Deconstructing Sammy

by Matt Birkbeck

  “Hey, where’s Dean?” said Frank.

  “I thought he was coming down,” said Brian.

  “Don’t think. Go upstairs and get him, right now,” Frank ordered.

  Brian went to Dean’s room and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. Brian pressed his ear against the door but heard nothing. He returned to Frank’s suite.

  “He’s not in his room,” said Brian.

  “Well where the fuck is he?” Frank bellowed, causing an immediate halt to the party.

  People flew out of the suite to find Dean Martin, and within minutes word came back that Dean had left the hotel for the airport, where he boarded a private jet for Los Angeles. When he arrived there, he checked himself into Cedars-Sinai Hospital, complaining of kidney ailments. In reality the pain was Frank Sinatra, and Dean had had enough.

  Hours later, as dawn broke, Brian sat in a chair in Sammy’s suite, listening to Frank, Sammy, Eliot Weisman, and several others discuss whom they could get to replace Dean. The tour was a cash cow and had to continue. The overwhelmingly popular choice was Liza Minnelli, who was represented by Weisman, and after a brief pause the tour continued under a new moniker, The Ultimate Event. It was a spectacular success, and Sammy’s financial fortunes had finally turned, even at a performance-contracted rate. Frank’s people, as always, set the fees and Frank, as always, took the lion’s share, and that included a major piece of the souvenirs and concession revenues. But the numbers reported for tax purposes, and to be split with Sammy and Liza, were far less than actually received. Brian watched as Frank’s people skimmed off the top of everything, stuffing bags of cash into suitcases, which were taken out of each arena or stadium before it could be counted. Sammy knew of the skim but said nothing, and Brian wondered just how good a friend Frank Sinatra really was.

  The tour, and Sammy’s cash flow, came to a sudden halt in August 1989. For months Sammy endured a persistent sore throat, and he had difficulty singing. He was in Orlando when, his voice breaking during simple conversation, he decided to fly to Los Angeles for tests at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. A biopsy produced the cancer diagnosis. The doctors suggested surgery to remove the tumor, saying there was an 80 percent chance of survival. But they’d have to remove Sammy’s larynx. Sammy declined, opting instead for radiation and chemotherapy even though they offered only a 30 percent chance of success.

  “What can I do? If I can’t sing I can’t do anything,” he said.

  Brian suggested that Sammy could dance or direct or do something else in entertainment. But Sammy was pragmatic and had a clear grasp of his situation, particularly his dismal financial affairs. He reasoned that if he couldn’t perform live and earn, then he might as well be dead. Without his performance income, whatever remaining money he had would quickly dry up and force Sammy to file for bankruptcy, sell his home, and seek handouts from friends, which was something Sammy said he would never do.

  “If I can’t sing, I can’t be Sammy Davis Jr.,” he said.

  Brian thought long and hard about what he knew, and he thought even longer about Sonny. What would Sonny do with all this information? Would it really help Sammy if the world knew? Prior to his one conversation with Sonny, Brian had never talked about Sammy or his affairs to anyone. His training wouldn’t allow it. And he again decided against sharing it.

  Brian never returned Sonny’s call.

  CHAPTER 20

  Sy Marsh strode briskly up the Avenue of the Stars and toward the Century Plaza Hotel. Even at eighty years of age, he still worked out regularly at the Century West Club, where he reminisced about the old days, and the old clients.

  Sy was once a preeminent agent at the William Morris Agency, whose client roster included Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and Steve McQueen. But Sy’s favorite client was Sammy Davis Jr. Sy watched as Sammy exploded into stardom in the 1950s and continued on his upward rise through the 1960s, only to see his career come to a near standstill by 1970. Sammy still commanded high fees for his live performances, but he couldn’t find a music role, or a hit record, or a meaty television role. And despite millions in earnings, Sammy was always broke and living off of advances from various Las Vegas casinos. Sy knew Sammy was borrowing a hundred thousand here and another hundred thousand there to pay for a growing gambling habit, a private jet he leased from MGM studio head Kirk Kerkorian, and a weekly overhead of $25,000 for his entourage whether he worked or not. The loans began in the late 1950s, when Sammy borrowed $100,000 from Chicago mobsters associated with the Chez Paree club. The loan was interest-free, but in return Sammy promised to pay 20 percent of his earnings for fifteen years. To oversee the loan, a Chicago attorney Joe Borenstein was assigned to represent Sammy. Borenstein remained with Sammy through the 1960s, and by 1971, in a desperate bid for solvency, Sammy asked Sy to become his partner.

  Sy had been with William Morris for years, and planned on retiring from there a millionaire. But Sy was intrigued by Sammy’s offer, which included a 50 percent split of the profits. So after a discussion with his wife, Molly, he accepted it. Sammy and Sy formed a corporation, SYNI, and each drew on their individual expertise—Sammy on the stage, Sy in business—to make their partnership a success. Sy immediately slashed expenses—which included getting rid of the private jet—and he sought to create and capitalize on other opportunities aside from the $100,000 a week and more Sammy earned performing in Las Vegas. He got Sammy an Alka-Seltzer commercial that paid $250,000 for a single day’s work. He also got Sammy his own television show, Sammy & Company, and negotiated a new recording deal with Berry Gordy’s Motown Records.

  Sammy had recorded for Frank Sinatra’s Reprise label throughout the 1960s. But since Sammy didn’t write his own songs and the good tunes were always given to Frank, Sammy was left with a mediocre catalog and dismal sales. His work for Motown didn’t fare any better, and Motown owner Berry Gordy gave Sammy his master tapes following their breakup. Sy had them placed in a storage facility with other valuables important to Sammy, such as personal photos and scrapbooks, which Sonny found years later.

  Aside from Sammy & Company, Sy tried to find other vehicles for Sammy, but there was little interest. And despite a two-year run, Sammy &Company was roundly panned by critics, who ridiculed Sammy for everything from his poor interviewing skills to a penchant for laughing too hard at bad jokes and comments. Sammy’s bread and butter remained live performances. Their partnership dissolved in 1981, when Sammy turned to Shirley Rhodes and John Climaco.

  Sonny saw the slight old man with the sprightly step walk into the hotel lobby, and they sat on a couch to talk. It was Sonny who asked for the meeting, calling Sy at the suggestion of Mort Viner, and the hotel was near the health club. Sonny knew the conversation would produce no material gain for Sammy’s estate, but he was troubled. Sammy’s estate documents revealed issues with financial planning and the decision-making involved. Not once, Sonny believed, did the executors, John Climaco and Shirley Rhodes, make any attempt to save the estate. Sonny needed to hear more, and since it wouldn’t come from Brian Dellow, Sonny reached out to Sy, who was eager to talk.

  Sy told Sonny about his early relationship with Sammy, how he was in awe of Sammy’s talent, and how he tried so hard to deliver on television shows, movies, and records. He took credit for talking Sammy into doing “The Candy Man,” and took the blame for getting Sammy another shot at his own television show. But the partnership was fraught with problems from the beginning, he said. While Sy concentrated on the entertainment, others took over the business side.

  Sy told Sonny how he bought into the tax shelters with Sammy and, upon their breakup, he was forced to sell his $2 million Beverly Hills home to pay his IRS debt, after which he moved into a much smaller, $600,000 home.

  “You know I didn’t have anything to do with those tax shelters,” said Sy.

  “But you got the blame. Why did you let that happen?”

  Sy paused, and thought long and hard.

  “There were other people who were al
ways involved with Sammy,” said Sy. “And they controlled Sammy. I didn’t know it when we went into business, but when I found out I thought I could work around it. In the end, they destroyed me, just like they destroyed Sammy.”

  In May 1973, the National Highway Safety Foundation held its very first and only telethon. Famed game show host Monty Hall joined Sammy in hosting the event, which featured appearances by Muhammad Ali, Ray Charles, Dick Clark, Howard Cosell, Jerry Lewis, and a slew of others. Steve Allen was there with his wife Jayne Meadows, and Steve, as he was apt to do, talked into a little voice recorder, which he often carried with him.

  Steve noted into his recorder the heavy presence of organized crime figures lurking backstage and mixing in with Sammy and his extended entourage. Steve had seen mobsters before, but never in these numbers. And Sammy seemed to embrace them, even accepting a $10,000 check from Joe Colombo Jr., son of a New York Mafia leader who had been shot and critically wounded two years earlier.

  Also mingling backstage was Richard Wayman.

  Wayman was a partner with Ernst & Ernst, a major accounting firm in Cleveland. Aside from numbers, Wayman’s real love was shooting photos of auto wrecks. Beginning in the late 1950s, Wayman suddenly appeared at bloody crashes on Ohio’s highways with a handheld color camera and took pictures of the grisly aftermath of horrendous car crashes, body parts and all. Wayman gave appreciative police departments copies of his photos, and the somewhat ghoulish hobby turned into a full-time endeavor, with Wayman forming the National Highway Safety Foundation and producing films that were shown throughout high schools during the 1960s. Signal 30 won a National Safety Council Award, and Mechanized Death and Wheels of Tragedy were just a few of the other bloody gore-fests shown to students nationwide as part of their driver’s education courses. The NHSF was a nonprofit agency Wayman funded through bank loans, state, and federal grants. But in 1972 Wayman came up with another idea to raise money: adding Sammy Davis Jr. to his board of directors.

  Everyone knew that Sammy had lost his left eye in a car crash in 1954, and given Sammy’s national celebrity, his association would legitimize the foundation and help gain approval for additional state and federal grants. Wayman also needed star power to legitimize a telethon, and Sammy’s drawing power would not only entice other major celebrities to appear but it would elicit millions in pledges from the public. Sammy would be to highway safety what Jerry Lewis was to muscular dystrophy.

  Sammy agreed to lend his name to the foundation, and articles on highway safety bearing Sammy’s byline appeared in newspapers across the country. Soon after, in May 1973, Sammy hosted the NHSF telethon. The event raised a disappointing $1.2 million in pledges, yet Wayman reported receiving only $500,000. Wayman considered the telethon a success and scheduled another one for 1974, but he was forced to cancel it amid allegations that he and the NHSF received millions in bank loans using forged documents. Wayman’s accounting firm, Ernst & Ernst, which later became Ernst & Young, mysteriously agreed to pay over $5 million in defaulted NHSF loans to a Cleveland bank, but the state attorney general had already begun an investigation, probing whether the foundation was a front for organized crime to use the foundation’s nonprofit status to siphon millions in federal and state grants. Fearing prosecution, Wayman fled to California, where he immediately took on the role of Sammy’s business manager.

  Throughout his career, Sammy watched firsthand as Frank Sinatra built his reputation around talent and muscle, with the latter provided by Frank’s underworld friends from Chicago and New York. Frank didn’t ask, like everyone else, he ordered. And people responded. Sammy admired Frank’s power and his ability to make things happen. Sammy also liked the idea of associating with the same unsavory characters. Being feared meant being respected. But unlike Frank, who kept his business dealings with the underworld at arm’s length, Sammy jumped in headfirst, from borrowing money from Chicago mobsters to allowing his name to be used in various business ventures. Such was the case with Wayman, an eccentric who lived in a bus and dressed in tacky polyester suits.

  It was Wayman, not Sy, who took over Sammy’s career after his arrival in California in 1974, and it didn’t take Wayman long to involve Sammy in a number of business deals, one of which was the purchase of a building to house a television studio. They called it TAV, otherwise known as Transamerican Video, and Sammy taped his talk show there. They also opened Command Video, which was a production facility for new Beta and VHS formats, which had just been introduced to the market. Sammy, as was his usual way when it came to business, bet on the larger, Beta tape format. But the American public showed a clear preference for VHS, and Beta quickly fell out of favor.

  While the venture appeared to be a total bust, it wasn’t. Wayman’s affinity for blood and severed body parts on film transformed into a love for pornography, which he shared with Sammy, and Command Video, aside from its advertised business of producing television commercials and duplicating video tapes, was also used to duplicate porno movies onto video to be sold to stores around the country. During one embarrassing moment, executives from a major auto dealer visited Command Video to view their new television commercial. But when the commercial was played, a skin flick appeared instead.

  Sammy maintained a rigorous tour schedule and didn’t know—or didn’t want to know—what was really going on. There wasn’t much he could do anyway, given the people he was involved with. Wayman, for instance, gave a $50,000 check to one of Sammy’s employees to deposit into his personal account. The idea was to hold the check until it cleared, and then return the money to Wayman. But the FBI and IRS, investigating Wayman on a number of fronts, swooped down on the poor employee and charged him with money laundering. It took months before the employee could clear his name.

  Wayman became a corporate officer of SYNI and he concocted a number of other ideas and scams, from investing in a gourmet quail farm in Texas to Sammy’s sponsorship of the Greater Hartford Open golf tournament. Sammy was also involved in Daniel Boone Chicken, a fast-food chain in Tennessee designed to compete against Kentucky Fried Chicken. The chicken idea was nothing more than a ruse to use Sammy’s great name to entice investors unaware that the business was destined to close as quickly as it opened. The golf tournament, on the other hand, survived more than a decade, and was one of Sammy’s few legitimate business ventures. Sammy loved to play golf and he took great delight in the fact that his name was attached to an official Professional Golf Association event. Wayman also created the Sammy Davis Jr. Foundation for Highway Safety, yet another questionable nonprofit with no discernible purpose other than to collect proceeds from a two-record collection of Sammy’s greatest hits in 1975.

  Sy explained that all anyone had to do was say to Sammy, “You’ll be my partner,” and in his own innocent, childlike way Sammy would jump at the chance. But no one ever defined “partner,” and Sy grew increasingly frustrated with Sammy’s business dealings away from entertainment. He was also troubled by John Climaco, the young attorney from Cleveland, who was introduced by Wayman.

  Climaco graduated from law school in 1967 but within a few years he had built an impressive clientele that included many of Cleveland’s power brokers. He also represented a Cleveland civil service association, the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, and the city council. By 1974, Climaco had a new client: Sammy Davis Jr. It was Climaco who represented Sammy in a federal lawsuit alleging that he had personally taken part in the Daniel Boone Chicken scam. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed on a statute-of-limitations technicality, and it was Climaco who represented SYNI in various legal matters and who introduced Sammy to another famous client, Jackie Presser.

  A powerful Cleveland union leader, Jackie was the son of Bill Presser, a vice president of the Teamsters union and protégé of famed Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa. Together, the Pressers were among the most powerful members of the Teamsters union and served as trustees of the Central States Pension Fund, which was the richest Teamsters pension fund in the coun
try, known to law enforcement as the “mob’s bank.”

  Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the Central States fund had secretly lent over $1 billion in real estate loans for various projects in and around Las Vegas, from money for spanking-new hotels and casinos like Caesars Palace, the Stardust, Fremont, Aladdin, and Circus Circus, to golf courses and a hospital. But the fund was controlled by organized crime, and trustees like the Pressers took their orders from various mob families in Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Scranton, and Kansas City, and they directed tens of millions to Las Vegas. Organized crime held control over many of the casinos, which raked in tens of millions each year. And to fatten their profits, skimming had become the bread-and-butter operation. And to help propel the skim, the mob employed entertainers, particularly Sammy and Frank Sinatra, whose drawing power brought in more people than even the most popular conventions, which produced millions more for the skimming operations. Aside from taking their cut before taxes from all gambling receipts, the mob took money any other way it could, from parking, concessions, food, and placing loan sharks in the casinos to loan money to gamblers short on cash. They even reduced the winning percentages programmed into gambling machines, especially when Sammy or Frank performed. Their ability to draw large crowds increased the skim by millions, and by the late 1970s Sammy was among the mob’s most prized possessions. Along with Frank, Sammy was considered to be one of the mob’s best “earners.”

  The Central States fund propelled two decades of unprecedented growth in Las Vegas, and the Teamsters leaders held the kind of power and influence that allowed them to move freely within national political circles. The confluence of politics, entertainment, and organized crime served as a moving force in American culture. Presser and Teamsters president Frank Fitzsimmons played golf with President Nixon, and they regularly rubbed shoulders with senators, congressmen, and titans of business and entertainment, including Sammy, whose great celebrity continued to be exploited.