Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (58 page)

He looked at me straight. “I hears the jokes about Will and me. And they’re right. I knowed it the first time we opened Ciro’s. I watched Will do his dance and then I did mine and I stood back thinkin’ we was really somethin’ else. Then I watched you and I saw what you was doing to the people and I knew we’d moved into a show business that was over my head, that I didn’t have no right to be on the same stage with you, and I shoulda been happy sittin’ out front or standin’ backstage and lovin’ you ‘cause you was mine, instead of being in your way, makin’ it harder for you.”

He poured himself a drink, took it down straight, and slowly shook his head. “I just didn’t have what it takes to quit, Poppa. I liked the fuss everybody was makin’ over us and I liked the money and I figured well, I’ll just hang on a little bit and enjoy bein’ big for a while before I bow out. But the more I got of it the harder it was for me to walk away. You know what I mean?” I nodded. “The sun never fell on a day since then that I didn’t tell myself Today’s when I’ll do it.’ Then I’d think what it’d be like to be out of show business and on the side and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Then you had that song written and I let myself believe it was true—that we taught you all the things you do. Hell, if Will and me couldn’t do ‘em ourselves … well, I guess I wanted to fool myself, just like I wanted to believe the people likes seein’ us still together. But deep down I always knowed it was wrong….”

As he spoke, I could remember knowing it was wrong for us to remain a trio, but none of the reasons seemed important compared to the pain on his face, the longing he’d feel for our way of life, the finality of the exile to which he was sentencing himself. “Dad, maybe it isn’t wrong. Who the hell knows. We’re doing good …”

“Poppa, please. Leavin’ show business is the toughest thing I ever done. Don’t talk me out of it. I’m grateful you’d even try, like I’m grateful for a son that wouldn’t push me out like most kids’d do. I ain’t been much as a father. I shouldn’t never have let you sign that contract with the Trio. I let you down there, and a hundred times since, so for God’s sake let me do this much while I’ve got it to give. You know what I mean? It’s all I can give you.”

He got up and took something out of a drawer. “You know what these is, Poppa?” He was holding a pair of shoes on the palm of his hand. “The first shoes you ever wore to dance in.” He sat down, smiling nostalgically. “It was back in ‘28 or ‘29, you was three years
old and there was this amateur contest at the old Standard Theater in Philadelphia …”

Two days later the newspapers reported that my father had suffered a mild heart attack and his doctor had ordered him to retire from show business.

A stage hand was centering cards on an easel and a cameraman was focusing on them: “Mike Wallace”—”Night Beat.” I was sitting in what they’d started calling “the hot seat.” I smiled back at him. You go right ahead and make it hot.

The commercial was over and he leaned into the camera. “A Negro … a Jew … the Peck’s Bad Boy of show business … a man to whom any worthy charity can turn … probably the finest entertainer in all of show business. There appear to be many Sammy Davis, Jr.’s, all running at top speed twenty-four hours a day …” The camera swung over to me. “Sammy, in this past week, you’ve done eight performances of
Mr. Wonderful
, appeared at nine benefits, rehearsed and performed on the Steve Allen show, you’ve been on radio with several disc jockeys, you’ve entertained parties of from eight to twelve every night for dinner at Danny’s Hideaway, and you’ve ended every night, or I should say morning, with gatherings at your apartment.”

I smiled. “You’ve been checking up on me pretty good.”

“We want to know the real Sammy Davis, Jr. but our research has turned up more questions than answers. I don’t mean this facetiously, but don’t you ever get tired?”

“Y’mean, ‘Where does he get all the energy?’ ”

“I guess it is a cliché, but, where
do
you get it? What keeps you going? Is it the love of what you’re doing or is it a desperation? Are you running toward—or away from something?”

“I think I’d better light a cigarette and stall a little before I try to answer that.”

“All right, let’s put it differently. You’ve already achieved more than most men ever hope for. You have fame, you earn a fortune, you wear fine clothes, drive the best cars, own a magnificent house—why can’t you sit back and enjoy life? Why does Sammy Davis, Jr. remain a controversial figure?”

“First of all, I don’t think of myself as a controversial figure—I know that I am but I don’t
feel
controversial. I never woke up and
thought: Today I’ll shake ‘em up. Let’s see now … what convention should I defy?’ I do what you just suggested: I try to sit back and enjoy the life I’ve been able to make for myself. Obviously that has to be done on my terms. I choose my own friends, live where I like, and do whatever I feel I have a right to do. Now, unfortunately there are people who disagree about what my rights are, so I become controversial.”

“But you’re not the only Negro who’s ever been in the limelight, how is it the things
you
choose to do seem to become so public? Specifically, your dating of white women, your conversion to Judaism.”

“Mike, I never yet went on radio or television and said ‘Hi there, folks, I’m dating a white chick,’ or ‘Yoo-hoo out there in television land. Guess what? I just turned Jewish.’ On the other hand I’m not going to go out of my way to hide what I do. I keep a book of the Talmud on my night table—I like to have it there. When friends come up I don’t slip it under the pillow. They see it and I guess because it’s me they mention it to other people. From time to time it’s come up in an interview and I’m not about to say ‘No comment’ or tip the guy off in advance ‘Let’s not talk about that.’ I’m no hero but I’ll stand on what I do or I won’t do it.”

“But there are other Negro performers of major name value, why don’t we hear jokes and slurs about
them
? What do you do that they don’t do?”

“I think my problem lies not in what I do—but in my refusal to go out of my way to keep it quiet. There’s nothing I do that others haven’t done before me and won’t be doing long after I’m gone, but I guess the difference is that others have been more discreet. Perhaps they want the peace of being left alone more than they yearn for the dignity of knowing that they’re doing what they feel like doing, like all other free men.”

“Sammy, is this determination to live your own life motivated by a desire to do so for the good of the rest of the Negro people?”

“I wish I could say I live my life as a crusade, it would be nice to get medals like ‘He’s a champion of his people.’ But, what I do is for me. Emotionally, I’m still hungry and let’s face it, paupers can’t be philanthropists. I can’t do anybody else much good until I get
me
straightened out. However, I know that my people will benefit from what I do, because every time someone moves downtown—not just to a hotel, but in all ways—he opens the door a little wider for
others to follow. I didn’t suffer a lot of the humiliation I might have because there were pioneers before me who diluted the prejudice. Look what Jackie Robinson went through as the first Negro pro-ball player. But he just dug in and played harder. Now, I don’t know who he was doing it for but I do know that he made it a lot easier for guys like Willie Mays to follow him. In my case, I’m totally aware that if I break down a barrier, others will benefit, and although I can’t claim that as motivation, it certainly gives meaning to some very unpleasant moments.”

“To balance those unpleasant moments in the struggle to be Sammy Davis, Jr., have there at least been rewards?”

“Definitely.”

“Professionally?”

“Yes. I never went to school but I can stand in front of a thousand people and just talk to them and make them laugh, and that’s something I couldn’t do years ago and wouldn’t be able to do today unless I understood my audiences and could speak on their level of sophistication. I don’t have to rely on ‘colored’ or ‘show business’ topics to get laughs. I can reach them because I understand them. Naturally, as in all things, there’s been a price attached to it. I bought a knowledge of the rest of the world, not just one segment, and I paid for it. I’m still paying and I suppose I always will.”

“Sammy, despite your fame, do you also pay by feeling a certain amount of discrimination as you travel through what is predominately a white world?”

“I’ve had my moments.”

“Even here in New York?”

“Mike, let’s not kid ourselves that prejudice is geographic. Down South they lynch you and kill you—up North most Negroes die before they ever really lived at all. How much difference is there between preventing a man from earning the money to buy clothes, and ripping them off his back? Either way the result is he’s standing there naked.

“If you steal a man’s dignity, does it matter if you rob or embezzle it? The crime is the same—only the method is different. Down South they do it openly; the restaurant puts up a sign ‘No colored people allowed.’ Up here they use raised eyebrows to accomplish the same thing. You don’t see many or
any
Negroes lunching or having dinner in ninety per cent of the good restaurants below 125th Street. And this isn’t because all the colored people got
together and said, ‘Hey, let’s boycott all the best restaurants and the best hotels in town.’ ”

“Could it be explained, at least partially, in terms of economics? Just the simple cost of going to these places?”

“Sure, for ninety-five per cent of the colored people that might be the answer. But what about the other five per cent, the guys who make the dough? When a Negro walks into a downtown restaurant, he’s going to be watched, silently criticized—at best he’s a curiosity. And when he’s finished a hard day at the office he’s not exactly dying to go through that jazz. It’s almost like he’d call a buddy and say, ‘Hey, let’s get our wives and go downtown tonight and have a little indigestion.’ ”

“You mean assuming they’ll be admitted in the first place.”

“Right. So, the result is all them cats in Harlem cruise around in block-long Cadillacs complete with radio, TV, and kitchens, they wear diamond rings on every finger—and then the white cat rides through Harlem on the commuter special to Westchester shaking his head: ‘I can’t understand these colored people; they live in tenements like animals but you always see brand new cars parked out front.’ How else can they spend it? They can drive it and they can wear it. Period. They’d prefer to eat balanced meals, but if the meat store is the only one open then they’ve got to make a whole meal out of steak. They can’t go join a golf club and spend an afternoon shagging golf balls, or say to their wives ‘Happy birthday, darling, let’s celebrate, we’ll catch the show at the Waldorf or the Plaza.’ There’s no ‘Where do you feel like eating tonight?’ They
know
where they can eat and it’s not listed in
Cue
magazine. So they’re buying all the things they shouldn’t because they can’t do half the things they should.

“Why does a man buy his wife a big diamond ring, Mike? Because it’s beautiful and he loves her and he wants to make her happy. But, isn’t it also because he wants to look at that ring on her finger and be able to feel that in her eyes and in the eyes of the world he made it, he belongs, he’s somebody? But if every day of his life someone jumped up and told him ‘You
don’t
belong. You’re
nobody,’
if every place he went he saw that he doesn’t even cast a shadow—imagine how big a diamond he’d need.”

He was looking at my clothes, at the gold cigarette case I’d just opened, then at my face. Leaning forward, his eyes probing mine, he seemed to have forgotten that we were on the air, and I caught a
glimpse of a human being hooked on the contradiction between fact and reason, involved in it, feeling the frustration of it. He got a time signal from one of the floor men, and surfaced. “Sammy, one last question. I asked you earlier what it is you’re looking for. Could it be summed up in one word: acceptance?”

“That’s as good a word as any.”

“You want people to like you.”

“Yes, but that’s the frosting on the cake. In its simplest form: I don’t want people to
dis
like me before I’ve earned it.”

I poured a coke into my silver goblet and watched a guy, his arm around a chick, swaggering toward my bar. As they reached me he gave her a little squeeze and bragged, “Here he is, Myrna. Did I tell you I’d introduce you to Sammy Davis, Jr.?”

She clutched my hand, pathetically sincere. “Oh, Mr. Davis, I’m …”

“Call him Sammy,” he blustered, putting his hand gaudily on my shoulder, across the bar. “What’s that Mr. Davis bit? He’s my buddy.” His other hand was crawling around her like a roach but she made no move to stop him. He winked at me and I was tempted to louse up his plans for the evening by saying, “Good to see you again … uh, what’s your name?”

My father was easing his way through the crowd, carrying a platter with some wax paper covering it. “Here’s some stuff Peewee
cooked up for you. I’ll put it in the icebox.” He went into the kitchen and I heard the refrigerator door open and close. Then he was standing near me, surveying the room, trying not to let the disapproval show on his face.

“Have a drink, Dad?” He nodded and I poured him some scotch.

“Can I talk to you a minute, Sammy?”

I followed him into the kitchen. “What’s the matter?”

“Well … I guess it’s nothing, it’s just I’m your father and I don’t feel good seein’ you comin’ apart like this.”

“Coming apart? Where the
hell
do you get that kind of an idea?”

“Ain’t you? You looks terrible, you’re blowing your voice doin’ too many benefits, you’re blowin’ your money on garbage like you got out there …”

I closed the kitchen door. “Hey, wait a minute. If I feel like having some friends in …”

“Friends? That crowd out there ain’t nothin’ to you. Hell, I betcha you can’t tell me half their names. And they don’t care none about you ‘cept to eat your food and drink your whiskey and be around you ‘cause you’re big. George, Morty, Jane and Burt, Michael—maybe
they
cared some about you but you chased ‘em away.” He looked past me. “Why should they mix with what you got hangin’ around you now?”