This week, Cher unveiled Cher: The Memoir, Part One. The hefty book details the first half of the icon’s life, while the second half will be recounted in the upcoming Part Two.
The book is as raw and unfiltered as one would expect from Cher. She doesn’t hold back on any figure in her life, whether it’s one of her mother’s seven husbands or a random celebrity encounter. Here are some takeaways from the year’s biggest memoir.
Cher was briefly raised by nuns
Cher’s early childhood was peppered with bouts of extreme poverty and tenuous. The worst of it was when her mother, Georgia Holt, was married to Cher’s biological dad for the first time. John Sarkisian was a gambling addict who bet — then subsequently lost — his family’s business. Sarkisian promised his wife he would go find a way to make money for the family, abandoning Holt and their infant daughter in Scranton, Pennsylvania while he set off on never-fulfilled moneymaking scheme. Before he left, he encouraged his wife to let Cher be taken care of by a Catholic children’s home while she tried to make ends meet. The nuns would not let Holt hold her daughter during the months Cher was there, and Holt eventually had to get a city councilmember to help her get her daughter back. In 1994, Cher wrote the song “Sisters of Mercy” about this time in her life.
Her mom’s troubled childhood made their relationship difficult
Cher and her mother were bonded for life, but Holt carried trauma from a difficult childhood that made transitioning to young motherhood rough. As a kid herself, Holt’s family was extremely poor and her father was abusive. At one point, he tried to kill his children by gassing them in their bedroom; Holt ended up being the one to save her family. Holt was left with very little after her first husband abandoned her and their daughter, so she found ways to make ends meet with odd jobs in nightlife or as an actress. She also married and re-married constantly, looking for stability for herself, Cher, and later her youngest daughter (Cher’s half-sister) Georganne. Some of Holt’s husband’s were extremely wealthy, leading to lavish lifestyles between Los Angeles and New York; Holt at times was jealous of how much easier her daughters’ childhoods were in comparison.
Cher briefly dated Warren Beatty
While growing up in the heart of Hollywood, Cher had all sorts of great encounters with fascinating people and true stars. One was none other than Warren Beatty. The rising legend was 25 when his car nearly crashed into hers on Sunset Boulevard. Cher was just 15 then, already illegally driving, and took up Beatty’s offer for them to spend the day together. They swam and kissed until Cher was brought home to her angry mother past curfew. But Holt’s mood sweetened when she learned that it was Beatty who had taken an interest in her daughter; the two went on a few more dates and reconnected in the Seventies when he asked her out again. They would eventually become friends.
Sonny was a controlling husband
Cher and Sonny met on a double-date when the singer was 16 and her first husband was 27. She was immediately fascinated by him, though she admits they weren’t very attracted to each other. When she needed a place to stay, she lied about her age and moved in his one-bedroom apartment. They eventually “married” in Tijuana when Cher turned 18, a publicity cover-up for their more intimate ceremony in their first home when she was still underage. They only became legally married in 1969. The marriage was hardly easy: While there were plenty of tender moments between the pair; Cher paints a portrait of a controlling, unfaithful husband. He wouldn’t let her talk to band members and was short-tempered and jealous. He burned her tennis clothes after she was seen socializing with her tennis coach outside of their lessons. Sonny was also negligent of his young wife; they struggled to conceive a child and Cher’s recovery after giving birth to Chaz was a difficult one. The first night home from the hospital, Sonny went out while his wife laid on the bathroom floor passed out from a hemorrhage.
Cher felt so trapped that she contemplated jumping from the balcony of a Las Vegas hotel when she was just 26. It was Lucille Ball who told Cher to leave him. “Fuck him, you’re the one with the talent,” Ball told Cher. Cher would later pay it forward when she had Tina Turner on her solo variety show, offering her advice on how to finally walk away from Ike Turner’s rampant physical and emotional abuse.
Her acting career had a difficult launch
Acting was Cher’s first love. She grew up around actors; her mom worked as one and married one for a spell. She eventually left high school to go to acting school. Her acting coach called her a “natural” and Cher found freedom in performing on-stage. She notes that some of the best acting advice she got was to not always wait for her scene partner to finish their line to make the flow of conversation smoother. In the Seventies, as she was beginning her new career outside of Sonny, Cher struggled for years to get an agent, let alone interest from male directors and producers. Mike Nichols turned her down for a role after they were introduced to each other by Jack Nicholson. She was considered by Jon Peters for a remake of A Star Is Born, though she felt he had “an ulterior motive” in meeting with her. Producer Ray Stark made a gross sexual innuendo during their meeting, as well. It was Francis Ford Coppola who saw the potential in Cher’s career on screen, lauding her show and asking why she hadn’t made the jump to film yet.
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