Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (27 page)

Big John Hopkins was in the dressing room with Will and Nathan when I got there. “Mr. Davis,” he laughed, “I believe you’re the gentleman who called for a road manager. Now I’ve worked for some very fine acts like Nat ‘King’ Cole, Lionel Hamp …”

I wanted to play it cool but I couldn’t. “Well? Didn’t I say you’d be working for me some day?”

John roared like a laughing lion, picked me up like I was a glass of water and swung me around in the air. “You were right, Boss! And I’m glad I’m here to see it.” He put me down and shook his head. “What’s been happening to you! Good God Almighty! Did you see where Lee Mortimer called you a miracle?” He took a newspaper clipping from his pocket.

“John, you’re working for a very big star now. I mean—really, I couldn’t possibly begin to read
everything
that’s written about me.”

He laughed in my face. “Hell, you can’t con me with that bored jazz. You musta already read it. I knew you when your little bottom was hangin’ out and it ain’t been that long since then.”

When I came back between shows a vaguely familiar looking man, carrying a little black suitcase was waiting for me. “Sammy, my name is George Unger and I’m glad to meet you. I’ve been around show business all my life and I never saw a performer like you.” He opened the combination lock on the suitcase and began taking out platinum and gold watches, diamond rings, gold cigarette cases … “Whattya like, Sammy?”

Now I placed him. He sold jewelry to a lot of show people and I seemed to remember him in Frank’s dressing room at the Capitol. He kept pulling things out of the suitcase. I picked up a heavy gold money clip with a twenty-dollar gold piece mounted on it.

“Y’like that?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. How much is …”

“Put it in your pocket.”

“But how much?”

“What’re you worrying about? Put it in your pocket.” He moved
around the room giving away gold chains and key rings to everyone there.

“Are you kidding with all this? Look, George, I appreciate the gesture, but I’d really rather pay.”

“Will you stop it, please? Now cut it out or you’ll embarrass me.

I put the money clip in my pocket. “Okay. It’s ridiculous but I’d never want to embarrass a nut who’s trying to give me a present.” I browsed through some of his things. “I’m in the market for a good watch.”

He showed me a Patek Philipe, then a platinum Vacheron-Constantin. “Here. Look at this one if you can stand it. It’s the thinnest watch in the world. Go to a jewelry store and price the same watch at $1150. It’s yours for nine hundred.”

“I’ll take it. Can I pay you at the end of the week?”

“No! You can’t pay me ‘til the end of the year. Maybe not even ‘til
next
year.”

“Now wait a minute, you’ve gotta be kidding.”

He threw his hands in the air. “What is it with you? I’m making statements of fact and you’re asking me am I kidding. Now be a good fellow. You like something? Take it! You got any presents you have to buy people? Take ‘em now. If you don’t see ‘em here, tell me what you want and I’ll bring ‘em around. I’ve got ‘em at the store. And stop annoying me about money.”

“George, you’re out of your mind but if that’s how you want to play, it’s okay with me. I dig this kind of a game. Listen, do you have a diamond ring … a stone about this big, set in platinum or white gold?”

He reached into the suitcase. “You mean something like this?”

I stood up and held it under the light of a table lamp, turning it slightly, watching the sparks flash from its facets, remembering the ritual that took place every time we’d gone to Bert Jonas’ office, hearing my father’s words echoing back through the years: “One of these days I’m gonna have me one just like that, Bert….”

Unger was saying, “Try it on.”

I swirled my bathrobe like a cape, and flourished Will’s gold-headed cane like a sword at Unger. I held the ring high. “So, Richelieu … you believed your traitorous intrigue, your treacherous theft of the Queen’s eleventh diamond stud would prevent her attendance at His Majesty’s celebration? You hoped to cause
a royal rift, eh? But, foul fool, you are foiled again for I shall return the missing diamond to Her Majesty and within moments she will make her appearance at the Royal Ball for all of France to see. Your villainy has failed. Once again power has slipped through your fingers and I give you your life only because it will amuse Her Majesty to witness you choking to death on your own traitorous laughter.”

“Richelieu?” Unger was gaping at me. “What Richelieu? I’m a happy Hungarian trying to make a living. Will you try on the ring, please?”

I sat down on the couch. “No, baby. It’s for somebody else. Be sure to put it in a nice box, will you?”

“Sure.”

“Hey, listen. One more thing. Have you got a solid gold pen? With a heavy point? Something I could use for signing autographs?”

Standing at a window in my suite at the Warwick, looking out over the city, I felt as though I were in a scene from a John Garfield movie.

I opened the ribbon on the Dunhill box. The lighters were in flannel bags. I set one on the coffee table and put the other in the bedroom on my night table. I distributed the cigarette boxes, set the pipes up in the bedroom, and started on the Sulka boxes.

Wearing a pair of maroon silk pajamas with white piping, the matching robe and black velvet slippers, I sat down at the phone and lit my Saturday pipe, waiting for Room Service to answer. “Good morning. This is Sammy Davis, Jr. I’d like to order some breakfast….”

Morty Stevens called me late in the afternoon.

“Baby, I hope you’ve got something very important to say. You interrupted me right in the middle of putting away my gold garters. Now if you have any class at all you’ll get off the phone and be over here in fifteen minutes.”

He walked in and blinked at the sight of me.

“Just a little something Sulka whipped up for me.” I took him on a tour of my closet and dresser drawers.

“You’re joking with all this …”

“Don’t get hysterical, baby. Just some of the little niceties of life. Hey, whattya say we call Room Service? We can watch television and have dinner right here. How about steak, salad, and coffee?”

“Great.”

I got Room Service on the phone. “Darling, this is Sammy Davis, Jr. I’d like to order some dinner…. Oh? … Why, yes, fine. Thank you.”

Morty was looking at me when I hung up. “How come you didn’t order?”

“Baby, I wish you had a little more class. How can you order dinner until they send up a Captain with the menu?”

We were finishing our coffee when Jess Rand called. “I’ve got some wild news for you. I arranged for you to have a layout in
Look
magazine.”

“Beautiful.”

“You’re damned right. I set up a dinner for tomorrow night with the photographer, Milton Greene.”

“You’re kidding. He’s like an idol of mine in photography.”

“Well, anyway,
Look
assigned him to shoot you at the Copa, during the show. But he wants to get together with you first.”

The operator buzzed me back as soon as I hung up. “Mr. Davis, did you want service on the line?”

I rested the phone back on its cradle, and turned slowly. “Morty, from now on when you call, it may take a while to get me.” I crossed my legs and puffed on my pipe. “You’ll have to give your name and then the operator’ll have to tell me who it is and … well, who knows, I mean I can’t be expected to be in a telephone mood
all
the time.”

Will closed the dressing room door. “Sammy, I want a word with you. You and your father are spending money like you’re plain drunk.”

“I can’t talk about what my dad’s doing. That’s his business.”

“Then we’ll just talk about you. The way you’re buying clothes and jewels and records and hi-fi sets all over the place and spreading yourself out in a hotel suite … why you’re acting like you believe the mint is working overtime just for you.”

“Don’t you think maybe you’re exaggerating it just a little bit?”

“Am I? Why, you must’ve spent five thousand dollars this week alone.”

“So what? It’s only a week’s salary.”

“It’s
five
weeks’ salary. Sure we’re making $5000 a week but
we’re splitting it three ways and we’re
supposed
to only take a thousand a week apiece in salary and put the rest aside for agents and taxes and expenses. But this week alone you’ve already borrowed three thousand from me in cash, plus you drew your salary, plus I know you’ve got a whole lot of charge accounts because you’ve been letting them send the bills to the Morris office. Now I told them to go ahead and pay ‘em, but you gotta cut down. I’m afraid to see what it totals up to.”

“What’s the difference? So it’ll take me a few weeks to catch up. How many weeks a year will we be playing New York anyway? Look, I’m having a little splurge. I can cut down when we hit the smaller towns where they don’t have these kind of stores. And by then I’ll have everything I need, anyway.”

“I certainly hope so. You’ve got to start thinking some about the future.”

“I am thinking about the future.”

“When you buy yourself ten suits at a time?”

“That’s right. I’m a
star!
And I’ve got to
look
like one. When I walk down the street I want people to say, ‘Hey, that’s Sammy Davis, Jr.’ I don’t want to look like the guy next door who blends in like he isn’t there. Nobody goes to clubs to see the guy next door and I can’t be a star just the few hours we’re on the stage. I can’t turn it on and off like a light. I’ve got to feel like a star every minute I’m awake.”

“Sammy, what’s the name of that comic who was sitting outside?”

“What’s the difference?”

“
That’s
the difference! You don’t even know his name and you gave him a hundred dollars.”

“Massey, he’s a performer and a good one, too. If he needed a few bucks badly enough to have to ask for it well, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t turn him down.”

“I’m not saying don’t help people. But you’re overdoing it. Why, the word’ll get around there’s a damned fool at the Copa handing out money and he doesn’t even want to know your name!”

“Maybe. But it would’ve been a long walk back to South Side if the Wessons hadn’t helped us in Chicago. And I can’t forget what it was like when I had to ask B and he came through for us.”

“I can’t forget it either, Sammy. And it could happen again. That’s why you’ve gotta be more careful with your money.”

“Oh, come on, Massey. It’s not going to happen again. We’ve made it for sure this time, and we’re going to keep on making it. My God, we’ve got enough offers to keep us working two hundred weeks this year.
Nothing
can stop us now!”

“The only thing that sure is money in the bank! Don’t you see that you’ve been working the Copa for nothing?”

“How do you figure
that?”

“You’ve got nothing left, so you’ve worked for nothing.”

“The way I see it you’re the one who’s working for nothing. Look at that suit you’re wearing. It’s the same one you wore four years ago. And you’re still living in the cheapest room you can get at The America, right? We’re making $5000 a week and what’ve you got to show for it? A bank book?”

“That’s what I work for.”

“Well, it’s not what
I
work for. The money has never been my payoff for a week’s work. Never! When we were starving from one town to another I wasn’t thinking, ‘Someday I’ll have a pile of money.’ I was thinking, ‘Someday we’ll make it and I’ll live like a human being. I’ll go where I want to go and I’ll be able to do anything I want to do!’ I’ve got no complaints about this week. I’ve got everything I wanted out of it.”

“Poppa? What’s got six legs and is big in Harlem?” He was stretched out on a bed in the dressing room holding a copy of the Amsterdam News, waiting for an answer.

“I’ll bite.”

“Us.”

I gave him a look, and took the paper he was offering. “Damn! I’ve heard about hometown boys making good but this is ridiculous!”

He smiled happily, his hands clasped behind his head, tapping his toes together thoughtfully. “Yeah. I’d’ve figured we’d have t’knock off the whole Ku Klux Klan t’come home in this kinda style.”

The cab dropped me at 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, and I went into the Baby Grand. Nipsey Russell introduced me from the stage, finished MC’ing the show, and sat down with me, smiling, “Welcome to the small time.”

“Still no bites from downtown?”

He shook his head. “Still playing the back of the bus.”

“A guy with your talent …”

“Thanks, Sammy, but they just don’t want me. Maybe someday. ‘Til then I’m not complaining. I work steady. I’ve got wine, women, and the thin-skinned sensitivity of an armadillo.”

“It’s wrong, Nips. You’ve got something to offer.”

“That’s the funny part of it, isn’t it? The Mountain comes to Mohammed.” He gestured around the room which was seventy per cent filled with white people.

It was time for his next show. I sat at the table alone, listening to the sharp, often brilliant, comedy he was doing. Laugh for laugh he could stand against almost any of the big name comedians. He wasn’t doing “my wife is so fat that—” He was really saying something. I tried to understand why acts like ours could get booked “downtown” but he couldn’t. It was obvious. We came in dancing. Without planning it that way we offered something they would accept from a Negro. Nat Cole came in singing. They’d accept that, too. Louis Armstrong was a jazz musician. The same thing. But a humorist was different. They weren’t ready for an articulate man who could face them on their own level and offer ideas.

I left the Baby Grand and started walking west on 125th Street. Some kids spotted me and fell in alongside of me. “You’re Sammy Davis.” I nodded and smiled. He nodded, satisfied, and they kept walking with me. We passed an all-night barber shop and a guy came to the door with shaving cream on his face. “Hey, Sammy, whattya say?”

I waved back. “Whattya say, baby!”

I stopped at a barbecue stand and ordered some ribs. A crowd started gathering. “You’re top man at the Copa, huh, Sammy?” “You really know movie stars?” “You read about yourself in the papers?” “Hey, Sammy, there ain’t nothing you can’t have, right?”