In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Junior (88 page)

At the end of
Ragtime
, Elvera wanted to meet Brian Stokes Mitchell, the show’s star. But outside, the line at the stage door was frightfully long. We wouldn’t get to see Mitchell; any fool could see that. So gliding along the line I suggested dinner. (I had more questions to ask, anyway!) Then, in a flash, Elvera Davis raised her cane above her head and started moving and elbowing up the line. The cane poked a man in his rear end; I looked away as his head
jerked around. “Move, please!” Elvera hollered out. “I’m Sammy Davis’s mother. Please move. I’m the mother of Sammy Davis, Jr.!” She stood at a glass booth, next to the stage door, and identified herself. The man behind the glass listened, seemingly drawn to her spiel. “Tell Brian Mitchell I want to see him. I’m Sammy Davis’s mother.” And there we were, in Mitchell’s dressing room. He hugged Elvera and shook my stranger’s hand and grinned at us both. He was in between performances; it was the matinee; of course he needed his rest before the evening show, and as there were others who wanted to meet him, we needed to go. But Elvera rested her cane, then herself, giving Mitchell no choice but to entertain us. He summoned his wife, who was also appearing in the play, and we all idled in his dressing room.

Afterward, Elvera and I went to dinner. On the way, she had sharp words for the taxi driver, whom she accused of taking the long way back to the East Side, needlessly hiking the fare. She sat mostly in silence at dinner. She had had enough of my line of inquiry about her and Sammy, and would direct the conversation elsewhere.

During the last months of her life, Elvera Davis began confiding to her niece Gloria that she needed to talk to someone, a professional. When her niece asked why, Elvera told her that she was beginning to worry why she hadn’t cried at Sammy’s funeral. They found a psychiatrist for Elvera to talk to. At the end of her first visit, the psychiatrist suggested a follow-up; he told her it would be wise. Elvera told him she could not schedule it right then because she had to check her appointment book, which was at home; she did not want to schedule a visit and have it conflict with her upcoming manicurist appointment. The psychiatrist thought the manicurist visit—whenever it happened to be—was not important, told her so, and waited for her to suggest a follow-up date. Elvera Davis did not approve of his tone, or his suggesting that her manicure date was unimportant. She rose, left, and never returned to see the psychiatrist again.

The last I saw of Elvera Davis, she was walking back inside her apartment building. She was leaning on the cane that had been given to her by Sammy—and given to Sammy by Will Mastin.

Elvera Davis died, at home, on September 2, 2000. She was ninety-five years old. None of Sammy’s children attended her funeral. Mark Davis, Sammy’s adopted son, actually confided to his aunt Gloria that he was intimidated by his grandmother’s demeanor.

Maybe we are all lonely. And maybe we all suffer—more than we let on—under the gods of our own families.

Elvera’s nieces and grandnieces went to clean out her apartment. In the apartment, they came across a box filled with mementos—cast listings from her showgirl wanderings; precious photos of her Cuban-born ancestors; other
photos. Elvera in flapper dress; Elvera tending bar; Elvera standing pridefully next to the only man she married. There was a picture of Sammy Jr. and Sam Sr., side by side, in pinstriped suits. They were somewhere on the road. The year 1937 is etched on the photo. Little Sammy would have been twelve.

Sammy, age five. In black (face) and white
.
(
COURTESY LORELEI FIELDS
)

Despite what we would like to believe, sweetness and light does not fall from the womb of all mothers. Sammy would always wonder if his mother truly loved him. Who knows? Who are we to ask? Elvera Davis, like her own mother, lived her life at an emotional remove. When the world of show business snapped their children up, there was nary a motherly voice raised. They were tough Catholic women who mothered with coldness; they were descendants of Cuba’s internecine wars; they both had lost husbands early. Of course they wished their children well, but they had no intentions of tarrying after them. Through the years, Elvera’s children—Sammy and his sister, Ramona—would have questions for each other about their mother, each curious what the other knew. They were like sightless adults trying to stack chess pieces upright on a board. They realized that each was in too much darkness to help the other.

I had one long meeting with Ramona in a Harlem restaurant. She was quite formal. The only time she smiled was when she told me of the true joy of her childhood—seeing her little brother, Sammy, come through the door, off the road of vaudeville, and plop on the floor with her, where they would play, as brother and sister. At the time of our meeting, Elvera was still alive, but Ramona did not want to talk of her mother. She surprised me now and then by sending things through the mail. On two occasions, tapings of Sammy’s concerts. And once she sent a photo of her and Sammy on a rare vacation together—1987, Hawaii. They’ve got their arms flung around one another. They’re facing the camera—a brother and sister who were mostly separated at birth—and smiling.

Ramona James died in New York City on April 10, 2001.

Still waters run deep, all right; they can also be dangerous. There were many things Sammy triumphed over in his life, not the least his mother. His money could not come close to unraveling her hard life. But she had given him something quite significant: the dark and ferocious wind at his back. Elvera Davis was the love that haunted her only son, and the devil that drove him.

The bulk of this narrative has been shaped by interviews, of which all—more than 250—were conducted by the author. I was fortunate, during these five years, to come across nine individuals who had a decades-long relationship with the elusive Sammy Davis, Jr., and had rarely, if ever, talked about him. Especially warm thanks to: Cindy Bitterman, whom I thank not only for the long hours she talked to me about Sammy, but also for her godmothering grace; Jess Rand, for trusting me and spilling it all forth (not to mention the wonderful photo archive); Steve Blauner, for his candor, hospitality, and the Sammy film moments; Rudi Eagan, for his amazing concern about both book and author—and for the Las Vegas insights; Amy Greene, for all the doors she helped open; Burt Boyar, for the
Yes I Can
story and his graciousness; Shirley Rhodes, for her faith; and Peggy King and Helen Gallagher, for breaking their silence.

Others whom I thank for interviews: Jay Bernstein, Dick Gregory, William Gibson, Margaret Gibson, Hugh Benson, Judy Balaban, Rudy Duff, Jim Davis, Ernie Farrell, Dean Green, Carl Green, Jerry Blavatt, Randy Phillips, Bobby Short, Danny Stradella, David Levering Lewis, Jerri Spencer, Joe Stabile, Gregg Geller, Francis Davis, Jack Carter, Roxanne Carter, Johnny Brown, Altovise Davis, Marguerite DeLain, Al Grey, Lillian Cumber, Mary Louise, Bill Britten, Abe Lafferty, Pudgy Barksdale, Harry Belafonte, Mike Green, Peter Brown, Robert Guillaume, Lolly Fountain, Eileen Barton, Tony Franciosa, Doug Benton, Lola Falana, Ramona James, Mike Curb, Cholly Atkins, Billie Allen, Dorothy Dicker, Evelyn Cunningham, Elvera Davis, Steve Allen, Buddy Bregman, Charlotte Dicker, Warren Cowan, Jean Flemming, Carl Brandt, Lee Adams, Dee Dee Cotton, Betty Belle, Virginia Capehart, Joe Delaney, Sally Neal, Hilly Elkins, Charles Fisher, Richard Donner, Abe Ford, Frank Bolden, DeForest Covan, Tony Curtis, Milt Gabler, Will Jordan, Jerry Lewis, Miriam Nelson, Olga James, Frank Military, Pat Marshall, Virginia Henderson, Elliott Kozak, Lionel Hampton, Maggie Hathaway, Peggy Miller, Fayard Nicholas, Norma Miller, Elliott Norton, Phoebe Jacobs, Eartha Kitt, Dr. Fred Hull, Mabel Robinson, Marilyn McAdoo, Howard Koch, Bill Miller, Lenny Hirschan, Betty Isard, Sy Marsh, Molly Marsh, Leon Isaac Kennedy, Janet Leigh, Maurice Hines, Billy Kelly, Leroy Myers, Bonnie Rand, Albert Popwell, Luddie Waters, Philip Yordan, Paul Winik, Barbara Rush, Paula Wayne, George David Weiss, Gloria Williams, Tara Arthur, Lorelei Fields, Madelyn Rhue, Annie Stevens, George Schlatter, John Barry Ryan, Ann Slider, William Smith, Keely Smith, Pierre Turner, Margaret Styne, Prince Spencer, Timmie Rogers, Lloyd Richards, Chita Rivera, Claude Thompson, John Souza, Charles Strouse, Arthur Penn, Roger Straus, Bill Reed, and Josephine Premice.

Prologue: Yes He Can

When Sammy Davis, Jr.’s autobiography,
Yes I Can
, was published in 1965, it created something of a sensation. It made best-seller lists, it was widely reviewed. There had never been a book quite like it in American letters. But when I began peeling away the layers, probing the origins of the book, I became fascinated by what was
not
in
Yes I
Can:
no Davis family history, little if anything about Sammy’s psyche. Thus I became more than a little curious about the book’s genesis, inasmuch as the book itself had seemed to fasten itself upon the American reading public just as the door to the civil rights movement was swinging open.

Burt and Jane Boyar were the coauthors of
Yes I Can
. I wrote Burt—his wife, Jane, had died—and when I didn’t hear back, I wondered if he had simply felt there was nothing else to discuss, that, for him at least, everything was in
Yes I Can
. My letter had actually wound its way across the ocean: Boyar was living in Spain at the time. When his reply arrived, he said he’d be more than happy to talk about Sammy and the creation of
Yes I Can
. He happened to be in the process of relocating to Los Angeles. There was much, he allowed, that never made it into the book. And thus began a kind of literary investigation on my part into the making of a book that, because of its litany of editors who came and went, was in constant peril of never being published. Burt Boyar sat for several interviews in his Los Angeles home. He prepared a delicious lunch once; he battled with me over a dinner bill on another occasion. My gratitude to him is large.

Others who were interviewed for this chapter: Carl Brandt, Roger Straus of Farrar, Straus and Giroux (publisher of
Yes I Can
), Jess Rand, Peggy Miller, Eartha Kitt, Cindy Bitterman, and Dick Gregory. (The notes cited here and in subsequent chapters are given where there is no obvious citation in the text.)
1:
“But you don’t”: Odets and Gibson,
Golden Boy
, 98;
2:
“Is his gun”:
Hue
, 5-58;
3:
“the world’s greatest”:
Ebony
, 7-90;
4:
“Can it be”:
New York Times
, 9-19-65;
5:
“We played the”: Davis,
Yes I Can
, 74;
6:
“Baby, you’d better”: ibid., 252;
7:
“I’m not going”: ibid., 281;
8:
“Can I get”: Odets and Gibson,
Golden Boy
, 74;
9:
“New York is”: Kluger,
The Paper
, 701;
10:
“Something very nice”: Plimpton,
Truman Capote
, 245;
11:
“an adroitly balanced”:
New Yorker
, 10-30-65;
12:
“After the show”: Davis,
Yes I Can
, 84–85;
13:
“So it does”:
Christian Science Monitor
, 9-30-65;
14:
“I didn’t write”: Boyar interview;
15:
“tiny rejected spirit”:
Negro Digest
, 1-66;
16:
“Strip him of”:
New York Review of Books
, 1-20-66;
17:
“Are you that”: Branch,
Pillar of Fire
, 509;
18:
“Now, the plane”: Davis,
Yes I Can
, 430–31;
19:
“It goes a”: Ellison,
Invisible Man
, 15;
20:
“I turned on”: Davis,
Yes I Can
, 6.

Chapter 1: Vaudeville Dreams

Upon the death of Elvera Sanchez Davis, Sammy’s mother, I received a phone call. It was from Tara Arthur, a grandniece of Elvera’s. She said that she had been cleaning out Elvera’s apartment, sorting things, and had come across a letter I had written to Elvera. “Did she tell you about the Cuban side of the family?” Cuban side? “Yes, she was Cuban, not Puerto Rican.” The revelation stunned me. Days later I sat in an apartment in upper Manhattan surrounded by women—one was Gloria Williams, Elvera’s niece and Sammy’s aunt—who not only told me of the family’s Cuban roots, but shared photographs and dates of Cuban ancestry with me. Sammy had sought to keep this part of his family history secret. (“Families are strange,” Williams said to me.) I am deeply grateful that Tara and her sister, Lorelei Fields, took the time to explain this family dynamic to me, which shed wonderful light upon Elvera and her own mother. I also benefited from three interviews with Elvera Davis herself. (An interview she gave to the Hatch-Billops Collection on March 25, 1990—it is a research library housed at 491 Broadway, New York, New York—proved helpful as well.) Steve Blauner invited me into his home in Marina Del Rey and showed me the rare and precious copy of
Rufus Jones for President
, Sammy’s first film performance. Blauner’s kindness seemed endless.