Cher Trivia
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50 free Cher trivia questions with answers. Snap out of it. This quiz covers six decades of Cher: the girl from El Centro who sang for Phil Spector as Bonnie Jo Mason, the duo with Sonny Bono, the Comedy Hour and the navel the censors tried to hide, the 1970s No. 1s, the marriage to Gregg Allman, the Broadway detour that led to Silkwood, Mask and the Oscar for Moonstruck, the battleship video, the Auto-Tune of Believe, the farewell tour that lasted three years, the ABBA album, the Christmas record and the 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Fifty questions on the songs, films, marriages, records and reinventions. The easy questions ask which film won her the Academy Award and which 1998 single popularised Auto-Tune; the hard ones want the name she used on her first single, the duo's earlier alias, the ship in the If I Could Turn Back Time video, the fee for her Caesars Palace residency and how many decades she has scored a Billboard No. 1 in. It suits fans of every era and anyone who has ever wondered whether she really can turn back time. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Cher, her records and films, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Cher's birth name?
Cheryl Sarkisian
Cheryl Sarkisian. For decades she was said to be Cherilyn, but when she went to court to become plain Cher she found Cheryl on her birth certificate, to her own mother's surprise.
Q 02Cher's father was of which ancestry?
Armenian
Armenian. Her paternal grandparents survived the Armenian genocide, and in 1993 she flew into Armenia on a relief group's cargo plane carrying 45 tons of medical supplies and other aid.
Q 03Cher's first single, a 1964 novelty record, was a love song to a member of which band?
The Beatles
The Beatles. 'Ringo, I Love You' flopped, and Cher has said many radio programmers took her deep voice for a man's and would not play a man's love song to Ringo Starr.
Q 04Which record producer was Sonny Bono working for when he met Cher in 1962?
Phil Spector
Phil Spector. Through Sonny she became one of his backing singers, and her voice is on the Ronettes' 'Be My Baby' and the Righteous Brothers' 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin''.
Q 05Before they were Sonny & Cher, the duo recorded under what alias?
Caesar & Cleo
Caesar & Cleo. The singles under that name went nowhere in 1964, and their national breakthrough came the next year, after Atlantic's Atco label signed them as Sonny & Cher.
Q 06Which 1965 Sonny & Cher hit became emblematic of 1960s counterculture?
I Got You Babe
I Got You Babe. Sonny wrote it in the middle of the night and woke Cher to sing it; she disliked it and went straight back to bed.
Q 07Which moody 1966 song was Cher's first million-selling solo single?
Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)
Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down). Sonny Bono wrote it, and Nancy Sinatra's slower cover from the same year found a new audience in 2003, when Quentin Tarantino opened Kill Bill with it.
Q 08Which Cher single became her third solo US number one in 1974?
Dark Lady
Dark Lady. Its New Orleans fortune teller warns the narrator off her cheating lover, then turns out to be the other woman, and the narrator shoots them both.
Q 09Cher's 'Half-Breed' is sung by the daughter of a white father and a mother of which nation?
Cherokee
Cherokee. Lyricist Mary Dean wrote it for Cher just as producer Snuff Garrett had fallen out with Sonny, so the song sat in his desk for months until he could get her back to record it.
Q 10Sonny and Cher sank their own money into which 1969 film, written by Sonny to star Cher?
Chastity
Chastity. It flopped and left them owing back taxes, but the name lasted: their only child, born the same year, was named after the film.
Q 11On which network did The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour begin as a summer replacement series in 1971?
CBS
CBS. Programming chief Fred Silverman offered the pair a show of their own, and its summer ratings were strong enough to earn it a permanent place in the schedule.
Q 12Which 1995 teen comedy named its heroine after Cher?
Clueless
Clueless. Cher Horowitz says she and her friend Dionne were named after great singers of the past who now do infomercials, a nod to the beauty-product ads the real Cher fronted in the early 1990s.
Q 13Which designer created Cher's trend-setting outfits on the Comedy Hour and beyond?
Bob Mackie
Bob Mackie. Passed over for an Oscar nomination in 1986, she presented an award in his towering feathered headdress and joked that she had received the Academy's booklet on dressing like a serious actress.
Q 21For which 1985 film did Cher win the Best Actress award at Cannes?
Mask
Mask. Director Peter Bogdanovich fought the studio after it recut the film and replaced its Bruce Springsteen songs, but Cher refused to back his protest.
Q 22Cher won the Academy Award for Best Actress for which film?
Moonstruck
Moonstruck. Julie Bovasso, who also acts in the film, doubled as its dialect coach and helped Cher master a Brooklyn accent.
Q 23Who plays the fiancé's younger brother Cher's character falls for in a 1987 romantic comedy?
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage. Cher wanted him after seeing the risk he took in Peggy Sue Got Married, where he gave his character a nasal whine modelled on a clay-animation horse.
Q 14Which talk-show host did Cher insult to his face on her first visit to his show in 1986?
David Letterman
David Letterman. He admitted that being called a rude name on his own show hurt his feelings, yet 18 months later she was back, singing with Sonny on his stage for the last time.
Q 15Whom did Cher marry on June 30, 1975, within days of her divorce from Sonny becoming final?
Gregg Allman
Gregg Allman. Within ten days of the wedding she filed for divorce over his drug and drink problems, then thought better of it, and the marriage lasted until 1979.
Q 16Which kind of animal was Kaavan, whom Cher helped move from a Pakistani zoo to a Cambodian sanctuary in 2020?
An elephant
An elephant. Kaavan had spent 35 years in Islamabad's zoo, the last eight without a companion, before a campaign fronted by Cher won a court order for his release.
Q 17Cher's former husband Sonny Bono was elected mayor of which California city in 1988?
Palm Springs
Palm Springs. He won the office a few months after he and Cher sang together for the last time, in late 1987, and he went on from city hall to the US Congress.
Q 18Who played Cher's teenage daughter in the 1990 film Mermaids?
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder. Cher drew on her own mother to play a woman who moves her daughters from town to town, and her cover of 'The Shoop Shoop Song' for the film topped the UK chart for five weeks.
Q 19Which director cast Cher on Broadway and on film in Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean?
Robert Altman
Robert Altman. She had moved to New York in 1982 to study with Lee Strasberg, but won the part at an audition before she ever enrolled, and her performance led straight to her next film role.
Q 20Cher earned her first Oscar nomination as Dolly Pelliker, the title character's roommate, in which 1983 film?
Silkwood
Silkwood. Before the film had made her name as an actress, Cher sat in a cinema and heard the audience laugh when her name came up in the credits.
Q 24Who plays the wealthy visitor who seduces Cher, Pfeiffer and Sarandon in The Witches of Eastwick?
Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson. He stepped in after Bill Murray, who had been cast first as the devilish Daryl Van Horne, dropped out before filming began.
Q 25Cher's If I Could Turn Back Time video, notorious for its outfit, was shot on which battleship?
USS Missouri
USS Missouri. The extras were the ship's own sailors, and after two months of complaints that her outfit demeaned the Navy, MTV would show the video only after 9 p.m.
Q 26Which style did Cher adopt on Cher (1987), Heart of Stone (1989) and Love Hurts (1991)?
Hair metal
Hair metal. Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora co-produced the first of the three, and swapping pop and disco for big rock ballads gave her a first US top-ten hit in eight years.
Q 27Cher's 1989 US top-ten duet 'After All' was sung with which soft-rock singer?
Peter Cetera
Peter Cetera, once the voice of the band Chicago. The song was the love theme of the film Chances Are, and when it was nominated for an Oscar, James Ingram and Melissa Manchester sang it at the ceremony instead.
Q 28Which 1996 television film marked Cher's debut as a director?
If These Walls Could Talk
If These Walls Could Talk. Cher directed the last of its three stories about abortion, playing a doctor targeted by protesters, and it became the highest-rated film HBO had shown up to then.
Q 29How did Sonny Bono die in 1998?
A skiing accident
A skiing accident. Sonny, by then a congressman, struck a tree on a slope above Lake Tahoe, and at his funeral a tearful Cher called him the most unforgettable character she had ever met.
Q 30Which studio tool, pushed to a robotic extreme on Cher's Believe, gave rise to the term 'Cher effect'?
Auto-Tune
Auto-Tune. The producers at first claimed they had used a vocoder, to keep their trick secret, and when her label asked for the effect to be toned down Cher answered: 'Over my dead body!'