Cher’s mother, model, actress, and singer-songwriter, Georgia Holt, has passed away at the age of 96 years old. With Cher simply writing, “Mom is gone,” a rep for the Oscar winning singer-actress confirmed Holt’s death to The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday morning.
Holt had featured in films such as A Life of Her Own, Grounds for Marriage, Father’s Little Dividend, and Artists and Models, as well as, TV shows like the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and as a “Jacques Marcel” Model, on I Love Lucy.
Holt was given a contract from Columbia Records and recorded an album in 1980 titled, Honkey Tonk Woman, that was backed by members of Elvis Presley’s band. It even included a duet with Cher called, “I’m Just Your Yesterday.” Holt told People magazine back in 1978 that, “I know that a record company might want to sign me just because I’m Cher’s mother, 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.”
Unfortunately, the album did not release until spring of 2013 after the master tapes were rediscovered in Holt’s garage. Cher then 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, Basically, we just kept Mom’s voice and put everything else new on it,” she said to Jay Leno on The Tonight Show.“
Holt was born Jacki Jean Crouch on June 9th, 1926, in Kensett, Arkansas and her mother was just 13 years old at the time and her father, who was a baker and an alcoholic, wasn’t that much older. She previously had stated that, “When I was little I was a singer, 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.”
Holt ended up performing along with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys at the age of ten and then hitchhiked to California with her dad and her brother. While working in a doughnut shop in Fresno, California, she met a truck driver named John Sarkisian, and soon they were married. According to Holt in the past, “I left him the day after [the wedding], 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 20th, 1946, in El Centro, California.
Holt won singing and beauty competitions and also worked as a model while making her way to Hollywood. Holt was also married three times by the time she was 21 years old, with her husbands being Sarkisian, John Southall, Joseph Harper Collins, Chris Alcaide, banker Gilbert La Pierre, Sarkisian again, and Hamilton Holt.
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