Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (70 page)

After a while I went inside and sat at the window dissecting, until I understood, mistakes I could never make again: the using of color as a cop-out for any impulse I’d felt like indulging; the incredible lack of human understanding—from
me
who wanted to be understood; the scorning of people’s weaknesses, using them; the grabbing, taking, drawing everything I wanted out of everything and everyone who came near me; accepting kindness and generosity as though they were owed to me.

And what I’d done with my talent—milking it for whatever I’d wanted, hiding behind it, using it to fill my closets, caring only that it was there, never asking why God had chosen my body in which to place the awesome gift, never seriously trying to understand what I was supposed to do with it. I remembered planning to think about it when I’d come out of the hospital and it was frightening to look back and see that once the panic had passed, as soon as things had started swinging again it had been strictly: I’ve got talent, I’m a star—and I’d just grabbed it all and run without looking at the price tag.

Maybe it was too late. Maybe I’d used it all up, milked it dry. But if I still have another chance what do I do with it? …

The ultimate mystery is one’s own self. In the days that followed, days I dared not waste, I pondered and probed through what had passed, and came up with some answers. I knew they were not the whole story, just as I knew that no one can know himself so well as to say: Here I am. Entirely. This is me.

But it was a beginning, and if nothing else, an end to so many years of disastrous self-deception.

Samuel Goldwyn stood in the doorway of my dressing room at the Moulin Rouge, his hand extended. “Mr. Davis, you are Sportin’ Life. The part is yours.”

Frank, Jack Benny, George Burns—a dozen top people had tried to interest him in me but Goldwyn’s reply had been “Sammy Davis? He’s a singer or something?” The guys in the motion picture department at the Morris office had been breaking their necks for me and striking out completely. Finally Abe Lastfogel told them, “I’ll take over.” He’d made his pitch for me and Goldwyn had groaned, “All right, Abe! Sammy Davis, Jr. is coming out of my ears already. Let him make a screen test.” Mr. Lastfogel had refused. “He doesn’t make screen tests. You want to see film on him? Run
Anna Lucasta
. You want to see him perform? I’ll take you to the Moulin Rouge, we’ll have dinner, and you will see a consummate artist.” The
Goldwyns probably go to a nightclub once in five years. Only a man of Mr. Lastfogel’s stature could have brought them there.

The Morris office pushed back all my nightclub dates that fell during the six-month shooting period. I came in off the road and the picture began moving on a clockwork schedule. The day after I finished recording the soundtrack I was due for costume fittings at the wardrobe department.

Irene Sharaff handed me a suit she’d created for Sportin’ Life and as I started toward the dressing room she called out, “I don’t want anything underneath those pants. Nothing!”

I stopped walking. “Miss Sharaff—I’ve got to have a little
something …”

“Nothing!”

As I started to close the dressing room door she held it open with her foot and gave me an Eve Arden cynical grin, “You won’t mind if I make sure, will you? I don’t want anything underneath those pants except your skin.”

“You’re joking. You mean you’re going to stand here while I—”

“Put on the pants.”

“Look, Miss Sharaff, I don’t wanta be Charley Modest, but …”

“Relax.” She waved her hand, bored, “I’ve seen half of Hollywood undressed. Just put on the pants.” She was standing there arms folded, foot in the door.

“Okay, but I feel like a stripper.”

She grinned, “Tell me the truth. If I wasn’t standing here like a cop, you’d try to sneak in a little pair of jockey shorts, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, I’ll admit it crossed my mind.”

She nodded. “Put on the pants!”

They fit like skin. It was all I could do to close them. “Y’know, I wear tight pants, but this is ridiculous.”

She called the tailor. “Make them tighter. I want those pants so tight that you’ll see him move all over his body.” She handed me a coat which buttoned down the middle and closed completely in front from top to bottom. She shook her head. “No good. Split the coat at the bottom. I want them to see everything he’s got.”

I broke up. “You’ve got to be kidding. I’ve heard about this jazz with the glamor girls—but with
me
?”

Mr. Goldwyn sat forward at his desk and peered at me over his glasses. “You’re a
what
?”

“I’m a Jew, Mr. Goldwyn, and I can’t work on the high holy days.”

“You mean it? It’s not one of your little jokes?”

“No. I’ll do anything in the world for you Mr. Goldwyn, but I won’t work on Yom Kippur.”

“You’re a real Jew?”

“Yes, sir. I converted several months ago.”

“You know what it’ll cost to suspend production for a day? We can’t change the schedule, it’s too late. Twenty-five thousand. Maybe more.”

“I just learned today that I’m scheduled to shoot on Yom Kippur, sir. I came up as soon as I heard.”

He threw out his hands. “Sammy—answer me a question. What did I ever do to you?”

“Sir, you’ve been wonderful and I feel terrible about the problems I’m causing you, but I’ve gone to temple a lot less often than I would have liked because people still look at me like they think it’s a publicity stunt or like they can’t understand it, but I must draw the line on Yom Kippur. It’s one day of the year I won’t work. I’m sorry. I really am.”

He took off his glasses. “Sammy, you’re a little so and so, but go with your yamalka and your tallis—we’ll work it out somehow.” He sighed, like now he’d seen everything and as I left his office he was behind his desk talking to the four walls, “Directors I can fight. Fires on the set I can fight. Writers, even actors I can fight. But a Jewish colored fellow? This I can’t fight!”

Charley Head had tired of traveling, and quit the job after
Porgy
. As it came time to go on the road again I hired a man named Murphy Bennett. I led him into the bedroom and he gazed at the array of camera cases, pipe racks, guns and holsters, tape recorder, twelve suitcases, a six-foot-high trunk and clothes piled high on the bed and on every chair. “I’ll need the lightweight stuff in Florida and the heavier things for the rest of our swing—New York, Toronto, and Buffalo.” He nodded dazedly and I couldn’t help enjoying the way he was looking at everything Alice-in-Wonderland-style.

Jim Waters looked into the room. “Will Mastin and the people from the Morris office are waiting for you in the Playhouse.”

I smiled at Murphy. “It’s all yours, baby.”

Jim, a tall, good-looking actor, had come to work for me in his spare time. He was an intelligent, responsible man; we’d taken four rooms in an office building on Sunset Boulevard and I’d turned all of my business details over to him. I said, “Grab the phones for me while I’m down there, will you, Jim? I wouldn’t want anything to interrupt the fighting.”

I’d gotten a cable from London: “STILL MOST EAGER TO BOOK YOU HERE. NAME YOUR TERMS. AL BURNETT.” It was at least the tenth contact he’d made with me in three or four years, inviting me to play his club The Pigalle, and I’d had as many offers from the Palladium. I’d given cliché turn-downs like “We’re booked solid” but the fact was, I was afraid of it. What did I know about England and what did they know about me? I’d seen too many important English performers come over here and die like dogs because our audiences hadn’t understood them. Sure, it would be great to have the prestige of being a hit over there—but what if I didn’t make it? Within twenty-four hours the word would be all over American show business. But now my fears of London were balanced by the possibility of making a fresh start there. Maybe if I totally changed my surroundings, if I started from scratch with new people, with new audiences, I might be able to make contact again.

Sam Bramson was in town from New York and I’d asked him and Will and a few others from the Morris office’s nightclub department to come by. He sighed patiently, “Haven’t we been urging you to do it for years? But not in a
nightclub
. You’ve got to be presented
properly
, with the prestige and stature you rate. The Palladium can give that to you, but the Pigalle …” he shrugged and the others nodded agreement.

Will said, “Sammy, here some of the world’s greatest experts on show business are telling you: play the Palladium. Judy Garland plays there, Danny Kaye plays there, Jack Benny plays there …”

“Massey, I respect the experience and the judgment of everyone in this room. But I’m the world’s greatest expert on Sammy Davis, Jr. After the decisions are made and the contracts are signed, eventually it’s opening night, and you’ll be here in the States and you’ll all send cables ‘Good luck, Sammy’ and that’s beautiful—but then Sammy has to go onstage and do it.
You
don’t go on, Massey, Sam Bramson doesn’t go on, Abe Lastfogel doesn’t go on—it’s just me. The music starts, I wait for my cue and I walk onstage a-lone. So, when that moment comes I want to know that
I’ve got everything going for me that my thirty years of experience can provide.

“Every word you say about the Palladium is true. But those are the exact reasons I
don’t
want to play there. Look, we all agree I’m not going to London for money, so the only important thing is: what can I
accomplish
over there? Danny Kaye did as good as any man is going to do at the Palladium—ever! And Judy Garland did it for the women. I’m not going to top them. Nobody is. My one chance for individuality is to come into London differently. By playing the Pigalle I’ll stand out and be judged on my own.

“I have another reason. I want to create my image for London in the area where I can control it best, my own medium—a nightclub. At the Palladium the headliner comes on, does an hour or so and closes a big show. Well, if I’m going to make it with people who’ve never seen me perform I want to know I’ve got as much time as I need, to do all the things I want to do for them. Maybe it’ll be an hour and a half, maybe two hours—I have no way of knowing ‘til I’m over there. But I can’t be limited. I’ve got to be sure that each audience goes out of there having seen me as I want them to see me. Then maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll like me and they’ll say ‘There ain’t nobody gonna be that good in a nightclub as Sammy Davis.’ ”

I looked around my suite at the Eden Roc and went into the bedroom to begin unpacking. “Murph!” He didn’t answer.

He was sitting on a chair in the living room, crying.

He looked up and smiled, embarrassed. “I know I look foolish, Sammy, it’s just that I never thought I’d see the day I’d walk in the front door of a Miami Beach hotel. When I gave the bellmen the tip,” his eyes flooded with tears again, “they said, ‘Thank you, sir.’ ”

I felt myself starting to go under with him. “Murphy, you’re working for a star and we go first cabin all the way. Now go down to your room and get into some comfortable clothes and let’s get this jazz unpacked so I can do a show or we’re gonna be
living
in a cabin!”

I’d told the stage manager not to announce the act in order to avoid the ludicrous moment after: “the Will Mastin Trio starring Sammy Davis, Jr.,” when only I appeared.

Morty hit the first few bars of
Mr. Wonderful
which had become a
signature for me, then a fast rhythm thing, an exciting mixture of drums and brass. He kept repeating it, building suspense, and because there was no way of knowing when I’d be coming on, the audience was forced to keep watching the wings. I walked on. I didn’t wait for the applause to stop. I started singing right over it.

I was in the middle of the show, taking a breather, chatting with the audience; I’d just done Louis Armstrong and I was still holding the over-sized handkerchief that I used as a prop. I dropped it over my head like a hood and spoke through it. “And there’ll be
another
meeting tomorrow night!”

Laughter started tentatively in the back of the room and gathered momentum as it rolled toward the stage completely stopping the show.

When they’d calmed down I said, “I love Miami Beach. I really do. And such nice, friendly people: only this afternoon I went by the pool and guys stuck their heads out of cabanas and shouted, ‘Hi’ya, Sam. Beautiful tan y’got, baby.’ ”

They screamed.

Will burst into the dressing room. Murphy left, fast, and Will locked the door. “Sammy, now I
know
you’re crazy.”

“What’s wrong, Massey?”

“Don’t what’s-wrong-Massey me. You tryin’ to get yourself lynched? In all my years around show business I never heard a colored man stand in front of a white audience and do
those
kinds of jokes. Never!” He looked at me, aghast. “I can’t believe I really heard you doing jokes about the Ku Klux Klan? And in
Florida
!”

I pulled a chair over to him. “Take it easy, Massey. Sit down. You want a drink or something?”

“Sammy, what got into you? How’d you even
think
to say those kind of jokes on a stage?”

“I never thought about it at all. The lines came to me while I was onstage and I thought ‘why not?’ so I did them.” I sat down next to him. “Look, during the show you were watching
me
when I did those jokes, but I was watching the audience. Those lines weren’t the funniest in the world, but they screamed. You heard them. And there was no race riot. On the contrary. Maybe it’s because Little Rock is on the front pages every day and the racial thing is all anybody talks about, but the fact is that by bringing it out in the open it was like I’d bridged a gap that had been between us like it
always
is between
any
colored guy and white guy until one of them acknowledges that there’s something standing there between them.”

“All right, Sammy, you did it and it can’t be undone, but promise me one thing: no more.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that. There’s something I’ve got to try.”