Georgia Holt, the seven times-married mom of Cher who hung out as a mannequin, actress and singer-songwriter, has died, her daughter announced Saturday evening (Dec. 10) on Twitter. She was 96.
“Mom is gone,” Cher wrote.
A rep for the Oscar-winning singer-actress confirmed Holt’s loss of life to The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday morning. No particulars of Holt’s loss of life had been instantly obtainable.
Holt appeared briefly in such movies as A Life of Her Own (1950), Grounds for Marriage (1951), Father’s Little Dividend (1951) and Artists and Models (1955) and on TV exhibits like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and, as a “Jacques Marcel” mannequin, on I Love Lucy (within the hilarious 1956 episode “Lucy Gets a Paris Gown”).
Holt was supplied a contract by Columbia Records, and in 1980 recorded an album, Honky Tonk Woman, backed by members of Elvis Presley’s band. It included a duet with Cher, “I’m Just Your Yesterday”; covers of “Love Me Tender” and “Cryin’ Time”; and authentic tunes written by Holt.
“I know that a record company might want to sign me just because I’m Cher’s mother,” she told People journal in 1978. “I’d like to have a career, but I’m not going to be a novelty or a flash in the pan. A lot of people say I can do it.”
However, the album was not launched till spring 2013, shortly after the grasp tapes had been rediscovered in Holt’s storage. Cher took the tapes to her musical director, Paul Mirkovich of The Voice, and “he went in and took it all apart and put all new music in it,” she instructed Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. “Basically, we just kept Mom’s voice and put everything else new on it.”
Also in 2013, mom and daughter appeared (with Cher’s half-sister, actress Georganne La Piere) within the Mother’s Day Lifetime documentary Dear Mom, Love Cher.
A yr later, Holt appeared as a visitor decide alongside her grandson Chaz Bono on Logo TV’s RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Holt was born Jackie Jean Crouch on June 9, 1926, in Kensett, Arkansas. Her mom was simply 13 on the time and her father, a baker and an alcoholic, wasn’t a lot older.
“When I was little I was a singer,” she stated in a 2013 interview. “When I was 7, my father used to put me up on top of the old-fashioned bars. They used to have sawdust on the floor and spittoons. It was during the Depression. We had no money and no food — well, we got beans, but that was it.”
She carried out with bandleader Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys at age 10 after which hitchhiked to California along with her dad and her brother. She as soon as stated that she had attended 17 completely different junior excessive colleges rising up.
While working in a doughnut store in Fresno, California, she met truck driver John Sarkisian, and shortly they had been off to Reno, Nevada, to be married.
“I left him the day after [the wedding],” she instructed People. “I knew I didn’t want to be married. But he told me to try it for three months, and if I didn’t like it, then I could walk out. Well, before three months was out, I was pregnant with Cher.”
Cherilyn Sarkisian was born on May 20, 1946, in El Centro, California, and spent a while in a Catholic orphanage, the place nuns urged her mom to surrender her child for adoption, however Holt wouldn’t do it.
Holt received a number of singing and wonder competitions and labored as a mannequin as she made her approach to Hollywood. She stated that she was given an element in John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950), however her agent known as to say she was being changed by Marilyn Monroe.
Holt was married thrice by the point she was 21. Her husbands had been Sarkisian, John Southall, Joseph Harper Collins, Chris Alcaide, banker Gilbert La Pierre (who adopted Cher and Georganne), Sarkisian once more and Hamilton Holt.
She additionally had a latest and longtime relationship with former antiques seller Craig Spencer.
This article initially appeared on The Hollywood Reporter.