Is This Her Farewell Tour?

Story: Eirik Knutzen  
Photography: Michael Lavine and Frank Micelotta

Cher (formerly known as Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPierre Bono Allman) has done it all during an amazing career with repeated flashes of brilliance that, incredibly, spans four decades. The sleek, outspoken 56-year-old singer-actress did it with a droll sense of humor while raising two children, essentially alone, but now the time has come to get off the road and sleep in her own bed for a change.

Don’t be mislead by Cher’s current year-long North American “Living Proof—The Farewell Tour” though. True, she will discard her wigs, low-cut sparkling outfits and avoid concert stages from Portland, Oregon to Sunrise, Florida, but is hardly leaving showbiz in her wake.

Beyond the tour—which keeps getting extended and may not end until sometime in June—Cher is prepping two CD albums, starring in a TV musical special on NBC and playing herself in a Farrelly Brothers comedy feature, “Stuck On You” with Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear, due to be released in December 2003. The highly charged Cher shoots the musical telefilm version of “Mame” as the wealthy and eccentric Auntie Mame who teaches her 10-year-old orphaned nephew the meaning of life. Nobody knows how it will turn out, but it is guaranteed to be different than previous silver screen efforts by Rosalind Russell and Lucille Ball. And when the opportunities arise, she plans to direct motion pictures and appear in occasional Broadway productions. Even after 40 years as a true diva, there seems to be plenty of time for Cher to top herself.

Born a month early in the desolate California desert community of El Centro, she is the exotic product of an Armenian father who faded out of the picture early on and struggling actress Georgia Holt, a striking lady with her sharp, part-Cherokee features. Raised in Los Angeles, the slim, 5'8" performer dropped out of high school at 16 to concentrate on acting. To raise money for acting lessons, Cher hired on as a background singer for famed songwriter/record producer Phil Spector and soon befriended fellow aspiring artist and future U.S. Congressman Sonny Bono.

Their first record as the Sonny and Cher duo in 1965, “I Got You Babe” zoomed to No. 1 on the Top 40 pop charts. “Baby Don’t Go” was right behind it, paving the way for three No. 1 hits in the ’70s: “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” “Half-Breed” and “Dark Lady.” She married Bono in 1969, just as their daughter Chastity was born, and the union lasted through most of their well-received TV program “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour”/“The Sonny and Cher Show.” Three days after their divorce was final in 1975, she married the occasionally troubled rocker Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers Band and filed for dissolution nine days later. By the time the paperwork was finished, she gave birth to their son, Elijah Blue.