TV SPECIAL BY CHER’S MOTHER : SHE’LL TURN THE SPOTLIGHT ON MOMS

Jackie Jean Crouch from Arkansas was 19, singing country songs in a club in Fresno, when she met and married the man who would become the father of her first child--a girl destined to become a superstar named Cher.

Jackie Jean Crouch--now named Georgia Holt--left Cher’s father the day after they were married (although there were several reconciliations over the next four months).

“I wasn’t in love with him,” said the former Jackie Jean, 40 years, two children and five husbands later. Her husbands included alcoholics and millionaires who left Holt with no money; the last one took back her five-carat diamond ring and left her a Rolls-Royce that cost $6,000 a year to maintain.

Holt’s own promising singing career fell by the wayside as she took on the task of raising Cher and her half-sister, Georganne La Piere, in a little house in North Hollywood.

But Holt, 60, has maintained her sense of humor, as well as an enthusiasm for motherhood that has led to her recent project: “Superstars and Their Moms,” a pre-Mother’s Day television special devoted to mothers of the famous. The program airs Sunday at 10 p.m. on ABC (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42). Holt is co-executive producer with Phyllis Quinn; it was produced by Dick Clark Productions.

“There’s a camaraderie that happens; it’s like we’re all members of the same club,” said Holt, whose interest in star-motherhood grew out of meeting mothers of other celebrities through clubs for stars’ relatives.

“Superstars and Their Moms,” hosted by Carol Burnett and her daughter, Carrie Hamilton, includes the mothers of Cybill Shepherd, Robin Williams, Whitney Houston, sisters Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen, Tom Selleck and Bill Cosby. The show took two years to produce.

Said Cher through La Piere, who works as her assistant: “I think it’s fabulous that mom is doing this, and I’m really proud of her.”

Holt said the most difficult thing about being a star’s mother is being used by fortune seekers.

“People try to get close to you because of your child, wanting to get a script to them, wanting to get a song to them,” she said. “You never know if people really like you.”

Gossip and negative publicity about the child can also be tough on the mother.

“It used to just absolutely devastate me,” Holt said. “Cher just told me: ‘Mother, welcome to the business.’ ”

Along with production partner Quinn and a professional writer, Holt is working on a book tentatively titled “Starmoms,” to be published in 1988 by Simon & Schuster after five rejections. The book came first: Holt telephoned the Osmonds to ask for an interview with Olive Osmond, the family matriarch. An Osmond family representative suggested she turn the idea into a TV special.

The book will contain about 60 celebrities’ mothers, including the moms of Elizabeth Taylor (“She’s 90 and still worried about her legs,” said Holt), Tina Turner, George Hamilton, Sammy Davis Jr., Mick Jagger and Cyndi Lauper. She also hopes to reach Yoko Ono (mother of Julian Lennon) and Princess Diana’s mother. Bruce Springsteen’s mother turned her down.

As for her own life, Holt began singing on the radio in Arkansas when she was 7; at 10, she sang with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys in Oklahoma. Her father brought her to California during the Depression to become a “star” (he had separated from her mother, who was 13 when Holt was born).

A national beauty contest winner, Holt was signed to play a lead role in the 1950 film “The Asphalt Jungle,” but the part was later given to Marilyn Monroe. An attempt to revive her singing career 10 years ago did not succeed.

Still, Holt has no regrets.

“Oh, God, no, honey!” she said. “Cher did what my father brought me out here to do. . . . When my father saw her perform, he said, ‘That’s just you made over, Jackie Jean.’

“She did it, and much bigger than I ever dreamed of doing it. Most of the mothers are real proud of the heights their kids have reached.”