Cher

Locked forever in Teflon celebrity, the woman with the world's most beautiful armpits always gets the last laugh ... or so she says.

By Cintra Wilson

Feb 22, 2000 | I read somewhere that only two species will survive in the event of a nuclear holocaust: cockroaches and Cher. It's been nearly four decades now, and she betrays no signs of wear, no hint of eventually going away -- indeed, she is a testament to sturdy, career resilience and an inability to accept "No" for an answer. She just keeps shape-shifting, from questionable pop singer to surprisingly good movie star, from mortifying hair-care shill to cash-money cosmetics endorser, dipping her insensibly shod feet in books, politics, good causes and men 20 years her junior along the way.

Cher has truly Lived.

Cherilyn Sarkasian LaPiere was born in El Centro, Calif., on May 20, 1946. She's the only child of Georgia Holt and John Sarkasian, an Armenian farmer, whom Georgia divorced while pregnant with Cher. Cher was (mostly) raised by her mother and Gilbert LaPiere, one of the several stepdads her dishy, blond mom would provide her with. Despite mild feelings of inadequacy Cher suffered as a result of gawky skinniness, bad clothes and a swarthy complexion, she seems to have had a fairly fun, goofy childhood, filled with boy-craziness, a couple of memorable shopping trips (she was the first girl in her clique to wear a midriff top) and learning about sex from nasty Catholic schoolgirls with lots of black eyeliner.

While she was no rocket scientist (she learned in adulthood that she was dyslexic), Cher always knew she had a "special" quality, and dropped out of high school at 16 to take acting lessons in Hollywood. She began her career the right way by having a teenage one-night fling with established actor Warren Beatty, who she met as the result of a fender-bender. "What a disappointment," she would later comment. "Not that he wasn't technically good, or couldn't be good, but I didn't feel anything!"

In a Sunset Boulevard coffee shop in 1962, Cher met a strange yet groovy guy named Sonny Bono, who ended up being the most influential person in her life. Though he couldn't have been less interested in her at the time -- he was 28, she was a skinny 16 -- Cher, as she remembered in her autobiography "The First Time," "thought the sun rose and set on his ass." In the book, she recalls seeing him and the world going into soft-focus "like Tony and Maria at the dance." She knew, she says, that she would never be the same again.

When Cher got kicked out of the apartment she was sharing with some actresses and showgirls, Sonny took her in as a cook and cleaning lady. The relationship was strictly platonic. He "didn't find (her) terribly attractive," he said. Even though they slept in twin beds, they had to hide the arrangement from Cher's mother; every time she visited, Cher would take all of Sonny's clothes and hide them in a friend's house blocks away. Her mom eventually found out about the arrangement and threatened to lock up Sonny; a devastated Cher had to move back home.

In one of the most touching parts of her autobiography, Cher writes, "Up to this point, the warmest thing that Son had ever said to me was that I was a pain in his ass. But when Son started to help me pack my meager belongings, he just looked at me, and we both started to cry." After that, S&C had the kind of love that parents have nightmares about.

In 1964, Sonny, who then had a gig as an occasional percussionist for Phil Spector, dragged Cher into Spector's Gold Star studio, where she was asked to sing backup when a Ronnette didn't show for a session. Cher was invited to the studio for more backup work regularly over the next few months. Terrified of singing solo, she recorded a few duets with Sonny; this evolved into a singing act they performed in bowling alleys, calling themselves "Caesar and Cleo."

When Cher moved a couple of teenage seamstresses into their upstairs apartment and kept the girls busy making clothes she designed, she started up the machinery of the fashion victimhood that elevated the duo to stardom. After finding a bobcat vest for Sonny in a pawn shop, the two finally had a bold look that would bring them the attention they craved. That same year, Sonny and Cher romantically married themselves with their own vows and souvenir rings in a hotel bathroom in Tijuana.

In 1965, Sonny and Cher recorded "I Got You Babe." The Rolling Stones, who, at the time, were a new band they were hanging out with, suggested to S&C that they try to take England by storm, since their proto-hippie outfits weren't going over so well in the still-conservative U.S. English newspaper photographers showed up when S&C were thrown out of the London Hilton the night they arrived -- literally overnight, they were stars.

London went gaga for the heretofore-unseen S&C look, which was neither mod nor rocker. "I Got You Babe" was an instant mega-hit in the U.K. that booted the Beatles out of the No. 1 chart spot. By the time Sonny and Cher got back to America, the hit was No. 1 in the states and they had to disembark from the plane onto the tarmac or be ripped to shreds by scrap-seeking fans.

Over time, Sonny & Cher did pretty well -- a few more singles; a million-seller here and there.

In 1969, Cher got knocked up, and she and Sonny got married the legal way before their daughter was born on March 4. They named the baby Chastity, after one of the two movies they'd recently made, both flops. Sonny had sunk most of their own music money into the movies, leaving them in a financial crunch (they also owed the IRS $270,000).

Then, at the worst possible time, hippies took over America, dubbing S&C "out of touch" and "passi," especially when the two went on TV to emphatically denounce marijuana, which they'd never tried. The day of the pothead was at hand, and S&C records flew Frisbee-style into the bargain rack.

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