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Cher has revealed how her ex-husband Sonny Bono said he “seriously thought” of killing her at the end of their turbulent marriage.
It happened after Cher was so unhappy that she considered jumping from the balcony of their Las Vegas hotel room, she writes in “Cher: The Memoir (Part One).”
Cher, now 78, called time on their marriage during a stint in Las Vegas at the Sahara Hotel in October 1972 — when she told her husband she wanted to sleep with Bill, a guitarist in their band.
She didn’t actually mean it, Cher writes, but Sonny — who she claims was so controlling that she was banned from wearing perfume — hadn’t listened to her previous pleas to let her go.
“The silence was deafening. Then [Sonny] said, ‘How long do you think you’ll need?’
“Two hours,” she responded. Sonny left, while Cher cried on Bill’s shoulder.
The couple — who were starring on “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour,” one of the biggest shows on TV at the time — split up but came to an agreement where Cher would continue living with Sonny during the week so as to not destroy their public image.
One morning at breakfast, Sonny surprised her by saying, “You know, after you went off with Bill that night at the Sahara, I seriously thought about throwing you off our balcony.
“He laughed a little at that and so did I. It was crazy that he was telling me,” Cher writes.
“He went on: ‘I figured I’d plead insanity like Spade Cooley and get seven years in jail before they released me. Then I’d get a book deal and my own show.’”
But Cher then surprised him with an admission of her own, telling her estranged husband “there would have been no need to push me because I was gonna jump!’”
Faced with such a stark reality, “Within seconds we were howling. No one watching our response to what had been the darkest moment of our marriage would have understood.”
Cher writes, “I don’t think for a minute that Sonny would have actually pushed me off the balcony, but I’m sure it crossed his mind, and he knew that jumping off had also crossed mine. What else could we do but laugh?”
And while Cher did eventually hook up with Bill, the guitarist, she also found out that Sonny had slept with Bill’s girlfriend as revenge.
Sonny and Cher met when she was just 16 and he was 27. She moved in with him after he offered her a bed in exchange for being his cook and housekeeper, and they were married from 1964 to 1975.
Cher also reveals in the book that Sonny cheated throughout their marriage.
Cher caught him with his assistant and fled to her mother’s home — only for her mother to tell her she had been hearing stories of Sonny’s infidelity.
When Cher confronted him, he told her it was her fault because they weren’t having enough sex.
Sonny died in 1998 following a skiing accident.