Might as Well Laugh About It Now (23 page)

The brilliant Ray Bolger re-creating his Scarecrow, talented Paul Williams as the Cowardly Lion, and the wonderful Lucille Ball as TinWoman. Donny and I were the luckiest kids in showbiz.

“
W
e’re four people in search of a last name.” Cher said this line onstage while wearing a bright red sweater with a giant sequined
C
on the front. The
S
,
D
, and
M
occupying the sweaters next to her laughed along.

This was before Madonna came on the music scene and long before the introductions of Usher, Shakira, or Jewel. At that time, hardly any performers were recognized on a first-name basis only.

Donny and I were the
D
and
M,
appearing as guests on
The Sonny and Cher Show
in 1976. A couple of months before, they had appeared on our show. Every variety show before Sonny and Cher’s and ours had used full names in the titles:
The Red Skelton Show
,
The Andy Williams Show
,
The Carol Burnett Show
, to name a few. I guess Sid and Marty Krofft, who produced our original show, thought “Donny and Marie Osmond” sounded like a married couple. The brother-sister thing seemed obvious to us, but when our talk show aired twenty-two years later, there were
still
people who thought we were husband and wife. That’s just gross, okay?

Sonny and Cher had been through a very public divorce the year before. They had each tried to launch separate variety shows, but it seemed that no one wanted to think of them as unhappy and apart, and so they joined forces once again for a new show. As Sonny reminded the audience: “Together, but no longer related.”

We had been invited on to sing a silly love song. Literally. The four of us stood side by side to sing Paul Mc-Cartney’s number-one hit on the Billboard charts, “Silly Love Songs.” Supposedly, Paul wrote this song in response to the music critics calling his music lightweight. I don’t think he expected it to zoom up the charts, but that was what people were into then. People loved the song. The Vietnam War had ended the year before and people were looking for lighthearted entertainment. Their mood rings were blue, they adopted pet rocks, I guess to prove that everything deserved love, and even a simple yellow smiley face T-shirt was a best seller. It’s probably why the Sonny and Cher producers wanted Donny and me to come on the show. The deepest issue we were bringing to public awareness at that time was our different tastes in music. Me: country. Him: rock ’n’ roll.

Donny and Sonny stood between Cher and me, but a lot of other factors seemed to separate us, as well.

By age seventeen, Cher had already begun her serious relationship with Sonny; at sixteen, I wasn’t even allowed to date. Cher’s singing voice is deep and rich; mine was sweet and high. She had gorgeous, thick, waist-long hair; I wore a wispy, chin-length pageboy. We ice-skated on our show; Cher skated over anything Sonny had to say with a hysterically funny cool glance and a sharp tongue. Cher had exotic, captivating features; mine were extremely “teenager.” Even though Cher and I both had the famous Bob Mackie design our wardrobes for the show, the results were as far apart as could be possible. Cher’s costumes were bold and daring for that time, even exposing her navel; mine were much more modest, barely exposing my neckline. Looking back, Bob probably was able to create my outfits from the yards and yards of material he had left over after making Cher’s! I felt like the ugly duckling. Cher always made a splash, no matter what she did. I thought I was going to drown in my awkwardness.

I was starting to constantly feel like a girl who was way out of her league. Standing onstage next to Raquel Welch and comparing my appearance to hers was enough to send me into a “hating myself” tailspin. It was pretty hard to leave my dressing room feeling like anything other than a poser playing dress up. As
Donny and Marie
became a hit on ABC, the most stunningly beautiful women celebrities of the day signed on for guest-star spots on our show. Among the many were Farrah Faw cett, Barbara Eden, Tina Turner, Jaclyn Smith, Cher . . . and two other gorgeous Chers who seemed to have it all: Cheryl Ladd and Cheryl Tiegs.

I wanted so much to be in my twenties and thirties, thinking that it would finally be the time when I didn’t feel shy and self-conscious as a gawky-looking teenager.

When men tell me now that I was their first crush, it makes me smile. I have always been surprised that anyone even gave me a second glance, especially since Farrah Fawcett’s famous red bathing suit poster had most young men walking around in a hypnotic trance that they didn’t shake off until the 1980s.

Knowing that feathery blond hair and a red bathing suit would never be me, I was completely open to absorbing advice from that most famous redhead with the one-word name: Lucy. She appeared as a guest on our show in 1977. She was sixty-six years old, had starred in three television shows of her own, won multiple Emmy Awards, had great roles in movies, and was the first female owner of a large Hollywood production studio (Desilu). Beyond that, she was a comic Einstein, recognized around the world. She shattered the stereotype that women couldn’t be the central character in a show, and proved that they could be both beautiful and brilliantly funny. She changed the scope of what was possible for women in entertainment forever.

I wasn’t envious of her; I was terrified! She was a force of nature.

She walked onto the set of the
Donny and Marie
show as if she did it every day. She gave directions to everyone from the director to the seamstress to the sound engineer and the security guard at the stage door. Perhaps she stepped on the toes of some, but she never asked for time or effort from anyone that she didn’t put into the show herself.

What I learned from Lucy in that brief rehearsal week has been useful for my entire career, including some practical advice that I apply to almost every interview with every camera crew.

“Let me show you something, kiddo,” she said to me the day before we taped the show. She grabbed a mirror from the backstage makeup table and handed it to me.

She tugged on my elbow, walking me out to the center of our stage.

“As a woman, never allow this if you want to last in this business!”

I was worried that she was going to want to rewrite part of the script, but that wasn’t her intention.

She tilted my face up toward the stage lights hung up high over our heads.

“Look in the mirror. This is very unattractive lighting for the female face,” Lucy told me. “The light is too high. It gives women dark circles under their eyes and exaggerates the jowls.”

She pointed out the results to me on her own face.

“Now watch!” she said, asking the crew to lower some of the lights to more of a straight-on position.

The results really were effective. The light was caught up in her eyes instead of under her eyes. Her whole face looked more lively and expressive.

Then she jostled me toward the camera.

“See how this lens is lower than my face?” she asked me. “This is a horrible angle for a woman. It creates a double chin, I don’t care how young you are. You look awful. The camera is forgiving of men, but never of women. Got it?”

I did get it. I was taking a crash course in Lucille Ball entertainment wisdom and I knew that the lessons were ones I would use my entire career.

It seemed that Lucy knew how to make everything look better. On the morning of the taping, I came in early to have my hair done. Lucy was having her hair braided into numerous small braids. The hairstylist then pulled them tightly toward the back of her head and pinned them down, and put her wig on top. The effect of the braids being pulled back gave her a very natural-looking face-lift. I’m sure it was somewhat painful, but the results were pretty amazing.

Though I’ve yet to try her braiding trick for erasing the years, I have applied Lucy’s other techniques whenever and wherever I can. Some camera crews, especially in Los Angeles, New York, and Utah, know what to expect now and are ready with beautiful lighting when I arrive. This past June, I was taping an interview for the American Heart Association. When I arrived on the set that day, I was greeted by one of the technicians, a guy I’d worked with several times before, with a good-hearted nature.

“We’re all ready for you,” he said, smiling, leading me to the chair in front of the camera. “Check out the Lucille Ball lighting. Pretty good, right?”

It was good, and much appreciated. After all, as Lucy taught me, there is no harm in giving yourself the best advantage whenever it’s possible. And it’s a lot more productive than worrying about aging.

It didn’t seem that Lucy wasted any time wishing she could change anything that was out of her control. She worked with what she had and she turned it into genius. It was through Lucy that I learned early on that the way you feel about yourself at sixteen will be the way you feel at thirty and even forty, especially if you waste time always comparing yourself to others.

My initial fear of Lucy turned into a deep admiration when I understood the reason she didn’t worry about what Donny or I or anyone else working on the show personally thought of her. She focused on only one thing: that she did her job well. She was there to entertain the audience in the studio and the millions of viewers at home. After all, that’s supposedly the reason all performers get into the business. Isn’t it? Though Donny and I may have been too young at the time to fully appreciate being exposed to the committed work ethic of stars like Bob Hope, Sammy Davis, Jr., Paul Lynde, John Wayne, Andy Williams, Milton Berle, and even Groucho Marx, we know that those early lessons have definitely contributed to our long successful careers.

As I was preparing my
Magic of Christmas
holiday tour for 2007, I crossed paths with Cher at . . . of all places . . . a famous costume designer ’s studio in Los Angeles. It was the same one where we used to see each other in the seventies, while having our Bob Mackie fittings. This time, Cher was getting ready to open her new show at Caesars Palace in Vegas, and I would soon be going through the same process for our show at the Flamingo.

Even in jeans and boots, Cher looked amazing as ever, in great physical shape, toned, and radiant. Probably because I was dressed in my dancing warm-ups, a T-shirt and one of my haphazard ponytails, I thought about my teenage insecurities during my appearance on
The Sonny and Cher Show
. Time certainly is the great equalizer. Those differences that seemed like the great divide between us at that time have narrowed and filled in with many similar life experiences: parenting, divorce, loss, charity work, and the challenges of re-creating ourselves as entertainers again and again.

I was smiling while reading the list of entertainers performing in Las Vegas this year: Cher, Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, Neil Sedaka, the Osmond Brothers, Paul Anka, Louie Anderson, George Wallace, the Smothers Brothers, and Donny and Marie. It’s like Vegas hic cupped and the seventies came back up! It seems that, once again, especially with all the troubles going on in the world, people are craving lighthearted entertainment, a time to set aside worries for a while and just enjoy. It makes me happy that my career has now lasted as long as Lucy’s. I know it’s a combination of blessings, hard work, and the tilt of the spotlight that has kept the sparkle in my eyes. Oh, and the audience.
Always
the audience.

Dude, It’s for Me