Cher Remembers Sonny In Personal CBS Special

When they began making music together in the early 1960s, they billed themselves as Caesar and Cleo.

The world would come to know them much better as Sonny and Cher.

After Sonny Bono died in a skiing accident in January, his former wife and singing partner gave him a highly emotional and memorable eulogy. However, Cher doesn't feel she completed the mission, and she hopes to do that with a personalized CBS special, "Sonny & Me: Cher Remembers, " at 8 p.m. Wednesday.

The special incorporates many clips from the couple's popular CBS variety series of the early 1970s, but it also involves much more. Illustrating Cher's recollections is footage of their other television work and their concert tours (showcasing such hits as "Baby, Don't Go" and "I Got You, Babe"), along with some long-unseen relics from their wardrobe when they were a duo.

"I've had the strangest response to that eulogy of anything that I can remember," Cher says of her previous tribute to Sonny. "People liked it very much, and that seems strange to me. It's one of those weird things that happen, where you do something without thinking others are going to be impressed by it. The reason I wanted to do a special was to re-examine who Sonny was in an entertaining way, so that the funeral wasn't your last thought of him."

Though CNN and MSNBC televised that service live, Cher maintains, "Truthfully, I didn't know it was being televised. I knew I was being photographed, but we came into the church at the front and walked across to our pew. When I got up to the podium, I was in a strange state of not seeing and not hearing. Some experiences are so intense, your senses don't work in the way they normally would.

"I kept saying to Chastity (Sonny and Cher's daughter) and my sister, `What if I get up there and I can't do it?' Chastity said, `Your professionalism will take hold, and you'll just be able to.' Sonny's death hit so many people in so many different ways. When someone who has been a giant part of the population dies, it's really a powerful thing."

That goes for those who knew Sonny Bono the politician as well as Sonny Bono the entertainer, but Cher wanted his showbiz years to provide the thrust of the special: "It has the first interviews we ever did, and our first TV appearances with Ed Sullivan and Dick Clark. We've gone through everything, and sometimes I watch it in a very detached way. Then I see how cute Sonny was, and I remember why I'm watching, and it hits me really hard."

Cher did a long interview about Sonny that is woven throughout the hour, "and most of the stories I tell about him are funny and fun. A couple of them got too close, though, and I had to have the tape stopped so I could collect myself. The same thing happened recently when Jane Pauley did a `Dateline NBC' interview with me. I'd have to tell her, `Jane, don't go there,' then she'd switch to something that she knew would be lighter for me. It's a very tight rope."

It was "Moonstruck" Oscar-winner Cher's idea to do the CBS special, and she approached the network with a loose outline. "I wanted to show Sonny as a performer and talk about him as a person, and we've included pictures from my personal albums that people have never seen. If this show was two hours long, we'd still have a hard time getting everything in."