Sensing the end was nowhere near—he seemed to be getting a second wind—I decided to take him into one of the back bedrooms. While I rarely slept with the men I dated on the first night, I made an exception with Danny just in an effort to get him to shut the hell up. He seemed to have fun, and I had several moments of blissful silence. Along with talking too damn much, Danny also had an insatiable appetite for sex that fit the textbook definition of a true-to-life sex addict. Too bad he hadn’t mastered the art of it. “Sex addict” wasn’t a term fully recognized back in the 1970s, but I certainly learned the meaning of it when I met Danny.
With that good deed done, my hope was that Danny Sims would run along and forget we ever met. No luck there—he insisted on walking me home across Central Park, talking nonstop all the way. I remember slamming my apartment door in his face when we got to my building, praying he’d take the hint that the conversation and date were now really over.
The next morning, I called James to rake him over the coals for his lack of full disclosure about Danny. He appeared oblivious to any of the personality quirks I noticed and attributed them to my disappointments in love.
“You’re being too hard on him,” James insisted. “You’re nitpicking because of your recent history. Don’t rush to judge him so quickly.”
Per usual, I heeded James’s advice. My heart began to really soften as numerous bouquets of exotic flowers began to arrive at my apartment over the next few days. James came over for a peek and just oohed and aahed, though he was less than pleased to learn that I had yet to call Danny to thank him for the flowers. I knew I needed to say thank you—I just wasn’t ready for the never-ending conversation that was bound to ensue.
“You’re being rude and you know it,” James said, as he watered batch after batch of my yellow roses.
What James called my rudeness would be put to the ultimate test when the beautiful flowers morphed into expensive gifts. One day, a gorgeous Mikimoto pearl necklace—the most expensive pearls money can buy—was delivered to my door. It was indeed beautiful, but I felt I would now have no choice but to call Danny and demand that the excessive gift giving come to an end. I mean, I’d met the man one time, and slammed the door in his face at the end of our date. Flowers coming every day were one thing, but a five-thousand-dollar pearl necklace in 1976 was an entirely different story.
Before making that call to Danny, however, I really wanted to know if the pearls were authentic. I guess I needed to see if he was playing games or not, because I wasn’t going to thank someone for sending me fake jewelry. If anyone had knowledge about real and faux pearls, it would be my James, the master of all things fine and fabulous, so I dashed over to his salon.
James was with a client when I arrived, but he stopped twirling mid-curl to deal with me. James—who regularly escorted me through Tiffany’s massive showroom in an effort to school me on the various types, shapes, and sizes of diamonds—knew all the tricks of the trade as far as jewels were concerned. He did the quick and easy pearl test: putting the pearls in his mouth and rubbing them against his mega-white teeth. Real pearls have a slightly rough texture and faux pearls are smoother. The verdict: My new pearls had a rough texture and were quite real.
With that final confirmation, I decided I had no other choice but to give in, and called ol’ chatterbox at his office to thank him profusely for his kindness over the last few days. I also explained to Danny that I could not accept the pearls. He expressed disappointment and then somehow managed to get me to agree to dinner where I could return the pearls in person. How did I ever walk into that trap?
Surprisingly, dinner the next night did reveal a much more fascinating Danny Sims, though his wardrobe remained the same—awful! This forty-plus-year-old man dressed in the way the very wealthy often dressed then—that is, shabbily, to distract people from how much they were worth.
Once I’d gotten over his second horrific outfit of the week, I decided to listen to the words coming out of his mouth in an effort to be as open-minded as James had suggested. Surely a man who talked as much as Danny Sims had to say something worthwhile at least some of the time. Another plus for the man who talked way too much was that, with the exception of Arthur Ashe, Danny was the first black man I’d met who had traveled extensively around the world and had been exposed to many of the cultural experiences I had. In those days, a black man with serious business dealings, international contacts, a hefty bank account, and who didn’t play sports or sing songs for a living was a rare find.
So I listened. What I learned was that Danny was the eighth child of twelve, and that his parents had been sharecroppers in Mississippi. He had vivid memories of riding on the back of the watermelon truck as a child while his father tried to sell the melons around town, an experience that convinced him to get as much education as possible. He attended college in Illinois, where he played football, and soon found he had a great head for numbers. Years later, he and his siblings opened a few soul food spots in Chicago, then in Manhattan, and Danny worked in that business until he developed a particular talent for card games.
Danny began setting up card games in the back room of his family’s soul food joints using fixed cards that he’d number beforehand and then repackage to look like a new deck. These less-than-honest card games turned into big hits in the black community, and the money began to roll in. But with that kind of cash changing hands, word spread fast, and it wasn’t long before the Mob and other organized crime gangs came calling.
In the mid-1960s, Danny headed to Jamaica to meet up with his friend and singer Johnny Nash, who was best known for his hit “I Can See Clearly Now.” The two friends formed the record label JAD (Johnny and Danny), and in 1968 Johnny moved to Jamaica to record his own music and learn more about the popular rocksteady sound. There, Johnny met a struggling vocal group with a sound he loved, so he asked Danny to come down to get his advice on signing them to a deal. The group’s name was the Wailers, and their lead singer was a dynamic young man named Bob Marley. Danny was sold on the trio from the moment he heard them perform, and all three members—Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer—signed exclusive publishing and recording contracts with the JAD label.
Hearing the story of how Danny had co-discovered Bob Marley and helped bring reggae music to America turned my twenty-five-year-old head completely around. This man was a living, breathing, walking genius. Over the next few weeks, we continued dating, and Danny Sims continued to send even more fabulous gifts to my apartment. One day, shortly after our third date, he sent over a glorious silver fox fur. It was a beautiful piece, but something in me just had to ask for a receipt. My excuse was that I might want to exchange it for a different size or color, but what I really wanted to know was where the coat came from exactly. Had he purchased the coat from Saks, or was it stolen? A girl just needed to know these things.
I didn’t ask him this question point-blank, but I should have. Danny must have known that at this level in my career, I couldn’t walk around in a stolen coat—I would never live that down in the industry. Danny had perfectly reasonable answers for every concern I presented him with. His furrier had had the silver fox fur specially made for me, and he had his own jeweler, too.
Sometimes Danny would talk about the appeal of open marriages and multiple partners, but would quickly backtrack when he saw my reaction. I loved that he listened to what I had to say on the matter.
Danny had been married twice and had one child per marriage, but I was undeterred by his history, just as I was undeterred that he was an atheist and had diarrhea of the mouth and poor judgment in clothes. I even remained undeterred after mentioning Danny to my ex, Billy, and hearing his negative review of the new man in my life. Billy knew of Danny Sims and his reputation in the music industry, and nothing of what he had heard was very good. But I chalked that up to Billy just playing the jealous ex-husband, so I paid him no mind.
Though I’d met Danny in March of 1976, by April James was already asking if I had given a
ny thought to getting married again. James sincerely wanted nothing but the best for me, and he truly felt Danny could give me that. Danny was already talking to me about marriage, too, so we headed to the diamond district. I chose a not-so-modest five-carat engagement ring that was a little outside the box of what a traditional ring might look like. Then, in some roundabout way, I ended up being the one who asked Danny to marry me! And he said yes.
I called my parents to tell them about my impending marriage, and to let them know that Danny and I would be flying up to Buffalo that weekend for the family to meet him. I braced myself for what was sure to be their anger over his advanced age—he was closer to their age than mine—but lo and behold if Danny Sims didn’t charm my parents like he did everyone else. (My parents especially liked him after he told them he would buy them a new house.) Danny Sims was intoxicating, and I wanted to be around him more and more.
My mother suggested we get married in our family’s living room on Mother’s Day, which we did. A big reason for my parents’ acceptance of Danny, I’ll always believe, was that he was financially well-off and that he could certainly take care of me for the rest of my life. The tradition of men caring for their wives and families was still a very strong one. Financial security was first and foremost on the minds of my parents for all of their children, and though I had saved most of the money I’d made since my very first modeling jobs, I agreed with them—an extra layer of protection to fall back on never hurt.
The wedding didn’t go off without a hitch. As Danny and I readied ourselves to leave the day after our wedding, a sinking feeling came over me. Danny had said his good-byes to my parents and was already sitting in the car that would take us to the airport for our honeymoon in Puerto Rico. But I lingered inside my childhood home, unwilling, or unable, to join him.
My father kept saying, “Beverly, it’s time to go.”
Suddenly something in me didn’t want to go anywhere with Danny Sims. Eventually we went outside, but as we drew closer to the car, my father was now pushing me along, saying, “Beverly, it’s time to go to be with your new husband.”
By this point, my father had a concerned look on his face, as if it were all sinking in that maybe I should have given my second marriage some extra thought. My family had totally missed the signs of my first marriage being ill-advised.
As my father kept nudging me along, I looked at Danny through the car window and realized he was angry and frustrated. A chill went up my spine when our eyes met, though he quickly replaced that look of anger with a smile as he opened the door for me to get in. Maybe I should have run for the hills, or at the very least run back into my parents’ house, where I could have thought things over a bit longer. Instead, I got right into that car and pretended all was well.
I decided to try to enjoy my honeymoon, and managed to do so for about twelve hours. That was around the time I noticed Danny flirting with several women at the bar. So this is what married life to Danny Sims would be like? Confronting him about it later that night in our room proved pointless as he denied any wrongdoing. Then he turned the tables around by accusing me of having issues with jealousy and insecurity. Maybe I was making too much out of things; I didn’t want to fight with my new husband.
Back in New York I put my best face forward and moved into Danny’s spacious ten-room apartment at Fifth Avenue and 102nd Street in Harlem. Its location factored greatly into why his rent was so low. One of his brothers, Eddie, also lived with him, but I soon realized the hard way that his brother wouldn’t be the only one with whom I’d be sharing the apartment. Oftentimes I would return home from modeling assignments only to find many of the artists Danny had signed to his record label sleeping in the guest bedrooms or on the floor of our living room. Old friends of his, former lovers, and goodness knows who else would regularly reside under the same roof with us for weeks at a time. It was not exactly a normal marriage.
One night, after returning from a weeklong modeling job, I found a woman wearing my nightgown running out of my bedroom. She nearly had a stroke when she saw me and immediately started stammering, “Oh, Danny said you wouldn’t mind if I put this on!”
“And you were dumb enough to believe that shit?” I said.
Who knows what Danny and his brother Eddie had going on when I wasn’t at home. I’m pretty sure drugs of some kind were involved, as cocaine was in constant supply at the apartment courtesy of Danny’s many contacts in the music business. My guess was that our earlier talks regarding open marriages, multiple partners, and orgies were coming to fruition behind my back, but I decided denial was a better way to live. I wanted to be happily in love and that’s what I was going to be. I knew Danny loved me, despite whatever foolishness he had going on.
Danny began suggesting I study Scientology. I resisted for many reasons. I wasn’t all that familiar with Scientology, but I knew it didn’t have God in it, and that was really all I needed to know. But while I didn’t follow Danny’s lead on religion, I did adore his approach to health, cooking, and overall well-being. He was into natural products before they were all the rage. Our apartment was filled with blenders and extractors that he used to whip up celery, carrot, and spinach concoctions of all sorts, which I loved. After years of eating virtually nothing to stay thin, I could now get the nutrients I needed and still stay camera-ready. He even employed a specially trained housekeeper to make the healthy smoothies.
Danny had grand plans for everyone he worked with, and I was no exception. Together, we shared our experiences and our different perspectives and backgrounds to help each other work out how to expand our businesses in whatever way we could. Danny had lots of ideas for me: health and beauty books, major movie roles, and lucrative endorsement deals that would have my face on billboards and all over television. And if anyone could make it happen for me, Danny Sims could.
On the downside, despite all his grand gestures before our marriage that seemed to prove that he had an abundance of money for anything I ever wanted or needed, Danny suddenly became short on cash after we exchanged vows. I was now paying the eight-hundred-dollars-a-month rent on the Fifth Avenue apartment and for recording sessions with upcoming artists on his label. Danny would ramble on and on about waiting for cash to arrive from several of his overseas bank accounts. Sometimes he would say that there had been a mishap with the wire transfers, which meant I had to pay all the bills. I wasn’t happy with this, but I had to stay steadfast in my belief that my husband was being truthful with me about his business dealings. I believed he had no reason to mislead me since we were a team.
Our money issues came up in a conversation with my father one night, and I could all but smell the smoke coming out of Tim Johnson’s ears over the phone.
“Tell him to go to London and pick up his damn money. He can’t keep using yours!”
My father was right—Danny had money somewhere. I knew because he had let me in on the beauty of keeping offshore accounts on the Cayman Islands. But I didn’t want to call my husband a bald-faced liar, and I wanted and needed to trust him if our marriage was going to work. If we developed a strong bond together as husband and wife, then surely things would have to get better sooner or later. I was willing to make any compromise I could for him in order for him to see how much our marriage meant to me.
I even made a visit to a Scientology church in Manhattan one afternoon, and spent a few hours listening to all their ideas about life and death. At the end of my visit, the counselors asked for a generous donation, which I gave . . . to the tune of one hundred thousand dollars. The expression on Danny’s face the moment I announced my donation was priceless. But not quite as priceless as the phone call he made to the church a few minutes later, demanding they return my check immediately or risk their location becoming a parking lot by the next morning. My check was returned to our apartment within the hour, and Danny never mentioned Scientology again while we were married.
If only every issue in our marriage could have been resolved that easily.
Many of Danny’s business dealings were troubled, especially regarding his involvement with reggae legend Bob Marley.
Danny had signed Bob and his group, the Wailers, to a less-than-favorable recording and publishing deal back in the sixties, and Bob lost a great deal of money because of it. Though this was standard practice in the music industry, black folks really got salty when black record owners did it to black artists.
The two had parted ways on bad terms in 1972, several years before we married, and they hadn’t spoken since. But each time we visited Danny’s home in Jamaica, it would have been completely emptied out by looters (even the toilet paper would be gone). We had to replace the furniture and everything inside every time we made the trip down there. People despised Danny in Jamaica because they all believed he had stolen Bob Marley’s money. For the most part, they were right.
On one particular visit to Jamaica, we were riding in the back of a cab on the way to Danny’s home, when suddenly the cabdriver looked into his mirror and asked, “Are you Danny Sims?”
Danny nodded his head. In a flash, the cabdriver whipped out a shiny, sharp machete from beneath his seat and yelled, “You thieving the music!”
I saw my twenty-five-year-old life flash before my eyes. I would never make it to the age of twenty-six, and I very much wanted to see that birthday. Screaming, Danny and I kicked the back doors open and just about escaped that madman and his machete. Don’t mess with Jamaicans and their beloved Bob Marley—they take the reggae icon very seriously, as they should.
The Face That Changed It All Page 13