Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (13 page)

Morty Stevens.

It was always easy with Morty

Arthur Silber, Jr.

Mickey Ebony Magazine

Will asked, “You mean there’s nothing in the whole city of Spokane?”

“There ain’t that many colored rooming houses to start with.”

“What about a hotel?”

“Ain’t a single colored hotel around.”

Colored side of town? Colored rooming house, colored hotels? Colored, colored, colored! And the way they were accepting it, so matter of factly. “Whattya mean
colored
rooming house? Why must it always be colored rooming houses and colored hotels …?”

“Now Poppa, you know better’n this.”

“I do like hell! Why do we always have to be pushed in a corner somewhere? Why do we have to live
colored
lives?” I was out of my chair, pacing our dressing room. “Y’mean we have to let people say, ‘You’re colored so you gotta sleep in your dressing room’? Where, Dad? Where do we sleep? On the goddamned floor?”

“Now Poppa, that’s how it is and there ain’t no use fightin’ it. That’s how people are.”

“Nobody has to tell me about people. I got the word. I found out how they are. And it ain’t ‘cause they’re jealous we’re in show business.” He backed up, hurt. As I was saying it I was sorry, but the heat was pouring out of my body. “I’ll get us a room. In the whitest goddamned hotel in town.”

As I spun through the revolving door, I glanced at the clean lobby, the uniformed bellboys and the elevators. This is the kind of place I’m going to stay in. I sauntered up to the front desk and practically yawned, “I’d like three single rooms for the next ten days. We’re appearing in the show downtown …”

“I’m terribly sorry, sir, but we’re entirely filled. There isn’t a vacancy. As a matter of fact, the manager had to turn his own personal suite over to a guest, a steady guest who arrived unexpectedly.”

He’s really turning me down. I’d known it would happen, yet I hadn’t really
believed
it would.

“… swamped. Truly swamped. Busiest we’ve seen it in …”

I didn’t want his room any more but I couldn’t back down now. My air of “show biz” and world traveller had disappeared and I stood there, frozen, staring at him. A moment before it had been impersonal, I was just a nuisance to be handled as he’d probably handled others before me, but I wasn’t taking the gentle way out, playing the game, smiling: “Well, thank you very much,” like I’d
tried and lost; and now he began perspiring around his forehead, doing “nervous hotel clerk” bits, coughing, looking around for the assistant manager and pretending to check the list of rooms. I guess this is what I’d wanted—to make it hard for him, to embarrass him. But there was no satisfaction.

The revolving door seemed so much heavier as I pushed my way to the outside.

“… nervy nigger wanted a room. Some crust.” A bellboy was telling the story to the doorman and he didn’t care a bit that I’d heard him. “Go on,” he said, “get outta here. Go back where you belong.” The face wasn’t grinning or leering or mocking, it just looked at me with the kind of contempt you have for something you dispose of with a D.D.T. spray gun.

All the strength in the world was in my body as I hurtled toward that face and hit it.

I was sitting on the ground smelling that awful, dry, dusty smell like I had when Jennings broke my nose. The doorman helped me up. I nodded my thanks and walked back to the theater. I should have been embarrassed returning like this after all my big talk, but all I could think was that my nose was broken and I had to keep the blood from staining my shirt.

My father and Will were waiting for me outside the stage door. There was nothing to say.

We made beds on the floor out of canvas tarpaulins, used our overcoats for blankets, and I made a pillow out of a rolled up pair of pants. All I’d accomplished was to get my damned nose broken so that for at least two weeks I’d be limited in what I could do onstage. I’d slid back and tried to hit an idea with my fists. I couldn’t make that mistake again. Every drop of my physical and mental strength had to be concentrated on just one thing.

At breakfast I told Will: “I’d like to put in impressions of Jimmy Cagney and Durante and Edward G. Robinson.”

He put down his coffee cup. “Sammy, what’s the matter with you? You want to do impressions of
white
people?”

“Why not?”

“You just can’t.” He was shaking his head. “They’ll think you’re making fun of them. No colored performer ever did white people in front of white people.”

“But I did them in the army and they went over great.”

“That’s a whole other story. Those soldiers are hungry for shows plus the fact of getting ‘em free, but this is show business and when the people put down their money they don’t want to sit there wonderin’ if you’re trying to insult ‘em. You just stick with Satchmo and B and Step’n Fetchit. Don’t fool with those others, not for white audiences. I’ve watched what’ll go over and what won’t for nearly forty years and you can’t get away with something like that.”

“Massey, I won’t argue with you. You’re the boss of the act. But it seems to me that all that should matter is if they’re good or not.”

“I don’t mean t’say I told you so, but you also thought we wouldn’t have t’sleep on the floor of our dressing room ‘cause it wasn’t right. Sammy, what’s right and what’s wrong don’t always have say over what is.”

In Seattle, after our fourth show, the musicians would sit in with a college band run by a kid named Quincy Jones. I went along with them and we played, sang, and experimented with new things until dawn.

There was a note under my door when I got home one morning. “Wake me whenever you come in. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. Will.”

I heard the springs of his bed creak, then his slippers swooshing across the floor. He opened the door, rubbing his eyes, smiling. “Go get Big Sam.”

I looked from one to the other. “Okay, now we have a pajama party. What’s it all about?”

Will said, “We’re booked as the opening act at El Rancho Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. For five hundred dollars a week.” He smiled, pleased. “Mose Gastin,
now
let me hear you say we’re going to be buried.”

The trade papers were bursting with news about Las Vegas. It was starting to become a show town. El Rancho and the Last Frontier were the first luxury hotels and there was talk about new hotels being planned to go up near them.

My father was heating coffee on the hot plate. “The word is they’re payin’ acts twice as much as anywheres else. Free suites and food tabs.” Will said, “They’re out to make it the number one show town.” I listened to them like I was watching a ping-pong game.
“… flyin’ customers in …”
“Variety
says …” “The whole business is watching what’s happening in Vegas.”

I walked over to Will. “Massey, I’m going to do those impressions.”

He got out of bed and stared out the window. I knew by his long silence that he wasn’t going to fight me. Finally, “Sammy, I don’t think you can get away with it. Still, you’re a third of the trio and you’ve seen a lot of show business so I won’t stop you. I’m just going to hope you’re right.”

I looked around backstage while we waited to rehearse. The band was the biggest we’d ever worked with, the floor of the stage was springy and slick, the lighting was the most modern I’d ever seen. I was standing next to the stage manager. I asked, “Do I have it right about our rooms, that they’re a part of our deal here?”

The manager came over to us as we finished rehearsing. “Sorry. We can’t let you have rooms here. House rules. You’ll have to find a place in the—uh, on the other side of town.”

I picked up our suitcases. “Let’s go, Dad, Will.”

The hotels we’d passed in the town itself looked awful compared to El Rancho but even they were out of bounds to us. The cab driver said, “There’s a woman name of Cartwright over in Westside takes in you people.”

It was Tobacco Road. A three- or four-year-old baby, naked, was standing in front of a shack made of wooden crates and cardboard that was unfit for human life. None of us spoke.

The driver sounded almost embarrassed. “Guess y’can’t say a lot for housing out here. Been hardly any call for labor ‘round these parts. Just a handful of porters and dishwashers they use over on the Strip. Not much cause for you people t’come to Vegas.”

The cab stopped in front of one of the few decent houses. A woman was standing in the doorway. “Come right in, folks. You boys with one of the shows? Well, I got three nice rooms for you.”

When she told us the price Will almost choked. “But that’s probably twice what it would cost at El Rancho Vegas.”

“Then why don’t you go live at El Rancho Vegas?”

“Pay her the money, Massey. It’s not important.”

Will counted out the first week’s rent. My father smiled sardonically
at her. “Looks like if the ofays don’t get us, then our own will.”

“Business is business. I’ve got my own troubles.”

My father followed me into my room. “Not half bad.” I nodded and started unpacking. He sat down and I could feel him watching me. I threw a shirt into a drawer and slammed it closed. “All right, Dad, for God’s sake what is it?”

“That’s
what it is. Exactly what you’re doin’, eatin’ yourself up, grindin’ your teeth. Y’can’t let it get t’you, Poppa. I know how you feels. But the fact is, when it comes time to lay your head down at night what’s the difference if it’s here or in a room at El Rancho?”

“Dad, I don’t give a damn about their lousy rooms, I really don’t. Right now, the only thing in this world that I want is their stage!”

As I danced, I did Satchmo. I shuffled across the stage like Step’n Fetchit. Then I spun around and came back doing the Jimmy Cagney walk to the center of the stage and stood there, facing my father and Will, doing Cagney’s legs-apart stance, the face, and then “All right … you dirty rats!” For a moment there was no sound from out front—then they roared.

In the wings Will smiled warmly. “I’m glad I was wrong, Sammy.” My father laughed and hugged me. “Poppa, you was
great
!” He put me down. “Whattya say we get dressed after the next show and go look around the casino. I got fifty dollars that’s bustin’ t’grow into a hundred.”

We went out the stage door and around the building. The desert all around us was as dark as night can be but the casino was blazing with light. The door opened and as some people came out there was an outpour of sounds such as I’d never before heard: slot machines clanging, dealers droning, a woman shrieking with joy—and behind it all, a background of the liveliest, gayest music I’d ever heard. As I held the door open for my father, my head went in all directions to slot machines, dice tables, waiters rushing around with drinks, a man carrying a tray full of silver dollars.

I saw a hand on my father’s shoulder. A deputy sheriff was holding him, shaking his head.

We rode to Mrs. Cartwright’s in silence. They got out of the cab and I continued on downtown where there was a movie theater, where for a few hours I could lose myself in other people’s lives.

A hand gripped my arm like a circle of steel, yanking me out of
my seat, half-dragging me out to the lobby. “What’re you, boy? A wise guy?” He was a sheriff, wearing a star badge and the big Western hat. His hand came up from nowhere and slapped across my face. He’d done it effortlessly but my jaw felt like it had been torn loose from my head. “Speak up when I talk to you!”

“What’d I do?”

“Don’t bull me, boy. You know the law.”

When I explained I’d just gotten to town and had never been there before, he pointed to a sign. “Coloreds sit in the last three rows. You’re in Nevada now, not New York. Mind our rules and you’ll be treated square. Go on back and enjoy the movie, boy.”

I had no choice but to go in. A Mickey Rooney picture was on. After a while I glanced up to catch a song he was doing and I looked away, still steaming. Then I looked up again and I forgot the cop and the theater and the rules and I was dancing across the campus in a college musical. An hour later I was Danny Kaye git-gat-gattling my way through the army. Then the lights went on and I was sitting in the last row of an almost empty movie theater, and again I was a Negro in a Jim Crow town.