Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (79 page)

MY WIFE

Our son, Mark Sidney

Our daughter, Tracey Hillevi

Bengt Erwald

The curtains opened in front of me, Al stepped back to shake hands, left the stage, and I was alone.

By the grace of God I never performed better in my life.

Cheers and applause roared up at me, crashing all around me and I stood limp, absorbing the beauty of it. As Bruce “carried” me offstage he whispered, “You were magnificent. Wait in the wings. You were magnificent.”

Pandemonium was building out front. A stagehand screamed, “The Queen put down her fan and applauded!” Another answered, aghast, “She did. She really did.” Bruce was at center stage leading the applause, motioning for me to come back on. I hesitated because we’d been strictly warned that nobody takes an extra bow. A stagehand pushed me. “He’s the boss. Out you go. Can’t keep the Queen waiting, y’know.”

I bowed and walked off, but the audience was still calling for me and again Bruce, still clapping, reached his hands toward me and I walked to the center of the stage, took a deep bow and then the long walk back—and I did it not two or three times which would have been unbelievable, but
eight
times.

They were starting to shout “More—more—more” in time with the applause, like one voice, but I knew I didn’t dare go out there again and as I closed the dressing room door I could still hear them calling for me.

Nat lifted me off the floor. “You did it, you dog, I
knew
you’d do it.” He was carrying me all around the dressing room, laughing, “I knew you’d do it, I knew you’d do it …”

“It’s over, it’s over, Nat, oh, thank God it’s over!” He put me down on a chair, and just sitting there was heaven. “What a night. Oh, what a gorgeous, beautiful night.”

The door opened and the assistant stage manager called in, “Eight minutes before the Finale.”

I jumped up. “Finale? What Finale? What’ll I sing? No one told me about any Finale.”

Nat said, “The number we all do together.”

Of course. We were all supposed to come out in our tails and top hats and sing “Strolling,” a typically English song. Then there was a big production number with a ramp and stairs down which we all walk in a promenade with Vera Lynn coming down the center to close the show with “We’ll Meet Again.”

“Murphy, where’s my suit?”

“Hanging right here, Sammy. All ready for you.”

I ripped off my tux and jumped into the pants they’d sent. I didn’t need to look at them in a mirror. I could feel the way they fit. I could have put a grapefruit between me and the waistband. I was flapping them in the air. “They’re like ten inches too big. This isn’t my suit, Murphy.”

“Yes, it is, Sammy. Look. It’s got your name on it.” I’d never rented a suit in my life and I hadn’t thought to try it on. Murphy was panicking. “What are you going to do?”

“Do I have a choice? Give me a safety pin, baby. We’ll pull ‘em up from behind so at least they’ll stay on.” We pinned them. “Well, it’s not exactly my type of fit but the tails’ll cover it.”

He held the shirt for me. I slipped my hands into the sleeves, but they never emerged. I stood there, arms extended, not even a fingertip showing. “Rubber bands. Quick.”

The assistant stage manager called in, “Two minutes, please.”

Murphy was ripping the dressing room apart. “I can only find one rubber band.”

I put it on my left shirt sleeve and experimented with my right arm. “If I hold my arm tight to my side maybe the cuff’ll stay up. Okay, let’s go with the vest.” I put it on. “Horrible! All right, lemme have the coat.” The sleeves dropped past where the shirt sleeves had gone. Murphy reached into a box and took out a black silk high hat. I put it on my head and it went plopppppp! Over my ears. Completely over my ears. Only my nose stopped it.

“Come on, Murphy. Give me
my
hat.”

He was almost in tears. “Sammy, this
is
your hat.”

“I don’t believe it. I
won’t
believe it. It’s not true.” I sat down. “I can’t go on like this, that’s all. It’s impossible. I look like a Walt Disney character.”

The door opened again. “Onstage for the Finale. Onstage, everybody.”

Nat said, “Here, take my hat. I have another.”

It wasn’t much better. I could get both hands completely under it
while it was on my head. I stuffed some kleenex into the hatband and tried it again. At least it was resting on the top of my head. I put on the gloves, which of course were four sizes too large, and I held the walking stick they’d sent. Why wasn’t it six feet long? I stood in front of the mirror—baggy pants, gorilla-length sleeves, one arm pressed tight against my side, hat teetering on my head, cane held in a baseball glove—the whole thing was like a Chaplin movie: the poor soul fighting for dignity against all odds. “Hello, your Majesty. You like my outfit?”

We were singing, “Strolling, when we’re strolling down the lane …” Vera Lynn walked down the center and began singing, “We’ll Meet Again …” and everything was fine. The big finish to the show is when all the performers sing “God Save the Queen.” Naturally when you sing this you remove your hat. We’re less than a minute away from it and I’ve got both arms pressed tightly against my sides and I can’t for the life of me remember which sleeve has the rubber band and which one leads to the hungry lion. The music strikes the first notes of “God Save the Queen.” The audience is standing. I have to make a choice. I go for my hat with my right hand and as I move it from my side the sleeve falls, swoosh! over my fingertips. I raise my arm, shaking my wrist to get my hand free, the cuff slides back, my fingers appear, and I can feel the hat. I get it off my head a few seconds behind everyone else and as I swing it down to my side the kleenex flies out of the hat, sails over the orchestra pit into the audience, and hits a man in the face. It falls to his shoulder and he plucks it off with two fingers and drops it to the floor.

I am so humiliated, so mortified that I’m praying I’ll fall straight through the floor and never be seen or heard from again. We’re coming to the last bars of “God Save the Queen” and I’m thinking: how do I put the hat back on? I can’t be the only one standing here holding his hat.

The song is over. I put the hat on and it slides down over my ears and onto my nose. I try to tilt it back so maybe it’ll catch on my forehead. I’m wrinkling my forehead trying to grip the hat with my eyebrows, but nothing helps. Only my mouth and chin are showing. All I can see is the inside of the hat but I can hear the audience starting to fall apart. They’re English and they’re dignified and they’ve been trying to hold on but there’s a limit to everything and we’d passed it long ago. Even the performers, the two hundred
disciplined kids behind me were cracking wide open and starting to die all over the stage. Finally we start filing out and I hear Jack Hylton hissing, “Take it off. Get the hat off….”

I stood backstage like a kin of the deceased as performers and stagehands came by, tapped me on the shoulder and muttered, “Tough luck, Mr. Davis.” … “Bad break.” A red carpet was being rolled down the center aisle of the theater from the steps of the stage to the door of the Queen’s car. At a signal the stars of the show filed onstage and lined up for presentation to Her Majesty, the orchestra began playing “Pomp and Circumstance” and two little girls came down the carpet dropping rose petals. Then, the Queen was walking down the aisle toward us, Prince Philip a few yards behind, with dignitaries following in strict royal procession.

The Queen reached the stage and began walking down the line of people, smiling but stopping at only one out of every four or five. You’re not supposed to touch the Queen’s hand unless she extends it. I saw out of the corner of my eye that when she did stop she did not put out her hand. She was four people away from me, then three, then two, then one….

The Queen of England was standing in front of me, smiling warmly, offering me her hand, and I was shaking hands with her, addressing her as “Your Majesty”—a phrase, the grandeur of which one can never fully understand until one is saying it to a person who is actually entitled to it.

Al Burnett came to the dressing room to get me. I was to do a special pre-opening show at the Pigalle. He’d invited a lot of people from the Command Performance, plus press and celebrities and I was glad that I had that to do; if I’d gone straight home without being able to taper off from the excitement, I’d have gotten the bends.

The Pigalle was packed beyond capacity. Most of the American stars in London were there: Gregory Peck, Tony Quinn, Bob Mitchum, and dozens of English performers. I was onstage for two and a half hours, but nobody would leave. The audience pounded the tables for twenty solid minutes. Finally, Al had to come onstage and ask them to stop because they were breaking his tables.

I sat on the edge of my bed pulling off my shoes, savoring the incredible evening. Then, to enjoy it all the more, in vivid contrast, a montage of other, lesser days that seemed so long ago, as if they’d happened to somebody else. And, in a way they had. Show business
had made me somebody else. It had taken a hungry kid off the streets of Harlem and brought him to England to entertain the Queen.

I heard Murphy and Arthur speaking low, putting a blanket over me. It would be poetic to say that as I fell asleep I also remembered myself as a child telling Mama, “Someday I’m going to sing for the Queen of England.” Mama would surely have said, “Yes, Sammy, if you want to sing for her you will.” But I didn’t say it. As high as I had hoped, I never dreamed I’d have such a night.

The
Daily Sketch
said, “Let’s start by re-naming last night’s Royal Variety Show at the Victoria Palace ‘The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show.’ For, in eight electrifying minutes, this … entertainer made the word ‘star’ seem inadequate …” Isadore Green of
The Record
and
Show Mirror
wrote: “… Those lucky enough to see him in person at The Pigalle indeed saw the greatest entertainer in the world …”

I was waiting at the gate as May cleared through Customs. She smiled, surprised to see me, and I became aware of the boldness of what I’d done. As we walked toward the Rolls Royce I’d rented, I realized that since my arrival in London I’d seen so many African students, with the bushy hair and the tribal claw marks on their faces, walking down the streets with white women, and nobody so much as looking around at them that my built-in caution had relaxed, I’d instinctively known that nobody would care.