CherSonny BonoElvis PresleyLiza Minnelli
9 Revelations From Cher's Memoir Part 1: From a Last-Minute Abortion to a Las Vegas Balcony
Cher opens up about her mother's near-abortion, an orphanage stay, running into Hollywood royalty, the start with Sonny Bono, and the moment she almost jumped.
Source material: salon.com
The Abortion Her Mother Refused at the Last Minute
Georgia Holt, Cher's mother, had played small parts on shows like I Love Lucy. Cher's father, Johnnie Sarkisian, is described in the memoir as a grifter and a heroin addict. Three months after Holt married Sarkisian, she was pregnant with Cher. Holt's own mother took her to get an abortion—a procedure that would have been highly illegal and dangerous at the time. At the last minute, Holt refused. Cher writes that her existence depends on this: “Thank God she got off that table, though, or I wouldn't be here to write these pages.” Cher also frames the decision as Holt's to make—her body, her life, her choice. The memory is not presented as judgment; Cher is explicit that the choice belonged to her mother, even as she is grateful that Holt changed her mind. The near-abortion, she suggests, was the first of several narrow margins in a childhood that soon included an orphanage.
The Orphanage Where Holt Paid $4.50 a Week
After Cher was born, Holt worked the night shift at an all-night diner and could not afford child care. In desperation, she left her infant daughter at a children's home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and skipped town. The arrangement cost her $4.50 a week—paid to the orphanage—and Holt visited every week until she could reclaim Cher. That happened, Cher writes, as soon as the girl was old enough to walk. For decades, Cher did not cry about this period; the tears came only after Holt died. Cher's memory of the abandonment is filtered through her mother's circumstances rather than anger: Holt was a single mother with almost no money, and the weekly visits were her attempt to stay connected. The image of a walking toddler being handed back to a mother who could not yet support her is one of the most quietly painful details in the first volume of Cher's memoir.
The Unknowing Playdate With Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland
A neighbor introduced Cher to a girl named Liza. Cher and her friends were told to sit on the front steps, and Liza spontaneously launched into “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Cher remembers thinking it strange because she had never been around a child who burst into song like that, even though Liza was “pretty darn good.” Only later did Cher realize the girl was Liza Minnelli and the woman on the stairs was Judy Garland. Cher adds, with adult hindsight, that Garland was probably not drinking juice. The encounter came through Dean Martin's children, who were friends with the neighbor family across the street from Cher's home. That meant one of Cher's earliest show-business memories was watched over by Judy Garland, a star she had no idea she was meeting. For a girl who would eventually build a career on performance, the moment was a first glimpse of instinctive musicality.
Elvis Presley, the Gold Suit, and the Spotlights
Watching Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, Cher felt as though he were singing only to her. She wanted to jump into the television and be Elvis. Years later, Holt managed to get two tickets to see Presley at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles. Cher recalls the dark stage, then the spotlights hitting Presley in his famous gold suit, shimmering and changing color. The crowd's roar was unlike anything she had heard, and flashbulbs went off in an explosion. She wished she had brought her family's Kodak Brownie camera. The performance did more than thrill her—it clarified her ambition: “I knew that I wanted to be on that stage in the spotlight one day too.” That night connected her personal desire to a concrete image of what fame could look like. She had seen the reaction Presley could produce, and she recognized it as something she wanted for herself.
The Teenage Run-In With Warren Beatty
A teenage Cher borrowed her stepfather's car and was cut off by a man in a sports car, nearly causing a collision. When she got out to talk to him, she recognized Warren Beatty, already known for his Broadway run in A Loss of Roses and for TV's The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Beatty told her she was “so drop-dead gorgeous” and invited her to his house. Inside, he fixed cheese and crackers, leaned in and kissed her. They went swimming—Cher wore Natalie Wood's bathing suit—and she did not get home until 4 a.m. She was grounded for missing curfew, but Beatty called the next day and asked to take her to dinner. He spoke to Cher's mother, who “melted” when she learned who he was. Cher's mother asked why she hadn't said it was Warren Beatty. The story is a snapshot of how Hollywood connections could override normal parental rules in Cher's teenage years.
The Coffee-Shop Meeting With Sonny Bono and the Twin Beds
The coffee-shop meeting with Sonny Bono began with a lie about Cher's age. They became friends, and Cher no longer wanted to live with her mother. Bono offered her a place to stay in exchange for cooking and cleaning. She assumed the offer came with strings, but he shook his head and laughed: “Don't worry, I've got twin beds.” He added, with a grin, that he didn't find her particularly attractive. Cher later reflected on the age lie and the power imbalance it created: she told The New York Times that it was “not a #MeToo moment because I lied to him,” while adding that she was not forgiving him for “some things he did that were ridiculous.” The two weren't officially married until 1969, before the birth of their child and the start of The Sonny & Cher Show. The twin beds story became the way Cher framed their beginnings: a practical arrangement, not an immediate romance.
The Las Vegas Balcony, Five or Six Trips to the Edge
In 1972, at 26, Cher stepped onto a hotel balcony in Las Vegas and looked down. She was “dizzy with loneliness,” and it seemed easy to step over the edge and simply disappear. She writes that she did this five or six times, unable to imagine another option. What stopped her was the thought of people who looked up to her: she realized that choosing that way out could make them think suicide was a viable solution. Then came the shift: “I don't have to jump off. I can just leave him.” The couple separated after the incident and divorced in 1975. Cher now frames the moment as the recognition that escape did not require ending her life—it required leaving the marriage. The balcony reappears in her memoir as the place where she talked herself out of the worst conclusion and into a practical one.
Sonny's Apology and the Money He Took
Sonny Bono's apology came in Cher's kitchen. He walked in one day and said, “Cher, I want to apologize. I realized that I hurt you in so many ways, and I was wrong.” Cher says that apology “went a long way” for her. But her feelings about Bono remain complicated. She believes he stole from her, taking all her money, and she is still fighting for royalties from the work he owned. At the time, she assumed marriage made their assets shared: “We're husband and wife. Half the things are his, half the things are mine.” It never occurred to her that there was another arrangement. Even today, she says, she wishes she could ask him at what point during what day he decided to take her money. The mixture of gratitude for the apology and anger over the financial betrayal keeps Bono unresolved in her account.
The Note on Chaz's Name
In a note to readers at the start of her memoir, Cher explains how she will refer to her child with Sonny Bono. During the years covered in Part 1, her son went by the name Chas, and Cher uses that name in these pages. Chaz Bono—who is transgender and announced his transition in 2009—has granted his blessing for this usage, Cher writes. In the next volume, at the appropriate point, she will refer to him as Chaz. The note is brief but deliberate: it separates the name he used in childhood from the name he chose as an adult, and it makes clear the choice is his. It also tells readers that the next volume will carry the story forward to that shift. For now, Cher writes with the historical name, and with her son's permission. The arrangement keeps the memoir respectful of both the past and the present.