April 3, 1979
Directed
by Art Fisher
Written
by Buz Kohan, Arthur Sellers, Patricia Resnick, Cher
Choreography
by Joe Layton
Cher
(Cher) was born Cherilyn Sarkisian in 1946 and has gone on to be one
of entertainments most enduring celebrities. She has been seen on
Broadway, in films (winning an Oscar in 1987), on television (Emmy
Award in 2003), and concert stages worldwide. As
a singer Cher is the only performer to have earned top 10 hit singles
in four consecutive decades. She is also one of the most imitated
singers of all time, including by Lucie Arnaz on a 1973 episode of
“Here’s Lucy” (with full cooperation of Cher herself). Cher’s
mother, Georgie Holt, appeared as one of the Jacques Marcel models in
“Lucy Gets a Paris Gown” (ILL S5;E20) as well as as a fur fashion
model in “Lucy and Pat Collins” (TLS S5;E11). Cher is currently
promoting her appearance in the movie musical Mamma
Mia: Here We Go Again (2018) and a Broadway musical based on her life, The Cher Show.
Lucille
Ball (Cleaning
Lady)
was
born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen
career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’
due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. With Richard Denning,
she starred in a radio program titled “My Favorite Husband” which
eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television
situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband,
Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful,
allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming
it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known
as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s
marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy
returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted
six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s
Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr.,
as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show”
during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more
attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon,
which was not a success and was canceled after just 13 episodes.
Elliott
Gould (Sign
Painter) is an actor best known for playing Trapper John in the 1970
film M*A*S*H. He was nominated for an Oscar for Bob
& Carol & Ted & Alice
(1969), a film Lucille Ball helped parody (as Alice) on a 1969
episode of “The Carol Burnett Show.” Gould was featured in
Oceans
8 and
is currently in pre-production for Romancing
Brazil. This is his only appearance with Lucille Ball.
Shelley
Winters
(Shelley) was
born Shirley Schrift in 1920 (some sources list 1922) in Illinois.
Her screen acting career began in 1943 under the name Shelley Winter
(no ‘s’). It culminated in two Oscars for Best Supporting Actress
in the films The
Diary of Anne Frank
in
1960 and A
Patch of Blue in
1966. She also won a 1964 Emmy. Winters was married four times and
known for her brash sexuality. She had an uncredited role in the 1946
Lucille Ball film Two
Smart People and
played a version of herself in “Lucy and Miss Shelley Winters”
(HL S1;E4) in 1968.
She
died in 2006.
Andy
Kaufman
(Adam) was
a performance artist and comedian. He is best known for playing Latka
Gravas on the TV sitcom “Taxi.” Andy appeared in movies, on
Broadway, did a one man show at Carnegie Hall, enjoyed a brief
professional wrestling career, and performed in concerts nationwide.
He appeared with Lucy on “Van Dyke & Company” in December
1976. He died in 1984 of lung cancer although the internet keeps alive the theory that he may be still alive.
Bill
Saluga
(Johnson, Cher’s Driver) of
the Ace Trucking Company comedy troupe, was seen all over television
in the seventies and early eighties as an obnoxious little fellow
named “Raymond J. Johnson, Jr.” When addressed as “Johnson”
though, he would launch into a tirade starting, “You doesn’t has
ta call me Johnson–you can call me RAY or you can call me JAY….”
He appeared on “The Tonight Show” with Lucille Ball in 1974.
Bob
Mackie and Ret Turner were nominated for Emmy Award for their
costumes. Mackie still creates fashions for Cher to this day and is depicted in the upcoming musical The Cher Show, as well as designing the show’s costumes. Turner died in 2016.
This special was only aired once and never made commercially available on video, although low-quality copies can be found on YouTube and have been available by private dealers.
In
a cold open, Cher is alone singing “Ain’t Nobody’s Business”
(written
in 1922 by Porter
Grainger
and
Everett
Robbins)
as a variety of women from history, all adorned in period costumes by
Bob Mackie, of course. Among the fashion parade are some recognizable
figures: Eve, Cleopatra, Scarlett O’Hara, all in a cloud-like
setting. At the end of the number, the scene cross fades to Cher, dressed in street clothes, stepping off a dingy elevator into an empty building’s atrium.
With
no one around Cher talks to the camera – about herself (in the
third person) until she sees a sign painter (Elliott Gould) looking
for “the blue”.
Looking for a party, he directs her to enter a
door labeled “Food
for Thought Inc.”
The elegant room features eight fancy dressed, bejeweled party-goers,
gossiping around a dining table, the elegant hostess looking very
much like Cher. In fact, it is Cher. At one point a more somber Cher ‘leaves her body’
wearing jeans and a man-tailored shirt and sings “Love & Pain”
(written by Richard
T. Bear
in 1979). She observes hostess Cher getting an engagement ring from a handsome
guest. At the end of the song, the two Chers
merge.
Back
in the hallway of the atrium, street clothes Cher encounters the Sign Painter
again, complaining that it was the wrong party. He directs her to a
door labeled “Misery
Loves Company” where
she (now in a new outfit) encounters primly-dressed Shelley Winters
in a dark bedroom setting. As a saleslady, Shelley offers Cher tragedies
from the four corners of the world. “Your basic one, two, three
and four handkerchief categories.” [A laugh track is discretely
used here to suggest this is comedy.] She suggests something from the film Rocky, but Cher
finds the ending too happy. =Shelley’s eye catches sight of a movie
poster for Wuthering
Heights (1939),
which she calls “Withering Heights.” It’s not quite what Cher is
looking for, so Shelley offers Gone
With The Wind
(1939). Shelley is not doing a good job of selling the tragedy, so
Cher coaches her through a scene, pushing her face into a burlap sack
of dirt. Shelley does the same to Cher saying “Share [Cher] and Cher [share] alike!”
Cher:
“Do
you have ‘Bambi’?”
Shelley:
“DEAR [deer],
you’re not the type. I don’t have that in stock, but I’ve got a rifle
from ‘Winchester 73.’”
Winchester
73 was a 1950 film about a prized rifle that starred Shelley Winters and
James Stewart. Shelley fires the rifle in the air and Cher takes on
the roles of Bambi’s mother and father. The suggestions start coming
fast and furious: The
Wizard of Oz (1939),The
Fly (1958). Shelley becomes desperate to make a sale. [A poster for the
1970 film Love
Story is on the wall, but not mentioned.] Shelley’s real life turns out to
be just the tragedy that Cher needs, so she plunks down some cash on
the counter and leaves.
Back
in the atrium, the Sign Painter is labeling a door titled “By
The Numbers, Inc.”
Inside a surreal hallway with huge file cabinets holds back-up
dancers for Cher to sing an upbeat “Feel Like A Number” (written
by Bob Seger).
Back
in the atrium, the Sign Painter is on roller skates. He tells Cher the story of “The
Red Skates.”
Cher goes through a curtain and is in a fairy tale cobbler’s shop
where the Skate Maker is working. The Sign Painter narrates the story,
which is presented without dialogue. The red skates transform roller
disco Cher into a glamorous female Mercury on wheels. But the story
takes a dark turn when the Skate Maker teaches her a lesson about
giving in to the allure of the red skates.
Back
in the atrium, the Sign Painter has a sign around his neck “Out to
Lunch” and is sitting at a small cafe table. Cher joins him for
lunch and they eat imaginary food. Pointing Cher to an unseen door,
he says “Little
does she know, it’s a jungle out there.” Inside, Cher is found dressed in a leopard body suit lounging on a red velvet
settee in a jungle singing “More Than You Know” (written
by Youmans,
Rose and Eliscu in 1929).
Dribbling
a basketball and dressed as Adam (a leafy loin cloth over long
underwear) Andy Kaufman comes into the jungle naming various plants.
Cher is now a snake in a tree. She is there to give Adam some advice
before the arrival of Eve.
Adam:
“But
why do I need an Eve? What can she do? Can she play ball?”
Snake (to camera):
“Does
Eddie Haskell love the Beaver?”
Eve
appears (also played by Cher) as a gum-snapping, sharp-tongued, nag wearing a
leopard print jumpsuit and cat glasses, a variation on a character Cher frequently played on her past variety shows.
Eve:
“Hey
Adam! They told me you look like Redford, dance like Travolta, and
swing like King Kong.”
Back
in the atrium, street clothes Cher is running around looking for an
exit. The scene fades to a swanky lobby setting where Cher sings
“Take Me Home” (written by Michele Aller and Bob Esty for Cher’s
1979 album of the same name). For the first time, the ‘dream Cher’
is seen in the atrium setting. Taking the dingy elevator to the ground
level, street clothes Cher emerges singing the end of the song –
the personalities have merged.
From
one of the doors comes a Cleaning Lady (Lucille Ball) pushing a cart
and singing “Bibbidi–Bobbidi–Boo,”
a song written in 1948 by Al Hoffman, Mack David, and Jerry
Livingston for the 1950 Disney animated film Cinderella.
Cher startles the Cleaning Lady, who says she had ambitions to be a lawyer.
Cher just wants to get out of the building. The Cleaning Lady
suggests she wait till midnight when her white mice and pumpkin turn
into a coach and horses.
Cleaning
Lady:
“By
the way don’t bother catching a lizard because you don’t need a
footman these days. It’s gauche. Very gauche.”
Cher
(to camera): “I
wish I was the crying type. I’d be a lot happier right now.”
The
Sign Painter dances on and the Cleaning Lady tells Cher they have a
“cursing acquaintance.” He suggests that Cher simply close her
eyes and wish herself home, a better method than the mice and pumpkin
suggested by the Cleaning Lady.
Cher:
“I
don’t know what to believe anymore.”
Sign
Painter:
“Faith can move mountains!”
Cleaning
Lady: “But
can it open doors?”
Taking
a snip of the Sign Painter’s hair, the Cleaning Lady moves on and he
instructs Cher to click her heels together three times and say
“There’s no place like home.” She does it but it does not work.
Cher:
“Nothing
happened! You’re no wizard!”
Sign
Painter:
“And
you’re no Judy Garland.”
After
the commercial, street clothes Cher sits dejectedly on the atrium
steps singing a sad “Take Me Home.” Across the lobby she sees
the revolving doors open and runs out onto the street. She steps
into a car and tells the driver (Ray Saluga) “Home, Johnson!”
This launches the driver into his famous “Oh, you doesn’t have to
call me Johnson. You can call me Ray, or you can call me…”
routine. Cher looks directly into the camera with a smile as the
vehicle pulls away from the curb.
End credits roll.
Other Fantasies…
Lucille Ball and Cher’s mother, Georgia Holt, first met when Holt played one of Jacques Marcel’s fashion models on “I Love Lucy” in “Lucy Gets a Paris Gown” (ILL S5;E26) in 1956. Cher was 9 years old at the time.
Holt also played a model on “The Lucy Show” in “Lucy and Pat Collins” (TLS S5;E11) in 1966. Cher was 19.
On “Here’s Lucy” (S6;E11) in 1973, Kim (Lucie Arnaz) and Frankie Avalon played Sonny and Cher at a talent show. Preparing for her imitation of the superstar, Avalon and Arnaz went to see a taping of “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour” in order to get some pointers. Cher loaned Lucie a wig, earrings and a pair of her eyelashes for the episode. They perform “I Got You Babe.”
Sonny and Cher were first mentioned in the series opener, “Mod, Mod Lucy” (S1;E1) in 1968 and then again in a 1970 episode (S3;E16), when Uncle Harry (Gale Gordon) calls Kim and Craig (Desi Arnaz Jr.) Sonny and Cher.
The Cher Show, the Broadway musical about Cher’s life includes Lucille Ball as a character. Her appearance is based on tabloid reports that Lucy gave Cher marital advice.
“Among the show’s nuttier moments is an encounter with Lucille Ball, when Cher is concerned about how the American public will react to her separation from Sonny Bono (Jarrod Spector) after he has worked her to exhaustion and shafted her out of a financial stake in their company. "Fuck him,” snarls Lucy, played by Emily Skinner as a brassy vaudevillian ham. Hilariously, she then launches into a big-sisterly take on “Heart of Stone,” all the while chugging on a cigarette. “My hand to God, guys, this conversation actually happened,” [Cher] tells us in one of many wry, fourth wall-breaking asides peppered through the show.“ ~ David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter, 12/3/18
Papermoon Loves Lucy 
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