Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (22 page)

Will was out of his chair, too. “I’m the boss of this act and what I say goes and don’t you forget it! This is a colored act and it’s gonna stay a colored act until I die.”

“For God’s sake, Will, what’s the difference? If he’s good he’s good. That’s all we should think about.”

“Don’t tell me what I should think about. My thinking kept you in food and clothes all your life and it got us up to $1500 a week and more to follow….”

I had to get out of there. I wandered around the parking lot and kicked a few tires. He had sixty years of one-way thinking and nothing I could say was going to change him.

He was sitting in his chair, staring at the wall. He looked up as I came in and I put out my hand. “I’m sorry, Massey.”

“I’m sorry, too, Sammy. I guess sometimes I lose track of how
you’re a full-grown man. I don’t intend for it to come out like I’m the boss and you gotta do it my way. You’ve a right to your say same as Big Sam and me.”

Milton Berle was at center ringside, watching, appraising, as performers will. Occasionally his head would nod like he was saying to himself, “Yeah, that’s good,” and I put extra steam into everything I did, because as a performer his little nods or the lack of them told me far more than a layman’s applause.

I dressed quickly, knowing that he’d give us the courtesy of stopping back to say hello.

After we’d spoken about the performance for a few minutes, he said, “Hey, you talk pretty good!” But he didn’t mean it entirely as a compliment. In going for articulation I had slipped into the British thing again, but by this time I was practically the Prince of Wales and he was warning me against it. There was no excuse for making the same mistake again.

Berle lit a cigar. “Lemme suggest something to you. Y’know the line you did when the drunk heckled you? The way you’re doing it now, it’s ‘If you’re ever in California, I hope you’ll come by my house and take some drowning lessons in my pool.’ It’s a cute line, but you’re not getting the most out of it. Switch it around. Frame it as a straight invitation, like, ‘If you’re ever in California, sir, I do hope you’ll come by and use my pool.’ A guy has been heckling you and you say something nice to him? This confuses the audience, and they’re waiting.
Now
you hit him with the punch line: ‘I’d love to give you some drowning lessons!’ The element of surprise has to get you a bigger laugh. Also, the joke phrase is ‘drowning lessons’ so let those be the last words. You can’t follow them with ‘in my pool,’ or you’re stepping on your own laugh. You force them to pause to listen and if they can’t laugh the second they want to you’ll lose part of it.”

“I’m not about to argue with
you
on how to do a line.”

“If you do I’ll break your arm. There’s one other thing. When you get a guy who starts throwing lines at you like that, don’t go for him right away. Ignore him the first couple of times. Let the audience become disgusted with him so that by the time you finally belt him they’ll be rooting for you and you almost can’t miss.”

He stood up to leave and we shook hands. “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Berle—”

“The name is Milton. Listen, I’m going down to Lindy’s. You feel like a sandwich?”

Danny had been coming by every night. He was waiting for me in his car with Marty and Cliff. “You guys better go without me tonight. I’m sorry, but Milton Berle asked me to join him at Lindy’s.”

Marty gave me a wink. Danny said, “Hey, that’s pretty good.”

I sighed, “Yes, it’s a little sit-around-and-have-a-sandwich. Just us stars.”

He smiled. “I’ll give you a star—right between the eyes. See you tomorrow at dinner.”

The doorman at Lindy’s spotted Berle’s limousine pulling up, rushed to the curb, opened the door and I stepped out. Milton gestured for me to go ahead of him and I spun through the revolving door. He introduced me to the guys who’d been waiting for him, and made a place for me next to him. Everybody at the table focused attention on me. “Caught the act,” “tremendous,” “where do you play after the Riviera?” They were press agents, personal managers, comedy writers, all Broadway pros who were on close terms with a lot of stars and they knew I was just a “kid who’s moving up” but they treated me almost as if I were already there, giving me far more attention and acceptance than I really rated. It seemed that as much as the world loves a winner it reaches out all the more for a contender.

Suddenly Berle stood up and shouted at me. “Okay, out!
out!
I don’t need you to steal my audience.”

As we left there an hour later Milton offered me a lift but the world was beautiful and I felt like walking in it. I headed downtown, crossed 51st Street and as I passed the Capitol Theater, I thought about Frank. I’d read that he was in town and I was wondering where he was staying and how I could get in touch with him, when I looked across the street and there he was. I started to run after him and call out to him but I stopped, my arm in the air. He was slowly walking down Broadway with no hat on and his collar up—and not a soul was paying attention to him. This was the man who only a few years ago had tied up traffic all over Times Square. Thousands of people had been stepping all over each other trying to get a look at him. Now the same man was walking down the same street and nobody gave a damn. God, how could it happen?

I thought maybe he’d rather not see me. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, walking the streets, alone, an ordinary Joe who’d been a
giant. He was fighting to make it back up again but he was doing that by himself, too. The “friends” were gone with all the presents and the money he’d given them. Nobody was helping him. He was walking slowly—a hundred people must have passed him in those few minutes—dozens of them must have been fans who’d screamed for him only a few years ago, but now nobody knew who he was or cared. I was dying to run over to him, but I felt it would be an intrusion. Or, maybe I felt too much for him to want to see him this way.

I didn’t want to walk any more.

I stood in the wings watching Jack Benny’s performance every night. I think he’s the only man in the world who can do nothing but gaze at the people and make them laugh. His legendary genius for timing was the next thing to hypnosis. He’d mold a theater full of people into a little ball and hold them in his hand. And when he was ready—only when he was ready, he would open his hand and as much as say, “Okay, now you laugh.”

Almost always, they roared. But by not setting himself up like “Here comes the joke, folks,” by carefully not preparing them for anything hilarious, if a joke didn’t work he was never left in the position of having to do desperation lines like “I know you’re out there ‘cause I can hear you breathing” or, “But, seriously, folks …”

I saw my mistake in presenting the impressions by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, Jimmy Cagney.” If on a particular night I didn’t sound exactly like Jimmy Cagney I was in trouble. Without intending to, I’d been creating a “watch this!” atmosphere, setting myself up as Charley Impressionist and I had to be great or I was dead.

I tried it differently. I said, “These are just in fun, they’re satirical impressions of people I dig,” implying that I was just doing them for laughs rather than “Look how much I sound or look like somebody.” And I could feel it paying off before I’d finished the first one. No one knows better than I the impressions I do very well, the ones I do badly and the ones which are just passing. But now when I did one that was just passing, it got laughs instead of polite applause, and when I threw a good one the audience screamed. The whole
answer was in how I set it up in their minds and the impressions began working better for me than ever before.

The most influential people in the industry throughout the world are Jack’s close friends and he made a point of seeing to it that I was at dinner with him or in his dressing room to meet them. “These are the people you’ll be dealing with soon, and I want you to know them as friends, first.”

Being with Benny was invaluable, but there was also relative obscurity in the shadow of a performer of his magnitude. There was certainly no shame, in being second to him. He was a “King” and just being with him offered a glory of its own, but it came a year too late and by the time the tour dropped us in Los Angeles I was eager for us to be out on our own again.

At dress rehearsal the director said, “We’re running three minutes over, Eddie.” I began thinking which of our numbers to cut. Mr. Cantor glanced at the list of songs and dances. “Kill my second number.”

Before we went on the air he said “After your act you and I’ll have some fun together onstage, for three minutes.”

My father, Will, and I took our bows. They went off and I stayed on to join Mr. Cantor. They were still applauding when he came on. He hugged me and took a handkerchief from his pocket and blotted my face, beaming at me like a proud father. We hadn’t planned what we were going to do for our three minutes so I just followed his lead, and he was such a great pro that we could have ad-libbed another ten minutes with no trouble at all.

In his dressing room after the show I noticed a gold chain with a gold capsule attached to it. He saw me examining it. “That’s a mezuzah, Sammy, a holy Hebrew charm. We attach them to the doorposts of our homes or wear them for good luck, good health, and happiness. There’s a piece of parchment rolled up inside and on it are twenty-two lines of Deuteronomy, a prayer for the protection of the home.”

“Do you have to be Jewish to wear one?”

“I’m sure the sentiment is what counts. I don’t suppose God cares very much which floor we do our shopping on, just as long as we go to His store. Keep that, Sammy. I’d like you to have it.”

I opened my shirt and hung it around my neck. “Is there anything I’m supposed to do with it—I mean a special prayer?”

“Only what’s in your heart. In our religion we’re not confined to many rituals. That’s a basic part of our belief—that every man should have the freedom to face God in his own way.”

Frank called me at the Sunset Colonial. “Bogie’s having some people over. I want you to meet him.”

The butler escorted us to the living room. Bogart nodded to Frank the way you do to a close friend and shook hands with me. “Glad to see you. Come on in.” He took me over to Lauren Bacall. “This is my wife.”

She smiled. “I’m glad to meet you. I saw you on the Cantor Show and you’re marvelous.”

Bogart said, “Come on and meet the people.” He began steering me around the room. “Mr. Davis, Mr. Tracy. This is the kid I saw on television, Spence, he’s been doin’ me and if he keeps it up he’s gonna get a knuckle sandwich … Say hello to the Grants … Mr. and Mrs. Stewart … Miss Hepburn … Mr. and Mrs. Gable … Miss Garland … okay, now make yourself at home.”

I tried to seem at ease and at home drinking a coke, listening to the conversations, but I found myself gazing like an idiot. There was something so incredible about being in a private home, watching four people casually chatting like anybody would at a party—except they were Jimmy Stewart, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Judy Garland.

I couldn’t take my eyes off Frank. The dignity and the guts of the man! By all standards of show business success he was as down as anybody could be, yet, as he moved around in this incredible group of movie giants, he stood as tall as any of them.

He’d starred in half a dozen big pictures that had been completely built around him, and he’d lost it all. But, he had the strength to start all over again completely from scratch. He’d just signed to make
From Here to Eternity
, accepting a secondary role, without any singing, ready to try for a whole new career as an actor. Being down in the business hadn’t licked him as an individual. Maybe the whole world was saying he’d had it, but he didn’t hear them or care. He was a total individual, measuring himself against nothing but his own standard.

I went into a coffee shop for breakfast. The counterman smiled “Afternoon, Mr. Davis.” I didn’t know him. He began sponging the
counter in front of me, even though it had seemed spotless. “I saw you on the Eddie Cantor show. You were real fine.” A man two seats away from me raised his coffee cup, “Enjoyed you a lot. The whole family did.”

In over twenty years of playing nightclubs and theaters nobody had ever before recognized me, cold, like that. But the right presentation on just one television show had done it.

Will was waiting for me at the Morris office. The head of the nightclub department said, “I’ve got great news for you. Sam Bamson just called from the New York office. You’re hot as a pistol in Pittsburgh. They’re completely sold out for your entire engagement. The club started getting calls the night of the Cantor show and they had to close reservations in forty-eight hours. That show was fantastic for you.”

“Do you think we’ll get another shot?”

“We’re almost sure of it. He was tremendously pleased with you.”

I stopped at a newsstand and bought a pile of papers and movie magazines. I picked up my mail at the front desk and as I started toward the elevator the door slid open and there was the Sun Goddess in a pair of white sharkskin slacks that fit like they’d been painted on. The elevator closed behind her and she was coming straight for me, smiling. The best thing was to keep it light—do jokes with her. I shook my head. “You could be arrested for looking like that.”
Exactly
the wrong thing to say.

Her smile expanded. “Well, you
can
be friendly.”

Oh God, that voice! She made Marilyn Monroe sound like a bus driver. Where the hell was the damned elevator?

“I saw you on television the other night. You were wonderful.”

The elevator opened and I did one of those great suave walk-aways, crashing right into a guy who was coming out. I rolled off of him, fell against the edge of the door and stumbled into the elevator like a graceful drunk, mumbling, “Well, s’long, nice t’have met you.” As the door closed she was gaping at me like I was out of my mind.

I stared out the window, thinking about the rules of society. If she were colored and gave me openings like that—but she isn’t. What’d I need her for? There was nothing about her that was any better than most of the girls I was making it with.