Sonny Bono
Sonny Bono is an actor, born 1935.
Sonny Bono spent the 1960s as a singer, songwriter and record producer, and the 1970s as one half of Sonny and Cher, the duo he formed with his second wife. The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour and its successor The Sonny and Cher Show put him in American living rooms weekly, playing straight man to a partner who was funnier, taller and better dressed, and knowing precisely how much of the joke he was.
The acting career lived off that persona. He is a passenger in Airplane II: The Sequel, a snobbish suburban heavy in John Waters' Hairspray, a supporting turn in the horror picture Troll, and, in First Kid, a congressman called Sonny Bono. That last one was not a stretch by 1996: he had been mayor of Palm Springs from 1988 to 1992, and from 1995 the United States representative for California's 44th district as a Republican.
He held that seat until his death in 1998. The screen work is a footnote to a life that contained two much larger careers, but it is a strangely likeable footnote: a man famous long enough to be relaxed about it, turning up to do a day's work in other people's films and never once pretending to be an actor.
Movies (5)
TV (6)
Where to start with Sonny Bono
Start with The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, because everything else here is downstream of it. The variety format is dated and the sketches are broad, but the double act is the reason he had a screen career at all, and it is still funny in the way a well-worn marriage is funny.
For the films, Hairspray is the one worth your time. Casting a pop celebrity as a suburban snob is a joke the film never bothers to explain, and he plays it dead straight, which is exactly why it works. Airplane II: The Sequel gives him a few minutes and gets a decent gag out of them.
Troll and Escape to Athena are for people who enjoy watching famous musicians in films that could not afford actors. First Kid casts him as a congressman, a piece of stunt casting that happened to be accurate.