Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (20 page)

As he spoke I realized I’d been saying things like “Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, with your very kind permission we have some impersonations to offer. We do hope you’ll enjoy them.” I sounded like a colored Laurence Olivier. In trying to elevate myself I had gone from one extreme to the other. And there was no honesty in it, I wasn’t leveling with the audience. It was phony. Luckily I hadn’t done enough of it to stifle whatever they saw in me that they liked, but I could see that if I kept it up eventually my personality could become buried beneath an English accent just as surely as it had been buried beneath “Yassuh.”

Jerry was pointing out things only another performer could see. Nobody else had ever done this for me. Nobody whose opinion I could respect above my own had ever sat in the audience with a pad on his knee and made notes, trying to help me.

“Y’know something? Tonight you didn’t make a single mistake. Not one. Last night—a few, but tonight your performance was letter perfect.”

I smiled. “Well, I guess we got lucky.”

He was shaking his head. “That’s terrible! You’ve got to make some mistakes on that stage. Sure you know your act perfectly, but you can’t have the satisfaction of looking like such a pro. Some things you should make look like they never happened before. The greatest thing that can happen for the guy sitting out front is if he can go home and say, ‘Wow, I saw Sammy Davis at Ciro’s and did he have his troubles: the mike went dead, the piano fell apart but he kept on performing and he was great.’ If he can do that then he feels like he’s been a part of something. You’ve gotta break up every now and then, maybe blow a lyric—something! If you do they’ll root for you all the more.

“Also, in the impressions where you use props, like a hat or the big cigar, you’ve been handing them to your father and your uncle. That’s awful. What are they, prop men? Don’t hand them your stuff with that gracious ‘Thank you, Dad, thank you, Will,’ like you’re some kind of a big deal and they’re your servants. Get your own cigar. Get your own hat. And put them down yourself when you’re finished with them.”

He was so right. From the audience’s point of view, it had to look like “This kid’s making his father and his uncle wait on him. What an ingrate! They put him in show business and look how he’s using them.” The audiences would have to resent it. We’d done it because
it kept the pace moving. In the old days it hadn’t mattered, but from now on it was a different audience. They were more show-wise, more discerning. In the past no one was ever offended by me handing Will my hat and taking a cigar from my father. Or, had they been?

Jerry said, “In all these things, find a happy medium. Just keep them in mind and you’ll know how to do them.”

“This is the greatest advice I ever got in my life. I just don’t know how to thank you.”

He was on his feet, glaring at me. “You wanta thank me? Then like I said in the first place, get outa the business.
That’ll
be a thank you.” We shook hands and he smiled. “Let’s see each other.”

Jeff Chandler and Tony Curtis came backstage with Byron Kane, a radio actor I’d known since the Sinatra rehearsals, and as soon as we met it was Instant Pals. They came by almost every night. Tony was dating Janet Leigh who was already a big star, but he was still getting the corny parts in the corny pictures like
The Prince Who Was a Thief
and he’d just changed his name again, from Anthony to Tony. Jeff had been a radio actor but now he was the fair-haired boy at Universal and getting hotter every day. The four of us were together constantly at Byron’s apartment or at Jeff’s house, playing records and charades, sitting around the pool for hours talking movies, often daydreaming about Tony, Jeff, and me doing one together.

Whenever any of the buddies came in I sent a message to the maître d’, “Give me the check for that table. And send over a bottle of champagne.” My cut of our $550 minus Mr. Silber’s 10 per cent was $165 but by the end of the first week I owed the club $280 for the checks I’d picked up. How Big Time can you get? I didn’t care. Money was just around the corner.

I was two weeks behind in my rent at the Sunset Colonial. I dreaded bumping into the manager and getting his withering dead-beats fish-eye, so I was doing some of the world’s great sneak-ins and sneak-outs. But one day there was no escaping him. I went straight for him. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to stop by and take care of my bill …”

“Mr. Davis. Please! I’m embarrassed that you even mentioned it. I can imagine how busy you’ve been.” He put his arm around my
shoulder and walked me to the elevator. “Whenever it’s convenient.” He winked. “We know you’re good for it.”

I rode upstairs marveling. “Oh, daddy, what a life this is gonna be! It was slow in coming, but wow.”

I was the star of the hotel. People who’d brushed by me a hundred times before now wanted to stop and talk. The shocker was a chick named Mikki something. Whenever I’d passed her in the hall and tried to be civil the best I could get back was frostbite. But a week after the opening I saw her in the lobby and damned if she wasn’t maneuvering herself to be standing right where I had to walk, giving me an ear-to-ear and a from head-to-toe—all that was missing was R.S.V.P. I was the same guy she wouldn’t look at last week. I had the same face girls had always laughed at, the same broken nose but now that it was in the papers every day it was okay. Fame creates its own standards. A guy who twitches his lips is just another guy with a lip twitch—unless he’s Humphrey Bogart. Certainly I was no Bogart. It was only a few days since we’d caught on, but people knew it was happening and already I had begun changing in their eyes.

I ran into her twice the next day. She was tall and had a figure like forget-it, with long legs and shiny golden hair hanging below her shoulders. She looked like she should star in a movie called “Goddess of the Sun” and each time I saw her she all but handed me the key to her room. I smiled politely and ran. I’d have given anything to make a move—anything but “everything.” All I needed was a nice little racial scandal to make everything blow up in my face. I had a lot of catching up to do, I wanted wine, women, and swinging by the yard, but the Sun Goddess was too much of a threat to everything yet to come. I’d have my chicks, all right, but I’d get them from downtown. Safe ones.

As I came out of Ciro’s a woman handed me a pen and piece of paper. “Can I have your autograph, Mr. Davis?” I was caught completely off balance, but I wrote something to her and signed my name while she stood there beaming at me. I handed it to her glorying in the moment, trying to act cool. She thanked me and I gave her a little Doug Fairbanks bow. “My pleasure, I assure you.”

She squinted at the paper. “I can’t read what you wrote here.” As I watched her puzzling over my childish scribbling the image of myself as the suave movie-star type shattered.

I took a cab straight to the hotel. I sat at the desk in my room
writing “All my best, Sammy Davis, Jr.” I wrote it over and over again, working until it was light outside, trying to make something I wouldn’t have to be ashamed of.

Our two weeks were up and Herman Hover held us over for six more as the headliners. We moved our things into the star dressing room and our name went up on top out front.

Abe Lastfogel, the head man at the William Morris Agency, one of the real powers in show business, came backstage to see us. “You’re doing wonderfully well. It’s time for you to have proper representation.”

They knew every facet of the business, they knew how to negotiate and they, if anybody, would know how to construct our bookings so that every move we made would be one step closer to the Copa. Will signed with them and immediately their men in cities all over the country began lining up dates for us. Within a week we were set for six months: they got us out of a $750 booking we’d made in Chicago and put us into the Chez Paree, the biggest club there, for $1250 a week; then on the bill with Jackie Miles at the Riviera across the bridge from New York; Buffalo, and a tour with Jack Benny which would bring us back to Los Angeles to be on the Eddie Cantor Colgate Comedy Hour.

We closed Ciro’s after eight weeks of excitement and capacity crowds which we alone had attracted. My one regret was that Mama was three thousand miles away and the closest I could bring her to it all was some envelopes of press clippings and a few long-distance phone calls. I could practically see her nodding her head and smiling as she said, “Well, Sammy, you finally got your break like I always knew you would.”

But as I thought about it later that wasn’t exactly true. The classic fallacy of show business is the statement, “Someday you’ll get your break and then it’ll be all velvet for you.” It’s a lovely dream but untrue. You can be ready for your break and not get it or you can get your break and not be ready for it. Nobody could have convinced me I wasn’t ready when I came out of the army. And, playing on the bill with Mickey and with Frank and with Count Basie and Billie Holliday at the Strand, being seen in Vegas and at Slapsie Maxie’s—those had all been breaks. But there was no mystery about why we’d gone back into the dirt after each of them. Something had been missing until the night we opened at Ciro’s.

I saw as I never had before, the importance of
everything
that
happens on the stage. Everything the audience sees, hears and senses about you contributes toward forming an image which makes the difference between just another performer or somebody with whom the audience becomes involved, somebody they care about.

Most of what I read about us after the opening indicated that the people liked the relationship between my father, Will and me: the two vaudevillians who knew the business backwards and the kid they’d taught it to. They liked the contrast between the old show business and the new. Maybe they also understood our feelings for the business, maybe they caught our desperation to make good—there’s no way of knowing all the things which contributed to create the image of us that they liked. Little by little we had changed our clothes, our jokes, our manner—everything. Whatever we were on the stage had evolved through the years until on opening night at Ciro’s the combination of circumstances was finally right and it all fell in place, like when the three cherries on a slot machine all come up at once.

Every head in the candy store turned as I walked in. Mr. Peterson put down a sundae he was making and rushed over to wait on me. Apparently Mama had been casually dropping our $1500 salary, and in our neighborhood $1500 a week was more successful than anyone had ever been. I’d never thought about this aspect of success, but I enjoyed the moment. I liked them staring at me like “Gee, he’s making it big.”

As I was paying for the newspapers I looked up, and above the counter I saw my picture, clipped from the Amsterdam News and posted on the wall.

“H’lo Sa … Mr. Davis.”

It was the guy who’d beaten me out of the baseball cards. I hadn’t thought about any of those kids in years. He seemed grateful that I remembered him and he called over a couple of his buddies. “This is
my friend Sammy Davis, Jr. He used to dance for us right in this store when he was just getting started.” I went right along with him, arm around the shoulder and “Yes, we’re old pals.” I was killing him with kindness, and he knew it, but he couldn’t get mad at his old pal, the local celebrity. Maybe he preferred to believe I meant it. When I left I should have had the traditional empty feeling of pointless triumph. But I’d loved every second of it and I felt just great!

I spread the newspapers on my bed. I’d never seen an ad like it before. It was a letter to the public:

It was signed by Bill Miller.

It was hot as hell in my bedroom. I opened the window. When I had it halfway up the smell of garbage whacked me in the throat and I remembered. I slammed it down and went into the front room. I wanted to call Marty Mills but we had no phone. I tried to take a bath but there was no hot water. Everything seemed smaller, more overcrowded, shabbier, than it used to be. I looked out the window at a bunch of kids coming down the street and I knew instantly which one’s mother worked for the richest family. I stared around me at everything I’d almost forgotten, hating it, yet glad to be reminded.

I lit a cigarette to help kill the last few minutes before we went on. It seemed as though every performance we had ever done had been driven by fear. At each degree of progress along the way I had felt: “If we can just make it tonight.” But then at the next plateau there was a new reason to be afraid. I took a last drag and ground my cigarette hard into the wooden floor. We stood in the wings listening to our introduction, waiting for our cue, all but crouched like runners waiting for the gun. My father held up his crossed fingers and we ran on.

They sat forward like we’d pulled a string. By the time the last notes of our music were playing they were shouting and banging
spoons against the tables. They were friends and the fighting was over. For tonight.

Jack E. Leonard and Red Buttons, strangers, came to the dressing room. Red said, “We just wanted to say hello and tell you to keep it going—you’ve got a great act.” Fat Jack said, “Yeah, your act is a bitch.” He glared at me. “But, if our friendship is to continue you’ll have to become a headliner very soon because I need a bigger dressing room to hang around in and I’m not going on a diet just to hang around with you.”

I thanked them for coming back. Fat Jack snapped, “It was your pleasure I assure you.” His voice softened. “Just keep swinging this way. You can’t miss.” He started out the door, blocking it completely, and I heard him growl, “Don’t stand there with your arms folded, Ed, or somebody’ll bury you.” He turned into the corridor and Ed Sullivan stepped in.