Cher and Sonny, the dynamic couple, brought a lot of love, laughter, and light to mainstream
media during the late 1960s and ’70s. Smiling on the outside, the famed duo’s connection was
even deeper, more complex and more fraught than their public image suggested. Not only was Cher
just 16 when they met, but their marriage was riddled with personal and professional betrayal.
Sonny Bono had already been working in the music industry for a few years when he met Cher in the
early 60s. The young songstress was just 16 years old in comparison to the 27-year-old Bono, who was
already married but separated from his wife. During a 2018 SiriusXM special titled The Cher
Show: Making the Musical, the singer revealed that she felt an instant connection with Bono.
She shared that “everyone just disappeared” when she first saw him, noting that “he was
the most unusual person I’d ever seen.” Though Cher was immediately infatuated
with Sonny, he was actually interested in one of her friends. “I was with my girlfriend,
who was really beautiful,” Cher recalls. “He liked her, so he didn’t really say anything to me.
He was like, ‘Oh yeah, kid.’” Even though they weren’t romantically involved,
Cher was soon living with Sonny. He’d moved into a nearby apartment when her roommates
kicked her out, and said she could stay with him if she’d clean the place.
Reluctant to return home, Cher agreed to do so — though she never actually tackled household
chores. He also let her know upfront, he didn’t exactly have heart eyes for her.
“He said, ‘Okay. I have twin beds. You can stay in my house. I don’t find you particularly
attractive,’” said Sonny. Yet, in time, their relationship shifted from platonic to romantic.
Cher, who’d been abandoned by her father, said, “It wasn’t a fiery, sexy thing with us, but rather
paternal, like we were bound together, two people who needed each other, almost for protection.”
Cher’s mother also felt her daughter’s father issues played a role in the relationship.
“It’s strange,” she told Ladies’ Home Journal in 1975, “but at that time Sonny was the spitting
image of her father. I think the father image had a great deal to do with Cher’s feelings, but I
didn’t think it would have helped if I’d told that to Cher. When a girl is as much in love with a man
as she was, not much can be done about it.” Soon enough, Sonny and Cher began working
on their musical careers. Thanks to his work for Phil Spector, Cher got gigs as a backup
singer on Spector-produced hits like “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” and “Be My Baby.”
Sonny felt Cher could succeed as a singer on her own. But due to her nerves,
he started performing with her to make her more comfortable. And after a few detours,
including time as a duo called Caesar and Cleo, the pair became stars with “I Got You Babe”.
Sonny had written the song, and he continued to oversee their career as they produced other hits,
including 1967’s “The Beat Goes On.” Cher told Billboard in 2017, “I knew what I wanted to do,
but I never would’ve gotten there without Sonny.” Cher and Sonny’s personal relationship had
continued as they sought and found stardom. They had a faux “marriage ceremony” in 1964
(they would officially tie the knot in 1969). As in their career, Cher was happy to let Sonny take
the lead in their personal lives. Looking back in 2010, she said,
“I had such a hero worship of Sonny, long after we were together. I just thought he was great.”
By the end of the 60s, Cher and Sonny’s music career had stalled out as public tastes shifted.
And Sonny’s decision to self-finance Chastity, a movie starring Cher,
left them broke after the film flopped. In 1969, the couple had a child
(Chastity Bono, who later transitioned to male and became known as Chaz Bono),
but this relationship milestone made it all the more important to jumpstart their career.
Cher and Sonny started a lounge act, during which their onstage banter evolved into Cher delivering
perfectly deadpan put-downs to, and about, her husband. They became popular enough to land
a TV show in 1971: The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. It was a huge hit, with their family
relationship a centerpiece of the series. Underlining this closeness was Cher
and Sonny singing “I Got You Babe” to each other at the end of each episode.
Also, it didn’t hurt that soon-to-be comedic star Steve Martin wrote some of the material.
Though their careers had been reborn, their personal life was in trouble. As Vanity
Fair put it, Sonny “had married a teenager, but soon she became a woman and a mother.”
Cher also became a superstar, often shining so brightly that Sonny got lost in the background.
“You are a butterfly, meant to be seen by all,
not to be kept by one,” he admitted, even as he controlled Cher’s decisions.
Despite showcasing an ideal relationship on-screen, Cher and Sonny’s dynamic
behind-the-scenes had begun to crumble. At the height of their stardom, Sonny and
Cher’s marriage became rife with infidelity. It all began in 1972 when the relationship
started going downhill. Sonny wasn’t faithful to Cher, who once remarked,
“One woman, or even five, was not enough for him… I asked him, ‘How did you manage the logistics?’
I was trusting and faithful with him. I’m not sure if we should’ve ever been husband and wife.”
Soon, both were having affairs. Sonny was seeing a woman named Connie Foreman,
and Cher was seeing several lovers but would begin seeing label executive David Geffen
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_uAtFkvrps&ab_channel=extratv 0.06).
As their careers were tied up with the idea of “Sonny and Cher” as a couple,
it was hard to divorce. Instead, they stayed married but found new partners,
with some joining the couple at their mansion. In a diary entry from August 21, 1973, Sonny
wrote, “Connie and I live together as husband and wife. But my public wife is still Cher in order to
maintain all the things I want right now. That’s the way it has to be.” This didn’t seem to faze
Cher, who has said, “We had a weird relationship. I don’t expect anybody to understand it.”
Yet, the marriage facade couldn’t last forever. Sonny filed for separation in February 1974,
then Cher demanded a divorce, calling their marriage “involuntary servitude.”
In the process of breaking up, Cher had discovered that Cher Enterprises, the corporation formed by
Sonny, was 95 percent owned by her husband, with the remaining five percent held by their
lawyer. Despite being known as a pair, only one half fully profited from “Sonny and Cher.”
Trusting her hubby, Cher had also signed a restrictive contract that meant she
couldn’t take jobs without Sonny. Now she wanted out of this agreement.
Indeed, Cher was tired of being controlled by Sonny.
“It wasn’t like, I mean, he never hit me, never really yelled at me,”
she explained. “I could just never ever talk back to him, and so I never got any of my needs met.”
As a result, their show was canceled, and their split was now in the public eye. It would be
Cher’s new beau Geffen, who acted helped get her out of the limiting contract imposed by Sonny.
He apparently likened her contract to “slave labor.” In divorce proceedings,
the singer notably said her soon-to-be ex-husband relegated her to “involuntary servitude.”
Sonny detested that accusation, and talked about in his autobiography, And the Beat Goes On,
according to The Washington Post. In the end, the two came to a deal
for Cher to participate in more than a million dollars worth of shows and
appearances with Sonny to leave her contract. When the divorce was finalized, they were ordered
to split their earnings and properties equally. Sonny was also told to pay for all of Cher’s
legal fees, in addition to paying her $25,000 a month for half a year and pay child support.
After separate TV shows failed for both Cher and Sonny, they worked together
on The Sonny and Cher Show again, but the magic was gone, and the show didn’t last.
Cher struggled to find her footing after divorcing Sonny.
She said in a 2017 interview that he had made every decision for her. “I knew how to sing and
how to be a mother. I didn’t know anything else.” But she remained a star and added an impressive
career in acting to her resume. Sonny decided to become a restaurateur before turning to politics.
At times, both seemed to regret their break-up. “I enjoyed the power of Sonny and Cher so much.
That took years and years to let go.” he revealed to People magazine in 1991.
In 2010, Cher confided to Vanity Fair that she’d felt Sonny was “treating me more like the golden
goose than like his wife.” She also said that if he had agreed to just disband Cher Enterprises and
start all over again, she would have never ever left. “Just split it down the middle, 50–50.”
Despite sharing a child, Cher and Sonny often sniped at each other in public after splitting up.
If asked about the time she’d been happiest, Cher would often say, “When I left Sonny.”
Sonny felt Cher “played the part of a victim.” Yet they reunited for an
emotional rendition of “I Got You Babe” on Late Night with David Letterman in 1987.
And Cher once clarified, “Even if we don’t say nice things about each other,
it doesn’t mean anything. I know Sonny too well.” Cher was devastated and in shock when she learned
Sonny had died in a skiing accident. She spent days drafting a eulogy she hoped would repair
all the damage and misconceptions about Sonny. At his funeral, her moving words touched on
their history and connection. She ended by saying, “When I was young,
there was this section in Reader’s Digest called ‘The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met.’
No matter how old I get, no matter how many people I meet, that person will always be Son for me.”
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