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

by Davis, Sammy

  I closed his door behind me. How can he not understand? He’s too smart not to see the value of it. How can he be blind to something so obvious?

  In the dressing room at Ciro’s, I spread albolene on my face and began covering it with powder. Dave was watching me. “Sam, how come you use that dark powder?”

  I let the powder puff drop to the table. “Oh! You’re out of line. You’re so out of line you’re like a bowl of spaghetti.”

  “Seriously. I’m working for you, I oughta know these things.”

  “Baby, it’s for the lights. It cuts down the glare. What should I use, white powder? You want me to look like I’ve been rolling in a flour bin?”

  I noticed Nathan helping my father into his jacket in the other room. I’d never seen him do that before. As he slipped his arm into the sleeve his face contorted in pain. I got up and went in. “What’s wrong, Dad?”

  “Nothin’ wrong, Poppa.” He was holding his right hand behind his back.

  “Let’s see it.”

  He showed it to me, reluctantly. It was swollen to half again its normal size. “It don’t look too good but it ain’t broke, just sprained.” He smiled, “I kinda bumped it into a guy’s jaw last night.”

  I shook my head slowly, putting him on. “Dad, I’ve warned you about those bust-out joints with the half-dollar doubles.” I kept needling him, but I noticed that although he and I were laughing Nat and Will weren’t. “Hey, is there something I don’t know?”

  Will said, “Sammy, you might as well know the facts. It happened ‘cause Sam heard someone insulting you.”

  My father looked away. “No need makin’ a big thing outa nothin’, Will.”

  “What happened, Dad?”

  “Oh, I was at this bar and some guy didn’t know I was your old man and he happened to mention a joke they’re tellin’ about you, so I stepped over and told him, ‘Y’know, you got a lotta mouth.’ ” He stopped and winked at me. “And the fact is, Poppa, he’s got lots more mouth today than he had last night.” He sighed. “I’d sure hate to be wearin’ his jaw right now.”

  “Which joke was it?” I kept looking at him, but he wasn’t going to tell me.

  Will’s voice was quiet. “Sammy, I’ll tell you the joke, because it’s not the first one like it … about you trying to be white. And I think you ought to know about it.” The dampness of his face gave away how much effort it was taking for him to pronounce the words. “It’s a joke about you sitting in Danny’s Hideaway in New York when some guy looks at you and calls out: ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger!’ and you jump up and yell: ‘Where? Where? Where?’ ”

  “Thank you, Massey.” I put my hand on my father’s arm. “I’m sorry.”

  I slowed down outside of Warner Brothers so the guard could recognize me and I gave him a Charley Star smile as he waved us through. Dave and I wandered around the sets and were watching a fight scene being rehearsed when I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Y’lookin’ for work as an extra?”

  “Hugh! Whattya say, old buddy? And cool it with the ‘extra’ jazz ‘cause I ain’t had no better offers. Hey, y’doing any pirate shows? Maybe y’need a small colored fella to hang from a yardarm? I’ve even got my own patch. Excuse me, do you know Dave Landfield? Dave, this is Hugh Benson.”

  Hugh said, “We’re screening Rebel Without a Cause, the Jimmy Dean picture. You interested?”

  “Sure. He’s sort of a friend of ours.” Dave gave me a look.

  As I sat in the screening room watching Jimmy Dean’s performance, it suddenly hit me: “Holy God! This guy’s a genius.”

  The traffic was bumper to bumper back to L.A. I didn’t say a word. All I could think was how I used to see him sitting in the corner of the room literally absorbing people and all I figured was he must be some kind of a kook. A sensitive, talented guy sat in my house every night for a month, reaching out for my friendship, and all I gave him was bits like “Are you here again, Jimmy?”

  “Whattya say, chicky? How’s the cover boy of the scandal magazines?”

  “You’re a bundle of laughs, Jess.” I pulled a chair up to his desk. “Listen, is there something happening at Disneyland tomorrow?”

  “They’re having the big pre-opening thing for celebrities and their families—you know, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Famous at Disneyland with their little monsters.’ ”

  “How come I wasn’t invited? I’m not exactly an unknown.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Well, right off the bat I can think of two reasons. First, you’ve got no kids. Second, they’re going for the wholesome, family kind of publicity, so if there are three guys in the world they’d make a point of overlooking, chicky, it would be Rubirosa, Errol Flynn, and you.”

  “You’re a very funny man, Jess.”

  “Hey, I was just doing bits.” He took a manila envelope out of a filing cabinet and handed me a stack of clippings. “Maybe you don’t read all this stuff but it’s my business so I have to.”

  The top one, a scandal magazine, another of the dozens of imitators of Confidential, had me and June Allyson on the cover. “Do you realize what a horrible, unfair thing this is? Here a woman was kind enough to come backstage on my opening night at Ciro’s, with her husband, for one minute to say, ‘Hey, I liked your show.’ So for that they smeared her. That’s all she did. The only time I ever met her.” I dropped the magazine into a wastebasket.

  “Chicky, face it: you’re a sex symbol.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “Come on, cheer up. Look at the bright side of it: at least they’re not calling you a fag.”

  “Jess … this’ll kill you, but I don’t think of myself as somebody who can’t be seen around decent people. It’s not exactly what I worked my whole damned life for.”

  The phone was ringing as I got to my suite in the Garden of Allah. Dave grabbed for it. “Hello? Oh! … yes, sir. One second please, he’s right here.” He held the phone out to me like it was hot, his face blanched of its color, and mouthed the words: “It’s Frank Sinatra.”

  “Hi’ya, Charley, listen, you dig all this Donald Duck jazz. You want to go to a thing at Disneyland tomorrow?”

  His children were leaning out of the back window waving to me, and the sight of them almost threw me. It had seemed impossible that he’d be going to Disneyland without them, yet, knowing how he protected them like all the gold in Fort Knox, I’d wondered if he’d let them be seen with the town monster.

  The radio was on and as we drove a disc jockey said, “Now, the number one record in the country, Sammy Davis, Jr.’s ‘Black Magic’!”

  “Turn off that record, Charley. Get another station.”

  “Oh, sure, Frank. Gee, I wouldn’t want to make you jealous, I mean a man with an Oscar and all …” I turned to the next station. “Here it is, folks, number one, Sammy Davis, Jr.’s ‘Black Magic.’ ”

  Frank smacked the steering wheel. “For crying out loud, I can’t listen to anything on that radio but you!”

  “You want me to change it, baby?”

  “I’ll baby you! Leave it.”

  When it was over he turned off the radio. “The records are good, Charley, but you’re not singing yet. You’re performing. You’re doing them like you do them in clubs, but on a record you don’t have the physical moves going for you, there’s only one dimension to work with—the voice. On this one it comes across, but on some of them you don’t. I don’t mean they’re not good, but they don’t translate unless people can see you, so you’re cutting down your percentages for a hit. But I’m not worried about you. One day you’ll be singing.”

  The guard waved us through the gates at Disneyland, we pulled into the parking lot, and the photographers crowded around before Frank could open his door. I stayed in the car while he and the children got out. I turned my face away from the mob and tried to keep busy tying my shoelaces. I could hear them yelling, “One more with your arms around the kids, Frank?” … “Can you move closer together, please?”

  There was a knock o
n the window. Frank was beckoning me with his finger. “Hey, Charley, did we come here together or not? Let’s go, let’s get into these pictures.” He pulled me over and put one arm around his children, rested the other on my shoulder, and the photographers began shooting. I looked at him smiling at the world through those cameras, as much as saying, “In your ear. He’s my friend.”

  We walked around the park looking at the rides and saying hello to almost everyone we passed. Frank hadn’t invited me just for fun. He’d known there would be newsreels, wire services, that almost everyone in the industry would be there, and he’d wanted to give me the value of association so that some of his tremendous public favor might rub off on me. I turned to watch one of the rides and when I looked up Frank was a few feet ahead of me talking to someone. He had one arm around Tina and Frank, Jr. and his other hand was unconsciously stroking Nancy’s head.

  He walked over to me. “What’re you looking at, Charley?”

  “I don’t know, I was just thinking about you and the kids. Frank … thank you for bringing me here.”

  He brushed it off. “Come on. Y’wanta be late for Donald Duck’s party?”

  The man at the Morris office leaned across his desk. “Mr. Davis, have you any idea how much money you owe?”

  “Is that all you wanted to see me about?”

  “But Mr. Davis, it’s—”

  “Look, Mr…. uh …”

  “Marcus.”

  “Mr. Marcus. I know it’s your job and all that jazz but I’m really not that interested.” He seemed hurt. “Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m only in town for a few more days and well, life’s too short.”

  “You’ll find that when you owe money you make it a good deal shorter.”

  There was something about the way he said it and the way he was looking at me, like it meant so much to him. I decided to humor him. I sat down. “All right, how much? Twenty? Thirty thousand?”

  He slid a piece of paper across the desk to me. It was blank except for “$106,050.”

  I scanned his face. He wasn’t the type to do bits. Too square. I said, “Pardon the old joke but how successful can you get?” He didn’t laugh. “Hey y’know, there should be a thing called Spenders Anonymous, like a switch on the old joke? When a guy’s a spender he joins S.A. Then when he feels close to trouble he calls up another member and says, ‘I’ve got a horrible urge to go to Tiffany and the other guy says, ‘Sit tight, I’m on my way over.’ Then they go out and booze it up. Heh, heh … uh … well …”

  “Mr. Davis, have you any idea how much money you must earn in your bracket in order to pay your debts?”

  “Listen, as long as you brought it up—and I’m not kidding now—just what the hell is a tax bracket?”

  “I’ll explain it in detail later. But first I must make you aware of the fact that because your earnings are so large you pay a tax of approximately ninety cents on every dollar, and therefore, in order for you to personally accumulate $100,000 you must earn one million dollars! Or, to put it more dramatically, you are in debt for the next million dollars you earn.”

  I stood up. “Look, if this is some kind of a joke I don’t get it and I’m leaving ‘cause I don’t dig your humor and I didn’t owe any million dollars when I walked in here!”

  “Please, Mr. Davis, sit down. I realize it’s a shock, but it’s long past time for you to treat your finances seriously or you’ll be in debt for the rest of your life. Now, I sympathize with your position. I’m aware of how easy it is to fall into the trap of knowing that your income averages $15,000 a week and that when you see a car you might automatically think, ‘I can afford it, it’s only a third of a week’s salary.’ In your case, you split your income three ways, so perhaps you think, ‘I make $5000 a week, it’s only a week’s salary, I’ll buy it.’ But that kind of thinking will be your destruction.

  “You must entirely forget the amounts you earn because the largest part of it will never touch your hands. You must learn to think only in terms of the money you will actually receive. By that I mean your salary of a thousand dollars a week from the Trio.”

  “Look, without the details, obviously I’m in trouble. Can I get out of it?”

  “I believe so. And, we can help you, if you’ll cooperate. Now let’s go over these bills from George Unger, Saks Fifth Avenue, Abercrombie and Fitch, Sulka, ad infinitum. I want you to show me which items are personal and which might be considered business expenses.”

  An hour later we were shaking hands and he was saying, “If you don’t spend in excess of your salary, we’ll be able to straighten you out in a reasonable amount of time. But remember, we can only do it if you have large income. Although you’re making a great deal of money today, there’s no guarantee that in two or three years you’ll still be doing this well, so you dare not let this get further out of hand.”

  I walked a few blocks, mulling it over. The poor guy had been so solemn, he’d seemed so worried that I couldn’t resist doing a bit with him. I bought a gold cigarette case and had it engraved: “Thank you for the advice. Gratefully, Sammy, Jr.” What the hell, so I’d owe a hundred thousand plus another six hundred.

  Mama was sitting on a chair in the front hall, wearing her hat and holding her umbrella. Her suitcases were standing near the door. “Sammy, I’ve got my carfare and I’m going back to New York to a furnished room.”

  My father and Peewee had adopted two little girls, Sandy and Suzette, and when we’d gone on the road Mama, Peewee, and the kids had moved into my house.

  “Mama, what’s wrong?”

  “There’s nothing wrong that you’ve done, but I can’t live here any more. If it’s not the children screaming then it’s Peewee having her friends over for company. I don’t blame her. I know it gets lonely for her with Sam on the road and all. And when he’s home they’re always having parties and people come up and I don’t know what anybody’s talking about and I can’t hear the television. Last night Sam was all juiced up and I just can’t take it any more so I’m leaving. It’s the only thing I can do to get some peace and quiet. I’m an old woman, Sammy, and I need my rest.”

  As she spoke I realized that as much as I loved her, I hadn’t taken the time to really look at her in years. Sure I’d kissed her and hugged her and listened to her words, but I’d missed the most important part. The history of her lifetime was indelibly etched into her face, and there was no disguising it with a new dress or a smile. It was all there: the hard work, the struggling, the years of hoping the relief check would arrive on time—I could see what it had cost her to buy me the drums, and the food she would never have bought for herself, to never have a day in all these years when she didn’t worry about me. But I hadn’t taken the time to worry about her, the one person in the world who never stopped thinking about me. I sat down next to her. “Mama … I’m sorry …”

  “Sammy, you’ve been good to me, and I know you’ve done everything you could.”

  “Mama, please, don’t leave me. I need you.” I took the umbrella out of her hand. “Give me three days and I’ll have a house for you. A home like I always said we’d have. Please. Now come on, give me your hat and don’t worry. I’ll get you a house. Just don’t go back to New York.” I kissed her and rushed out to the car.

  Dave was in our suite at the Garden of Allah. “Baby, how much have I got in the bank?”

  “Goose egg. You had about six thousand but I wrote checks for those bills you were going to pay.”

  “They’ll have to wait. I’ve got to buy a house.”

  “But I thought you were going to cut down.”

  “That’s all fine and good but I’ll have to start next week.” I sat down and made a list of club owners. Julie Podell at the Copa, Dallas Gerson and Dave Dushoff at The Latin Casino in Philadelphia….

  Dave was looking over my shoulder at the names and the figures next to them. “What happens if they say no?”

  “They won’t.”

  The problem w
as going to be the racial thing and I didn’t have that kind of time to lose. I’d have to ask Herman Hover to help me.

  I stood at a window in the living room stunned by the sight of Los Angeles spread out for miles below.

  The broker was aghast. “Are you sure you don’t want to see any others?”

  “I don’t have to. This is it. Can you wait here for fifteen minutes?”

  Mama was watching television. “I’ve got the house, Mama. Let’s go see how you like it.”

  “I’ll change my clothes.”

  “Don’t bother about that. You look beautiful.”

  “Sammy, stop dragging me. You’re getting me out of breath. If the house won’t be there long enough for me to see it without running, then it can’t be much of a house to live in.”

  I got her into the car and zoomed up the hill. “You’re going to love it. It used to be Judy Garland’s. It’s on three levels ‘cause it’s built on the side of a hill. I figured out how you could have your own private apartment. We’ve got about five acres of land—there’s no swimming pool, but we’ve got plenty of space to build one someday.”

  “Well, that’s good, Sammy. You know how I need my swim every day.”

  I opened the front door and led her into the living room. She broke into a smile. I took her from floor to floor, I was racing ahead of her, in one room and out the other. “Now in here’s where I figured we could …” I looked around. “Mama? Where are you?”

  “Sammy.” Her voice was coming from outside. “I’m out in the yard, Sammy.” She spotted me in the window. “How’d I get down here?” She started laughing so hard the tears were rolling down her face.

  Two days later, I walked into her old bedroom and turned off the television set. “The house is yours. We’re moving in tonight.”

  “I can’t move in tonight. There’s no furniture and the electricity has to be put on and …”

  “Mama, I’m leaving town tomorrow and I want to spend one night in your new house with you. You’ve got bed linen and Dave and Arthur’ll help me bring over your bed, and I can sleep on the floor.”