Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (61 page)

The audience screamed and he did his strut around the stage heckling everybody. I could ad-lib with Jerry because he could hit back. I folded my arms, Jack Benny style, and watched him with mock impatience while I was looking for the right line. My father had come back to the show for closing night and he and Will were in their usual places. I motioned toward them, “Jer, I’ve still got
my
partners.”

Shelley Winters got up from a table and took the mike. “Ladies and gentlemen, all these people sitting up here came over after doing their own shows to pay tribute to a great performer and it’s been a lot of fun but you’ll have to excuse me for adding a serious note because there’s something that should be said. Sammy made something important happen on this stage for the past year. Mr.
Wonderful
is more than just a hit show. It’s the first show in which both Negro and white performers worked together on the same stage and after five minutes nobody cared or even noticed the difference.”

As I finished my closing number—row by row, like waves popping up on an ocean, sixteen hundred people stood, applauding. The cast gathered around me, we took twelve bows, and the audience was still applauding and shouting “Bravo” as the curtain fell on
Mr. Wonderful
for the last time.

“You really did it, Sammy.” “… fantastic personal triumph.” “… tremendous accomplishment!” “… you really made it.” I moved from table to table through the Harwyn, which I’d taken
over for my closing night party. From person to person the words hardly changed as the people kept smiling, patting me on the back, asking me to sit with them—showing and telling me in every way they could that I’d made it. But I couldn’t feel it. “How about
The New York Times
, Sammy? They buried you a year ago but they finally had to list you under ‘Hit Shows,’ right? Beautiful.” I smiled and nodded, wishing I could feel something more than an empty satisfaction at having done what I’d said I’d do, wishing I could feel the kind of exhilaration I knew should be the payoff for making a show run for a year. “What a night, Sammy! Those names on the stage, I never saw anything like it. What a closing!” A waiter walked by with a bucket of champagne, the orchestra played “Mr. Wonderful” again and everybody turned to me, applauding, as they had when I’d walked in. I smiled back at them, seeing them all celebrating, happy for me, and I kept moving around the room trying to feel some of the excitement, too. They stopped me at every table to tell me I’d made it but the words wouldn’t fill me up, they kept running out, leaving me hollow. The higher the hilarity rose the more impossible it seemed for me to reach it. I kept moving, playing host, trying to soak it up and feel it as everybody else could, trying to open myself to it, hoping that if I heard it over and over again it would numb the doubt, and the joy of the evening would flow into me too, and I’d be able to taste what they were all telling me was mine….

Jane and Burt were getting up from my table to dance. I spoke quietly. “Let’s go to El Morocco.”

“Now?
In the middle of your own party?”

“Just for a little while, then we’ll come back. Will you take me?”

I told our chauffeur, “El Morocco,” and I sat back in the seat. Here we go, daddy. It’s either the frosting on the cake or a pie in the face.

We were approaching the blue and white awning I’d passed so many times, and the doorman, dressed like a guy from the French Foreign Legion, symbolizing the gaiety inside. Burt, Jane, and I did a wordless grasping of hands. The doorman opened our car door, we stepped out and went through the revolving door.

Two headwaiters stood at the entrance to what seemed to be the main room. Burt smiled pleasantly. “Good evening, Joe, Angelo. We’re three tonight.”

They didn’t look at me but at Burt, and there was a wordless, momentary pause, a vacant look in the eyes of the two men, a look conveying the hurt of betrayal.

“This way, please.”

Time and sophistication had refined the moment. At another time, another place, it might have been “I’m sorry, do you have a reservation?” At still another time and place it might have been “Colored people can’t come in here.” Or it could have been more brutal.

It was a hollow voice saying, “This way please” offering no welcoming warmth—but at least the words were right. At least they hadn’t embarrassed me, and I was walking to a table at El Morocco.

The motion with which the room was alive seemed to veer and change course and accelerate into a more frenetic kind of action; heads were spinning as if they were tops and my entrance had just pulled the strings. I walked behind Burt, looking straight ahead, but seeing the nudging and leaning, the blinking and staring, the simple surprise at the presence of someone with my color skin who wasn’t wearing a turban. Then smiles began breaking out here and there like beacons across a dark field and I got little four-finger waves, and a “Hi, Sammy” murmured discreetly as I passed a table of six. I looked to see if I knew the man who’d said it but they were all strangers. I kept walking, experiencing an awareness of myself that I’d never felt before an audience of five thousand people. As the maître d’ led us past the dance floor, the people swayed back and forth, keeping the franchise of being there, maneuvering for better looks at the drama of the moment.

The maître d’ stopped at a table against the wall, drew it out, and the three of us slid behind it. He bowed slightly and left. It was no moment for “stage waits” and the three of us plunged feet-first into conversation. “Did you enjoy the crossing?”

Jane tossed her head back. “Oh, rather. I do prefer the Italian ships though, the English are so stuffy, don’t you think?”

“Quite.”

“How is your dear Aunt Agatha?”

“Haven’t seen her of late. Dead, y’know.”

“Really?”

“Rather!”

A table captain took our drink order. Waiters were going out of their way to walk past our table for a look at me. The guys in the
band hadn’t broken into Mr.
Wonderful
but they were welcoming me secret-service style, playing all the other songs from the show. People at other tables smiled, and although the three of us were still playing “Oh dear, Morocco again? Such a bore,” the tension began softening under my awareness of the incredible fact that I was actually sitting at a table in the place I’d read about for years as the most sophisticated club in the country.

When the waiter had served our drinks I leaned closer to Jane and Burt and spoke quietly, “Hey, this is
okay
, isn’t it? I mean they’re not even doing the slow service bit. Let’s be fair. I’ll admit they didn’t toss flowers at old Sam but it’s a lot better than the last time, right?”

Burt smiled. “Yes. It’s fine,” but the muscle in his cheek was working itself back and forth.

“Baby, if something’s wrong I think you’d better tell me.”

“Nothing, Sam. Really.”

I looked at Jane.

“Okay, fellas, let’s have it.”

Burt hesitated, then said, “It’s not important, it’s just that we’re on the wrong side of the room. The tables they consider best are on the other side of the dance floor. It’s ridiculous but the idea of it …”

We all knew that in this case it was not ridiculous, that it was the stone wall between acceptance and rejection. I had thought that they’d resisted me by habit but once I was there, once they had seen me, they’d accepted me. But they were fighting me on their own terms: the nuance, the veiled insult. Everyone in the room had known I was being insulted, that even a semi-name would immediately have been given a table on the other side. Everywhere I looked I found my hands fumbling with something. I took out my pipe and tobacco pouch to use as a prop, and I filled the pipe slowly, deliberately, trying to appear as though that was all I was concentrating on in the world. As I struck a match the maître d’ seemed to materialize in front of our table.

“We don’t allow pipe smoking.”

I put the pipe down quickly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

He smiled, like: Of course you didn’t.

Burt said, “Casually turn your head to the right and look at the swinging door, the one to the kitchen. That’s John Perona.”

The owner of El Morocco, a legendary figure in international
society, the epitome of so-called sophistication, was hiding behind that door, staring out at me through a little window as though trying to figure out what I was.

I looked away. “Do you think we’ve been here long enough so we can leave?”

When our limousine door closed, Burt told the chauffeur to take us to the Harwyn.

“Baby, do me a favor. Drop me off at the Gorham. Pay my respects at the party, and I’ll see you guys at the apartment whenever you can get away.”

Jane put her hand on my arm. “Sammy … you worked a whole year for this … it’s your party. Don’t let this ruin everything for you.”

They couldn’t understand that there had been nothing to be ruined, that Morocco had only failed to contradict what I had known: I hadn’t gotten what I’d come to New York for. The people at the Harwyn were celebrating the fact that I’d made a show run for a year but that was not what I had wanted to celebrate on my closing night.

“Darling, I’m fine, really. I’m just shot. It’s been a long day.” I smiled. “In the best tradition of Mary Noble, Backstage Wife: The marquee is out and so is he.”

The apartment was dark except for a haze of light coming in through the windows. I sat on the couch, too tired to unbutton my overcoat or to reach for the lamp only a few inches away from my hand. I hadn’t done it. I really hadn’t. And now I was at the end of a long, long road, standing in front of a stone wall a whole world high and a whole world wide.

As I passed through the kitchen on my way to the wings, a waiter carrying a tray with bottles of scotch and setups went out of his way to walk alongside me. “We missed you like a son, Sammy, welcome home.” I nodded and he hurried away to his station. Sure, welcome home. They love you
better
than a son. You’re Santa Claus come to deliver the big tippers. Just don’t let the deliveries slow up. The chorus kids had just come off and as they passed me one of them stopped, winked, and swung her satin-covered bottom at me. “Rub it for luck, Sammy.”

Will was already standing in the wings. He nodded happily to me, then turned back to the audience as though magnetically drawn to them—unconsciously lifting one foot and buffing the already gleaming leather shoe against the sock of his other leg—waiting to go on
with all the ready-to-go of a Major Bowes contestant. I looked away from him.

The announcer’s voice blared: “The Chez Paree proudly presents The Will Mastin Trio starring
Sammy Davis, Jr.”

Will rushed on.

I watched him doing his old-hat number, selling it as though it mattered, smiling confidently, “giving the people what they want,” and my distaste for the ludicrous picture became mixed with resentment toward my father for leaving me with this. Instead of just once standing up to Will and saying, “It’s over. I’m quitting and so are you,” he’d taken the easy way out. The one time I’d needed him to come through for me he’d come up empty. All I’d gotten was a dramatic scene, a lot of tears, and a pair of baby shoes.

I walked on, took the handmike and began singing over the applause:

“Seriously, folks, that song speaks for how I feel. Sure, we had an interesting year on Broadway and I won’t say it wasn’t a joy beating the critics, but I don’t kid myself I’m Rex Harrison: Let’s face it—I’m a saloon guy.” I paused for the applause. “With your very kind permission I’d like to make mention of a gentleman who isn’t with me tonight as he has been all my life. That gentleman, of course, as most of you know, is my father who was taken ill during
Mr. Wonderful
and was forced to retire to California where he’s enjoying a well-deserved rest from a lifetime of supporting me on this stage …” I smiled Charley Good Son during the applause, then switched to Charley Modest. “I just hope that my humble efforts may satisfy you as well in his absence as when he was here to help and guide me every step of the way.” I held my hands up,
preventing more applause. “If I may impose upon you just a bit more may I say that the gentleman to the right of me is the man whose wisdom and show business teachings are so much a part of everything I do on this stage, the man who has given so generously of his vast experience and taught me all the tricks of the trade which he knows so well, and which in my humble opinion account for whatever small success I may have had. I wish you’d help me thank him for his kindness and generosity in remaining on with me, providing me with the support I need so much … ladies and gentlemen, my uncle, my teacher, and my friend: Mr. Will Mastin. Take a bow, Uncle Will.” I led the applause and turned smilingly toward him, respectfully, devotedly, thinking: you ridiculous figure.

I waded through the crowd in my suite at the St. Clair and found George and Jane and Burt. George waved to the crowd, smiling derisively. “Hello, Chicago.”

I folded my arms. “Okay, let’s have it, George. You know what they say: only his best friends’ll tell him.”

He shifted uneasily on the couch. “Well, if you must know, I could’ve lived without that ‘saloon’ song.” He glanced at Jane and Burt, like they’d all been talking about it, then he faced me and shrugged. “Aside from the fact that I think you’re far beyond the point where you need special material opening numbers—”

“You don’t have to soften it, George.”

“Well, I just think that song is in the worst possible taste. It’s phony and patronizing. I kept waiting to find you were kidding, but the whole show had the same attitude, all those little remarks and digs about Broadway—I don’t know about the rest of the audience, but I don’t go to nightclubs to have the performer put me down.”