Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (48 page)

Ed said, “Sammy, I can’t use your father and your uncle. Naturally, I’d love to have you on the show, but I want you alone. I’m sorry, I really am, but if I buy you and put aside eight minutes for you I don’t want that time split up. You’re what my audience will tune in to see and that’s what I want to give them.”

“But Ed, we’ve always been a …”

“They’re dead weight, Sammy. I can understand your loyalty to them and it’s wonderful and there’s no reason why you still can’t split the dough with them if you want to, but from a strictly show business point of view it’s lost its value, and frankly, it’s becoming uncomfortable.”

“You don’t understand …”

“No, Sammy, I’m afraid it’s you who don’t understand. When Babe Ruth was playing ball you didn’t see his father and his uncle on the field. Maybe they helped put him there, maybe they trained him, but when it was game time he walked out there alone. You’re
not the first performer who had a situation like this. It was the same with Willie and Eugene Howard, and Al Jolson and his brother Harry. Al had the big talent, so Al worked alone. But it wasn’t easy for him. You’d go into a town where an Al Jolson movie was playing and across the street from it there’d be a vaudeville theater with a marquee saying ‘Jolson’ in the biggest possible size, then over it in little tiny letters it said ‘Harry.’ I’ll never forget the day I bumped into Harry Jolson and I said, ‘Isn’t it great how well Al’s doing in the movies?’ Harry looked at me like I was crazy, and said, ‘Ed, that son of a bitch is making such lousy pictures that I can’t even get booked.’ All I’m trying to point out is that Al had his problems too, but he never let them interfere with what he did on the stage. I understand your situation, Sammy, it’s a sympathetic one and I apologize for saying as much as I have, but I wanted you to see my side of it.”

When I hung up, Sam Bramson said, “Steve Allen’s been after us for you. He’s fighting hard to compete with Sullivan and he’s offering $10,000 instead of Sullivan’s top of $7500.”

“No. Sullivan was the first network show I ever did and he’s always been a gentleman to his fingertips. I can’t just run for the money. Keep trying. Maybe he’ll change his mind.”

When I got back to the hotel, there was a telegram for me: “WELCOME TO NEW YORK. PLEASE DROP IN AND VISIT US. ED WYNNE, THE HARWYN.” I called George at his office. “What kind of a place is the Harwyn?”

“East Side supper-clubbish. It’s the hot place. Whatever
that
means.”

I read him the telegram. “That’s damned nice of them.”

“Well, really! You
are
the star of a Broadway show.”

“Baby, I admit I’m one of the great stars of our time. I even admit that I’m adorable. But I’m not exactly in demand around the chic nightclubs.” As I spoke, the tone of his voice caught up with me and I realized that he’d understood; I could picture him smiling, but he was considerately playing it cool. “Anyway, the least we can do is accept the man’s invitation, right? Will you have your secretary make a reservation for me for twelve-thirty, baby?”

“Sure,
baby.”

“And call Johnny and D.D. and Michael and tell them we’ll all go over to Chandler’s after I get off tonight—I’ve got the Barry Gray
show—and then we can swing over to the Harwyn and be chic and East Side-ish.”

“Is that little
schvartza
going to sit with us?”

The words, whispered contemptuously, cut through the restaurant sounds, zinging their way to me as I walked into Chandler’s. It came from a club-date comic sitting at the performers’ table. I scanned the room for somewhere else to sit but the place was packed and the captain was at my side. “This way, Sammy. Barry’s expecting you.”

The comic looked up, feigning surprise at seeing me, smiling big, arms outstretched, long-lost-brother style. “Sammy, baby, great to see you again.”

“Hello, Jackie.” He was in his forties but still Charley Almost, just another stand-up comic off an assembly line, using everybody’s jokes, everybody’s style, with no change or improvement in his act for fifteen years—but watching with bitterness the young, inventive guys who offer something fresh and make it big. He represented the great paradox of the business: a failure who earns $1500 a week.

His face had the strained, desperate look of a man beginning to understand he’s never going to make it, a man aware of his positive and final classification in the business as a second-rater. He didn’t hate me, he hated himself. He resented everybody’s success, but the fact that a colored guy had made it devastated him.

“How are you doing, Jackie?”

He shrugged. “I’m still the best-paid secret in the business. You know the bit: I play Boston during Lent, Miami in July, and in Vegas I play roulette.” It was an old joke, but his genuine bitterness, the built-in apology for failure, killed any possibility of humor. He leaned forward anxiously. “Listen, Sam, I don’t like to impose on our friendship but you could do me a favor. If you were to ask for me when you go back to clubs, like Vegas or the Copa … I mean if you said you wanted to use me on the bill with you …” His ingratiating smile was the picture of a man committing moral suicide.

I heard my name and saw Barry waving for me. I stood up. “I’ll be in town for a year, Jackie. Keep in touch.”

Barry Gray gave the show an enormous plug as he’d been doing every night since we’d opened. Then we got down to the interview. “Sammy, do you mind if I get personal with my questions?”

“Anything you like.”

“Is it true that you’ve become a Jew?”

A hush fell over the restaurant. The people were leaning in, listening. “Yes, Barry, I am a Jew.”

He extended his hand. “Welcome aboard, lantzman. When did this happen?”

“I think I have always been a Jew in my thinking and my own undefined philosophies which I found so clearly spelled out when I began reading about Judaism a few years ago.”

“How do you think people will react to Sammy Davis, Jr. being a Jew?”

“I guess everybody will react differently, if they’re going to react at all. And judging from the past—they’ll react. I don’t think my departure will set Christianity back. As for the Jewish community, I’m aware of the possibility that they might be offended by a Negro becoming a Jew. Maybe it’ll turn them against me, I don’t know. It’s a pretty frightening thought, because they make up more than 50 per cent of my audiences. But I’ve found something in Judaism, and I’m not about to give it up. I have to believe they’ll accept me according to Jewish law and custom which sees no color line or any lines other than between belief and non-belief.”

“I’ve heard it said that you wanted to be a Jew because all your friends are Jewish.”

“Barry, Frank Sinatra is my closest friend and I never yet saw him wear a
yamalka
. I’ll admit he eats a bagel every now and then …”

“I read a joke in one of the columns that said you were playing golf on Long Island and the pro asked you for your handicap and you told him, ‘I’m a colored, one-eyed Jew—do I need anything else?’ How do you feel about the Sammy Davis, Jr. jokes?”

“They’re a hazard of the business and the fact is you’re glad people know your name well enough to do jokes about you; but some I despise because they are destructive and insidious.”

“Can you remember—or would you rather not remember—any you’d classify that way?”

“I’m not about to forget them.”

“Would you tell us one?”

“Yes. But in order for it to serve a purpose I’d like to say a few things first so that maybe you’ll be able to see this kind of humor as I see it. I was reading a book about Judaism and I came across a statement: ‘The difference between love and hate is understanding.’
That understanding is obstructed by the images which are imbedded in people’s minds. Obviously it’s not the dark skin that’s unattractive to white people or they wouldn’t spend a hundred dollars a day in Florida trying to get it, right?”

“In other words, Sammy, you believe that what separates people is a lack of knowledge of each other?”

“Isn’t that the definition of the word prejudice, Barry? Prejudgment without due examination. Wasn’t there a time when people thought all Jews have horns? Now, the only Jew I ever met with horns was a Jewish bull I got to know in South America once. But he’s the only one.”

He smiled, “So when you saw that all Jewish people don’t have horns you became Jewish?”

“Right, Barry. And as long as we’re discussing it I don’t mind saying it was a pretty big shake-up that after I decided to become a Jew only
then
did I learn the Jews don’t really have all the money. When I found out Rockefeller and Ford were
goyim
I almost resigned.

“Anyway, I believe a very large chunk of the racial thing is a question of changing the images that remain in people’s minds and
certainly
not contributing to them. You’ve noticed that there are no Step’n’Fetchits any more, no more Parkyakarkases, none of the characters which were caricatures of entire groups? It didn’t happen because they weren’t fine performers, but pressure groups went to work and they asked Hollywood, ‘Hey, don’t use a Step’n’Fetchit any more. Let’s not have any more kids growing up thinking of Negroes as slow, lazy, shuffling characters.’ Groups like the American Jewish Committee fought against stereotyping Jews as greedy, grasping, and money-mad, just as the NAACP got Little Black Sambo, and all those damned pancakes he ate, out of the school books and out of our lives.

“Now, getting back to me and the jokes: I get myself to the point at which I’m able to own a beautiful home, we keep our house and grounds looking well, and although I certainly didn’t buy the house as my contribution to racial harmony, it’s a beautiful extra to know that the neighbors can see a colored family and they’ve got to say, ‘Gee, it’s not really true they live eighty of them to the room.’ The next thing I know a guy tells me a joke that’s circulating: One of my neighbors tells her husband, ‘Strange about the house next door:
The maid comes and goes all the time, but the people who live there never leave the house.’

“Now, I’m not so hard-nosed and bitter that I can’t see the humor in a well-constructed joke. But I have to detest humor predicated on the assumption that all colored women are maids. My grandmother
was
a maid, and a lot of guys dug ditches until they became president of the company or until their families made it and pulled them up with them. There comes a time to forget humble origin. Mr. Armour isn’t a butcher anymore, right?”

“Sammy, did you rap the guy in the mouth, I hope?”

“No. He wouldn’t have known why I was hitting him. Most of the people who tell these jokes are not haters; they’d never yell a dirty name, they’d get sick if they saw a mob throwing rocks at a colored kid trying to go to school, they’d be repelled by racial violence, yet—intentional or not—they are perpetuating the legends which perpetuate the prejudice which causes the racial violence.

“Charley Joke-teller doesn’t understand that violence is the smallest part of prejudice. He’s standing in the middle of a social revolution, telling his little jokes, thoughtlessly assuring people that we all carry knives and steal and lie, until it’s hardly any wonder that when we try going to school with you, some guy who’s been convinced is ready to crack open our skulls to prevent it.

“As awful as violence is, at least it’s out in the open where it can be recognized and handled and eventually it’s ended. But the jokes keep on, quietly, subversively, like a cancer, rotting away the foundations of hope for the Negro, stealing the dignity on which we can build respected lives.

“And as bad as the jokes, are the words—the put-down words like ‘nigger,’ ‘kike,’ ‘chink,’ ‘wop,’ ‘spick.’ I hear them used between buddies, good-naturedly, but anyone who thinks he’s above prejudice, so he can use them affectionately or humorously is missing the point: If a person sincerely desires to stamp out a sickness he can’t keep a few of its germs alive just for laughs. Before we can reach a Utopia in human relations those jokes and those words and the legends which they perpetuate must die.

“You can pass legislation for desegregation, but you can’t legislate people’s minds and that’s where the progress must finally be made, in people’s minds and in their hearts. Opening school doors and job opportunities is the first step, but it’s like hacking off the top of a weed: After we do it we’ve got to get down and pull out the
roots so that it won’t keep growing. We’ve got to get to the source of racial intolerance, of prejudice—the ignorance, the clinging to long outdated legends which continue to distort the picture of the American Negro. When people reach the point at which they examine the facts then there’ll be little or no need for laws that say colored kids can go to school with white kids because I really believe there won’t be anybody suggesting that they shouldn’t.”

“Sammy, this Utopia you mentioned, do you think it will ever come?”

“I’m sure it will. I’m sitting here talking to you on the radio about it, right?”

“It’s remarkable that despite the racial abuses you must have suffered, you haven’t turned around and hated right back. You’re really an optimist.”

“I have a right to be. I don’t want to do Pollyanna bits, I’ve been knocked down by white people—but I’m not about to forget that every time it happened the hand that was reaching out to help me up again was white. But more important, I’m not a bigot. No Negro can intelligently lump all white people together like They’re all no good.’ Wouldn’t that be everything we don’t want people to do to us?”

In the cab to the Harwyn Michael looked at me. “And where did all
that
come from? My God, you sounded like Harriet Beecher Stowe.”

I nudged George. “And what about our producer? Doesn’t he have some kind word for his star who just turned out to be a public speaker?”

“I was trying to remember if I’ve ever told a racial joke.”

“Baby, the fact is, half the racial jokes I hear I get from colored guys. Who sits around twenty-four hours a day wondering ‘What’ve I done for the racial situation?’ But the beautiful thing is when somebody
starts
thinking about it, then he’s not about to go out and tell any more racial jokes, right?”