Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr.

by Davis, Sammy

  We laid off at Mama’s and every morning we’d go downtown to a booking office. When a call came in for an opening dance act, we were one of ten or twenty or a hundred who could fill the bill, so we’d sit there hoping it was we who had the strongest connection. And I was beginning to understand that’s how it was going to be all our lives. We weren’t an attraction that drew people to a theater, we were just a prop, a tool to open another man’s show fast and lively, interchangeable with countless others just as fast and just as lively. We were one of a million like us in a world that was buying tickets to see one-of-a-kind.

  When United Booking had closed for the day Will and my father went to dinner. I left them at the Paramount Building and walked up Broadway. People were streaming out of the office buildings and theaters and I was swallowed up by the thousands of bodies swarming around me, pushing past me. I was so tired of being lost in the crowd, just another face with no name, the performer nobody remembers the minute he steps off the stage.

  Lucky Millander’s band was doing the stage show at the Strand. A colored comedy act was just going on as I sat down. They were pros, funny as hell and I was laughing, but I wasn’t enjoying myself. Something was bothering me. I listened to them saying, “Ladies and Gen’men, we’s gwine git our laigs movin’, heah.” They were talking “colored” as Negro acts always did. I’d heard it a thousand times before, but for the first time it sounded wrong. They were labeling themselves. I watched them doing all the colored clichés, realizing that we were doing exactly the same thing. We’d always done them. They were an automatic part of our personalities onstage. It was the way people expected Negro acts to be so that’s the way we were. But now it was like I was seeing it for the first time and I almost couldn’t believe my ears. Why don’t they say, “Gentlemen”? Why must it be “Gen’men”? Isn’t there a way to give people laughs without doing it at our own expense? Must we downgrade ourselves? Must we be caricatures of cotton field slaves? We don’t all pull barges up the Mississippi. Can’t we entertain and still keep our dignity?

  If a white man ever said “Yassuh” to me I’d climb all over him. But how could I logically resent it from him when we were doing it ourselves, contributing a means for their mockery by characterizing all Negroes as good-natured, lazy, shuffling illiterates who carried razors, shot craps, lied, and ate nothing but watermelon, fried chicken and black-eyed peas.

  I went from theater to theater, wherever there were colored acts. They were all shuffling around, “Yassuhing” all over the stages. Does the public really want this? It doesn’t seem possible. If the joke is funny won’t they still laugh if we call them “Gentlemen”? They don’t expect every Jew to have a long nose and a heavy accent; not every Irish performer has to do “Pat and Mike” jokes so why must every Negro be an Uncle Tom?

  Then I saw the trap of it: they were making no personal contact with the audiences. None! And how could they even hope to with their real personalities camouflaged, buried beneath ten feet of “Yassuh, gen’men”?

  I studied the acts and saw that most Negro performers work in a cubicle. They’d run on, sing twelve songs, dance, and do jokes—but not to the people. The jokes weren’t done like Milton Berle was doing them, to the audience, they were done between the men onstage, as if they didn’t have the right to communicate with the people out front. It was totally the reverse of the way Mickey played, directly to the people, talking to them, kidding them, communicating with them.

  By a lifetime of habit, by tradition, I too had been cementing myself inside a wall of anonymity. It didn’t matter how many instruments I learned to play, how many impressions I learned to do, or how much I perfected them—we were still doing Holiday in Dixieland—still a flash act. That was how we set ourselves up so that was how the audience would see us.

  I strode the floor of Will’s room for hours, explaining everything I’d seen, everything I felt and wanted to do. He was gazing past me. “Okay, Sammy. The only thing is I’ve been doing an act one way all my life, the way I know, and making a living. Only a fool would throw away what he’s lived on for forty years. But I won’t stop you from trying new things if you believe in them. Maybe you’re right that we’ve been sneaking in the impressions instead of framing them to get the most out of them. Take a straight eight minutes in the middle of the act and use it however you want. But your father and me’ll do what we know and always did.”

  We were up North playing Portland when Will received a wire.

  “OPEN CAPITOL THEATER NEW YORK NEXT MONTH, FRANK SINATRA SHOW. THREE WEEKS, $1250 PER. DETAILS FOLLOW. HARRY ROGERS.” We passed that telegram back and forth like three drunks working out of the same bottle.

  My father was gazing at it, “I ain’t lookin’ no gift horse in the mouth, but I’m damned if I can figure how come us?”

  Will shrugged. “Frank Sinatra always has a colored act on the bill with him.”

  “Yeah, Will, but why us? I mean, with all the powerhouse acts around like Moke and Poke, Stump and Stumpy, the Nicholas Brothers, the Berry Brothers….”

  “We’re as powerhouse as the next and I guess Harry Rogers did a good job of agenting.”

  I stopped listening and counted the days on a calendar. We had three weeks to get ready. I could feel myself on the stage with our new act, smooth, organized, everything displayed to give it the best possible chance to go over—and at the Capitol Theater with Frank Sinatra where the world would have a chance to see us!

  Alan Zee, the general manager of the Capitol, came over to us at rehearsal. “You ran sixteen minutes. Gotta cut it. Too long. Drop the jokes, drop the impressions, all we want is the flash dancing. Just give me six minutes. No more.”

  I ran after him. “Is there any chance of taking a little time out of Lorraine and Rognan?”

  He kept walking. “Just cut your act. Don’t worry about anybody else’s.”

  “But, Mr. Zee …” He went through a door and closed it behind him.

  My father and Will walked over to me. “What the hell, Poppa. You’ll get another chance.” He put his arm around me. Will said, “Sure you will.” He hesitated. “I know how you feel, Sammy, but I hope you know that you can’t get away with what you did at the Strand. Not here. Not for $1250 a week.”

  I nodded. “I know, Massey.”

  On opening day, a Pinkerton man made a break in the line of kids so we could slip through and in the stage door. I put on my make-up and got into the zoot suit I’d had made. The waistline of the pants came up to my chest and the legs were like balloons around the knees, tapering down skintight at the ankle where they zippered closed. The coat was tight at the waist but the shoulders measured three and a half feet across and I had to walk sideways through narrow doorways. I had a four-foot dangle chain, and I’d changed the style of the day, slightly, by adding a cowboy hat for laughs. A guy in a short-sleeved shirt came in. “You Sam? Mr. Sinatra would like you to come by his dressing room.”

  Frank Sinatra came out of a second room, dressed in his shirt and tie, his valet behind him helping him into his jacket. “Hi’ya, Sam, good to see you. How’s your family?” As we walked toward the wings he smiled. “Glad we’re working together.”

  The house lights were down, the orchestra played the first bars of “Night and Day,” the pit rose with Skitch Henderson conducting, the curtains opened, Frank Sinatra was onstage and the kids began stamping their feet, screaming hysterically and leaping up and down as though the seats were hot. He sang three numbers to get the show started. Then he said, “We’ve got three cats here who really swing and they’re all too much but keep your eye on the little cat in the middle, because he’s my boy! Here they are, ‘The Will Mastin Trio and Sammy Davis, Jr.’ ”

  Frank took me completely under his wing. He didn’t just say, “Well, you’re working and that’s fine.” He had our names up out front, he was wonderful to my family, and he had me to his dressing room between almost every show. If I was there at dinner time he’d take me out to eat with hi
m. Every time we stepped through the stage door there were hundreds of kids waiting for him, and it took us half an hour to walk the twenty feet across the sidewalk to his limousine. They even screamed at me, “Oh! You touched him. Let me touch you.” Day after day they were in line for tickets at six in the morning, holding bags of sandwiches, and they wouldn’t come out until late at night.

  I stood in the wings at every performance watching him work. He’d walk to the microphone like he had nothing better to do, arriving there at exactly the moment his cue came up. As he rolled through a song I could see him almost smiling as he got to certain phrases, knowing the bobby-soxers were going to swoon as he sang them, and they did, on cue as if he’d pressed a button. His effect on the audience was awesome: they held their breaths during the quiet moments of a song as if they’d rather stop breathing than break the spell. They were completely involved with him, reacting to every shading of his voice, finding meaning in every gesture. Like Mickey, he was touching them, taking a mass of people and making them care.

  “Pretty great, isn’t he?”

  Sidney Piermont, the head of all Loew’s booking was standing beside me. I whispered back, “He’s unbelievable, Mr. Piermont.”

  We walked toward the dressing rooms together. “Your trio is doing a fine job.”

  “Thank you very much, sir.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he smiled, “I fought against hiring you.” He saw that I didn’t understand. “You were booked strictly because Frank insisted on you. When I was lining up the show I asked him who he wanted. He said, ‘Get Skitch to put the band together.’ Then, for the opening act I suggested the Berry Brothers and he said, ‘Yeah, fine. No, wait a minute. There’s a kid who comes to my radio show when he’s in town, he works with his family, his name is Sam something. Use him.’ I tried to figure out who he meant. ‘You don’t mean Will Mastin’s kid?’ He said, ‘Yeah, that’s them.’ I was totally against it. I told him, ‘I know they worked the Loew’s State with Mickey Rooney and the kid did a lot of time onstage, but they’re unknowns, why gamble on them?’ Frank insisted, so I said, ‘All right, Frank, if you want ‘em you got ‘em. How much do you want to give them?’ ‘Make it $1250.’ Well, that was ridiculous. I argued, ‘We can get the Nicholas Brothers for that kind of money and they’ve even got a movie going for them. They’re hot.’ He said, ‘$1250. That’s it. I don’t want the Nicholas Brothers. I want Sam and his family.’ ”

  Frank had never even hinted at it. Just, “Glad we’re working together.” Like it was a surprise to him, too.

  He invited the cast to a Thanksgiving dinner the day before closing. He had a basement rehearsal hall converted into a party room and his mother sent over pots and pots of delicious home-made Italian food. We were eating our heads off when somebody yelled, “Hey, Sammy, do the thing for Frank like you did for us.” I’d been playing around with an impression of him. I hadn’t done one since the army but being with him all the time I was able to catch the physical things he does, his hands, his mouth, and his shoulders, as well as the voice.

  He said, “Let’s see it, Sam.” He had no idea what it was and I was afraid he’d be offended. But he laughed, “Beautiful, beautiful. It’s a scream. Listen, I want to talk to you tomorrow.”

  The next afternoon in his dressing room he asked, “Why don’t you sing?”

  “Well, I sing when I do impressions, but as far as straight singing goes I made a few sides, but Capitol’s melting ‘em down for candles. I don’t have a style of my own.”

  “Let me hear some of the impressions.” I did a few and he began shaking his head. “You’re ridiculous if you don’t put those in the act. And you definitely should sing. Straight. You’ve got the voice, work on it, develop a style. And you should do as many of those impressions as you can. Do them all.” He frowned. “You should have been doing them here. You wasted three weeks of important exposure.”

  There was no point explaining that they’d been cut.

  After the closing show, the members of the company came to his dressing room to say goodbye. I stood off to the side thinking how a star of Frank’s stature had taken the time and thought to help me. We were so many miles apart in every way that it was hard to imagine why he would reach out for me as he had. When the last of them were gone I tried to let him know how grateful I was.

  He gave me an “are you kidding?” look and we shook hands. “So long, Sam, I’ll be seeing you.” He looked me straight in the eye. “Anything I can ever do for you—you’ve got yourself a friend for life.”

  I nodded the best thank-you I could and went for the door. He called out, “Hey, Charley.” I turned. He was smiling. “Take care of yourself, Charley. And remember—if anybody hits you, let me know.”

  9

  “This is where we oughta be, Massey.” I handed him an article about Celebrity Night at Slapsie Maxie’s, a club in Los Angeles owned by Ben Blue and Sammy Lewis. “We’ve got the act now and this is the showcase we need. Everybody in the business would see us.”

  We hit the stage at Slapsie Maxie’s like Joe Louis went for Schmeling, the second time. My father and Will stepped back, I did Satchmo, Lionel Barrymore, Edward G. Robinson, Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, Sinatra and Danny Kaye—and I did them directly to the audience. Our music came in over the applause, my father and Will moved forward and as we swung into our closing number our normally frenzied dancing was frantic.

  The audience, mostly show people, was giving us a tremendously warm ovation and I wanted to do something more than just stand there bowing and smiling our thanks.

  I stepped forward. They were quieting down to listen to me. I felt the cold of the mike against my hands. I’d never before spoken a word onstage that hadn’t been prepared in advance, but they were waiting. “Ladies and gentlemen, you can’t imagine what this means to my father and …” I couldn’t possibly say “Mr. Mastin” or “our friend Will.” I said, “my father, my uncle and me.”

  We were booked for two weeks. I’d just come off stage when I caught a look at myself in the dressing room mirror. I looked again, staring at my zoot suit. It was horrible! I’d thought of it as a timely costume which got big laughs but I was doing exactly what I despised in other Negro performers—making people laugh at me. I was saying, “Gen’men” with those clothes just as loud and clear as if I’d come shuffling on singing “Old Black Joe.” I tore it off my body, unable to get out of it fast enough, and dropped it in the trash can.

  A few nights later, a middle-aged woman came backstage and said, “I just had to meet you to tell you that when you first came onstage I thought, There’s the most unattractive man I’ve ever seen.’ But fifteen minutes after you started performing I thought you were beautiful.” She turned and left.

  Something had happened during my performance. I must have touched this one woman. I must have gotten through to her enough so she couldn’t see anything but what I was trying to do as a performer. I wanted to ask her a dozen questions. Maybe she’d be able to tell me when I’d changed and maybe I could analyze why. I searched for her in the audience every night but she never came back. I was lifted to the skies by the knowledge that it was within me to touch an audience, but after all the wondering and testing and trying, it was killing to not know what thing or combination of things had accomplished it for me.

  The stage manager handed me a cablegram. “THE REVIEWS WERE GREAT. KEEP IT UP. FRANK.”

  I showed it to Will and my father, then looked at it again, seeing that it had come all the way from Spain, realizing that almost a year had passed since the Capitol. And what a rotten year it had been for him. His radio shows were off the air and his records had begun dropping on the charts. For no logical reason he’d cooled off and his career was in a serious decline. I hung the cablegram on the dressing room mirror. “Can you imagine a guy like this? With all his troubles….”

  Our name was getting around, people were starting to say, “Hey, y’oughta catch that new act at Slapsie Maxie’s,” and we wer
e actually attracting a few customers. We’d taken the job for $200 a week, just to be seen, but we closed riding such a crest of good talk and publicity that when we signed for our next date, the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco with Buddy Rich and his band, our price went to $550 a week and stayed there as we played our way across the country to New York.

  I saw Buddy Rich standing on Broadway outside the Brill Building. He introduced me to the fellow he was with, Marty Mills, and nodded toward the second-floor windows of the Brill Building that said “Mills Music” in gold letters. “Marty’s plugging songs for his old man. C’mon with us. We’re going over to Mel’s rehearsal.” Perry Como had a fifteen-minute TV show every night on CBS and Mel Tormé and Peggy Lee were his summer replacements. I felt very “inside” going over there to drop in on a friend’s rehearsal.

  Marty, Buddy and I were together constantly. We formed a club, a very secret organization. Marty was X1-69, Buddy was X2-69 and I was X3-69. We’d call each other on the phone and say, “Hello, X1? This is X2. We’re meeting in front of the Paramount at 12:30.”

  Marty found four old police badges in a pawnshop. We each had big gold “Chief Inspector” badges. The fourth was silver. Buddy said, “C’mon let’s go over and show Mel.”

  It was a silly time in our lives. We were grown men in our twenties, but we walked into the studio wearing our badges Secret Service style, concealed behind our lapels. Mel was just finishing a number. We walked over to him and flashed them.

  “Hey, how about me?”

  Buddy was firm. “Sorry, Mel, you can’t join.”