Cher: The Memoir: Part One

Cher recalls her mother’s whirlwind romance with Joseph Harper Collins, who proposed to her two weeks after their first meeting at a party. Cher loved moving into Joseph’s pink mansion and enjoyed some luxuries for the first time in her life, such as fancy food and a heated swimming pool. However, Georgia and Joseph were not very compatible, and they soon divorced. Fortunately, Joseph was a “class act” and provided Georgia and the kids with a rental house and some money.

During this time, Cher’s biological father, Johnnie Sarkisian, got in touch with Georgia and asked to see her and Cher. Cher believes that this was hardly coincidental: Johnnie had seen Georgia’s divorce announcement and believed that she was now rich. Cher was hesitant to meet Johnnie, as she still missed John, but agreed. She was intrigued by their similar looks and mannerisms but had complicated feelings about his sudden appearance in her life.

Johnnie became a regular fixture in the household, and Georgia even decided to remarry him. Cher still feels incredulous about her mother’s decision to remarry a person who had caused her so much pain. She explains that because of Georgia’s upbringing and generation, she considered marriage a way to survive. Johnnie expressed remorse to Cher for having abandoned the family, explaining that his heroin addiction and imprisonment, among other things, kept him from being there for Georgia and the kids.

Cher was wary and resentful of Johnnie, and his addition to the family caused yet another move—this time to “Little Armenia” in Fresno. However, she found that she loved her new extended family, who welcomed her. Her physical resemblance to Johnnie’s family made her feel particularly connected to them. The family moved on to Las Vegas, where Johnnie soon had a relapse of his heroin and gambling addictions and lost the family’s money. Georgia took Cher and Gee and left, moving back to their old place in California. Cher now knows that Georgia then had another abortion; she recalls thinking as a child that her mother was sick and would die. She is still astonished that later, Georgia again went back to her relationship with Johnnie.

Cher kept her flair for adventure. At 13, she stole her mother’s car a couple times, driving to her favorite hot dog place on Hollywood Boulevard. She grew to love her new Catholic school and the nuns who ran the place, but when she revealed to her mother that one of the nuns had hit her, Georgia insisted that she go back to public school. Cher had a misadventure with her new school friends when they urged her to drive them to the store. Underaged and with no license, Cher and her friends were arrested and brought to the station. Cher recalls her sadness at how this ended her friendships with those girls, who weren’t allowed to hang out with her anymore.

Now 14, Cher had crushes and first romances with neighbors and school friends. It was confusing and frightening when some of her mother’s friends made romantic advances toward her, which she had to fend off. Soon, Georgia met a wealthy banker named Gilbert LaPiere and accepted a marriage proposal from him. Cher was both nervous and excited to learn that she and the family would now take on their biggest move yet and relocate to New York City.

Cher and Gee loved the plane ride to New York, their first ever, though Georgia had a panic attack due to her fear of flying. Once there, Georgia adapted to Gilbert’s glamorous lifestyle. Cher immediately liked the energy and novelty of New York. As a California girl, she was amazed by the first snowfall she saw. However, she struggled with loneliness since she did not know anyone there.

Eager to make friends, Cher went to a party with the young man who was the elevator operator in her new building. While there, she was asked out by another guy, and while she got the sense that he was unaware of just how young she was, she agreed. Their date ended when he became sexually aggressive with Cher and she had to talk her way out of his apartment.

Since Cher was becoming more independent and had been running the household with her mother for years, she felt frustrated by her stepfather’s more traditional parenting, which she found “patronizing” (104). To make matters worse, when she started high school, she was viciously excluded. After three weeks, she refused to return. Gilbert noticed her loneliness and introduced her to a friend’s daughter, Joyce. Cher immediately befriended her and was included in her friend group; she loved having places to go and enjoying “a new kind of freedom” (105).

Gilbert took Cher to see Eartha Kitt in concert for her 15th birthday, an experience that made a big impression on Cher. She was amazed by how such a small woman used her voice to captivate and move a whole audience. That summer, the family went to Vermont on vacation, where Cher had a romance with a young Austrian man who worked at the hotel. She soon lost interest in him and had many boyfriends when she returned to New York, feeling like Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Gilbert continued to dote on Cher, taking her shopping and helping to mediate her relationship with her mother.

Georgia was becoming more unhappy and unstable, which Cher attributes to her intense homesickness for LA. Cher recalls how, one day, she had a disagreement with her mother at the dinner table and her mother slapped her mouth, cutting Cher’s lip with her ring. Cher and Gilbert were both shocked; Georgia had never hit Cher before. She believes that this sad incident shows how miserable Georgia was in New York.

Cher had mixed feelings when the family moved back to California, knowing that without a car, she could not have the same freedom she had in New York. She befriended another teen named Steve, who was gay. Cher considered his sexuality a non-issue and liked that they had a relaxed and platonic friendship. She was shocked to learn that being gay had been criminalized in her childhood and that Steve hid his sexuality from his parents.

At this time, Cher began dating Nino Tempo, a singer and producer who was working for Phil Spector, a young music producer and record label owner. While Cher liked Nino at first, she was frustrated by how little she saw him since he was always working. When she met Spector, she found him creepy and rejected his advances. Ultimately, she broke up with Nino because his work consumed all his time. Cher also passed her driving test and was excited to reclaim her freedom. Having been suspended from her new prep school for not taking off her sunglasses in class, she decided to resist ever going back to school.

One day, Cher was cut off in traffic and yelled at the man in the other car. The man turned out to be Warren Beatty, a rising star at age 25 and already renowned for his countless romances with women. Cher was stunned to meet him and charmed when he bought her a pack of cigarettes and invited her to his house. They kissed and swam in his pool, and Cher was delighted until she returned home to her furious parents at four o’clock in the morning. Cher was grounded for her latest misadventure until her mother discovered that she had met Warren Beatty. She then changed her mind and encouraged Cher to date him. They went on a few dates, but Cher soon moved on to other love interests.

At this time, Cher persuaded her parents to let her stop attending high school and take acting classes instead. At first, she found the classes difficult since her instructor was very strict, and she was the youngest in class by many years, but she grew to love her acting teacher, who privately told her that she was the best in the class. She felt especially competent at improv and wanted to impress her teacher.

Cher began to feel increasingly frustrated with her mother, whose moods were unpredictable. Cher could see that her mother felt confined by the suburban life she was now living, and she was not sympathetic to Cher’s worries and struggles. Gilbert agreed to allow Cher to rent a separate apartment with Josita, the family maid, and Cher was thrilled to move out of her parents’ house. After quitting a stressful job as a cashier, she got a job she enjoyed, packing gift baskets in the back of a candy store. However, Cher was still learning how to take care of herself and ate very little aside from the candy she was allowed to eat at the store. She burnt herself out by working full-time and partying at night, and she had to leave her job when she became ill. Unable to afford her apartment, she moved in with a friend named Red, who nursed her back to health. Now 16, Cher wanted to become an actor or singer but knew she couldn’t rely on the performing arts to make a living. She did not want to go home to live with her mother again. With no money and little experience, her future felt uncertain.

While hanging out with her friend Red, Cher met Sonny Bono and was immediately fascinated by him. She found his style, confidence, and life experience interesting and was thrilled to learn that he was moving into the same building where she was staying with her friend Melissa. Later, when Sonny learned that Cher had to move out of Melissa’s apartment, he offered to let her stay with him and pay rent by keeping the place clean and organized. Cher was thrilled and agreed. She found Sonny to be a caring and fun-loving person, and she soon fell in love with him.

Sonny was nine years older than Cher and already a father. He insisted that he was not interested in Cher romantically, but she held out some hope. The two lived together until Georgia came over unexpectedly one day and discovered that Cher had been living with a man. Furious, Georgia insisted that Cher move back into the family home. Gilbert told Georgia to be calm and trust that Cher would move on from Sonny in her own time, but Georgia wanted to separate the two further. She took Cher and Gee on a family trip to visit relatives in Arkansas. Cher was horrified when she realized that some of her extended family and their friends were racists. While Cher had some awareness of anti-Black racism, she was shocked and troubled to see her own family behaving that way, and it further alienated her from her Arkansas relatives.

Back in California, Cher endured her mother’s rules, which limited her access to Sonny. The two continued spending time together, and Cher realized how deep her feelings were for him. She moved into the Hollywood Studio Club, a women-only residence with a curfew. She longed to live with Sonny again but made friends with her roommate and attended acting classes. Gilbert left Georgia and began a relationship with one of her closest friends. This betrayal caused Georgia to fall into a deep depression. Knowing how fragile her mother was and feeling worried about her younger sister, Cher moved back into the family home to take care of her mother. Georgia still made Cher’s life difficult by being overbearing. Soon, however, Cher’s life reached a turning point when Sonny took her to a movie and the two finally kissed.

Cher began to tag along to Sonny’s work at Phil Spector’s record label, and she loved the musical environment and watching the singers. Sonny always asked Spector to let Cher sing and record something, insisting that she had a great voice. One day, Spector needed more voices in backup and asked Cher to join the group. She was nervous, as she had no formal training in music and was intimidated by the talented singers she was joining. Spector was impressed with her voice and regularly asked her to sing. Cher loved the job but continued to worry that she was not good enough. It was difficult to balance her singing gigs with her acting classes—especially since she was singing for free. Sonny insisted that Cher should drop acting and focus on music instead, even if she was working for free at the time. Georgia had a different opinion and urged Cher to demand payment for her singing work, which she then did.

Over time, Sonny became more possessive and controlling of Cher. He resented her activities that did not involve him and told her to stop. She agreed, but in hindsight, she resents how he put a stop to her different interests, such as her weekly baseball game with her mother’s friends.

At the time, however, Cher accepted Sonny’s advice. By age 17, she decided to ignore her mother and move back in with Sonny. The two established a home together, and Sonny finalized his divorce. Cher wanted to marry Sonny and felt that they were “as good as married in [her] heart” (151). While the two were generally happy together, Sonny sometimes had a bad temper. In one incident, he angrily pushed Cher against a wall and held her there. Not wanting to experience abuse as her mother had before her, Cher assertively told him that she would leave him if he ever did that again.

Cher continued to be involved in Sonny’s work at the music studio. She felt both fear and excitement when she became pregnant, but she lost the pregnancy at 16 weeks. The two discussed marriage and agreed to have a very private and unofficial wedding ceremony in their bathroom. They exchanged silver rings and shared customized vows. Cher kept her unofficial marriage a secret from her mother.

Meanwhile, Sonny was still trying to launch Cher’s musical career, but Phil felt that her voice was too low to appeal to a mass audience on its own. The two recorded some songs, but none were successful. Phil tried to rebrand Cher as “Bonnie Jo Mason,” which he felt sounded more wholesome and all-American, yet this produced a flop as well. Sonny then tried to market the pair as “Caesar and Cleo,” but this didn’t take off either. Cher’s shyness about singing on stage and the disappointing results of her early songs made her think that she might only ever make it as a backup singer.