Like everything else in the Department of Defense, getting the Navy to help with any kind of entertainment production can be an arduous process. You fill out a questionnaire, a project officer is assigned to review the production, and if it meets the Navy’s criteria, your project can get support.
This is probably the same process director Marty Callner went through so beloved singer Cher could film a music video for her 1989 hit “If I Could Turn Back Time” aboard a battleship. Since the Navy just had a recruiting windfall with the release of “Top Gun” and the song was about a sailor getting a “Dear John” letter while underway, the Navy saw no problem with helping out.
A video featuring Cher singing to a rowdy group of American sailors would have been no trouble for anyone involved — if it weren’t for a last-minute costume change that would leave the Navy brass clutching its pearls.
See if you can spot the Navy’s problem.
The video itself is pretty simple. Cher is singing a rueful song about lost love to sailors aboard the battleship USS Missouri. The costume that would cause the uproar was apparently a last-second decision. On the last day of filming, the singer arrived aboard wearing what is essentially a V-shaped strap that covers only what it needs to cover, a body stocking, boots, garters and a leather jacket. The Navy’s on-set representative, Steve Honda, told the director to change her outfit.
“You go tell her she can’t wear it,” Callner said in reply.
Honda clearly did not. Geffen Records, which produced the song, reminded the Navy it had seen storyboards, and her outfit was just as sheer in the boards they approved.
By today’s civilian standards, Cher’s outfit in the video isn’t lurid — it’s iconic (it’s even been called one of her best looks of all time). But if you asked some officers in the Navy at the time, however, it was an embarrassment.
“The U.S. Navy, a part of our government that should stand for what is good and honorable, is putting its stamp of approval on trash like this,” one outraged viewer wrote to the Navy. “What kind of image did you hope it would give the Navy?”
The backlash to the video came as a surprise to some, but the Navy had done everything it was supposed to do in support of any production. Its representatives had reviewed the song’s lyrics, the planned story for the music video and gave the video producers access to the USS Missouri and 200 sailors over the course of three days.
“The Navy worked closely with the producer to ensure the video would be in good taste,” Lt. Cmdr. A.J. Dooley wrote at the time. “However, changes during the final stages of production, including Cher’s revealing costume, were unanticipated, and led to overtones that we had sought to avoid during our pre-production planning.”
“I knew she had tattoos, but I never knew they were so big,” Yeoman 2nd Class Don Cipriano told the Los Angeles Times, referring to the ones seen on Cher’s posterior in the video.
Cher wanted to wear the outfit, but was reportedly nervous about it, recalled Bob Mackie, the actress’ longtime stylist.
“At the time, Cher wanted to wear this outfit so badly. I call it the seatbelt outfit. She got so nervous with the sailors there, she put on her leather motorcycle jacket and you could see anything except this little strap that made that look worse. She loved it at the time, but it made her very nervous — and it’s the only time I know she ever got that nervous,” Mackie told Vanity Fair in a 2021 retrospective.
To be fair, it wasn’t just the Navy that deemed the outfit too risqué. Family groups (which have probably never encountered sailors before) protested that the video was offensive, given its sexual nature. MTV was forced to broadcast the video at night, outside of the channel’s primetime window.
As time went on, the uproar over Cher’s outfit eventually faded away. If Cher was nervous about wearing the outfit aboard the USS Missouri during production, that case of nerves faded away, too.
“There was an auction and a lady bought the outfit for $75,000,” Mackie recalled in Vanity Fair. “And during this tour, Cher wanted to rent it for a year, and then another year. She wore it for a year.”
It’s also important to note that not everyone in the Navy was offended by her choice of attire. Some thought it made the Navy look like “a neat place to be.”
“I thought the ship looked outstanding,” Lt. Cmdr. Steve Chesser said at the time. “I don’t think the Navy has anything to apologize for.”
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