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lot of fun together when I got home. We moved around a lot, but the girls had birthday parties, nice clothes, and a real home to live in—not an apartment” (14).
    According to Cher, her first memories of her childhood date back to when she was four years old. She remembers playing hide and seek with Maria, the Mexican girl who would look after her while Georgia was working. She recalls to this day getting lost one afternoon in the wooded area near their house in Laurel Canyon, and panicking.
    It was around that same time that Cher recalls making her first trip to the cinema and into the magical world of the movies that opened up toher. The first movie she saw was the Disney film Dumbo . The theater was the famed Hollywood Boulevard landmark Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Cher claims that she was so entranced that when she had to go to the bathroom, she simply stayed in her seat and wet her pants rather than miss a moment of the movie.
    She was hooked on cinema dreams. “That was the first time I ever thought whatever is inside this dark room is really what’s happening. I don’t care that much for what’s outside. It was then and there that I knew what I wanted to be” (15). From that one experience, she became obsessed with the idea of becoming an actress.
    Cher also remembers her mother and stepfather arguing. According to her, “My mother hated it when my father drank because it threw everything into turmoil. When they started arguing, I’d get sent to my room, but I could still hear the violent yelling. I hated those fights. They made me a nervous wreck at [the age of] four” (16).
    When she was four years old, her grandparents, whom she called Mamaw and Pa, purchased their first television. Cher recalls being fascinated with the images she saw on it. When she was five, her mother got the family’s first TV set, a maple cabinet with a black and white screen, and she recalls being fascinated by the movie One Million B.C . She fell head-over-heels in love with the movie’s star, hunky Victor Mature.
    Cher’s other set of grandparents, Grandma Lynda and Grandpa Charlie, were her mother’s parents. Grandma Lynda was only thirty-two years old when Cher was born. Grandpa Charlie worked for the Johnson Pie Company, and Cher recalls him bringing home samples from work. She still remembers the chocolate cream pie that he brought home one day as the best she has ever had.
    Although Georgia Holt never became a star, she managed to land several small parts in films and on television.
No man ever paid me alimony or child support, so there I was a young mother with two small girls. I began working again in bit parts in television and movies. I worked as a cocktail waitress for a hundred dollars a week and hated it. It was the same feeling I had when I was a maid. But I had to feed my children. I was given a wonderful part in [the movie] Asphalt Jungle . My agent called to tell me it was mine. But later he told me a girl named Marilyn Monroe had been given the part. I had leads in the Ozzie & Harriet TV show, which was a big deal after doing one-liners on other programs. But I wouldn’t go the casting couch route, so my career never did get rolling (11).
    Georgia did several television commercials to make ends meet, and often took Cher and Georganne along with her. “David Janssen used to hold Cher on his lap when she was three—I couldn’t get a babysitter—and when I did the old Ed Winchell/Speidel Watch commercials” (7). Holt remembers getting Cher and Georganne little walk-on parts on TV.
I got the girls work on Ozzie’s show whenever I could. But I wasn’t a pushy stage mother. I did, however, push Cher into studying with Jeff Corey, the drama coach. And she was the youngest kid ever to qualify for the Pasadena Playhouse. But at the last minute she refused to join the group. I couldn’t force her to go because she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life (11).
    Cher insists that she had a pretty clear