Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (50 page)

“That’s more like it.” He came back and tapped an empty glass on the bar. “Scotch.”

He was peering across the bar at me, smiling owlishly. “Well? What happened to Mr. Wonderful?” He twirled his glasses around by one stem, like a yawn. “I’m only asking so I’ll look interested. Is there anything we want to tell Sergeant Gilbert? They say—whoever ‘they’ are—that these things feel better when you tell them to somebody … I mean, you tell it to me, and I’m not even listening, but you hear how unimportant it is …” He mumbled self-consciously, “Whatever all
that
means!”

I poured a coke. “I learned a long time ago that if you’ve got a problem and no one can help you with it, then keep it to yourself.” I looked up and was touched by the tenderness in his face. “Baby, if it was something you could do,” I smiled. “Like if I needed some money …”

“Oops, wrong number.”

I smiled back at him and walked to the window. “Y’know something. Despite all my years of living with prejudice, so help me God, I’m incredulous every time it hits me in the face. I never one day of
my life woke up thinking I’m colored, or I’m anything other than just a guy. And then every day somebody reminds me.” I strummed my hand up the Venetian blinds. “I guess I’m lucky that I can start fresh every morning.”

George walked into the dressing room and did a Donald Duck take, gaping at a line of bulky sweaters hanging along an iron pipe rack. “My God. What is
that?”

“They’re for the kids.”

He inspected one of them. “You bought seventy-dollar sweaters to give away? For no reason?”

“I’m not giving them away, I’m going to wear them onstage, a different one every night, to help keep the kids from getting bored.” I heard Johnny Ryan’s voice in the hall. I got busy showing one of the sweaters to George.

“Sam? Are you okay? You weren’t sick last night?”

I turned around. He was standing in the doorway. “No, John. I’m fine. I’m sorry about dinner, baby, but something came up.”

“Oh … okay.”

I went after him and stopped him in the hall. “Look, Johno … I’m sorry. I didn’t forget. I just couldn’t make it.”

He was looking at me, not with anger, but confused and hurt. “Sammy … D.D. spent the whole day cooking a turkey for you. Couldn’t you at least have called?”

“I’m sorry, John. I couldn’t. I really couldn’t.”

His eyes became veiled, just as surely as if a stone wall had risen between us. “All right, Sam. We’ll do it some other time.” He turned and I stood there watching him walk away from me.

I smiled with satisfaction at the first line in Earl Wilson’s column: “The B.W. and I had dinner with Jack Benny who is as tight as Sammy Davis, Jr.’s pants.” The pants were on their way to becoming a trademark for me. I opened an envelope of newspaper clippings. The top few were from the Negro press. The first was a three-panel cartoon: two colored guys were standing near a lamp post which said “Harlem.” One of them was asking “Howcum we never see Sammy Davis hangin’ on the corner up here?” The other was shrugging, “You crazy, man? Sammy ain’t colored no more.”

After a while I looked at the next one, an article: “Sammy Davis Jr. Starring in ‘I’d Rather Be White.’ ” My thoughts kept drifting
back to only a few years before, to other stories, to newspaper clippings hanging over Mr. Peterson’s counter and the pride Mama had taken in me. I didn’t want to think about her seeing these, but I knew she would; she read the Negro papers religiously, looking for stories about me.

I kept going through the clips, picturing the disapproval in the faces of the people who wrote and read them, unable to stop reading, like a gambler on a losing streak who stays in the game hoping the next roll of the dice will bail him out. I stopped at a Robert Sylvester column from the
Daily News:
“Dropped in to see Sammy Davis, Jr. in
Mr. Wonderful
. Sorry, but I just can’t get excited over him. Maybe it’s me because throughout his nightclub act—the last scene, Mr. Davis’ talents were not lost on the rest of the screaming, applauding audience.”

I called Jess on the coast. “Baby, when we first played the Riviera, can you remember what Bob Sylvester said about the act?”

“Yeah … he said you were ugly as a shovel but you could dance like a son of a bitch! Something like that.”

“Do you still have the clipping?”

“It’s probably in one of the early albums. You want me to send it to you?”

“No. I’ll hold on till you find it.”

It was a rave, just as I’d remembered. I hung up and stared at Sylvester’s name. What the hell had happened?

I lit a cigarette and watched Cliff Cochrane’s face as he reread the recent Sylvester clipping. He handed it back to me. “I’ve read worse.”

“You’re wrong, Cliff. I’m in big trouble. That’s the most serious thing that’s ever been written about me. I need some public relations. Fast! You can’t see what I see in it, but it’s not a typical rap; there’s nothing racial about it, nothing snide, no snipe job—just a simple, honest statement: ‘I don’t like Sammy Davis, Jr.’ It’s more than honest. The man even bent over backwards to be fair by saying that other people
did
like me.”

“So?”

“If Bob Sylvester saw my act for the first time and he didn’t dig it I’d say, ‘Crazy, you can’t win ‘em all.’ My act is not like water which everyone must like. But Sylvester
used
to like the act. And the act hasn’t changed! You were there when we opened at the
Riviera. I did everything I do now except I’m technically better today than I was then, I’m more polished, more mature. And I’ve got to assume that Sylvester’s taste hasn’t changed, either. Let’s face it, he was a pro then—it wasn’t like he was seeing his first nightclub act and he got carried away by the excitement. So, if the act didn’t change, and Sylvester didn’t change—what did? There’s only one thing left. Me! My image.”

“I don’t see the connection. The man was reviewing the
show.”

“Cliff, there’s no separating a performer’s public and private life—not with a ‘personality.’ It all weaves together. Whatever people believe I am from what they hear and read
must
have an effect on what I’m trying to say as a performer. Obviously all the bad publicity, the constant ‘wild kid’ bit has been hammered at so often that it’s hardened into fact and created an image so strong, so vivid and distasteful, that a guy like Sylvester doesn’t like me any more.

“When he saw me on the stage in Mr.
Wonderful
he saw a better version of everything he liked a few years ago, but instead of the-sweet-kid-who-loves-his-father-and-his-uncle-and-isn’t-it-nice-he-doesn’t-push-them-aside, he saw a monster who bleaches his skin white, sits in bars with a bottle of whiskey and six blondes on his lap, shouting ‘Drinks for the house.’ And his sense of morality made him dislike me enough as a person, so that he just couldn’t feel what I was doing as a performer.

“Okay, I lost Sylvester. And I know for a fact I lost Hy Gardner. When I opened at the Riviera there was nobody more in my corner than Hy. He’s been a friend, in his column and personally, right down the line. Now even he’s shooting little zingies at me, like he’s crossed me off. That’s two important guys I’ve lost, two that I
know
about. But how many others are starting to turn away from me? People who can’t let me know it in a column, people who just stop coming to see me.”

Cliff said, “I never thought it was this serious. Sure, I didn’t like your lousy press but I didn’t give it much thought; you seemed to be getting only bigger as a result of it.”

“Baby, how could you see it if
I
didn’t? When it first started happening I got scared but then I saw that it wasn’t hurting me—on the contrary, it was adding something, making me more interesting. There were times I even secretly gloried in it. When all the bedroom scandals started, a lot of chicks began looking at me like: ‘Let’s find
out what he’s got!’ and I didn’t exactly chase ‘em away. But that’s over now. I can’t let it run wild any more.

“The other side of it, which is horrible, is it’s killing me uptown. I’m being isolated from my own people. I’m an outcast. Obviously I’m not white, but now it’s gotten so the colored people don’t want me, either. It’s like I’m the man without a country.

“I’ve got to completely remake my image. The first step is to straighten out with the guys who reach the people, guys like Sylvester and Hy. I want to go about it methodically, man by man, with every paper, every magazine: the columnists, editors, feature writers—everybody! You’ve got the connections. I need you to set it up for me to meet every single one you can get to.”

He was stirring his coffee slowly. “That’s going to be a tremendous job for you.”

“Baby, I eat dinner every night. Let’s make use of that time. Let’s make every dinner count. I’m available any time of the day and night except when I’m on the stage.”

He nodded, staring past me into space, evaluating, planning. “What about the Negro press? I can’t do you much good there. I just don’t know them.”

“I’ve already spoken with a buddy of mine, Billy Rowe, a top press agent. His wife is Izzy Rowe. She writes a very important column in the
Courier
and she’s always been fair with me: if I do something she likes she says so, by the same token she never misses beating my brains out when she doesn’t dig something. The important thing is that because of Billy, I always had a liaison with her so she could at least check with me and find out if such and such is true. I’ve got the same thing with
Ebony
and
Jet
because I made it a point to meet the publisher and they’ve been completely fair with me. That’s all I can hope for, and between you and Billy maybe I can get it right down the line.”

Cliff nodded. “We should hit it from another direction, too. You should start appearing at every benefit for every important cause. The new image needs that kind of dimension.”

The next evening Billy Rowe met with Cliff and me at Danny’s.

“I don’t know where I went wrong with them, Billy. I cherished their acceptance when I had it, but I sure lost them somewhere along the way. Like Evelyn Cunningham. Cliff, this woman is our Hedda and Louella put together but with a little Dorothy Kilgallen thrown in. Now I never even met her, but for some reason I happen
to be her personal choice for President of the White Citizens Council.”

Billy nodded painfully. “The general impression around the Negro press is that he’s got it made and he just doesn’t give a damn. Maybe we should start off our campaign with the Negro press by having a little get-together. Let them see how you feel. It might break the ice a little before you tackle them individually.”

I smiled at him. “Beautiful. We could do a special thing just for them—family style. No business, no interviews, none of the ‘Hey, put my name in the paper’ jazz. Strictly a thing for us all to relax, have a little booze, a little food, and get to know each other.”

Evelyn Cunningham’s column jumped up out of the
Courier
and slapped my face.

P.S. Ain’t it rough being cullud? There’s always something!

I got Billy on the phone. “Did you see what that bitch wrote? Did I have to throw a party for
that
?”

“Sammy, she’s right and we were wrong. Read the column again and you’ll see it.”

“Holy Toledo. Is it against the rules to be friendly and just say hello? Isn’t ‘Have a drink and let’s be friends’ enough of an announcement? What the hell does she want from me?”

George glared at me as I got into the limousine. “Do you realize I’ve been sitting in this hearse for almost an hour?”