The word ‘icon’ is thrown around quite a lot these days, with the term loosely attributed to various cultural personalities throughout the years. But few people assigned to the notable status can claim its title as much as Cher. In her long-awaited autobiography Cher: A Memoir – the larger-than-life singer, actress, and powerhouse personality, shares the moments, memories and revelations that shaped every part of the present day icon the world knows and loves.
Cher was born in El Centro, California on May 20, 1946 to her 20-year-old mum, Jackie Jean and father, Johnnie Sarkisian, a heroine addict and swindler who decided early on that fatherhood wasn’t for him.
As we come to learn from quite early on in the novel, Cher’s life was punctuated and marked by events so emotionally significant that it’s almost hard to reconcile the Cher of today, with what we know of her younger years.
Charting the years that began with her earliest childhood memories, through to her tumultuous teenage years, a toxic marriage and the birth of her storied career – and children – Cher’s memoir was (understandably) so epic, that the publishers had to split it in two parts.
“Often when I think of my family history it sounds like the opening of a Dickens novel, but it’s true,” she writes in the book’s opening chapter.
“Ours was a sad, strange story of Southern folk coming from nothing and carving out a life after the Great Depression. It wasn’t pretty and it was never easy. Every day was a fight for survival for most of my family going back generations. Resilience is in my DNA.”
Part one – out now – takes readers on an emotional journey of self-sacrifice, grit, and constant reinvention, from when she was born, right up until the 1980s. But we’ll have to wait a little longer for part two, which isn’t due to be released until early 2025.
Until then, read on for some of the most unexpected, wild and eye-opening parts of the superstar’s life as chronicled in Cher: The Memoir Part One.
1. Cher Wanted To Be Dumbo When She Grew Up
At the age of five, Cher’s first trip to the cinema was a moment she recounts as one of the greatest in her life. Among other things, the events that transpired during her first silver screen viewing resulted in the beginnings of a lifelong obsession with the magic of film – an infatuation Cher says, that was inherited from her mother.
Describing the seminal moment as an “out-of-body experience” Cher recalls the moment the lights went down and the images began flickering on the screen: “This was the first time I’d ever seen anything in color on a screen in my life. By the time the animals started singing and dancing, I was a goner.”
“I was so lost in that movie that I thought it was real, especially the baby elephant with the oversized ears who was made fun of until he was given a magic feather and learned how to fly. I felt so completely at one with his character that I was right there alongside him.”
As soon as she left the cinema her mind was made up. “I was going to be Dumbo when I grew up, which seemed like a perfectly logical next step to me.”
While she says her mother swiftly crushed her dreams by noting she couldn’t actually be a cartoon elephant, it becomes clear as she continues to make comparisons to her animated muse throughout the novel, that the connection she discovered was manifest in her own path to freedom.
2. Her Mother Forgot Her Legal Name
Having always gone by Cher, short for (what she had been told) Cherilyn, the singer was completely shocked to learn that her birth name, wasn’t actually her birth name after all.
The unexpected discovery was made in 1979 when, in the process of legally changing her name from Cherilyn to Cher, she was issued with a copy of her birth certificate. On it, the name ‘Cheryl Sarkisian’ was written in bold, marking a moment of disbelief for the star, who’d spent her entire life up until that point thinking her name was Cherilyn.
When she questioned her mother about the anomaly, she recalled a nurse asking for a name to go on the certificate. “My mother had no idea, but the woman insisted so she replied, ‘Well, Lana Turner’s my favorite actress and her little girl’s called Cheryl. My mother’s name is Lynda, so how about Cherilyn?”
When Cher learned about the error, she asked, “do you even know my real name, mom?” to which her mother responded unconcerned “I was only a teenager, and I was in a lot of pain. Give me a break.”
3. She Was Abandoned At A Nunnery As A Baby
In the first chapter of Cher’s memoir, she recalls her mother keeping a small black-and-white photograph, of her as a child, hidden “somewhere in the back of a drawer.”
Describing the pain her mother felt whenever she mentioned the picture, Cher recounted the devastating events that caused her mother to have such a traumatic response to such a little polaroid.
“From what little I’d learned, the tiny square of celluloid depicted me as a baby clinging unhappily to the rails of my crib in a Catholic children’s home in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It was taken through a small viewing window by my tearful twenty-year-old mom, at that time still ‘Jackie Jean,’ her birth name, a singer from rural Arkansas working for tips as a waitress in an all-night diner.”
She goes onto reveal that her father had placed her there “before he took off on his latest moneymaking scam,” leaving her mother in Scranton with “a baby, no money, and few skills never to return.”
Her father had promised her mother that Cher’s placement with the nuns would only be a temporary one. “At first, Mom was calm. In her mind there was a plan in place. Everything would be fine, her husband and child would be back in two weeks.”
But that wasn’t the case. The reality of the situation dawned on her mother and she was forced to move into an “eight-by-ten room that was little more than a cubicle and found a job in an all-night diner where she was expected to work twelve-hour shifts from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. seven days a week.”
“As a mother, I can only imagine, and the thought chills my bones.”
After visiting Cher whenever she could, her mother would return to her “cramped accommodation… crawl into bed and cry herself to sleep.”
Once, her mother went to pay for her daughter’s “keep”, requesting to take Cher out for the day only to be denied contact with baby Cher.
“She wasn’t even allowed to hold me. All they’d let her do was view me through a small window in the door. ‘As I looked in, you were standing in your crib holding on to the sides and crying. I was crying too. I felt so helpless.”
“All she could do was go to the children’s home each week and demand to see me. The sight of my little face through the viewing window broke her heart, but it was on one of those visits that she borrowed a camera to take the photograph she held so dear.”
By early 1947, the mother superior had declared Jackie Jean an unfit mother and tried to convince her to place Cher up for adoption. Refusing, she called on a regular customer – a City Council member – to help her.
Reluctantly, he agreed “Dave offered to buy her train ticket. He then marched into the children’s home and told the mother superior: “You have no legal right to keep Cherilyn Ssarkisian here anymore.” Frightened, she handed me straight over.”
“To her dying day, my mother couldn’t or wouldn’t remember how long I was in that place, but it must have been several months, as I arrived as an infant barely able to crawl and when I came out, I was walking.”
4. She Used To Be Sonny’s Live-In Maid & Cook
One of the central narratives of Part One follows the star’s relationship with her first husband and father to her first child, Sonny Bono.
Their relationship started in a rather unconventional way, with Cher, about to become destitute and homeless after overstaying her welcome with a friend, spied the recently-divorced Bono moving into his new bachelor pad (read: one bedroom apartment), and decided to try her luck.
Cher had recently been introduced to Bono after he’d attempted to hit on her friend after a night out, but sadly for Bono, Cher’s friend wasn’t into Bono – or men in general.
According to Cher, the pair then spent the next 10 days getting to know each other, and after Cher’s time on her friend’s couch had officially run out, Cher confided in Bono.
“Looking for a sympathetic ear, I walked over to Sonny’s and sat on his couch to tell him I had no choice but to move home. Tears sprang to my eyes at the mere thought of it. I didn’t mean to cry, but I think it made Sonny take pity on me.
“Well Cher,” he said. ‘If you cook and clean the place, you could always move in with me for a while.”
“In my mind I was thinking, Yeah, OK, this old line. But I must have had a look on my face because he shook his head and laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got twin beds,’ he said. With a grin he added, ‘And honestly, I don’t find you particularly attractive.’ I was both insulted relieved. And that’s how I became the potty-mouthed sidekick to a man eleven years older than me who was in the middle of a divorce.”
Cher was 16 at the time, but told Sonny that she was 17-going on 18.
“Before too long, I thought the sun rose and set on his Sicilian ass, even though I knew that I wasn’t his type.”
The two continued on as platonic room mates for a while, and as Cher documents in detail, Sonny doted on her, cared for her when she was sick, but remained completely uninterested in her romantically. That was, until things changed and to Cher’s elation, their friendship eventually blossomed into love.
“I guess he was a little possessive, but the idea thrilled me because it meant he cared. Later I would find out that possessive and caring didn’t exactly go hand in hand.”
5. Sonny & Cher’s Relationship Wasn’t As It Appeared
If you asked most people what their impression of Sonny and Cher’s relationship was, it’s likely they would tell you about their on-stage chemistry, their iconic style, or even their similar sense of humour and undeniable `banter that launched them into the stratosphere of fame. But what most people won’t know about their relationship, is that Sonny was an emotionally (once physically) abusive partner that manipulated, controlled and financially crippled the star throughout their relationship.
From the outside looking in, the golden couple of the silver screen appeared to be rock solid. Sonny was a calming presence for Cher who suffered from stage fright, and Cher encouraged Sonny to keep his career dreams alive, despite experiencing more setbacks than successes.
But behind the scenes, he frequently cut her off from her friends and family, and wouldn’t let her go anywhere by herself. He even set her tennis gear alight after finding out she’d spoken to a man in passing as she was leaving her lessons (with her designated female instructor), thus putting a swift end to her only sanctioned hobby.
He also cheated on her incessantly.
The couple, who first met in 1963, unofficially married in 1964 and had their first child in 1969, eventually came undone.
After discovering that Sonny had signed the couple up to perform at Caesars Palace in Vegas “every summer for God knows how many years,” an exhausted and overworked Cher came to the realisation that he was always going to put “business first over me.”
She recalls stepping out onto the balcony of their Vegas suite and looking below. “I was dizzy with loneliness. I saw how easy it would be to step over the edge and simply disappear.”
“For a few crazy minutes I couldn’t imagine any other option. I did this five or six times [during the Vegas stay], and each time I’d think about [her child] Chas, about my mother, about my sister, about everybody and how things like this could make people who look up to me feel that it’s a viable situation and I would step back inside.”
It was these dark thoughts that eventually led to Cher’s decision to leave Sonny for good.
But it wasn’t until after they broke up and Cher started dating music mogul David Geffen, that she discovered the true extent of Sonny’s duplicity.
After reading her contract, Geffen discovered Cher had been signed as Sonny’s employee as part of a company called “Cher Enterprises.”
“I’d worked my whole life, yet apparently, I had nothing to show for it. I’d never for a second imagined that I needed to protect myself from Sonny, of all people, yet the contracts he’d had me sign were secretly designed to strip me of my income and the rights to my own career,” she writes.
“For years, I’ve racked my brain for how he could have done what he did, and I still can’t get over it to this day.”
Sonny Bono died in a skiing accident in 1998, and despite everything, Cher still speaks fondly of him and their time together, remaining close co-parents until his untimely death.
6. She Once Walked In On A Salvador Dali Orgy
Before the end of Cher and Sonny’s relationship, the couple were staying at the St. Regis Hotel in New York.
The pair ran into prolific artist Salvador Dali and the Spanish surrealist invited them, and friend Francis Ford Coppola, to a dinner party he was throwing.
Upon arrival, they stepped into a “large room where people were naked or in various states of undress.”
“One bra-less chick came out wearing a see-through blouse.”
As Sonny and Francis apparently huddled in opposite corners of the room, Cher sat down on a sofa to compose herself but realised she’d sat on what she described as a “gorgeous rubber fish.”
Admiring the fish when Dali sat down next to her, she exclaimed “Oh my god, Salvador, this is beautiful!” to which the artist responded: “Yes, It’s lovely when you place it on your clitoris.”
Always cool and collected, the star kept her composure but said “inside, however, I was – how can I put this? – screaming.”
7. She Helped Tina Turner Leave Ike
Tina Turner and Cher had first become friends after the singer had several guest performances on their television show.
One night shortly after news of Cher and Sonny’s separation became known, Turner came backstage asking for Cher’s help in covering up her bruises with make-up.
While Cher was tending to her, Turner asked: “Tell me how you left him.”
0“I just walked out and kept on going,” she replied.
And soon after that exchange, Tina Turner finally found the courage to do just that, leaving her abusive husband Ike Turner in 1976.
8. Cher Nearly Crashed Into Warren Beatty – Then Dated Him
In 1962, a 15-year-old Cher decided to take her stepfather’s car out for a joyride and almost crashed into a reckless motorist who’d neglected to look where he was going.
That motorist was a then-25-year-old Warren Beatty, notorious womaniser and Hollywood heavyweight who was also, at the time, dating his Splendour in the Grass co-star Natalie Wood.
The actor told Cher she was “so drop-dead gorgeous” and invited her back to his house.
“He showed me inside, fixed us some cheese and crackers, then leaned in and kissed me,” she wrote. “The two of us went swimming, with me in Natalie Wood’s bathing suit, and we had a great time.”
After getting home at 4am and suffering the consequences of a broken curfew from her mother, Cher thought that was the end of it. Until the next day, when Beatty called to ask her over again and she responded by telling him she was “grounded.”
1He asked to speak with her mother, who Cher says “melted” instantly, responding: “Why didn’t you tell me you were with Warren Beatty?”
Beatty and Cher went on two more dates after that.
Cher: The Memoir Part One, published by Harper Collins, is out now at all good book sellers and available to purchase here.
