden Globe

(34:05):
for that part.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Even did you know that that play originally premiered at
the Alliance Theater in Atlanta before Broadway. Amazing, So that
was a big breakthrough for her, that movie in particular,
but also Broadway. I mean, it's like a pretty big
deal to go act on stage. There's a big difference
between being in the hands of an editor and being

(34:26):
like live on stage. So that was a pretty pretty
big way to kind of debut as like a genuine actor.
Because one thing, we should say, that Chastity movie that
she first tried in nineteen sixty nine, that was a drama.
It wasn't a comedy. It was like a straight up drama,
and people were just like, no, we're not accepting this.
So she kept at it. She was in Come Back

(34:47):
to the Five and Don Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. She
I think the next year played the lesbian roommate of
Meryl Streep, well, Meryl Streep's character in Silkwood, and she
actually cites that as one of the one of the
watershed moments that started to attract like a following for
her from the gay community. That kind of eventually became,

(35:10):
you know, her gay icon ship.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
Right. Yeah, she won, by the way, a Golden She
won the Golden Globe for that.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Okay, great, and then she starred in Mask very she
I mean, she was amazing in Mask. That movie was
so good, if I remember correct. I haven't seen it
in a long time, but I just can't see that
not being good, Like that part where he teaches his
blind girlfriend, like what colors are her through touch? What
was that? Laura dern Okay, so Chaer is like her

(35:39):
Eric Stoltz's protective biker mom and just the whole movie
is just so great. She does a really great job
and she won the Best Actress Award at can for
her role in Mask. So she was expecting to at
least be nominated for an OSCAR for Best Actress. Nothing.
It was a a straight up snub, like Hollywood was

(36:02):
sending a message to her, like a nice tribe, but
to stay out of the acting business. We've got this.
We can't really take you seriously.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, it was a big thumb in the eye. So
Bob Mackie designed her famous revenge gown gowned gown, which
was this. It was the one where she had the big,
huge plume of black feathers all over her head kind
of like a headdress or I guess it was a
head dress and just like you know, not a Native
American kind of headdress. And it was it was basically

(36:33):
like hey, everybody look at me.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, not Don Michi? Who would win?

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Who won?

Speaker 2 (36:39):
Don Amici? He won for Cocoon. She was presenting the
Best Supporting Actor award.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Oh okay, I thought you met won her award. No,
I think that was Geraldine Page maybe in What Well.
I don't know if Share got nominated or would have
been nominated. I guess she would have been nominated for
Best Actress or would have been a Best Supporting for Masks.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
I think best Actress that's what she won and.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Can okay, So, I think Geraldine Page won Best Actress
in What. Can't remember the name of the movie.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
What was it about? Can you give a brief synopsis?

Speaker 1 (37:17):
No, I can't remember. But that was also the same
year of The Color Purple. So I think there were
three or four actresses nominated in both categories for that
and Jessica Lang. Like you know, it's always tough to
to say, like, well, this person deserved it more than
that person, but hey, that's how the Oscars go. Seron
should have been nominated at least, But she would win

(37:37):
the next year for Moonstruck, which is one of my
favorite movies.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
I've never seen it.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Oh man, it's you'd love it.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Okay, I'll take your word for.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Vintage Nicholas Cage. Also, I wanted to mention too, in
case anyone is curious, I did I got I rewatched Masked? Masked?
What is wrong with me? I'm just saying everything slightly wrong.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
Was it masked? James or Jim Carrey, James Carey?

Speaker 1 (38:06):
That was the mask?

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Okay, gotcha? So what's masked?

Speaker 1 (38:10):
There is no such thing? Again, there probably is, But
mask I rewatched a few years ago because that was
a movie crush movie. It was Tig Nataro's pick.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Oh nice, don't. I don't blame Tig for that at all.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah, so it's fun to go back and rewatch that
because that was an HBO special for me. I watched
it quite a few times back in the day.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
So did it hold up?

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah? Really good? Good movie.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Great. So the eighties were like really kind of big
for share. And remember she made her debut and was
releasing hits and had a hit TV show in the
early seventies, not even mid seventies. By the mid eighties
and late eighties, it was like she had a brand
new career. She'd win an oscar, she won a Best

(38:54):
Actress at cann She was becoming an acclaimed actress. And
then she starts releasing albums again, and two albums in
two years or three years, nineteen eighty seven and nineteen
eighty nine, and the nineteen eighty nine went Hard as
Stone that went triple platinum, and the reason, one of
the big reasons that went triple platinum was for her.

(39:14):
If I could turn back.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
Time song, Yeah, I've been singing that all day and
I didn't even watch it, just from reading those words
right and stuck in my head.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
I've got the thing I've been doing the whole time
with that, if I could turn back to it's I
saw Jack do it on Will and Grace when she
did a cameo on it, and he thought she she
was like a drag queen, but it was the real
share and he was telling her how to do it right,
and she slaps him and says, snap out of it.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Why was he doing his voice like that?

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Though he saw her and like they had like a
turn back time off and he was correcting her because
he thought he thought she was she was a sharre impersonator.
It's a pretty great you haven't seen that scene? It's great? Yeah?
You know what's Jack from Will and Grace?

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Oh? Does Sean Hayes.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Right, best known for his role on SmartLess the podcast.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, the movie career would continue if I can turn
Bactime was a huge hit. She put out Mermaids in
nineteen ninety that had another hit song in it, the
Shoop Shoop song It's in his Kiss. Sonny, like you said,
would very tragically die in a skiing accident in ninety eight,

(40:29):
But that was also the year of her biggest hit ever,
the song that you joked about with the auto tune,
which was Believe of the same album Believe, and it
was a quadruple platinum number one hit. The album was
quadruple platinum, and that song was number one for four weeks.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah, not only that, we talked about this in the
auto Tune episode. That was the first use of auto
tune in that way. Up to that point, it had
just been used to kind of just gently correct people's vocals.
That's what it was originally created for. And her producer
Mark Taylor was like, no, we're turning that thing up
to eleven to see what happens. And so this is

(41:11):
nineteen ninety eight, right. She had her first career in
the seventies, second career in the eighties, she's kind of
gone off and just been out of the limelight for
a good decade and she has this idea to record
this album and Warner Brothers in America was like, nah,
we don't think so, We're not one hundred percent you're
going to sell any copies. So, just like with the

(41:32):
Rolling Stones bringing her to England and saying like hey, everybody,
check these people out, and that helping her get her boost.
She went to her British label, Warner Brothers UK, and
they agreed to release it. So Warner Brothers America turned
down that album and luckily the UK label agreed and

(41:52):
it had not only just that huge impact on her career,
but also the fact that used auto tune. It just
took off from there.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Yeah, it was huge and you know, change music for
a little while. It's I don't think it's a it's
a thing that sort of rooted in time. Now. I
think a lot of people were worried, like, oh no,
this is going to change music forever, and it was
just sort of a oh, what's the word I'm looking for,
just a music trick that was fashionable for a little while.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
I guess, yeah, a long while. I would say, I mean,
this is like a good people still use that stuff,
and not just in rap anymore. Right, And it's been
a quarter century that people have been doing that.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Is it still a thing?

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, yes, it is still a thing. It's becoming, like
you said, less and less and less. I think everybody's like,
we got to come up with something besides trap music
now because it's just been done too long, too many times.
But I saw an interview with Cher you said Jay
Z once came up to her and thanked her. He said,
a lot of my friends who don't have very good

(42:58):
voices have career thanks to you in auto tune. So
I think that's a reason why it's stuck around for
a quarter century because it lets producers say like, hey,
you're terrible at this, we can make that right, Just
go out there and be the image that we want
to see.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yeah. Well, one word you've said a few times in
describing that as decades, and I'm not talking about her perfume,
but her perfume is named decades because the coolest fact
about Share probably is that she's only solo artist in
music history to have hits in seven different decades, which

(43:36):
is just unbelievable. And it's something I mean that's why
she called her perfume that because something she's really proud
of is her staying power. I know she's been asked
in interviews about like, you know who these days, is
it Lady Gaga or who's the next share who's comparable
to you? And she wasn't being like nobody, honey, But

(43:57):
her response was just sort of like, well, you know,
are all great, but like the thing I'm most proud of,
and I'm of course paraphrasing, is the decades, seven decades
of hits and like, you know, not saying there's no
one comparable, but there's kind of no one comparable, and
like kind of a call me in forty years kind
of thing and let's see where they're at. And not again,

(44:19):
she wasn't being a jerk. She's just being very matter
of fact about what a big accomplishment that is for her.
And I don't blame her.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
For sure. She's still releasing albums. I mentioned a Vegas
residency two thousand and eight to twenty eleven. She was
working Caesar's Palace. She released album in twenty thirteen. It
was a dance album. I think the whole thing was
a dance album that kind of made it different from
some of all the rest of her albums. She released

(44:46):
a Christmas album last year.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
I didn't know that. I got to hear that.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
It's it's unlistenable at least the single is. It's bad man,
DJ play a Christmas.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
Song, it's not all.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Yeah, I don't like it. And I like Sharon, I
like her work, but I'm not a fan of that song.
And you like Christmas music, it does, yes, I think
that's why I don't like that song. But yeah, yeah,
it's it's it's odd. It's definitely worth listening to, but
I don't think you're gonna make it through the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Okay, through that whole song.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Yeah. I mean, if you were on ecstasy and acid
and at a club, you'd probably be like, this is
pretty good. But if you're just sitting there listening to
it during a work day, yeah, I don't think you're
gonna like it very much.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yeah, while you're working at the Gap at the mall right,
please cut not again. I worked at the Gap during Christmas.
That's the only time I worked there was for like
a month. But that Christmas mix got so into my brain,
and the one that really stands out Wash Sanna's got
a brand new bag. The James Taylor win.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
James Taylor, James Brown.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
Did I say, James Taylor, what is wrong with me?
You know? James Taylor. Yeah, it's got to got a
brand new bags. Oh man, I'm just off my game today.
That's pretty funny, though I'm not gonna.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Be still charming as ever, though, I'll tell you.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
That I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Like Warren Baty, you just need auto tune for your
brain for this episode.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Yeah, that's exactly what I need. Share is but a
Tony away from an egot. I I'm not sure if
there are any plans to get her one. To me,
they should have given her one just for the musical
The Share Show, which was on Broadway and did win
Tony's but like, just throw a Tony man, give her
that egot.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
Yeah. One of the things. So we talked about her
being a gay icon. She did an interview with Pride
soource dot com and they were asking her about you
know how how that happened, and she was saying, like,
you know, gay men are very loyal, and she said
that come back to The five and dime when it premiered,
like it had a big response initially and then it

(46:54):
just dropped off. But yes, but the gay community had
already discovered and loved Share and she said they just
basically came out and supported the show and kept it
going long enough to develop into larger and larger following,
and that had it not been for the gay community,
it would have just been it would have been canceled
very quickly after debuting, and it didn't. And she's like,

(47:14):
that's that's just the kind of support that not just she,
but anybody that is an icon in the gay community
can expect. Yeah, they're just very loyal and supportive, even
if what you're doing is not that great. And I
read that the Share show is essentially being supported by
the gay community too, that it's not super good.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Yeah, I haven't heard that, And of course that's the
full spectrum of the LGBTQ community. Because of her work
with trans writes. You know, she even admits having a
hard time when initially Chaz came out as gay and
then later transitioned. But you know, they're a tight family
and they worked through it, and she has been a

(47:57):
supporter even though it she just had to wrap her
head around it. I know that she got her first
experience with the gay community when she was twelve. From
this article I read, she said told a very cute story.
She said, I came home from school one day there
were these two guys in our living room talking to
my mom and her best friend, and they were so
happy and excited about everything they were talking about, so animated,

(48:19):
and I thought, these guys are so much more fun
than the regular men who come over to visit. I
didn't know they were gay. I just thought these guys
are great, and it all started from them.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
I love that story. It's a great Anne.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah, it's really good.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
She also is a supporter of veterans. She's called into
c SPAN at least two times to promote her help
for I think with inserts into helmets for soldiers in
the Iraq War, and she co founded a charity called
Free the Wild that relocates captive zoo animals to like

(48:51):
actual good habitats.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Yeah, she's I mean, she's flirting with dollihood, not quite,
but she's really close. I mean, she's like a good
she's a cool person. Good person.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Yeah, I guess. Uh. Look for episodes on Barber Streiss
In and Judy Garland. Yeah, in the next couple of years.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Were you go, we're going to become gay icons.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
If we keep this up, that should round it out. Oh,
I hope so.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Well. If you want to know more about share, just
go watch some videos, listen to some songs, read some articles,
go see a Broadway play about her, whatever you want
to do. There's plenty to take in. And since I
said that it's time for listener mail, I'm.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Going to call this freaking follow up. Hey, guys, back
in the day, when there were payphones, the operator could
actually give you back your dime and later a quorterer
by a tone if something went wrong. One of the
earliest hacks involved getting back your dime without an operator
and usually many more dimes than just yours, by slowly
controlling the return from dialing the number nine.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Wow man, kids, Back in the day.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
As you return the dial, money would come out. Okay,
So it was on a dial phone and depending on
when the service, depending on when the service people had
last collected from that phone. I'm not sure I read
that right, but I think you get the picture. Yeah,
you can get quite a lot of money this way.
I refuse to answer how I know this, but a
person could pay for train fare to the suburbs from

(50:25):
Grand Central by going to several phone booths in a row.
That is from Danielle last name redacted.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Nice. Thanks a lot, Danielle. It's a great anecdote. I
love that one.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Chuck me too.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Well. If you want to be like Danielle and give
us a great anecdote about something we talked about, you
can guess we love that kind of stuff. You can
put it in an email and send it off to
Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.