The Sonny & Cher Ultimate Collection
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: B Episodes: B
When they arrived in the later 1960s, Sonny & Cher has
a fairly good run on the Pop charts, for a brief time being as hot a duo as any
in Pop music. After films like William
Friedkin’s Good Times and Sonny Bono’s big production showcase for Cher
called Chastity (reviewed elsewhere on this site), they began to see
their commercial success drift away.
They continued their nightclub act until a fateful night where an
executive offered them a television variety show.
This offer came from CBS and Fred Silverman, who ran the
network, though enough of them to think they had the perfect show to succeed a
retiring Ed Sullivan. As was often the
case in those days, Silverman was right and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
was an instant hit. It ran three
seasons, and even after the couple divorced, they reunited for two more seasons
of another series. The Sonny &
Cher Ultimate Collection chronicles highlights form some of the best shows
from all five of those seasons and much more.
The three DVD set from Respond 2 is a very well rounded look at the ride
their renewed success gave us.
As a promotional appearance for the Chastity
feature film on The Barbara McNair Show in 1969, included here as “1969
Pilot” shows that their act was set up even then. Sonny would be the insecure, loudmouth criticizing a quiet Cher,
who lets him go on and hang himself with his egotistical perception of how
talented and great he proved to be in the duet they just sang. The performance here is especially what we
would term sexist, having her sit down on a stool when he says so, the quiet
wife, then she comes up with deadpan sound bytes that cause his wall of ego so
slowly crack until in collapses altogether.
With woman’s liberation, changing times, and various social movements,
this was clever enough to be timely and capitalize on many things going
unaddressed. Their Hippie credibility
from their initial hits only added to the interest and authenticity.
The first disc includes the very first-ever episode of the
show and two of the stronger ones that debut season. Harvey Korman and cameos by Freeman King & Glenn Ford launch
the long line of guest stars. Cher’s
clothes were always made Bob Mackie, who also did The Carol Burnett Show,
so Korman was a perfect choice to help launch the show right and it
worked. Then there is the All In The
Family send-up as an Operetta in which even the “CBS Censor” shows up. The second show has Burt Reynolds sending
himself up throughout the show. Merv
Griffin shows how entertaining he could be in the third show, when he was still
known as a talk show host and not a game show mogul.
The second and third seasons are looked at on the second
disc. The classic Jackson 5/Ronald
Reagan show is up first, which gets more interesting (and bizarre) with
age. With daughter Chasity a part of
the show, they gave her a Mr. Rogers Neighborhood-like trolley car to
enter, which would then show us the guest stars of the show. Howard Cosell and Chuck Connors are in the
second episodes, while Danny Thomas with Ken Berry and George Foreman is the
final of the six shows form the first three seasons this set offers.
The third disc starts with the first new show of the new
series, with the animation and light-up globes set gone. Donnie & Marie show up in what was a
crossover appearance, as they also appeared on the Osmonds hit show. Alex Karras and Ruth Buzzi co-star. As far as the 1970s is concerned, the
Bono/Osmond thing is one of those touchstones that retro cannot touch. Farrah-Fawcett made a great appearance in
the second show with Glenn Campbell as guest star, who also does one of his
hits. Then there is the third show.
Over the years, the show was criticized for butchering other
people’s hit songs, but I always got a kick out of their covers. That was whether their singing worked or
not. The Vamp segments were my
favorites, something that the intended successor Lady Luck never
supplanted. Besides their own hits,
Cher landed a slew of solo hits that the show helped launch, including three
number ones! They are sometimes
considered gloriously annoying oldies from hell, but I enjoy those even more
than the singing with Sonny. But the
most inarguably great moment in the five seasons of the show is with the guest
starring of Tina Turner. On her way to
one of the most spectacular comebacks ever, the show was broadcast March 11,
1977 and it was in the disco era both Cher and Tina took their best shots at
the genre.
Once the show was over, Cher would hit in 1979 with Take
Me Home, while Tina would do notable covers of Disco Inferno and Hot
Legs with Rod Stewart. Both would
also become hit acts in Las Vegas, but would also have big chart success in the
1980s by leaving Vegas behind and embracing Rock music like never before. For Tina, it was Private Dancer,
while Cher has several albums that gave her hits. Both free of abusive husbands, with Cher and Sonny resolved
enough to do the series, the music performances by Tina solo, then the medley
she does with Cher is a glorious moment in TV and music that turned out to be a
triumph bigger than anything even they could have imagined at the time.
The only show not here that should have been is one that
offered Mike Connors of Mannix & Jean Stapleton from All In The
Family as guest stars. Without
going though an episode guide, that is a great one and maybe we’ll see it down
the line. Otherwise, this is a great
set of programs that will show you why Sonny & Cher were so popular and so
loved. They were themselves like no
team and certainly no variety show team had ever been before, and had a pop
culture moment few ever could claim, the kind TV rarely delivers anymore. The Sonny & Cher Ultimate Collection
nearly lives up to its name.
The full frame images throughout the DVDs in this set are
in great shape and show that the 2-inch reel-to-reel videotape survived very
well. The color is as consistent as
professional, analog NTSC video from that time can offer, but the limits are
there. With that said, these are pretty
clean. The producer interviews are
newer and Barbara McNair footage older.
The audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono throughout, with some warping on the
shows on the third DVD, odd considering they are the newer shows. The audio on Gypsies, Tramps &
Thieves is a bit distorted and on Half Breed is outright warped, but
since Cher was lip-syncing to the hit records, they should have been replaced
with a stereo copies of the songs. The
Way Of Love (a duet someone forgot to rewrite for Cher, so she sounds like
a lesbian character by the end of the song) and Dark Lady are also here,
with original vocals she sang during the taping. The Music Video clips are monophonic as well, but are still good
extras, but there are more.
Disc One has the first of a two-part interview with the
producers of the original three seasons and two 16mm promo spots CBS used to
launch the series. The second,
concluding part is on DVD 2. The third
disc has the 1969 Pilot, a three clip karaoke section, three clip Music Video
section, brief text biographies of the duo, too brief text on the show history,
a discography that is limited only to albums of them as a duo with chart
positions, an odd radio jingle with explanation, and promo spots for their solo
shows when they split. All shows
feature limited commentary tracks by Cher herself, and they are all worth
hearing. Add what the producers share
and there are some great stories here.
The animated sequences by John Wilson, who served as the
show’s equivalent of Peter Maxx throughout the original three seasons was a
signature of the show and the combination of his work and the way videotape was
used on this show was as much a forerunner of anything you would see on MTV’s
classic promo spots as anything. And
yes, that is Terri Garr and a bearded Steve Martin in the supporting cast. To find out more about this set, visit www.Respond2.com and also look into all the
other great exclusives from R2 Entertainment.
- Nicholas Sheffo
