If I Could Turn Back Time... How Cher Ruled 1987
Tuesday, November 17, 2020 at 3:03PM by Baby Clyde
I’m not sure if I believe in life after love (whatever that means) but I definitely believe in love at first sight. I first saw the love of my life in a dingy dive bar 1981. She stood there, pint in hand surrounded by an intimidating girl gang, dressed to the nines in black leather with gold hoop earring and Jungle Red nail varnish. I watched in awe as she slunk over to the jukebox all back combed hair and gum chewing attitude. Her name was Cherilyn Sarkisian and she changed my life forever.
I was not even 10 as I watched the video for Meatloaf’s single Dead Ringer For Love. A notorious flop in America it was a Top 5 smash hit in Britain at the tail end of 1981 in no small part because of Meat’s duet partner...
Cher's pop career had taken off in London in 1965 when she caused a sensation with her then husband Sonny Bony and I’ve Got You Babe made it all the way to #1. Whilst a huge name over here ever since she was a kind of mysterious figure to this pre teen homosexual. Always a media staple, my knowledge of her was mostly through tabloid articles about an outrageous wig or new celebrity boyfriend. She’d more or less stopped making music in an effort crack the acting world and 8 year old me wasn’t in any real hurry to watch Silkwood. This is why 1987 was such a revelation.
Cher owned 1987. She was everywhere. This is the year she proved herself to be a true showbiz icon, culminating in the biggest showbiz prize of all.
Now a teenager, I was there to witness it all and it was glorious. Let’s turn back time and look at how 1987 sealed her legendary status as singer / actress / STAR.
That Outfit
Cher’s long march to the stage of the Shrine Auditorium really began over a year before Moonstruck opened at the 58th Academy Awards in March 1986. Long before J. Lo, Bjork or Lady Gaga caused shockwaves at awards ceremonies Cher was paving the way by revealing one of the most famous outfits in showbiz history.
Having been snubbed for a Best Actress nomination despite winning at Cannes for 1985’s Mask, Cher decided to give a big FU to the snooty Academy by wearing this spectacular Bob Mackie creation and, to an entranced crowd, announce Don Ameche’s Best Supporting Actor win for Cocoon.
As you can see, I did receive my Academy booklet on how to dress like a serious actress
Nobody was talking about the winners the next day.
She was making a serious point. Cher refused to change for anyone. She was also demanding to be respected on her terms. As we will see, she soon got her wish.
The ‘Bagel Boy’
My first memories of Cher as a constant media presence are when she started dating a man 18 years younger. It doesn’t sound so shocking today but back then it was a giant scandal.
Feeling despondent at her 40th birthday party Cher’s mood soon brightened when she was introduced to 22 year-old aspiring actor Rob Camilletti. They dated for the next three years. Rob, who worked in a bagel shop when they first met, was derisively dubbed the ‘Bagel Boy’ by the press and the paparazzi followed them everywhere. He was even arrested after an altercation with a photographer once and Cher went to the jail to bail him out herself.
It was nonstop tabloid intrusion, not age, that finally drove them apart and she has subsequently called him the love of her life. They are still friends today.
The Chart Comeback
By 1987 Cher hadn’t had a hit record since her late 70’s disco smash Take Me Home. An early 80’s hard rock side project, Black Rose and an underpromoted (but brilliantly covered) 1982 album I Paralyze had both sunk without a trace and she’d then taken a 5 year break from music to successfully pursue acting.
"Cher" the album in 1987It was time for one of her many musical comebacks and no expense was spared making sure it was a huge success. With and all-star team of producers and songwriters including Michael Bolton, Diane Warren, Desmond Child and Bon Jovi on board the ‘Cher’ album took a turn towards soft rock and reinvented her as a power ballad queen. The album went platinum and the first single "I Found Someone" became her first transatlantic Top 10 hit since 1971’s Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves.
But there was some unfinished business to attend to.
The Reunion
In 1986 Cher caused a commotion by explaining to David Letterman that she hadn’t appeared on The Tonight Show with him before because she thought he was ‘an asshole’. He was reportedly quite upset by this. With an album to promote she went back a year later but this time took an old friend with her, Sonny.
After a huge pop career and subsequent TV success with The Sonny and Cher Show, acrimonious divorce and years of estrangement followed. It was a huge coup to get them back on TV and turned out to be the last time they would ever perform together due to Bono’s untimely death in a skiing accident in 1998.
Ambushed by Letterman when asked to sing I’ve Got You Babe with no rehearsal a clearly reluctant Cher knows a publicity stunt when she sees one and belts out their biggest hit to a roaring crowd. It’s all kinds of adorable.
Movie Star
It’s one thing to garner attention for outfits or boyfriends or reunions and making waves in the music world was something Cher was used to but 1987 was year that she became an honest to goodness MOVIE STAR!!!
She’d had a great start to her film career. Skipping over the two late 60’s misfires (I’ve watched them, so you don’t have to) Cher’s 80’s early forays into film had consisted of projects with noted auteurs Robert Altman, Mike Nichols and Peter Bogdanovich. A Golden Globe, an Oscar nomination and the aforementioned Cannes prize had followed but she was not yet deemed a bankable movie star. That was all about to change.
In George Miller’s summer hit The Witches of Eastwick she starred with Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer as one of the three titular witches who are at first seduced by and then team up to destroy Jack Nicholson’s devilish character. It made $68m ($155m Adj) at the American BO and ended up the 10th biggest hit of the year.
It also gave us this eternal read………
October brought us the courtroom thriller Suspect in which she starred with Denis Quaid and Liam Neeson.
Cher played a dowdy public defender tasked with representing a deaf, mute Vietnam vet charged with murder. It’s the type of adult legal drama (With a preposterous ending) that we don’t get these days. It wasn’t a huge hit but was a nice change of pace and certainly showed her versatility.
Last and certainly not least was the beloved romantic comedy Moonstruck. In her first proper comedy role Cher is a delight as Italian American widow Loretta Castorini caught up in a passionate affair with her fiancé’s brother. Brilliantly written by an Oscar winning John Patrick Shanley and directed by the always dependable Norman Jewison Moonstruck was released over Christmas and was an immediate hit. Grossing over $80m ($185m Adj) in the US alone it ended up the 5th biggest hit of the year. Cher was named the 9th biggest box office star of 1987.
Unusually for a romantic comedy in and era of stuffy Oscar Bait, Moonstruck was pushed as an end of year awards contender which leads us to the crowning achievement of Cher’s annus mirabilis…
The Oscar
1987 has one of the all time strongest Best Actress line-ups. Any one of the nominees would have been a worthy winner in another year. Heading into the ceremony the precursors gave no real help. Cher had won the Comedy Globe beating out NYFC winner Holly Hunter for Broadcast News, but the Drama Globe had been won by outsider Sally Kirkland for the tiny indie Anna. To confuse things further LAFCA had been a tie between Hunter and Kirkland. With Glenn Close’s iconic Alex Forrest from box office titan Fatal Attraction waiting in the wings only two time champ Meryl Streep in the little seen Ironweed seemed out of the running for an actual win.
There is no correct answer as to who gave the best performance in a lineup that peerless but Cher had many things in her favour. Three hit films were hard to argue with and as a veteran of more than 20 years, who had survived in a cutthroat industry proving her metal in music, TV, theatre and now film she had built up a huge amount of good will with her peers.
This was clearly on display when the ever dreamy Paul Newman read her name out as Best Actress of 1987. All but an obviously disappointed Sally Kirkland loudly applauded as former co-star Streep leads a then rare standing ovation. Cher turns to kiss Rob and then ascends the stairs in a Bob Mackie outfit only she could wear. She told the audience….
I don’t think this means I am somebody, but I guess I’m on my way.
Amazingly she forgets to thank her director but does mention her hair and makeup team!!! I cried.
And that was more or less it for Cher’s short but incredibly sweet A List film career. It felt as if she had achieved success way beyond her childhood Movie Star dream and then moved on to other things. Those other things of course consisted of being one of the most successful entertainers of all time, a worldwide icon and The Goddess of Pop but it’s that purple patch of late 80’s ubiquity that still does it for me. I’m still moonstruck by Cher after all these years and can say with complete certainty that I will never…
Reader Comments (23)
She deserved it!
This is a moment for the ages - Cher accepting her Oscar from Paul Newman with Meryl enthusiastically cheering her on.
Sally Kirkland's face when he announces Cher as the winner. lol
I'm Team Holly Hunter, but yeah given Cher's overall year her winning fit. I'd forgotten all about Suspect. As I recall I liked it and her in it, but I remember nothing about it beyond the genre.
CHERFOREVER!
Why did such a great career in movies fizzle out after Mermaids.
Yeah. What happened to Cher’s movie career. She certainly has the chops to a late career “comeback” of sorts...
Thank you Baby Clyde for a glorious read - even though I knew of many of these career highlights, I never realised that they all happened in the same year!
As for why her acting career faltered, presumably it was her choice, that she had little left to prove? Either way, she has a pretty stellar filmography regardless (even if I’d personally strike the “Cher plays Cher” phase - Mamma Mia, Burlesque, that Farrelly Brothers comedy).
People claiming things like "BUT _____ WAS ROBBED OF THE OSCAR" need to take a read of this great piece to understand why Cher's Oscar win makes sense in every possible way (and not only because her performance in Moonstruck is amazing, but because she was indeed the biggest star of 1987 and the perfect case of a celebrity struggling for years to be taken seriously, being embraced by her peers and the industry).
Do you think she was 6th in '85 for Mask? I don't think so but Film Twitter does.
Sometimes an actor will win for a body of work in one year or their entire career or to apologise for not getting it for another film in another year.
Cher had 3 hit films in 1987;- Moonstruck, Suspect and Witches of Eastwick. And she should have been nominated for "Mask" and some say she should have won for "Silkwood".
Michael Douglas had 2 hit films in 1987;- Wall Street and Fatal Attraction.
Olympia Dukakis won because she pretty much won every percussor award that year and I didn't think the other nominees were that worthy.
And Sean Connery won for his entire career of work. His performance in the Untouchables was - IMO - not that worthy. Robert De Niro was much much better.
And although I love Cher - she really didn't deserve it for Moonstruck - IMO. In my books Sally Kirkland and Glenn Close were better.
Cher... she's fucking awesome and a true survivor. She can definitely score another hit song. It's true what people say. 2 things will survive a nuclear holocaust, cockroaches and Cher. Except Cher is unstoppable and if we're to survive. We'd be near her.
And I liked the Bagel Boy. I thought he was pretty cool.
Wow thevoid99 not being ageist for once? I’m shocked. I would’ve thought you pegged Cher as another aging dinosaur. Color me amazed!
I still think that Holly Hunter gave the best performance that year, but there is no question that Cher had the narrative and narrative is what often propels Oscar wins.
This post brought back SO MANY MEMORIES. And i love that you said there's no definitive answer to who was best in '87. I think it's probably the best Best Actress list of all time because all five were worthy of a win.
Glenn Close deserved the Oscar that year - it was a horrible shock when she lost.
Thanks for posting the link to the duet with Meatloaf. Watching it now, I was struck by how much Cher resembles Celine Dion!
As for why Cher's movie career faded away, here's one theory. I suspect the plastic surgery played a role. When I saw her in Tea with Mussolini shortly after the movie opened in Italy, I remember being shocked at her frozen face. It left me feeling depressed: I loved her in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. I still think Mask was her most compelling performance, and felt vindicated when she won her Oscar for Moonstruck. Like Barbra Streisand, Cher is a great star AND a great singer AND a great actress. But it is hard to act when you can't really move your face anymore.
Entertainment Weekly Cher'd another theory: https://ew.com/article/1993/05/21/cher-her-movie-career-dead/
Who knows, maybe she felt she had nothing left to prove and lost her enthusiasm for the art form and prefers the stage to the screen.
I always felt that "do you believe in life after love" was about life together after honeymoon phase is over and hardship of everyday struggles takes over.
Reggie Lou -- The most hated woman in America? Nobody expected her to win.
Let me be THAT PERSON for a moment: The song is titled “I Found Someone”. Cher was my very first concert (with my dad), so she’s always been high on my list of icons.
She deserved her Oscar for Moonstruck if only as a genuine example of movie star charisma slotting into a witty and clever screenplay and energizing everyone else around her. This was her Erin Brockovich, and much in the same way Close’s performance in Fatal Attraction was technically more difficult and virtuoso (much like Burstyn’s in Requiem for a Dream!), when Cher just stops fighting Cage and goes “Okay! Okay! I don’t care anymore!”, that’s as much magic in the cinema as one could ever ask for.
Love her. Justly deserved. :)
A lineup for the ages indeed but it would take me a nanosecond to tick the box next to Glenn Close.
It looks like glen close is having a resurgence over the last couple of years. This year will probably get her a BSA nod for hillbilly elergy - but AMPAS refuses to give her a win.
Don't take it out on Cher. 1988 was the real fiasco.
In one night, Glenn and Sigourney should've both become Oscar winners. It would've spared all of us decades of anguish and frustration.
I think there are many reasons for Cher's movie career faltering. She released another hit albums in '89 and '91 and toured extensively over that period.
The one film she did make was reportedly a miserable experience and didn't do much box office so I'm sure the incentive to spend months making films wasn't there when millions of people around were eager to but her records and see her live.
The infomercial business was definitely and issue as well. It kind of turned her into a joke for a while. She did it as a favour to her friend not realising what an impact it would have.
There is also no doubt that the plastic surgery played a part. Surprisingly for someone so extraordinary looking Cher had made her name playing very down to earth characters. As she got into her 40's a 50's she couldn't really do that any longer because she didn't look like an ordinary person. She looked like a one named global megastar. This was a far cry from the waitress', accountant and nuclear plant workers she'd played in the 80's. The roles she's played since have all been flamboyant in some way. She's can't play normal anymore.
And kermit_the_frog I will not stand for this Stuck On You slander. Genuinely one of my all time favourite films in a genre I would usually disdain. It's hilarious from beginning to end and should have won Cher another Oscar in Supporting. I'm serious.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PefhojE2rf0