Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (76 page)

“I dig the idea that you’re beautiful.”

She thought about that for a moment. “When you look at me do you think Oh boy, she’s beautiful’—or do you accept it automatically, because I’m in films?”

“Darling, Edna May Oliver was in films but I didn’t ask her to marry me. I may only have one eye but that’s all I need.”

“Well, if I weren’t beautiful, would you still love me?”

“I don’t know.”

She gasped. “That’s a
terrible
thing to say.”

“Why? Being beautiful is a part of what you are. It’s not
the
reason I love you but it’s one of them. I also dig the idea that you’re an exciting personality, I mean commercially like ‘Hey, there’s May Britt.’ Let’s be honest. I’m a showman first, last, and always, in everything I do, and I’ve got to admit that I dig the kick of the combination of personalities so that when we walk down a street it won’t be just ‘there’s Sammy and his wife’ but it’ll be ‘there’s Sammy Davis and May Britt’ and there’s an extra excitement to it. I love you for all the dozens of things you are—and being May Britt instead of Maybritt Wilkens or Maryjane Smith is a part of what you are. By the same token I expect you to love me, in part, for my professional self. I spent my whole life trying to become a star. I started off in the world as fat, bone, and a gallon of water and I think it would be ridiculous to expect you to love me for
that
or for what I was when I was twenty. I love you as I want you to love me: for the sum total of what I’ve made of what I started with.”

She told me some of her feelings. “For one thing I want a house that’s filled with kids. And I don’t intend to be one of those Hollywood mothers who stops by the nursery for ten minutes every day. Sure, we’ll have a nurse if we can afford one but I want to raise my own kids. I want them to know me and I want them to know
you.”

“I couldn’t agree more. And I’ve been thinking, even if God lets us succeed in having our own child I want to adopt children too. There are too many kids, particularly colored kids, who don’t have homes, and nobody comes to give them one and they grow up hollow inside because they never had anybody to love them. I think it’s inexcusable if somebody can afford it and they don’t take a child into their lives, a child who’s already living and breathing and who needs them. I know that I have enough love stored up in me to lavish it on you and on all the kids we can physically handle.”

“I agree with you one hundred per cent. I don’t care how many we have of our own I’d still love to adopt some, too.”

“Then we’ve got no problems there.”

She said, “I realize that you’ll have to be on the road a lot and
when I can be with you then I want to be, but I know there’ll be places too expensive to travel to for only a short time or I’ll want to be at home with our children so at least when you are home I’ll expect you to try to create the atmosphere of a real home. I know you have a lot of friends and business guys to see when you’re on the coast but I want us to have a certain amount of privacy, too. Maybe it’s corny but I’d like to sit down at a dinner table with just my husband and have dinner with him. Particularly when we have children. I want them to have the security of being able to see as many of the traditions of home life as we can possibly make for them.”

“I agree completely. And I’m hoping the day will come when the debts are paid and I won’t have to spend forty weeks a year traveling around the country. Sy Marsh has kicked down the door for me in dramatic television, the ratings I’ve gotten have been unbelievable—they definitely prove that the whole South isn’t turning off its television sets the minute I come on—so eventually I should be able to count on maybe three or four good TV shows a year. That, plus a picture a year and we’ll have it made.”

“You mean that? When we’re out of debt, you’ll be able to stay home?”

“No. I’ll never want to cut out clubs entirely. I’m primarily a nightclub performer and I’ll always want to spend a certain amount of time facing audiences, both to keep myself up as a performer and because I enjoy it. Besides, the clubs have enough trouble finding acts that can draw without me walking out on them, too. But it’ll be beautiful to play just certain places, to pick and choose without being financially pressured to play every good offer that comes along.”

We sat near a big window in the living room, eating ham and eggs and talking, watching Sunday spreading over the city.

Jim took her back to her hotel, then picked her up again around noon. At two o’clock he said, “Our plane is at three-fifteen. We’d better leave here in about fifteen minutes.”

“Baby, get us on the next flight, will you?”

There had seemed, on the plane and in L.A., to be so many urgent things to discuss with May, but now the fact and joy of being together was more important than the details and problems of the future. She was wearing slacks and a bulky sweater and although the
weather outside was clear and sunny and we were in a New York apartment, I had the feeling I knew I’d have had if we’d been sitting in front of a stone fireplace in New England with mountains of snow outside, lulled by the flames of a blazing, crackling fire. “Hey, let me ask you something. How come you didn’t come over to the house that night after Dinah Washington’s closing? Didn’t I impress you at all?”

She laughed and gave me one of those reluctant compliments. “I must confess I was a
little
sharmed by Sharley Sharming. But I couldn’t just say, ‘Sure I’ll come up,’ the first time we’d met.”

“But you wanted to?”

She was embarrassed. “The next day I went out and bought your album ‘Sammy Davis, Jr. at Town Hall.’ I played it so much that my mother finally said, ‘Don’t you have anything else to play?’ Then, when you said you’d call me from Vegas,” she hesitated, “I really shouldn’t tell you this …”

“Yes you should, we’re engaged. Come on.”

“Well, I sat by the telephone waiting to hear from you, and whenever I had to go out of the house, I made my mother swear she wouldn’t leave … oh boy, was I mad when you didn’t call right away. Then I started getting worried you weren’t interested and—listen, I’ve told you enough. Now you tell me something. What did you think of me?”

I described the trouble I’d had making connections with her. “And let’s not even discuss how I put together a whole party just to meet you and you walked in with George Englund and sat with your back to me all night. Then I left town and did a whole tug-of-war with myself, ‘Should I invite her to Vegas? Maybe she’ll say no.’ ”

She burst out laughing. “I had my bags packed for two days.”

“And I want to thank you for having your mother’s bags packed too.”

Jim came into the living room. “Okay, kiddies, this is it. TWA is running out of planes.”

The car swung down Park Avenue, to 57th Street, then west to Fifth Avenue. It was one of those gorgeous winter Sundays with people strolling Fifth Avenue in couples. At the Sherry Netherland May got out. “So long. See you, Sharlie Brown. Good-bye, Yimmy.” As the car pulled away, I watched her through the rear window. She was standing on the sidewalk, waving good-bye, making a beautiful picture in a sporty, cream-colored fur coat with
the collar pulled up and a large alligator purse slung over one arm—Mary Moviestar all the way.

Frank was Charley Raised Eyebrows on the set Monday morning. “How’d everything go in New York?”

I hadn’t told him why I was going but obviously he knew. “Frank, we’re going to get married.”

“So what else is new?”

“I mean it.”

His voice was gentle, “I know you mean it, Charley.”

He must have known it before I did. He’d probably suspected something when I’d asked him to cover for me in Vegas, knowing I’d never ask him to do anything like that with just another chick.

Frank is two people: one, his public image—the swinger, the legend, the idol, the “ring-a-ding-ding” and “wowoweeewow” guy who says, “Let’s get the broads and get the booze and
be
somebody!” The other is the serious businessman, the father, the friend. The façade of fun, the atmosphere of laughs comes off like a coat, the looking everywhere at what’s going on stops dead, his attention is fixed on one thing and his lifetime of hard-earned experience comes forward. He was studying me, evaluating, balancing the factors involved, weighing one against the other, understanding—as only a friend and another performer could—exactly what I stood to gain or possibly lose by such a marriage.

Finally he spoke and the words were deliberate. “Yeah. It’s a good thing. Do it, Charley. Get yourself some happiness.”

There was no pontificating. Just simple. He’d thought about it and he agreed with it.

I took a last look around the living room. Jim, Luddy, Rudy, Etheline, and I had spent the morning blowing up balloons and hanging streamers around a huge sign: “Welcome Home, Peanuts.”

It was time to leave for the airport. I was nervous. I yearned to be standing at the gate when she got off the plane. But someone would point “Hey, look” like he couldn’t believe his eyes, or there’d be a slur, or she’d catch a hard look that would hurt her. Maybe nothing would happen—but I couldn’t take that chance.

I drove my new Rolls Royce. Jim was looking over the upholstery. I’d put all kinds of pressure on the Rolls people so that I’d
have it in time to pick her up in it. He grinned, “You wouldn’t by any chance be trying to impress her with this car would you?”

I gave him a look. “I’ll say this about them, Mary, they’ve got rhythm, and they love big cars.”

He blushed. “I wish I’d had this car when I was courting Luddy.” He was talking fast. “On the other hand I got her anyway …”

I broke up. “I’ve always suspected you were a hater … that’s why I keep you working for me, so I can keep an eye on you.”

He shrugged, “I’m glad you didn’t say eyes, as in ‘the plural of.’ ”

“Ah, my dear Inspector, so you are aware that one eye is false, eh? But did you also know that it contains a precision camera of infinitesimal dimensions with which I have been photographing all of your country’s strategic plans and ciphers?”

He nodded solemnly. “It’s all in my report to the Yard. But before you kill me, would you mind telling me how you operate it? I’ve known for months what you’ve been doing yet I’ve never seen your hand go near your face.”

“Certainly, Inspector. Delighted. Small good it will do you now.” I turned to him and raised my eyebrow. “I have just taken your picture!”

We did a few more minutes of international spy bits and drove the rest of the way in silence. As we neared the airport, I said, “You go and get her, baby. I’ll stay in the car.”

I saw May running ahead of Jim toward me and it took all the strength I had not to indulge myself in the pleasure of jumping out and throwing my arms around her. She stepped into the car. “Hello, there, Sharlie Brown.” She didn’t seem to mind that I hadn’t come out to meet her; she put her hand on mine and the gesture said, someday we’ll do all these things.

At the front door of the house I told her to close her eyes, and guided her until she was facing the living room. “Okay, now you can open them.”

She stood amidst the confetti and the party hats, staring at the sign, holding one of the balloons, not even trying to blink away the tears. “Nobody ever did anything like this for me before.”

I dabbed gently at her eyes with my handkerchief. Through the weeks, the veneer of the beautiful but cold and haughty girl had gradually relaxed with me to a softness that was loving, yet still independent. But now, sitting on the couch pouring out her happiness
at being loved, like a little girl, so soft and defenseless, it was as though she’d gained the security that permitted her to lower a final shield and admit to me how lonely she’d been.

By what miracle had we found each other and known, without really knowing, that we needed each other so much? I held her in my arms wanting to promise that I’d never let her be lonely again, wanting to tell her everything she meant to me and all the things I yearned to do for her that I’d never done or even thought of doing for anyone else. It was a moment when there was so much to say yet no words with which to say it. But at least it was also a moment when so much could be understood with no words at all.

After a while I stood up. “Okay, we’ve both had our little cry, now here’s the skam: we’ll go downstairs so you can say hello to Mama, then we’ll have lunch and I’ll take you home and you can unpack and get some rest.”

“But, Sharlie Brown, I just got here.”

“Hey, cool it. I haven’t seen you, either, and I ain’t all that choked up about letting you go but you’re in the middle of shooting and you need your sleep. Unless, of course, you’re doing a re-make of an old Marjorie Main movie! Darling, you’re making a picture?—do it right!”

After taking her home, I went downstairs to see Mama again. She was sitting in her chair, her TV set off, like she’d been expecting me.

“I’m going to marry her, Mama.”

“You sure that’s what you want to do, Sammy?”

“Yes, Mama, that’s what I want to do. I love her and I’ve asked her to marry me and she’s said yes.”

Her eyes were looking at me but seeing past me and I couldn’t be sure if she was seeing the years ago or the years ahead. “I won’t say do you know what’s ahead of you, Sammy. I know you must have thought it out.”

“Yes.”

“You think
she
knows?”

“No. How could she?”

“Is she strong?”

“Yes. And I’ll do everything I can to protect her.”

Mama nodded. “I watched her these times she’s been here. She’s a nice girl. Does she know what kind of life you led ‘til now?”

“Yes. I’ve told her.”

“Well, if she’ll have you, knowing everything you’ve done bad, you’ve got the right to marry her. But make her happy.” Her face took on the familiar, strong, stern expression it used to have when she was fighting my father or Will in the old days. “Be good to her, Sammy. Do everything you can to make her happy. If you don’t I won’t like you.”

“I’ll try my best, Mama. I’ll make her happy.”

She relaxed and smiled with a grandmother’s confidence that if I said it, and if I meant it, then it was good as done. “Mama, there’s something else. I spoke to Dad and Peewee about getting a new place for themselves and the kids, but this house is really yours and mine and I’d like it very much if you’d stay with me and my wife.”