Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (53 page)

I stayed with him at his apartment for an hour or two, then went upstairs to dress for dinner. I was tired and I dressed slowly, waiting for the usual adrenalin, the charge of excitement I could always count on to surge through me at the prospect of meeting new press guys and beating their preconceptions, neutralizing them, winning them over. It was always there for an audience, for an interview—the greater the challenge the greater the extra voltage—but it wasn’t happening, and I had to drag myself downstairs and into my car.

As I checked my hat at Danny’s, Cliff Cochrane put his arm around my shoulder. “We got a bad rap in the
Amsterdam News
, a thing about you always eating here instead of going uptown. Billy set up a dinner with the editor for next week. At least he’s willing to meet with us and get to know you.”

“Great. Thanks,
Cliff
. I appreciate it. What else is new? I mean with you personally?”

He looked at me strangely and I realized I was just stalling, standing back from the moment when I’d have to sit down at the table and be on. He said, “I’m fine. Couldn’t be better,” and filled me in on who was waiting for me at the table. I started toward them, trying to remember the names he’d just told me, trying to get myself in the right frame of mind. George and Burt and Jane were already there. I shook hands with the people, sat down, and started smiling.

I did ten minutes of chitchat to loosen everybody up, then somebody asked “Sammy, you live on Fifty-fifth Street, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She tried to conceal her surprise at something she had known but couldn’t really believe. “Well … isn’t that interesting … I mean it’s much more convenient for you.”

A little girl was tapping me on the shoulder, holding out a piece of paper and bashfully looking at the floor.

“Of course, darling.” I kidded with her for a minute, her shyness was replaced with confidence and she giggled happily, and ran back to her table to show it to her parents.

My guests were smiling with approval.

“Children seem to like you, Mr. Davis.”

“I guess that’s ‘cause they can sense how much I like them. I’m going to have a house full of them if I ever get lucky and find someone who’ll marry me.”

They laughed, they were trying to be nice, to keep it social—but they were testing, weighing, judging, and with every answer another layer of doubt seemed to fall away from their faces, and I knew that soon I’d see the look that would say, “Gee, he’s a human being,” and I resented my eagerness to see it, to be so goddamned glad to get what should have been mine to start with. A guy across the room was staring. I’d been aware of it from the moment I’d sat down. It wasn’t idle curiosity with a quick turn-away when I looked up—he was doing a real stare-down. I turned back to the people I was there to meet, but I could feel his eyes still on me. Why doesn’t he eat his dinner and get off my back? If he doesn’t like seeing me then why is he looking? Or why doesn’t he leave?

George and Jane and Burt were helping me carry the ball. They had to be bored to death but they were going along with it for me, playing it charming and interested. Why did I have to impose this on
them? Why should it be necessary for me to use my friends as props and scenery?

“Sammy, I’ve been curious about your becoming a Jew. As a matter of fact when we first read about it my wife said, ‘Doesn’t he have enough troubles?’ I mean what with having one eye and being … uh, a member of the—” he lowered his voice, “Negro race.”

“Well, sir, the truth is I never
did
get invited to be in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Now they’ve got two reasons.”

I could feel people all over the room looking at me, and I was aware that as usual I was instinctively watching myself, making all the right moves so nobody could point a finger and say, “Well, what do you expect?” I was so tired of being tested and judged, of doing the right things, for the wrong reasons. Why couldn’t I have good manners because I
want
good manners? Not because I
need
them because I’m colored. Why must I always keep proving myself? Nobody else has to. Why me? Why must I always prove what I’m not before I can prove what I am?

The son of a bitch across the room was still staring. I looked around our table, from face to face; the woman was completely won over, her husband was on the fence, skeptical, but one more question and answer and I’d have him on my side, too. I turned to him. I could feel the hate-filled eyes from across the room still boring into me as I heard my own voice being charming, sensible, witty, humble….

Is all this doing any good? Am I accomplishing anything? When does it end? I can’t meet the whole world, I can’t neutralize everybody one by one. I can’t even make a dent. What am I doing here? Fighting, always fighting, always begging people to like me. The faces at the table came into focus again and I saw them looking at me like I was supposed to say something. They were waiting and I remembered somebody had asked me something but I couldn’t remember what it was. Everybody at the tables around me was talking, the whole room was talking, but I couldn’t hear what anybody was saying, there was just a great big drone like a car horn that was stuck and wailing at me, growing louder, droning on, screaming, screeching, surrounding me, pushing me….

I was standing in the middle of the room and Pete had his arm around me. “You all right, Mr. Davis?” “Yeah, fine, thanks …” Danny was in front of me, worried. “Hey, maybe you’d better sit
down. You feeling okay?” I stepped around him. “I’ve got to get out, Danny. The walls are closing in on me.”

My new car was in front of the door, a Cadillac Brougham, $14,000 worth of automobile, the most expensive American car built. I got into it and started driving uptown.

Maybe in Harlem I’d be able to breathe, to get a reprieve from the grasping for quicksilver acceptance, from the constant looking over my shoulder, the listening, waiting—the endless vigil. I had to come down off the tightrope, to break the spasm of suspense.

I tore my collar open and kept pushing uptown, stopping at lights, not aware that the car had lost its motion until they changed and I was surging forward again, straining to get there. I passed 110th Street—I was actually beginning to feel better, looser. I turned west on 125th and drove slowly over to Seventh Avenue and parked.

I walked over to the corner. This is where they want me. Okay. It’s easy. I’ll hang on the corner. Anything. I let a crowd form around me. They were shoving to get near me, excited, calling down the street to their friends. But they didn’t give a damn that I was Sammy, that I was home, standing on the corner. I was just another celebrity, that’s all they saw—that and my car and my clothes. They were shoving and crowding and their voices were getting louder and louder—the same mass of noise as downtown. I broke through the circle, pushed my way through them and got back into my car. I drove further uptown toward Mama’s old place, speeding, suddenly afraid it might have been torn down.

I stared up at the window over the candy store, remembering Mama watching for the truant officer; shaking her head at our old heaps and making us park around the corner so the neighbors wouldn’t see them. The door of the Brougham slammed shut with its rich, heavy, solid sound, and I walked across the street and into the building.

I put my hand on the bannister, trying to feel as I had when Mama was in the kitchen and I could race up the stairs and inside for dinner. The rich warm smells of the food Mama was cooking, the home smells, used to be all the good things in the world to me. I looked around me at the walls, the stairs, the bannister—not really surprised at finding it no different, but not the same. I thought of going upstairs and standing in front of our door. Somebody’d come by and say, “Aren’t you Sammy Davis, Jr.?” and I’d nod, “I used to live here.” They’d ask me in and I’d sit in the easy chair next to the
window and the whole family would come in and watch me. “That’s Sammy Davis, Jr., he used to live here, right here in this room.” They’d be poor like we were, and when I left I’d find the landlord and pay up their rent for a year. But I knew that I was only torturing myself, romancing my unhappiness, playing a corny scene from any one of a thousand old movies—that I didn’t even feel like I was home.

I got back into my car and took a last look at Mama’s window, wishing I could cry, but knowing I wouldn’t. Only by seeing what I had come from, had I been able to see how far I’d gone. Perhaps I didn’t belong at Danny’s yet, and Mama’s place was yesterday, but I’d made my choice a long time ago and the years and all they contained had closed the doors behind me.

I shifted into gear and headed downtown to the theater. I had to keep playing it the way I’d set it up. If it worked out, then someday I could stand on the corner or sit in Danny’s—I could be anywhere and still be home.

George did a mock groan.
“Must
we sit up so close? I feel like I should get up and sing or something.”

I gave him the glare he’d been expecting. “The biggest opening in ten years, but you couldn’t possibly just say, ‘Hey, Sam, this is a wild table.’ There’s got to be a zingy, right?”

He blushed. “That’s my policy.”

Jane asked, “Did you see Earl Wilson’s column today?”

I’d seen it. “What’d he say, darling?”

“He said, ‘If you want to see Sinatra at the Copa you’ll have to speak to Sammy Davis, Jr. He’s got a ringside table for ten every night.’ ”

I touched my father on the shoulder. “I’m going back and say hello to Frank.” I passed Sugar Ray squeezing through the crowd on his way back to my table. He shook his head. “They usually put
four ropes around me when I fight.” As I moved through the club it reminded me of the night at Ciro’s—a famous face at every table.

When I got to the dressing room Hank Sanicola told me that Frank had gone out for a walk, by himself. If ever there was a time for a performer to be alone, this was it. The strength to face that fantastic audience could only come from the same place that he’d drawn the power to attract them. I went back downstairs, not envying him this hour. It’s great to know that the world is out there waiting for you, but who could know better than Frank how easily you can close your eyes to bask in the flattery and the admiration of millions of people and then when you open your eyes they can be gone. It’s great to be the absolute hottest thing in the business but how do you live up to being a legend?

As I sat down at my table a man seated behind us tapped my shoulder. “Hey, Sammy, you just see Frank? It’s wild up there, huh? Broads and booze … he don’t care about nothin’, right? How about him! He’s some guy …” The man’s face was bursting with delight. The rest of his party were smiling excitedly, enjoying their own mental pictures of the I-don’t-care-guy, eagerly waiting for me to confirm all that they’d read about Frank. I smiled and nodded, and their faces reflected an ecstatic satisfaction.

As Joey Bishop came on to open the show, my father whispered, “Like the man said, Poppa: I wouldn’t give that spot to a leopard.” I nodded. The audience was looking at him with polite indulgence, accepting the presence of a relatively unknown comic as nothing more than a sign that when he finally left Frank would be next.

Joey stood in the center of the stage, making a big thing out of looking around the tightly packed, glittering assemblage, and shrugged modestly, “You think
this
is something? Wait till
Frank’s
following shows up.” They laughed and shifted toward him a bit, mildly curious. Joey shook his head, puzzled. “I don’t know what all the excitement’s about. It’s the same act I’ve been doing for years.” The room exploded with laughter and I relaxed for him, admiring the brilliance of what he was doing. Obviously he’d come in with brand new jokes, worked on and polished, but having the most valuable thing a performer can possess—the understanding of his audience, the ability to judge what they would accept and what they would not—he knew that his prepared routine couldn’t possibly have drawn the people’s attention off the subject of the evening, that no matter how funny the jokes might normally have been they
would have died. He threw away his act and began ad-libbing, working with all the things the people were thinking, helping them to enjoy the excitement all the more, riding along on the momentum of the evening instead of trying to buck it, and he went off on bravos.

The lights lowered and a single spot shone on the microphone in the center of the stage. The music started, only the brass and the drums, like a signal, an announcement. I glanced toward the stairs. Frank was standing motionless, looking straight ahead, waiting.

It was all there: the sound, the confidence, the distinctive hands, the shoulders, the cigarette cupped in his palm, the slight stretching of his neck—everything, and within three songs he’d more than lived up to the legend, he’d surpassed it. As he rolled from song to song dictating every emotion of his audience, I vividly remembered that night on Broadway in ‘53 or ‘54: the same man, walking by himself, hands in his pockets, coat collar turned up—nobody recognizing him. To see him come back from that, not only a better performer but bigger than ever, was a sight to behold. And he’d done it alone. A-lone. When everybody had said, “He’s finished,” when they’d said, “Forget him, he’s a used-up nothing,” then, with nobody helping him, he fought his way back on sheer guts and talent.

I watched him working—the consummate performer: in fine voice, mature, precise, totally in control, delivering everything his name had promised. But it was more than just his performance that was causing a sort of mass hypnosis. The women were gazing at him with greater adoration than ever, and now even the men were giving him a beyond-envy kind of respect, leaning in to him, approving, nodding like
Yeah!
because Frank was the guy who was living, being, doing, accomplishing it; he was the guy with the guts to walk alone, the guy who’d fought the odds and won, the man who stands on his beliefs “Like me or not” but he stands on them, who professes to be no god, from whom there is no “Look at me, I’m a pillar of society” but who is a man, and like a man, all the mixtures are there: the good guy, the bad guy, the actor, the father, the businessman—every known facet of his off-stage personality had fused with his performance, and his atmosphere was lifting everyone to that peak of nearly hysterical excitement which surrounds a performer as he stands on the ultimate plateau.