Cher Reveals Salvador Dalí Once Invited Her and Sonny Bono Over to Visit After an Orgy
Cher said that Salvador Dalí was in “a different league of crazy” after this interaction.
In the entertainer’s memoir, Cher: The Memoir, Part 1, the “I Got You Babe” singer, 78, recalls an invitation she and her then-husband — the late Sonny Bono — got from Dalí and a sequence of events that had her screaming on the inside.
When staying at the St. Regis Hotel in N.Y. while visiting a friend, Cher and Bono ran into Francis Ford Coppola who was filming a movie. They also bumped into the prolific surrealist artist, who invited them to a party that evening he was hosting with his wife, Gala.
Cher said that everyone in their suite “was either beautiful or bizarre and all of them looked as if they were high,” calling the experience “like stepping into a bad Fellini movie.”
Despite detecting her discomfort, Dalí invited Cher and Bono back for dinner the following evening. Upon arriving at Dalí’s studio, Cher realized that an orgy had just taken place. She recalled a “large room where people were naked or in various states of undress.”
“One bra-less chick came out wearing a see-through blouse” that she likened to cellophane wrap. The “Believe” hitmaker attempted to look unbothered while Bono and Coppola, 85, were “sissies,” huddled together on the other side of the room.
Cher then realized she had sat on something, and pulled out a “gorgeous painted rubber fish” from beneath her that had a moving tail. She assumed it was a child’s toy but Dalí told her it was actually a vibrating sex toy.
She immediately dropped the fish and Bono and Coppola doubled over laughing. She kept her composure, but “inside, however, I was — how can I put this? — screaming.”
The group, including the “bizarre orgy people” and Cher, Bono and Coppola, went out to dinner. Several minutes into the meal, Dalí said they had a “previous engagement” and relocated to a table a few feet away. Cher, Bono and Coppola were beyond relieved and couldn’t stop laughing.
“I’m sure Dalí thought we were all cretins, but by then we were beyond caring,” she concluded.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Elsewhere in her memoir, Cher wrote about her friend the late Farrah Fawcett, advice she got from Tina Turner, meeting Jackie Kennedy when she was 19 years old and many other anecdotes throughout her lifetime.
Cher: The Memoir, Part One is available for purchase wherever books are sold.