Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (46 page)

I stopped at the end of the room. I couldn’t indulge myself in a dramatic walk-out. I took my hand off the door knob and turned to the Morris guy. “I’d like to speak privately to Mr. Mastin. Will you excuse us for a few minutes, please?”

The door closed and I walked slowly across the room and leaned against the desk, facing Will. “Massey, let me ask you something. What is it you want out of life?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“What I mean is: you love the business and you like having your money safe in buildings and banks and things like that, right?”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve seen a lot of show business, Massey, good times and bad, and you’ve got a few investments going for you, haven’t you?”

“Enough to carry me the rest of my life.”

“And I’m glad you have them. We may not be flesh and blood, but we’re as close as we can get other than that and I’m glad you’ve gotten what you want. You worked for it and you deserve it. Now I’m going to tell you what
I
want from life. We talked about this a long time ago but you didn’t listen to what I was saying or if you did then you don’t remember. I don’t want ‘nigger’ written on my door. I don’t want to be a buffoon because I bought a beautiful house.” I took out my wallet and showed him a card I’d had sealed in plastic. “You said I’d never get this. Read it. Tell me again that they’ll never let a Negro into the Friars Club.” He stared at my membership card, shaking his head slowly. “This is what
I
want out of life, Massey, and I know how to get it. I’m willing to cut down on everything. I’ll drop Dave. I’ll live in a furnished room—anything, but I’ve got to do this show. You’ve got yours. Let me get mine. Please. Don’t stand in my way.”

Jule Styne was smiling at me from just outside the gate to the field—there was a fellow with him: about my age, a little taller than me, horn-rimmed glasses, Italian raincoat.

Jule said, “This is George Gilbert, Sammy.”

“Hello, George. Glad to meet you after all the talk on the phone. You look different than I pictured you.” I hadn’t pictured him at all but I wanted to make it warmer than how-do-you-do.

As we shook hands, humor flickered across his eyes. “I recognized
you
immediately.”

Jule gave my baggage checks to a chauffeur, and we walked through the terminal building. I waved back to the Sky Caps and the reservations clerks; a woman coming toward us made a hurried search through her handbag and came up with a scrap of paper.
“Would you, Sammy?” Others came over with pencils and papers, and I let a crowd form. “You in town for Mr.
Wonderful
Sammy? My whole family’s waiting for it. We wouldn’t miss you.” Out of the corner of my eye I watched Jule and George soaking it all up, beaming happily. I pointed to them. “Those two gentlemen are my producers. I’m sorry but I can’t keep them waiting any more or they’ll fire me and get maybe Harry Belafonte.” It got a laugh, the crowd opened for me and I quickened our pace so we wouldn’t be stopped again.

The limousine was waiting directly out front. I looked at Jule. “In a No Parking zone, Gracie?” He smiled, pleased that I’d noticed. “Jule, I’ll tell you right now, if the people like us as much as I dig your style then we’re going to be the biggest hit of all time.” He smiled again, still seeing the crowd around me, and the three of us settled back contentedly against the cushions of the limousine as it rolled out of the airport and onto the parkway to New York.

The lobby of the Gorham Hotel on 55th Street, between Sixth and Seventh, was small, with a tile floor and furniture which had limped through the years barely making the transition from elegant to homey, and the elevator man was wearing one of those uniforms which you know wasn’t bought especially for him. “Penthouse B” was a freshly painted large room with a bar at the end near a small kitchen. The bar and kitchen had been thoughtfully stocked.

“You do this, George?”

He gave me a self-conscious nod and pointed quickly to a pair of couches. “They open into beds. And this whole terrace is yours.” I looked through the glass door leading onto a terrace that was bigger than the entire apartment. I smiled. “I’ll use it for sunbathing.”

He blushed and walked toward the door. “Well, I’ll be going. I hope you like the apartment—it isn’t exactly the Plaza.”

“Baby, I’ve lived in worse, and for $400 a month it’s beautiful.”

“Anyway, I live downstairs and if there’s anything I can do …”He grinned, “Like if you need a recipe or something.”

I laughed. “Thank you for everything, George. Catch you tomorrow.”

I unpacked the outfit I’d chosen for the first rehearsal: a new pair of levis—they’d cost $3.98 plus $22 for the alterations, but the fit was worth it, a red alpaca pullover under a double-breasted alpaca
sweater, a little cashmere polo coat—and they’ll know a star is coming to work.

I looked around the living room of Jule’s suite in the Bellevue-Stratford in Philadelphia, at the director, writers, our press agent, the producers, manager, general manager—all linked together by a common bond: panic. One by one they’d come in, glanced at the others, tried brave smiles and taken seats, all with the self-consciousness of entering a funeral chapel. There was a room service table with sandwiches, coffee, and a few bottles of liquor, and occasionally somebody stood up and browsed disinterestedly through it to spare themselves the necessity of speaking.

Jule looked sick as he called the meeting to order. “Well, we’re in trouble. We got one good one out of three. Sammy’s personal reviews are fabulous so at least we’ve got that going for us. And they liked Jack Carter and Chita Rivera. But on the other side of it two of the papers slaughtered us on the racial thing….”

Somebody in the back of the room ventured, “Maybe they’re right. Maybe it’s something that doesn’t belong in the theater.” The one voice triggered the others: “It’s dangerous.” … “Like they say, let Western Union deliver the messages.” … “Yeah, the racial thing should be softened.” … “It’s touchy.” …

I stood up in the middle of the cross-fire. “May I say something? If we take the racial theme and just sweep it under the carpet, then what’ll we have left?”

“An entertaining show. That’s all we need.”

“Well, God knows I want to entertain people, but this isn’t a nightclub, it’s a play, and it’s got to say something or it’s got no reason to exist. I mean … isn’t that true?”

“Sammy, if nobody comes then who’ll hear what we say? Our first concern must be to sell tickets. And apparently we won’t do it with the racial angle as is. You know we all feel as you do, that it’s worth saying, but it’s too hot.”

“But if we’re the first ones to come out with a hard-hitting story like this—isn’t that good?”

“Sammy, maybe the reason it’s never been done before is that nobody wants it.”

“But there’s got to be a first time….”

The room sunk into a fuzzy silence of uncertainty and indecision. A voice broke through. “I think that if we change the basic story line we take the heart right out of the show.” It was George Gilbert and his words cut through the air with the true ring of logic, making hard straight lines. “As Sammy said, we’ll have no reason to exist if we don’t have a point of view.”

The room burst into action again: “Our point of view is to stay alive.” … “Sammy, you’re new to the theater, it’s a different art form.” … “We know what the critics will buy.” …

I felt the helplessness of a man getting mugged by a gang.

Jule turned to me consolingly. “Sammy, we’re not going to throw our theme away entirely, but maybe we should bring it down a little, take some of the heat out of it—without losing our ideas or changing them. Let’s see what we come up with.”

I looked at George. He was young, too, and the others had a lot of shows under their belts. “Okay. I can’t argue with your experience.”

The voices that had been peppering away at me became a chorus of assurance: “Sammy, we really do know what the critics want.” … “Leave it to us, we understand the theater.”

I sat down, nodding acceptance, but uncomfortable in being completely dependent upon other people’s knowledge instead of my own. After a lifetime in show business I was a beginner again.

Someone was saying, “Now the big problem is, we can’t have him afraid because he’s a Negro. We could solve everything by moving Charley Welch out of Paris. Let’s kill the expatriate thing and make him a rock and roller working in New Jersey when Freddie Campbell finds him and wants him to come to New York.”

George gasped, “New Jersey? Giving up the great life he has in Paris and coming to America on a ‘maybe’ is our conflict. If he’s big and he’s already here then where’s our story?”

“So, let’s not make him big. Let him be a local hit in a jukebox joint. But he’s a big man around his own bailiwick.”

I stood up alongside George. “But if he’s not a hit anywhere except in one lousy little club then what’s he got to lose by going to New York and trying for success—bus fare? If it’s not racial then why else would he be afraid to make the move?”

“Well … he’s afraid because he’s afraid. Don’t worry about it.
It’s a detail. Right now the thing is to get him out of Paris. We can build our story from there.”

Jule said, “Bringing him to Jersey would mean new songs, a new set, new costumes—the French stuff can’t be used in Union City.”

Someone offered, “Why not? Why can’t it be a French-type nightclub?”

George groaned. “Are we all going crazy? How can an American rock and roll singer in a small-time gin mill that has a jukebox, possibly do a number like ‘Jacques D’Iraq,’ wearing the French costumes with the billowing sleeves …”

We rehearsed every afternoon, played the show at night and then had meetings in Jule’s suite. Everybody’s agent was in town trying to get more lines and songs for his client, and new scenes were being put in and thrown out in the same day. I was in the dressing room, trying to memorize the eighth new set of lines they’d given us, when I heard people arguing in the corridor. I shoved the door closed with my foot. It swung open and Will stormed in: “That line’s gotta come out. I don’t intend to argue. It’s plain out!”

“Hey, what’s going on?”

He didn’t even notice me. Jule was right behind him. “Mr. Mastin, it’s only a play … it’s make-believe.”

Will sat down in a chair and folded his arms like he was going on a hunger strike. “It comes out. It’s a lie.
I
did it,
I
‘
m
the one—not Jack Carter.”

George was standing in the doorway. I slipped out of the room. “What the hell’s going on?”

He gave me a nervous smile. “You know the line where Freddie Campbell says, ‘I’ll make this kid a star. I’ll teach him everything I know.’ Well, when your uncle heard that he jumped up and said, ‘Nobody taught Sammy anything but me. I’m the one who taught him.’ ”

“Baby, do me a favor. Will you and Jule cut the line? This show won’t be a hit or a flop because of it.”

I followed Will into the dressing room. “Massey, do we really have to have another meeting? We’ve had one every night this week and I can’t imagine what could be more important than giving me time to learn my new lines.”

He closed the door. “We’re a Trio, and there’s Trio business to be
talked over.” My father and I sat down. “Now the first matter is about the Trio becoming a corporation.”

“We already agreed on that, didn’t we?”

“We did. But we should go over the details again.”

“I don’t get it. Maybe I’m crazy, but I’ve been rehearsing all day, I’ve been with the newspaper guys, I just finished a show, I’ve got new scenes to memorize for tomorrow—it’s panic-in-the-streets, and you want me to sit here and shoot the breeze about something we already settled?”

“There’s no shoot the breeze about it. No point being in a show if you don’t know what’s happening to the money. Now, as I was saying, the way we agreed to set it up …”

As he spoke, I kept trying to understand why he was rehashing it like this. We’d always had meetings, but never so often and never about unimportant things. There was something in his face, something I hadn’t noticed was missing until I saw it reappear. He had the look of a man in control, a man exercising authority to which he was accustomed, and he was enjoying it. He was his old self and I realized how unlike his old self he had been during all the days of rehearsals.

“Now the next thing we should take up …”

I’d been too wrapped up in the show to see what should have been so clear to me. He was the manager of the Trio but there was nothing to manage—all decisions were the producer’s to make. And he had little or nothing to do on the stage. He was neither the star, nor the manager except in name. He was in the same position my father had always been in, and it was eating away at him, so he was calling meetings, making issues out of situations he’d never have bothered with six months before, repeating things that had been settled—anything to give himself purpose, to hold onto the position he’d earned and held all his life, until I had taken it away from him.

It hadn’t been enough to say, “You’re in the show and you’ve got the billing and we still split the money three ways.” No one knew better than he how little reason he had to be on the stage or to have his name up. By accepting the awkward, embarrassing situation, he was giving me more than everyone thought I was giving him. And he was keeping his bargain of a year on Broadway. When the reviews had come out bad he could have used them as an excuse to say, “You see? It’s a mistake. Let’s quit while we still can.” But he
hadn’t even hinted at it. He was sticking to his word, trying to live with something that was killing him.

The stagehands were striking the scenery and hauling it into New York-bound trucks before we’d taken our last bow. I changed clothes and George and I waited for Johnny Ryan, our stage manager, and his assistant, Michael Wettach, to finish seeing the last of the stuff onto the trucks. Then the four of us and Johnny’s wife, D.D., went for supper at our usual place, a little Italian restaurant a few blocks from the theater.

George was staring into his plate, quietly humming something from
Pal Joey
. I glared at him. “At least you could hum one of
my
hits.” Johnny made a whole production out of breaking a bread stick exactly in half and buttering the end of it like he was painting the Mona Lisa. D.D. said, “Sammy, as soon as we’re in New York I’ll get you some of that verbena soap I was telling you about.”