Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (28 page)

Every question was asked with a smile and the hope that the answer was yes. They were catching every move I made, digging my clothes, the jewelry—but without envy of me as an individual, as much as a wistful wondering what it was like. They clustered around me, their faces impassioned by what I represented: I was the guy who’d broken out, I’d made it downtown. They’d seen us on television and read about us at Ciro’s, The Chez, Miami, and the Riviera, and now the Copa. They knew we were making it in the white man’s world, and if you were making it there then you were something else.

The crowd parted for me at my first step forward. They followed me to the sidewalk as a cab pulled up. I waved good-bye, got in, and told the driver, “The Warwick on 54th Street, baby.”

“Anything you say, Sammy.”

I turned around and waved again to the crowd that was still standing at the curb watching me go downtown.

What had once been a simple matter of my father, Will and me packing two or three suitcases and leaving town unnoticed, now took on the proportions of a troop movement. On closing night I handed out gold watches engraved “Thanks, Sammy Jr.” to the captains and key staff guys at the Copa. The next day Jess left for the coast by plane. We were going to rent a house in Hollywood, so Mama went in Will’s car with him, my father, Peewee, and Nathan. Morty and I left by train, and John took off in a truck we’d bought, loaded with drums, vibraphones, props, sound equipment, stage wardrobes, a box of photography equipment, tape recorder, hi-fi sets, a crate of records, and a 280-pound box of music.

The real estate broker drove me straight to the colored section of Los Angeles.

“Nothing up in the hills, in the Hollywood section?”

“Well—you see—uh …”

“I see.”

“Mr. Davis, try to understand. If you were buying it would be a lot simpler. An outright sale—well these things can be handled. But renting presents certain additional problems….”

Obviously I wasn’t big enough yet. “Will you take me back to the Sunset Colonial, please.”

“But don’t you want to see any of these?”

“I don’t have to.”

I was never again going to live in a ghetto. Not even if the wall around it were made of solid gold.

I took a cab to my father’s apartment. “I’m sorry, Mama. You’ll just have to stay here with Dad and Peewee for a little while until I can work this out somehow.”

My father spoke softly. “Sammy, they ain’t about to let you have a house up there in the hills. Not to buy, not to rent. No way. So, why tear yourself apart over it? You can’t change these things.”

There was nothing to be accomplished by arguing with him.

We were booked as summer replacements for Eddie Cantor’s Colgate shows, so we spent the summer playing clubs around L.A. and San Francisco. I’d started recording for Decca and “Hey There,” one of my first sides with them, was starting to appear on all the record charts.

Tony, Janet, and Jeff were buddies I could be with endlessly, and my friendship with Frank was becoming really precious to me. I could relax with him more than I had in the early days, but I was still “the kid” to him and he was still “Sinatra” to me. He took me up to the Bogarts a few times and those were always beautiful evenings. Bogart might have been color blind. He decided on somebody with his second level of understanding. There was no “he’s a this” or “he’s a that.” Bogart got to know a man before he decided if he liked him or not.

I was dating anyone I wanted to, not “white girls” or “colored girls”—girls! If I saw one I liked and got the nod and she happened to be white there’d be a voice saying, “Hold it. She’s trouble.” Then there was another voice that answered. He was the swinger. “Go, baby. If she wants you and you want her then damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.
Go
.” And I went, playing both sides of town, each with its little extra kick: on one side, the satisfaction of knowing that nobody was telling me how to live, on the other, peace of mind and the joy I got out of the fantastic attention my own people were giving me. I hit those hot downtown bars empty handed, but when I left I was the Pied Piper of the Sunset Colonial, heading home with the freshest, best-looking tomatoes in the whole grocery store skipping along behind me.

Then the summer was over. The bed, every chair and every table in my room was loaded with clothes. I sat down on a suitcase in the middle of it all, exhausted by the sight of it and the thought of going through this scene all the way across the country. A beautiful thought crossed my mind. A valet. A gentleman’s gentleman: “Judson, I’ll be traveling in the gray mohair. You can pack all the rest, baby. I’m going out now. See you at the train.”

The phone rang. “Sammy, I’m at the Morris office and something just came up. How fast can you get down here?”

“I’m in the middle of packing, Massey, I’m not dressed.”

“Then
get
dressed. You’ll be glad you did.”

The receptionist led me to the room where Will and my father were waiting with one of the agents from the nightclub department.

Will said, “We’re playing Vegas. We’ll be working the Old Frontier and we’ll be
living
at the Old Frontier! In the best suites they got!”

“You mean right in the hotel?”

“And free of charge besides, and that includes food and drink
and
$7500 a week.”

I resented the excitement I felt over it. “I don’t know, Massey, I just don’t know if anything’s worth crawling in there like ‘Gee, sir, y’mean you’ll really let us live at your goddamned hotel?’ ”

“Sammy, we’re not crawling to nobody.”

The Morris guy smiled.
“Crawling
. It’s not good business to pass up an attraction that’ll bring people to the tables. To get you now, they’ll break their necks, let alone a ridiculous custom.”

“When do they want us?”

“They’re asking for November.” He looked at a sheet of paper on his desk. “That means you play Detroit, Chicago, Atlantic City, Buffalo, Syracuse, Boston, and then into Vegas. That’s twelve straight weeks with no day off except for travelling….”

I wasn’t looking for days off. If Vegas could open up to us like that then it was just a matter of time until the whole country would open up, and I couldn’t wait to hit the road and sing and dance my head off toward that moment.

It was a gorgeous crisp November morning as I stepped off the train in Las Vegas. My father and Will were waiting for me on the platform. I searched their faces. “Well?”

My father made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. “The best.”

“No problems?”

Will shook his head. “They’re bending over backwards.” I put my arms around both their shoulders and we walked through the station.

They stopped in front of a beautiful, brand new Cadillac convertible.
I looked at my father. “Damn! You musta hit a eight-horse parlay to get your hands on this baby!”

He tossed me the key. “Well, seein’ as you like her, she’s yours. Will and me bought it for you as a sorta advance birthday present.” I took a slow walk around the car and stopped in front of the “S.DJr.” they’d had painted on the door. “Well, climb in, Poppa, and let’s see if she drives.”

They slid in alongside me and I put the top down. “Might as well let ‘em see who owns this boat.” I put it in gear and we rolled away from the station. I ran my fingers over a clear plastic cone which jutted out from the center of the steering wheel, enclosing the Cadillac emblem. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Will said, “Don’t thank us, Sammy. Thank show business. That’s where it all come from.”

I couldn’t get serious if my life depended on it. We stopped for a light and I pulled out the ash tray. “Hey, fellas, whatta we do when this gets filled up?”

My father came right in on cue. “We throws this car away and gets us a
new
one.”

Will smiled. “You boys keep doing old jokes like that and we’ll be back riding buses.”

As we got onto The Strip, I slowed down. “We just drive straight up to the front entrance, right?”

My father laughed. “Like we own the place.” He was as giddy as I had been a minute before. “We don’t even have t’bother parking the car. They got a man standin’ there just to do that and all you do is slip him a silver dollar and he tips his hat and says, Thank you, sir.’ ”

As we approached the hotel I saw the big sign out front, “THE WILL MASTIN TRIO featuring SAMMY DAVIS, JR.” I turned into the driveway and pulled up in front of the entrance. A doorman hurried over and opened my door. “I’ll take care of it for you, Mr. Davis.” I gave him a five and he tipped his hat. “Thanks, Mr. Davis.” A bellman came over. “Take your luggage, Mr. Davis?” I pointed to a cab just pulling up. “It’s in that one, baby. My valet will give it to you.”

The door closed and we were alone in a huge, beautiful suite. I collapsed onto the bed, kicking my legs in the air. “I don’t
never
wanta leave this room! I’d sign a contract to stay here for the rest of my
natural!”
I got up and looked around. There was a large basket
of flowers in the living room. The card read: “Welcome to the Old Frontier” and was signed by the manager.

My father was standing behind a bar in the corner of the room. “Glasses, ice, soda, cokes, scotch, bourbon … hell, they didn’t slip up on nothin’.”

“Well, I guess this is about as First Cabin as anyone can ever hope to go.”

Charley Head, the man I’d hired in L.A., came in leading four bellmen carrying my luggage. I walked my father and Will to the door. “How about your rooms?”

“Almost the same layouts. Right down the hall.”

I inspected the suite while Charley started unpacking. “Pretty nice, huh, baby?”

He didn’t look around. “I’ll let you know when I see where they put me.”

Oh God, I hadn’t thought about that. “Well, look, you let me know, and if it’s not okay you’ll stay in here with me.” He just kept unpacking. I could imagine how he felt. “Let me help you, baby, and we’ll get it done faster.”

Morty was rehearsing the band. I sat in the back of the room listening, and checked John out on the lights.

When Morty gave the guys a break I called him aside. “Baby, I’ll open with ‘Birth of the Blues.’ ”

“You’re joking! What’ll you go off on?”

“We’ll use ‘Fascinating Rhythm.’ Look, we throw away all the rules here. The plotting of a show for a Vegas audience is different than anywhere else. For openers, the hotels are all but giving away the best shows that money can buy, so the average cat who comes in to see us has been in town for a few days and he’s already seen maybe six or eight of the biggest names in the business. This same guy may never see a live show from one end of the year to the next when he’s home but after a few days here he’s Charley-Make-Me-Laugh. Now, above and beyond that, plus the normal nightclub distractions, if I don’t hook that guy right from the start and hang on to him I’m dead, because he’ll be watching me but he’ll start wondering if when he leaves maybe he should try ten the hard way. So, it’s like when we make records: we do or die in the first eight bars.” He whistled softly. “And on top of that, where in a normal club if I start off a little slow I can always stay on until eventually I get ‘em and they leave saying, ‘Hey, isn’t it nice the way he does those long
shows,’ in Vegas the headliner has exactly fifty-two minutes, including bows. They’re in the gambling business here and everything’s timed down to the split second: there’s no dancing after the shows and your check is collected before the show breaks. Those doors lead into the casino and they want the people to walk through them
on time!
There are just so many minutes in each day and the hotel anticipates a certain amount of gambling revenue for each one of them. I can’t steal any of that time to make sure I come off smelling like a rose. They pay me to bring customers
to
the tables, not to keep them away. So, watch me extra carefully for the cues, baby, ‘cause once I’m out there it’s fight-for-your-life time.”

As we stood in the wings listening to them shouting for more my father cocked his head and sighed, “I hope the word don’t spread that we’re bad for the heart.” The three of us walked arm in arm back to the dressing rooms. “You gonna take a look around the casino, Poppa? Maybe take yourself a few bows?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I’ll see.”

I put on a black mohair suit, a gray and black striped tie, my platinum watch, folded a handkerchief into my breast pocket and took a last look in the mirror. I took out the handkerchief and went downstairs.

I stood outside the casino, afraid. A security guard passed me. “Anything I can do for you, Sammy?” I shook my head. A few people coming out spotted me. “Great show, Sammy … Wonderful!”

I lit another cigarette. I took two drags, stamped it out, pushed the door open and walked in.

The deputy sheriff standing just inside said, “Hi’ya, Sammy.”

I smiled back and kept walking. I was right in the middle of all the sounds I’d heard before and they took form even wilder and more feverish than I’d imagined them. People were playing blackjack and roulette and shooting craps with a deadly serious hilarity, dropping coins into hundreds of one-armed bandits which lined every wall and the sound was like we were inside a huge, tin piggy bank and somebody was shaking all the money around.

There was an empty seat at one of the blackjack tables. The faces around the table seemed pleasant enough, but how would they react to me sitting down to gamble with them?

I broke a hundred dollar bill at the cashier’s window. The seat was still open. I went over to one of the machines and dropped a
silver dollar in the slot. If I win, I go to the table. I pulled the handle and watched the spinning figures slow to a halt … cherries … cherries … orange. There was a sharp click and silver dollars poured out.

The dealer was in the middle of a hand as I put my money on the table and pulled up the chair. Someone said something about me but I couldn’t catch what it was. I kept my eyes on the green cloth. People were gathering around. I looked up. They were smiling.

I pushed a silver dollar forward and played my first hand. I won. I let the two dollars ride—and won again. I pulled back my winnings and kept playing for two dollars. A woman at the end of the table smiled. “I loved your show.” The dealer glared at her. “Would you like another card?” She giggled nervously and looked back at her hand. I lit a cigarette and he slid an ash tray toward me. He jerked his head toward the nightclub. “I hope you’re as lucky in here as you are in there.” The man next to me said, “That’s not luck. That’s talent.” A cocktail waitress came by. “Would you like a drink, Mr. Davis?” “I’d love a coke, thank you.”