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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: November 13, 1987
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Late Night with David Letterman
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Last time we talked about Late Night with David Letterman it was to help commemorate Dave’s retirement with a look back at one of his favorite recurring guests, Cher, and how her initial dislike for his late-night persona made for utterly riveting TV.
After that rocky initial interaction, though, Cher became one of Dave’s most reliably excellent guests. She was still kind of prickly, especially at first, but Letterman was always prickly. They were kindred spirits out there. By 1987, Cher trusted Dave enough to appear on the show with her ex-husband and former professional partner Sonny Bono. The interview itself was fascinating, in part because it was clear that things between Sonny and Cher were still pretty raw. And then Dave asked them to sing.
Once again, there’s a realness and rawness to the moment. Sonny seems nervous, and Cher seems a little annoyed. She maybe doesn’t want to do this, and Sonny maybe wants to do this a bit too much. And then it all disappears as they start singing “I Got You Babe.” It’s remarkable to watch them both (but particularly Cher, since she’s got the actual singing parts) slip right back into the song like they’d been performing it every night prior. And on top of that, the decades of meaning and experience and memory passing between them as they sang. By the end, Sonny’s crying.
Back in 1987, you had to work harder for your viral moments. (Obviously, they weren’t called viral moments then, but this was clearly a predecessor of the genre.) A TV moment had to be something truly once-in-a-lifetime to earn the kind of repeated-viewing immortality that Sonny and Cher on Letterman did with a simple song.
[You can watch Sonny and Cher’s full Letterman appearance on YouTube.]
Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.
