November 20, 2024

"She was only 15 when Warren Beatty lent her Natalie Wood’s bathing suit and took her for cigarettes and a swim."

"She was 16 when she met the 11-years-older, mid-divorce Salvatore Phillip 'Sonny' Bono, who lied to her about being a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, and she moved into his apartment in exchange for cooking and cleaning — not sex, at first."

From "Becoming Cher Didn’t Come Easy/The first volume of her frank autobiography is a testament to resilience, chronicling a grim childhood and the brazen path to stardom, with and without Sonny" (NYT).

46 comments:

Achilles said...

One of the incredible accomplishments of the United States is making pedophilia taboo and raising the age of consent for marriage to more adult ages.

It is not shocking that the Regime wants to go back to child rape and forced marriage. That is the historical norm and is the way things are in most of the world outside the US.

Supporting child trafficking is just what most other societies do. Democrats are flipping out because they are being called out.

gilbar said...

so, she was a teenaged sexworker?
that traded sex for access to fame? Like Most starlets do?

RideSpaceMountain said...

"not sex, at first."

In addition to a great t-shirt, that is practically the prologue of every failed relationship.

Shouting Thomas said...

The popular music biz is 75% selling pussy. I don’t see that ever changing.

RideSpaceMountain said...

Diddy did not kill himself.

Aggie said...

The article begins: "Before Twitter morphed into the strange ghost town of X...."

So right away, we know it's a fantasy piece, and bit of directionless wish-casting.

wendybar said...

All I remember is Cher so heartbroken over his death, claiming he was her soul mate. She has shown herself to be quite delusional these past few years, so I think she lost some brain cells when she was doing drugs with Gregg Allman.

wendybar said...

Pretty much. Now she is trying to #metoo the men she seduced.

Disparity of Cult said...

Her eulogy at Sonny's funeral was her best acting performance.

RCOCEAN II said...

The Sonny and Cher show was the ultimate in 70s cringe. You gotta admire Sonny. He couldn't sing, act, or tell jokes. But he made millions in show biz. He couldn't ski either, but that's another story.

tommyesq said...

So he told her that he was a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, and she believed him? Sucker.

DanTheMan said...

"What does the author want to be true?" There are over 600 million active users on X. That's one helluva ghost town.

Achilles said...

It more boils down to pure hedonism. They are only interested in selling something as long as it allows them to purchase happiness.

rehajm said...

...creepiest is Warren Beatty has Natalie Wood's bathing suit to lend...and that he knows it might fit.

stlcdr said...

"... lied to her about being a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte..."

Crime of the century.

Ampersand said...

I'm waiting for Sonny Bono's detailed, comprehensive, and persuasive rebuttal.

Dr Weevil said...

I used to laugh at all the Sonny Bono jokes, though I couldn't help noticing he was a better than average congressman. Then I bought Dwight Yoakam's album Under the Covers, in which he covers a dozen tunes by a dozen artists: one each by Beatles, Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison, lots more. One tune was a duet with Sheryl Crow that I didn't recall having heard before, looked at the track listings, and said "Sonny Bono?!?!?": "Baby, Please Don't Go" (aka "Baby Don't Go") was the best song on the album. I revised my estimate of Sonny (the good "Bono")'s talent several notches upwards. Should probably explore his oeuvre one of these days to see if it was a one-off, or if Yoakam and Crowe made a mediocre song great.

mccullough said...

Sarkisian.

Wince said...

"...lied to her about being a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte."

Or maybe just a facile way of him broaching the height difference?

William said...

As Faustian bargains go, she didn't strike such a bad deal......Sonny had some real talent as did she, and they both made the most of it.....There was a horn dog British PM who claimed he could talk a girl out of his face in fifteen minutes. Sonny knew something about marketing. He did look a little like Napoleon. He wasn't particularly good looking but if you saw the resemblance to Napoleon, you would process the data differently.......Cher can claim that she had a harder life than Sonny but she can't claim her life was unluckier. Just for one thing, she's alive and he's not.

AlbertAnonymous said...

“She was only 15 when Warren Beatty lent her Natalie Wood’s bathing suit…”

What? Natalie didn’t need it anymore?

What kind of wood doesn’t float?

wild chicken said...

Yeah "Baby Don't Go" was my favorite song of theirs, by far. I remember when they first appeared in LA as Caesar and Cleopatra.

Jamie said...

Almost no one in show business, it seems to me, has the mental wherewithal to form properly supported opinions about important issues. This isn't necessarily because they're stupid - I assume they're stupid in the same proportion as everyone else. I think it's because they never have to develop it. They're so often discovered while very young, and then their working life doesn't lend itself to thoughtful contemplation about anything except how to make other people feel prescribed emotions. And THEN they're either rewarded out of all proportion to the importance of that task, or they're too busy working similarly unthoughtful odd jobs to survive.

All of the above is a generalization, of course.

So the question is the one we were invited to consider the other day: what's wrong with our culture that we think the political opinions of show business people to be worth more than the CO2 they exhale while speaking them?

TaeJohnDo said...

"... lied to her about being a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte..." It was just a little lie.

Leland said...

The quoted section made me wonder about Cher's parents. Their story explains hers pretty well.

John Holland said...

It's amazing how often Sonny Bono's name comes up in "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs". He was all over the L. A. music scene between 1960 and 1967, and a surprising number of new bands in both the US and the UK cut their teeth covering songs he wrote or co-wrote.

Iman said...

More interested in the “wife of the guy passed out face down in his plate of pasta, Gregg Allman” chapters.

Iman said...

That is an outstanding song, Dr.! Always been my fave from Sonny & Cher…

Temujin said...

Sonny: "Come live with me in my apartment. You can clean and cook in lieu of rent. I won't touch you. At first."
Cher: No.
Sonny: "Did I tell you I'm a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte?"
Cher: "Which Napoleon was he?"
Sonny: "The Big One."
Cher: "Well...OK. But you can't touch me. At first."
Sonny: "The beat goes on."
Cher: "What?"

Money Manger said...

Volume One ??? Just tell me what pages to flip to for the good parts.

Narr said...

Well, I'm a descendant of Charlemagne, but that fact has never gotten me laid.

JaimeRoberto said...

Bono. Bonaparte. Both were short. It makes sense.

Narr said...

Napoleon wasn't short--he was just about average size for men of his time and station in France.

He also left no legitimate offspring that survived to procreate (not that Sonny claimed that, of course).

William said...

I bet Warren Beatty read her memoirs with particular interest.

Rocco said...

Narr said…
Well, I'm a descendant of Charlemagne, but that fact has never gotten me laid.

Since everyone of European descent is supposedly descended from him, you’d technically be doing it with a cousin.

Justabill said...

A living embodiment of the hot/crazy graph.

RCOCEAN II said...

Somebody likes Cher. Somebody liked Sonny. They sold records. They had hits. They had TV shows. I wasn't one of them.

Quaestor said...

Not gullible, impenetrably ignorant -- then and doubly so now.

Quaestor said...

We damn Bono for his line about being a descendant of Napoleon. The emperor fathered two known children, Napoleon II who died childless at 21, and Alexandre-Florian-Joseph Colonna, Count Walewski, who fathered seven children, three of whom left issue with living descendants, so it is not altogether impossible. However, everyone forgives Cher for pretending to be an Indian. That's not impossible, but I'd take a long odds bet Bono had some Bona parts. No dice on the tramp.

RNB said...

I thought Cher threatened to move to Jupiter when Trump was elected back in 2016. (The planet, not the town in Florida.) Shouldn't she at least be a Canadian by now?

Goldenpause said...

My opinion of Warren just improved.

Curious George said...

"The Sonny and Cher show was the ultimate in 70s cringe. You gotta admire Sonny. He couldn't sing, act, or tell jokes. But he made millions in show biz. He couldn't ski either, but that's another story."

The old joke "The first time sap went into a tree.

Marcus Bressler said...

Thank God she didn't move to my Jupiter.

Mark said...

Yes, the selection of a grown man who has sex with 17 year olds for money as Attorney General really sends the signal that Republicans are against pedophillia.

boatbuilder said...

Isn't that U2 guy also a descendant of Napoleon? Or maybe of Sonny?

Cappy said...

OK voice, easy lay.