B009HOTHPE EBOK (39 page)

Jake Freedman was a classic character from the old wild and wooly days of Vegas. He was from Dallas, an immigrant from Russia or Poland. He came to the U.S., settled in Texas, and learned how to speak English with a Texan accent, a little Jew with a Texas drawl on top of a Yiddish accent. He was five-foot-four and he would stand on a box to shoot craps. He would dress up in cowboy suits like Roy Rogers did, all costumed in nudie glitter getups. He’d say, “Howdy pardner! Ya doin’ ok, ya ol’ galoot? Good luck to ya!” This is almost straight out of Yiddish vaudeville, but it was taking place daily in Las Vegas in the ’50s. I wish I’d been old enough to witness it. What a scream that must have been!

*   *   *

Sammy Davis Jr. was an inspiration to me from a very young age, from when I started collecting records. When I heard his Decca recordings in the mid ’50s, where he did imitations, it motivated me to do the same thing. I saw Sammy when I was a teenager and he came to Canada with the Will Mastin Trio. I would see him perform at the Gatineau nightclub on the Quebec side and I was always mesmerized by him.

When I hit Vegas and started working the Sands Hotel, I was obviously very overwhelmed that I was actually in his company. Through the subsequent thirty years that I knew him, I would see the change in the man as I did with Sinatra—less so with Dean Martin—who never liked to hang out that much into the late hours of the evening. Keep in mind I was younger than all of the Rat Pack members and slowly got included into their crowd. I toed the line, acknowledging their seniority and being wary of their partnership with the mob. As Sammy explained to me later on in our relationship, very early in his career he had asked for money from the mob, which he needed not only back then, but actually all through his life. So he was under control of the boys. Frank liked him and protected him as best as he could even though they had two major breakups in their friendship. The second one was the most severe. Frank was aware, as we all were, that Sammy was into cocaine and ongoing sexcapades that had gone to a new level. As Sammy would later graphically explain to some of us that he was close to, including Sinatra and the rest of the group, he became absolutely obsessed with the world of porno. All of us knew it and saw it because we all worked at Caesars. Whenever he performed there, there were always a bunch of porn stars in attendance in the audience and backstage.

I remember around 1972 a group of us were in England. I was doing some shows there, and Sammy was there, too. They really embraced Sammy, the English—that was a special place for him. At dinner Sammy said, “After the show tonight, I want to run a movie at this private movie house,” something he had done many times before at home and on the road. Everyone said, “Let’s go!” We went down some stairs to a screening room. There were about thirty or forty of us, and no one knew what we were going to see. We get in there, sit down with our bags of popcorn—we had the whole place to ourselves—and the lights go down, and on comes …
Deep Throat
!

Everybody was sitting there in shock. You have to understand that our mutual friends, Gary and Maxine Smith, whom I have known for years and who are very dear friends of mine and my wife’s were watching this hard-core porno movie with their jaws dropping—as were Anne and I. Gary was one of the top television producers, and at the time produced Sammy’s television shows. Anne and I and Sammy’s wife, Altovise, all socialized together, but we hadn’t actually seen this raw side of his secret life. Sammy really got into porno stuff with a vengeance later on, by having sex parties with porn stars like Marilyn Chambers and Linda Lovelace and her husband. They would have foursomes with Sammy and Altovise.

But at a certain point we sensed that his marriage to Altovise had taken a different more sordid turn. He had met Altovise a few years earlier, when she’d been one of the dancers in his previous shows in England. They dated for a while and then got married. He was also seeing another dancer, Lola Falana, but it was his infatuation with porn star Linda Lovelace, the star of
Deep Throat,
which was beyond belief. Linda Lovelace had spectacular sexual prowess. She was able to perform fellatio on a man to the point where his penis would totally disappear inside her mouth and down her throat without causing her to gag. At the time it caused a huge public sensation. Sammy became obsessed with her. She shared his bed, with Altovise’s consent, and Altovise eventually joined them.

Frank knew what he was up to; we all knew. We were a tight group of people—you just can’t keep those things quiet. I would just go hang out with Sammy after his show; keep in mind I lived two blocks from Caesars. Over drinks he became very open about his sexual life. He invited me to go to strip shows with him. I declined, not that I was a prude … far from it. It just wasn’t my scene, and my kids and Anne were at home. Frank was hardly a prude himself but he found Sammy’s new porno fixation disgusting and didn’t forgive him for years. Sammy would tell me in his droll delivery that fellatio was as far as he went with Linda Lovelace. “Eatin’ ain’t cheatin’,” as he put it.

He’d tell me about all this weird stuff he was into. He had another life eventually, beginning at the end of the sixties and on through the seventies, where Sammy, at a certain hour, would gravitate to that porn crowd. It was the drugs and sex and all of that. His whole thing was, “Shit, I’m only living once; I want to do what I want.” It was a very, very strange situation and Sammy was just off the wall with that.

As time went on, Sammy’s kinky sex habits got kinkier. He became obsessed with Linda Lovelace and got very close to her, and also her husband, Chuck Traynor, who had a sadistic relationship with her. (She later claimed he beat her and forced her into porn movies at gunpoint.) He got into threesomes with them. They’d come over to his house. Sammy’s wife got involved with Traynor.

After the midnight shows, Sammy had a whole other life from the rest of us. He got seriously into drugs. Frank and he didn’t talk for a long time because Sammy got heavily into coke and Frank didn’t approve. They didn’t make up until years later. The wives got them back together, got Sammy off the blow, and got him back to his old self.

He just enjoyed life. Curiosity about
everything.
Explored everything. He was completely open about his sexuality, and got into his bisexuality. He loved England, went over there a lot, and was very open with an eclectic group of people he hung out with. He would confide these things to me, how cool it was to be involved with two women, with guys. He’d say, “Hell, man, I’m living my life the way I want to. No restraints, no hang-ups. It’s my time and I’m gonna do it the way I want to.”

Through the years I would see him change—more booze more drugs—but I must tell you he was probably the most talented guy I have ever seen. Loveable, socially easy to be with, and the best friend you would ever want. He loved to cook. I would see him not only at Caesars Palace but in other cities, where he carried suitcases of utensils with him. We’d eat and hang and talk shop as men will do. He would tell me how much fun he was having and the escapades of his sex life.

One thing that massively upset him was the famous photograph of him hugging Richard Nixon. The backlash that caused was huge. On one occasion in Vegas, I sang with him at a charity concert for sickle cell anemia, and after the concert we sat in the coffee shop at the Sands Hotel and talked about all the things that bothered him. He was very down. He had been very hurt that his own people, his black brothers and sisters, now perceived him as being white, as an Uncle Tom, and as Frank Sinatra’s court jester.

Furthermore, he always had money problems with loans from the mob but by the ’80s he was in more trouble than ever with the IRS. “I don’t give a shit about the IRS,” he’d say. “I don’t have a head for numbers—just broads and booze.” And physically he was in bad shape. He would complain about his hip, which he later had to have operated on. I heard much of this from my physician, Dr. Ed Kantor, who became my doctor when I came to the West Coast, but beyond that, he’s one of my best friends and one of the most respected, renowned throat specialists worldwide. He was my throat doctor, as well as Sinatra’s and Sammy Davis’s. A truly loved human being. He and Dr. Robert Koblin, my cardiologist, have kept me in check as to the lifestyle I live. Koblin himself has been a friend for years, again another one of the greatest guys I have ever known.

Anyway, at dinner one night, I told Dr. Kantor that I had heard rumors about Sammy’s condition. He told me what he could: that Sammy was having throat trouble, which was something that Sammy had already confided in me in Vegas. We all saw it getting worse and eventually he was diagnosed with throat cancer. From that point on, it all got very sad. He began to miss shows. Everyone tried to keep quiet about it, but then the inevitable happened: unable to work he was sent home. Sammy died in May 1990. It was a very sad ending for someone who brought so much joy to so many.

I kept in touch with Altovise and saw her a few times when I was performing on the road. I started doing a piece about Sammy built around the song I wrote for him, “I Am Not Anyone.” I’d recorded it with him for Michael Curb for Curb Records. Curb was a very astute record executive. After Sammy’s failure at Motown, he took Sammy under his wing and gave him the song “The Candy Man,” which became a huge hit for Sammy in 1972.

Sammy’s passing was devastating for me. My love and admiration for him went back to the first glimmers I had of becoming a performer. He motivated me do my first nightclub act at the Copa. As a tribute to him, I used “Mr. Wonderful” (written by Jules Stein from the Broadway show that Sammy was in) as my opening song.

Nine

IF DONALD TRUMPS WHO WYNNS?

Sometime in the mid-sixties, I’d gotten into the art scene through my wife Anne who’d introduced me to a gallery owner named Paula Cooper in New York. I soon got very curious about contemporary art and started buying early, a full menu of the contemporary painters: Ellsworth Kelly, Donald Judd, Mark di Suvero, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella—it ran the gamut. I had those three huge color panels of Ellsworth Kelly—they were walls in themselves.

And then one night in the late ’70s I was gambling at Caesars Palace and I was on a real lucky streak. In those days, I will admit I was betting more than I should have on cards, playing blackjack. I would even play five hands at a time. Not having any other bad habits, that was one I caught from Sinatra. I mean when we played, we played. Took over a table. You know when you’re at those places, you’re just captured. It starts out as a social thing and suddenly you’re deep into it—it’s hard to explain. I loved it at that time; I’m certainly not doing that anymore, I’m not hanging like I used to, nor do I have any desire to. Yeah, just keep telling yourself that, Paul. But anyway, that particular night I’m playing and playing and … I’m winning.

I’m up most of the night till about six or seven in the morning and we’re having a good time. I knew the dealers. I got to know them so well they actually gave me a plaque! An award from all the dealers, as one of the top tippers ever. I figure these guys have families, they’re nice people, and I tip them well. Especially when Atlantic City started up, Vegas became somewhat of a ghost town for a minute.

So I’m playing with one of the dealers I know. I would play with Sinatra and we had our favorite dealers. Anyway, one night I’m winning like crazy. I finish the next morning with about $100,000. I take the money home. I was drinking margaritas all night, I needed to sleep. I normally sleep all day and then I call this doctor friend of mine, John DiFiori, who always checked me and Sinatra and all the singers out whenever we had throat problems. He comes over and he’s laughing as he comes in, about five o’clock at night, hours before my show.

“Before I check your throat,” he says. “I’m going to tell you a funny story.”

I said, “What?”

He proceeds to tell me that one of his patients came into his office a few hours ago. “The guy is bitching and complaining that he was up on a catwalk, watching this guy win money all night.” This was in the days before they had electronic monitoring systems, technology they have today. Back then they had catwalks, platforms in the ceiling above the tables—guys walking around in these dusty attics, looking down on the players through
holes
so they can watch the players and see if there’s any hanky-panky going on. We called it the eye in the sky.

“The guy complains, ‘And I’m watching this guy all night long and we can’t figure out how he’s winning,
rah rah rah,
and I got dust in my eyes, my nose is stuffed up, it’s running from watching this guy and look how red my eyes are. I’m coughing, sneezing—and I already got allergies. I’m a mess.’”

Doc says, “Oh, okay,” and he fixes him up, sprays his nose, and then asks him, “Did you ever find out who the guy was who was winning?” And he says, “Oh, yeah, it was Paul Anka!” Of course the doctor doesn’t tell him he’s coming to see me. So John comes in, tells me this story, and we get a big kick out of it.

Anyway, I take the money home and I’m saying, “Man, what am I going to do with this?” Now, Anne and I had always wanted to own something by Robert Rauschenberg. I said, “You know what, I’m not going to go back and lose it, I am not going to gamble it. I call my wife Anne and I say, let’s get the best Rauschenberg that’s out there right now. And there was one called
Sleep for Yvonne Rainer,
beautiful thing.

I have to give Anne all the credit for my getting into the art world; that was her scene and it was because of her love of contemporary painting that we eventually developed a joint love of art. It was Anne who first introduced me to this exotic world. We went to cocktail parties with the art set, attended openings at New York’s Leo Castelli Gallery and Mary Boone Gallery. We met James Rosenquist, John Chamberlain, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Robert Rauschenberg. This was in an era when artists were still genuine bohemian characters.

I call up Paula Cooper, I tell her my intention, and she tells me it’s selling for such-and-such a price and we start negotiating. End of the story, I buy the painting.