Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (83 page)

Will stopped by a while later and we discussed some Trio business,
some dates that had to be firmed up. Then I braced myself. “Massey, the wedding is on the sixteenth and I’d like to take off a few days before and then a week after. I’ll need some time around here for last minute things and I’d like to have at least a full week honeymoon.”

He nodded. “I was thinking that myself. We can’t move the date of the Huntington Hartford one man show ‘cause they’re already selling tickets or I’d say you should take off a month. But we can cancel the two weeks before in Detroit and play them next year. I’ll take care of it. And, you’re going to be having more responsibility so I think you’d better start drawing an extra five hundred a week expenses.”

We sat silently across from each other. It was the first glimpse in a long time of the man I’d begun calling “Massey” so many years before, and I felt a flicker of the unity we’d had when we were starving but pulling in the same direction trying to keep each other alive.

“Massey? What the hell happened to us?”

“I don’t know, Sammy.” He shook his head slowly, sadly. “I guess when people put their hands on something new they’ve got to be extra careful not to drop what they already had … I don’t know….”

I tried to remember when all the fighting and arguing had started. It was when we’d started making it, when things should only have been better.

I walked across the room and put my arms around him. “Thanks, Massey.” Whatever the reason, or whoever was at fault, I was glad to have that warmth and friendship again.

One by one all the details had been handled. The decorator had been at the house every day, a dressing room was being built for May, a TV set had been suspended from the ceiling so we could watch from bed, and a large marble fireplace was being built in the living room. I had only Washington and Vegas to play before the wedding.

I went down to see Mama. I’d said good-bye to her like this a hundred times but for some reason this time it reacted on me. It wasn’t as if she groaned and said she was having trouble with her legs as she sometimes did, she was smiling happily, “Get your sleep, take care of yourself, Sammy,” but as she was saying it, it was like a
Zoomar lens that goes shoooom, close-up! and you see things you didn’t see before, that were always there for you to see. I looked at her face and it suddenly hit me: she’s not going to be around much longer. She has to die someday and the older she gets the sooner it’s going to be. It could be any day. I thought of all the times I’d known I should go downstairs and sit with her and talk awhile but hadn’t because I was too tired or involved in something, or because I had nothing in particular to say. I kissed her and hugged her and held onto her and I managed to say, “Good-bye, Mama, see you soon.” But when I left her room I fell apart.

I drove slowly around the curves of the hill, watching the road, May beside me, each of us with our own thoughts.

“Sammy? How come you never asked me to convert? To become Yewish?”

“Well, for openers if you keep giving it that Swedish ‘J’ I don’t think they’d even
take
you.”

She was smiling, pleased with herself, as she handed me a piece of paper. I pulled over to the side of the road. It was a certificate of conversion from Temple Israel in Hollywood. “I was always very satisfied being a Lutheran. But when you were on the road I started thinking about the children we want and I decided that whatever extra unity and support we could provide for them would mean just that much more emotional security built-in. So, I went to see your rabbi. We can be married in a religious ceremony, now.”

“Darling, there’s no nicer present you could ever have given me.”

“Then you wanted me to convert? Why didn’t you say so?”

“I didn’t feel I had the right to. I knew that if you thought I wanted it you’d convert and I didn’t want you to unless you personally had the desire to do it. You know how much I’ve gotten out of Judaism—for me it’s everything, but I’d be the last person in the world to say: Do it my way because my way is better.”

“Well, I must say that I started looking into Judaism strictly because I wanted our kids to have the same religion as the two of us, but now that I’ve studied it, I’m getting to really love it.”

I took her hand in mine and kissed it. “Thank you.”

Conversation in the cab died off. Big John was staring through the windshield, straining to see ahead as we moved through traffic, toward the Lotus Club. Murphy and I followed his gaze and saw them. Nazi storm troopers picketing me in the middle of Washington, D.C. They were wearing khaki shirts with swastika armbands and carrying signs: “WHAT’S THE MATTER, SAMMY? CANT YOU FIND A COLORED GIRL?” … “GO BACK TO THE CONGO, YOU KOSHER COON.” They had a little black dog walking with them. He was wearing a swastika and they’d attached a sign to his back: “I’M BLACK TOO, SAMMY, BUT I’M NOT A JEW.” Another sign said, “MARRIAGE TO MAY BRITT WILL BE AN INJUSTICE TO THE NEGRO RACE.” It was not being carried by a Negro.

I’d anticipated this, thought about it a hundred times, but when it finally, actually hit I could only stare at them, thinking: This is happening. It’s really happening. Thank you, God, for not letting May be here to see it.

My first impulse was to pull up in front of the club and walk through their midst even though normally I’d use the stage door, but that’s just what they wanted. They didn’t expect that their picket line would keep my customers away; they were hoping for an incident that would, combined with my name value, land them on page one, draw attention to them, help them spread their doctrine and get new recruits.

Big John put his powerful hand on my arm. “Sammy, you know I’m not afraid of them mothers, and I’m with you in whatever you do, but if you swing at them then I’m going to break a few of their skulls, and we’d only be playing their game. A riot’s what they want.”

“I know, John. Thanks.”

As I walked onstage the audience, as a body, rose to its feet, applauding, shouting: “The hell with ‘em, Sammy. We’re with you.”

“Thank you. Thank you for what you’ve given me. I’ll make a quick statement and that’s all because I don’t think they deserve any more of your time. They’re idiots. They don’t bug me. I hope they don’t bug you.”

The wire services carried the story and the phone didn’t stop ringing with calls from buddies all over the country. The local papers all took the attitude of Harry MacArthur of the Washington
Star:
“That self-appointed Nazi leader should live so long as to make as many people happy in a lifetime as Sammy Davis does in one night….”

Murphy put down his paper and looked across the table at me, his face a study in bewilderment. “What I don’t understand is that those Nazis can get a license to do this.”

“The law works for everybody, baby. I guess they’ve got a right to their opinion.” There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it.”

“No, I’ll get it, Sammy, it’s just the mail. I called down for it.” He rushed ahead of me.

I laughed, “Hey, I admit I’m a big star but I can open a door, right?”

He stood back reluctantly as I took the mail from the bellman. I
sat down at the breakfast table and opened the first envelope that didn’t have a return address. “Dear Nigger Bastard, I see Frank Sinatra is going to be best man at your abortion. Well, it’s good to know the kind of people supporting Kennedy before it’s too late, (signed) An ex-Kennedy Vote.”

“Sammy, why do you bother to read those lousy things? I can take care of them for you….”

“Baby, if you thought it would hurt me you wouldn’t tell me, right?” He didn’t answer. I handed him the letter. “Have we gotten many of these?”

“They don’t mean anything. They don’t even sign their names.”

“They don’t have to sign their names when they vote. Now I appreciate the fact that you were trying to protect me but please don’t keep things from me. I have to know what people are thinking. Do me a favor. Find an out-of-town newsstand and get a dozen or so papers, particularly from the South and the Southwest”

The first mention I saw was: “Show business and politics have merged more heavily in this election than ever before. Notable (and noisiest) among the vote-swayers is Frank Sinatra, who’ll give you an autograph if you’ll vote for Kennedy. The crooner, a close friend of JFK, will take time off from politics only to serve in the coveted capacity of best man at the wedding of Negro entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr.—another Kennedy booster—to blonde movie star May Britt.” I combed the papers every day. The already stale news that Frank would be my best man continued making the front pages and too often by “coincidence” right next to it were stories about Frank campaigning for Kennedy. The Broadway and Hollywood columns were alive with jokes and political rumors: “If Kennedy’s elected his big problem is: should he appoint Sammy Davis, Jr. Ambassador to Israel or the Congo?” … “Public opinion experts say that when Frank Sinatra appears at pal Sammy Davis, Jr.’s interracial marriage it will cost Kennedy as many votes (maybe more) as the crooner has been able to swing via his immensely successful JFK rallies.” … “Insiders hear that Frank Sinatra has informed Sammy Davis, ‘I can’t be your best man. It’s too hot.’ ”

I tried to scoff at the idea of my friendship to Frank being able to affect a national election but a bigot’s vote counts as much as a liberal’s and the smear experts were hungry for weapons like an interracial marriage. There were thousands of people stumping for
votes and obviously too many of them were willing to drive their man to the White House in a garbage truck if necessary.

I hadn’t been in Vegas twenty minutes when I got word that the bookmakers were offering three to one that Frank wouldn’t show at my wedding.

Frank, Dean, and Peter had come down for the weekend and I was in the steam room with Frank. He asked, “How’s she standing up under all the garbage?”

“So far so good, I guess. But the momentum keeps picking up as we get closer to the date and I dread the day when somebody’s going to think up a little zingy that’ll penetrate her outer layer of strength. At least if I could be with her to balance it off, but I figure the less we’re seen together until the wedding the less they’ll have to work with. I’m deliberately bringing her down here for only one weekend. Fortunately, she’s busy and excited getting things ready.”

He nodded. “She’ll be all right. She’ll have her moments but she’ll make it.”

When I spoke with May between shows she said, “Frank called me a little while ago. Just to say hello and find out how I am.”

I saw him the next afternoon as he and the guys were leaving. “I talked to May last night, Frank. Thanks.”

“See you at the wedding, Charley. I’ll leave Hawaii on the fourteenth and be back a day early to make sure I don’t run into weather.”

One of the Hollywood columns said: “Fox is sitting out May Britt’s contract until it runs out in July.” I suspected that it was one of those carefully planted ‘leaks’ intended as a last-minute warning to her. I’d expected it just as surely as I knew that the next day the studio would release a complete denial saying it was “a totally unfounded rumor” and they’re busily looking for scripts for her. I didn’t mention it on the phone, nor did she.

I met her at the airport Friday afternoon. “Now here’s the skam: get unpacked and comfortable in some slacks and we’ll have dinner in my room. It’ll be the only time we’ll get to talk until late tonight because I’ve invited some people over after the second show. I’ve got a lot of friends here and they haven’t stopped with ‘When am I gonna meet her?’ ”

When she got to my suite I sat beside her on the couch. “May. Did you see the Fox thing?”

Her face blanched and she nodded. She reached into her purse for a cigarette not noticing the open pack I’d put in front of her. She asked, “How do you feel about it?”

“Horrible. I just don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am.” I looked at the floor and the silence hung thickly between us, a silence of barriers despite all that had grown between us.

She said, “If I do get dropped by Fox I can always make Italian films. Of course I realize they won’t have the same impact so maybe we won’t have quite as much of the ‘May Britt and Sammy Davis, Jr.’ jazz …”

“I don’t dig.”

“You said it was one of the things you liked about me.”

I looked up. “You mean that jazz about the combination of personalities?”

She nodded.

“You’re not seriously worrying about
that?
I only meant that it’s a pleasant little extra, a kick, but it never had any importance.”

She studied my face before she spoke. Her voice was quiet, urgent. “If I ask you something, can I get an honest, no-kidding answer?”

“Yes.”

“Would you love me as much … if I weren’t in pictures?”

“You’ve got to be joking with a line like that.” She shook her head. I reached out and held her face in my hands. “Darling, I’ll love you if you never even go to
see
a movie.”

“I’m serious, Sammy. Have you thought about it?”

“I don’t
have
to think about it. I love you like I don’t even love myself, and you know that’s
love
. If I seem depressed about this Fox jazz, and I am, it’s because of the way it happened. If you’d said to me, ‘Hey, I’m bored with pictures, I’m quitting,’ I’d say, ‘Crazy,’ but I don’t want pictures to quit you. I realize that right now the last thing in your mind would be to do a picture. That’s natural. But things are going to calm down and there may come a day when you look at a fan magazine and you see some kid on the cover and you think, ‘Gee, I’m better looking than she is and I’m a better actress,’ and maybe you’ll wish you were able to go back and do one-a-year. Let’s be honest, you don’t exactly hate being Mary Moviestar and you’ve earned your career, you’ve worked hard and
you’ve got a great start and,” I forced myself not to turn away. “I don’t want you to look up one day and think, ‘What a heavy price I paid to marry him.’ ”

The color was coming back into her face. “Well, if you were only bothered about how
I
felt then we can forget it. As long as you love me then there’s nothing else I want. I couldn’t care less about being in pictures. I’d
much
rather stay around the house with our babies and be just plain Mrs. Sharlie Brown.”