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

by Davis, Sammy

  I helped make her bed and I rolled myself up in a blanket alongside her.

  “Sammy, how’re you going to sleep at this hour?”

  “I’ll sleep fine.” I turned out the flashlight. Neither of us spoke. We just enjoyed the feeling of the new house and the glow from the lights of Los Angeles far below.

  “You happy, Mama?”

  “Yes. I’m happy. I love my house.”

  “You don’t want to leave me and go back to New York anymore, do you?”

  “No, I don’t want to go back to New York. But now you’re going to be leaving this beautiful new house you just got. Do you feel bad about leaving, Sammy?”

  “Yes and no. I’m always leaving some place.”

  “Well, someday you’ll miss it. Someday when it’s filled with your wife and children. You’ve gotta have reason to stay home. And that can’t be me. The Lord didn’t make it for children to love their folks the same way their folks love them. Don’t ever feel badly I miss you, Sammy, ‘cause missing you is part of loving you and I’m as glad for one part as the other. I’m as happy as I can be.”

  “As you can be?”

  “Someday I’ll be happier. When you’ve got someone to miss. That’s when I’ll know you’re happy. Good night. And thank you for my house.”

  I was sailing down the road doing forty around the curves when I spotted a Porsche coming up the hill, honking its horn. It was Jimmy Dean. He had Ursula Andress with him. We skidded to a halt in the middle of the road and he jumped out of the car looking like he was in costume for Giant, with the Levi’s and a cowboy hat and a rope in his hand. “Hey, Sam, I gotta show you something I learned in Texas.” In two seconds he had the rope spinning.

  “Hey, that’s a gas, Jimmy.”

  “And I’m getting a little faster with the guns.”

  “But you still have no chance against me, no chance at all, right?”

  He grinned. “I just got back for re-makes and dubbing, I’ll be here for a couple of weeks. Can I come over?”

  “I’m leaving town in an hour. We open Chicago tomorrow night.”

  He let the rope fall. “Oh. Okay … see you, Sam.”

  Some cars trying to get up the hill were honking their horns at us. “As soon as I get back we’ll get together. I’ve got something I want to tell you.”

  “Then I’ll call you when I hear you’re back.”

  “Please do, Jimmy. I really want to talk to you.”

  We got back in our cars and it was rrrrrrrr and away we went trying to see who could kick up the most dust.

  Dave opened the dressing-room door. “There’s a Finis Henderson outside.”

  Finis, a buddy since our early days around Chicago, stood in the doorway, holding back a smile. “Mr. Davis, I presume?”

  I played it angry. “Finis, where in the damn hell have you been? I’ve been in town since yesterday.”

  He held up his hands. “Please. Don’t raise your voice at me ‘cause I don’t need you. I’m poor but I’m proud.”

  “You silly nut, come on in here. Listen, this is Dave Landfield, my secretary, and you know Morty. Hey, where’re the rest of the guys?”

  He looked away. “Oh, I guess they’re busy or something …”

  “Busy or something?” I turned him around to face me. “What the hell is that? On my opening night? You’re lyin’ through your teeth, Finis. Now let’s have it. We go back too far for you to do mysteriosa bits with me.”

  “Well, you know … maybe they’re a little mixed up. They figure you’re living over here with the ofays, when you oughta be over there instead. They think maybe you’ve gotten a little snow-blind.”

  “Hold it, Finis. Look at my face. I’ve had my nose broken too many times to hear I’m an Uncle Tom.”

  “Well, they don’t understand. They read all the stuff in the papers and … well, they figure it must be true what people’ve been saying.”

  “And just what have people been saying?”

  “Oh, come on now, daddy, don’t put me on the rack. I came over here to see my buddy. If I want a third degree I’ll rob a store.”

  I pulled on my jacket and jammed a silk handkerchief into the breast pocket. “Boy, that’s beautiful. Wouldn’t you think they’d say, ‘Go, man! You’re makin’ it and you’ve got the strength swingin’ for you so live like you wanta live! Fight it for the rest of us.’ But instead, the immediate reaction is ‘Hey, whattya think about Sammy livin’ white?’ Instead of sayin’ here’s a cat who might make it a little better for all of us, they turn against me and I become an outcast. I don’t hear ‘Hey, crazy! Maybe I can follow him through that door.’ All they want is to drag me back to the gutter with them. Well, man, I ain’t comin’ back!”

  The door opened and my father looked in. “Sammy, can I see you a minute?”

  “Finis, we’ll talk later at the hotel. Go on out to the table.”

  I followed my father into his dressing room. He closed the door. “Sammy, maybe this ain’t the best time …”

  The expression on his face was terrible. “What’s wrong, Dad? You all right?”

  He nodded. “I’m okay; nobody’s sick or nothin’ like that. I just wanta ask you to help me out with something.” He opened a drawer and took a magazine out from under some shirts and pointed to the last line of a review on our Ciro’s run. “Although there is no telling what heights young Davis may reach, it is a certainty that Will Mastin and Sam Davis, Sr. will go down in show business history along with Gummo and Zeppo Marx, Irving and Morris Ritz, and the third Dolly Sister.” I shook my head, “Man, they’re after us all; you, me and Will.” I kept looking at it, stalling until I could decide what to say to him.

  He sat down on the bed. “Poppa, that guy’s laughin’ at us. What I was hoping is maybe you could talk to Jess Rand or somebody so maybe they wouldn’t write that stuff.”

  “Dad, Jess can’t do anything about this.” The hope fell from his face. “Look, leave it to me. I’ll think of something. I promise you I will.” I put the clipping in my pocket. “They just don’t understand. Come on. Hey, betcha I can make you laugh.”

  He looked at me, a smile on his face that his eyes didn’t know about.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, as most of you know I don’t usually do special material, like ‘Hello, hello, I’m back in Chica-go!’ But there’s something important I want to say and I have to do it in the way I know best. It’s been a long road that brought me here and I didn’t travel it by myself.” The music started lightly behind me. “I’d like to tell you about the two gentlemen you see here with me, my father and my uncle: two men whose presence on this stage gives me more class than I could ever have alone.” The music swelled and I started singing.

  “Everything I know they taught me,

  Everything I do they did.

  Everything I own they bought me,

  Guess I was a lucky kid.

  When I was a tot,

  I sang before I talked,

  Believe it or not I danced before I walked.

  Mama squawked, but my Dad and uncle taught me—

  They taught me everything I know.

  So I dug their licks,

  Grabbed their tricks, and what I got was for free …

  The future looks grand,

  United we stand,

  My daddy … my uncle … and me …”

  I bowed to my father and Will. The audience was applauding them, warmly, sincerely.

  When we got off I saw Freddie Robbins standing in the wings—a buddy from New York, one of the first disc jockeys to play my records, when I’d needed it. I walked over to him, smiling.

  “Great show, Sammy. Wonderful. Hey, Jimmy Dean just died.” I searched his face for a sign that it was a joke. “It just came over the air. Car crash. He was …”

  I went into the dressing room and closed the door. Dave was standing in front of the radio, his face ashen, listening to the report of how it had happened.

  I never got a chance t
o tell him. I never gave him the pleasure of hearing it. And he didn’t have that many people who told it to him.

  They started the commercial. A jingle. I ripped the plug out of the socket and the sound died.

  I sat down and looked at Dave. “We had him and all we did was brush him off. I did to him what I wouldn’t want anybody to do to me. I tolerated him. I treated him like a kook.”

  “But he never knew that.”

  “Of course he knew. He was a sensitive man. He felt everything. And I made jokes about him.”

  How could I have judged a man before I knew what he was all about? Me, who’s suffered from prejudgment. Oh, God, I just hope—as corny as it sounds—I hope he knows I mean it, that I wish I’d said to him, “I know you were my friend and I wish I’d been your friend, too.”

  After the second show, I borrowed a car and went for a drive by myself, circling through the winding road in the park, trying to shake the guilt that was ripping at me like an iron claw. I’d been so busy being Charley Star that I hadn’t seen a guy who was reaching out to be my friend. Even on the hill when I could have said something—I could have yelled, “Hey, you were great”—I’d wanted the pleasure of telling it to him just right.

  Why don’t you tell someone you appreciate them while you still can?

  The Chez was packed, and as I walked onstage, I scanned the room as I had every night since the opening. When I got off I sent for Donjo Medlavine, one of the owners. “Don, a straight question: are my people getting treated okay? I mean, your guy at the door isn’t giving them a hard time or anything?”

  “They’re treated the same as anybody else—when they show up. Last year there wasn’t a show we didn’t have a couple of tables

  “Thanks, Don. I’m sorry I asked. I should have known better.”

  The man behind the rich mahogany desk didn’t like me one little bit. He stood up and motioned for me to sit down, studying me as I’d been studying him from the moment I’d entered his office. He didn’t ask why I’d called for an appointment. He waited.

  “Mr. Johnson, why are you turning my people against me?”

  The faint smile disappeared. “We’re not trying to turn anyone

  “I didn’t say ‘trying.’ If I thought it was deliberate, I wouldn’t be here. But you’re doing it. Not so much in Ebony, but your guys on Jet have been bum-rapping me with little zingies in nearly every issue. I’ve been convicted of taking turn-white pills but I was never invited to the trial. Between your magazines, and the papers like the Defender and the Courier—all of them—you’ve been holding America’s first all-colored lynching. Now what I want to know is: why?”

  “Mr. Davis, you are the one who makes the news. All we do is print it. When you don’t like what you see published about yourself, please try to remember that it is only a reflection of the image which you have created.”

  “Well, there’s been a little distortion, folks, a little crack in the mirror.”

  He laughed unpleasantly. “Can you seriously be telling me that you haven’t gone out of your way to indicate a complete disavowal of racial ties, to disassociate yourself in every conceivable …”

  “Mr. Johnson, I didn’t come up here to do two choruses of nobody understands me. You’ve been printing your point of view. All I ask is that you listen to mine.”

  He settled back in his chair and smiled, not bothering to conceal his contempt.

  “A few weeks ago a Broadway column ran an item saying I turned down $25,000 a week in Miami Beach, because I refused to live in the colored section of Miami. Now the fact is I won’t live there, but that’s not why we turned it down. We were offered our own suites in the hotel that was trying to book us. We turned it down because my father, my uncle, and I have one firm rule: we don’t play where they won’t open their doors to colored people. The columnist obviously didn’t know about the suites, so the item came out sounding like I hate colored people so much that even for $25,000 a week I won’t live with them. Nice, huh? Okay, it’s bad enough when an ofay columnist does this—I can’t expect him to care enough to find out if maybe there’s something more to it—but when I see it picked up and run in the Negro press too, when I see it published by people who should be hoping and praying it’s wrong, when I hear the reactions and see I’m marked lousy and suddenly I’m not getting Negro customers where I’m playing—well, that hurts. I can’t say it ran in any of your magazines but I saw it in three Negro newspapers. Now I’m not looking for togetherness, but that’s inexcusable.”

  He sat forward slowly, frowning. “You’re perfectly right. It’s a story that should have been checked out with you just in the hope that it was wrong.”

  “Mr. Johnson, when I get to a town it’s not exactly a secret. There’s always a sign saying: ‘He’s in there.’ But my phone didn’t ring. I’ve never yet had one guy call me and say ‘Hey, Sam, this true what I hear?’ Not one.”

  “Well, as a newspaperman I can guess what happened with that particular item.” He leaned back in his chair again. “Whoever heard it was aware of your overall racial image, the item seemed to be in character …”

  “Wait a minute. Before you talk about my image like that’s it, lock the box, that’s what I’m here for. What did I do to get that image? Let’s go down the list A, B, C.”

  “If you insist. Offhand I remember an item we ran recently about your conductor. How do you, a prominent Negro, justify the use of a white man when you know how scarce good jobs are for Negroes?”

  “Mr. Johnson, Morty Stevens is one of two white men out of seven people who travel with me, he’s the best man I know of for the job, he’s arranged three hit songs for me and he’s one hell of a conductor. I’m not buying his color, I’m buying his music.”

  “And you couldn’t find as good a musician who’s a Negro?”

  “Maybe I could. But none of them have come to me looking for the job and even if they did I’m not about to fire Morty and hire them just ‘cause they’re colored and he’s white. Should I be prejudiced and do exactly what we hate when people do it to us? Aren’t we praying for the day when there’s no discrimination? Should we practice it ourselves? And don’t think the Negro community has a monopoly on giving me a hard time about Morty, because every time he walks onstage there are white customers nudging each other and whispering, ‘Hey, look, he’s got a white man working for him.’ Now my job is to make those people like me, and I’m hip to the fact that it’s not exactly endearing me to some of them to see a colored guy have a white guy working for him. It bothers them. But I can’t worry about anyone who wants to look at me and find fault. All I’ve got to worry about is: am I right?”

  “Fair enough. But one’s image is formed by many things: you live in hotels not open to the average Negro; you bought a house in a restricted area of Los Angeles …”

  “Right! I’ve got one of the best houses in Hollywood—and incidentally, the neighborhood’s not restricted any more. I’m a liberal, and I decided it would be wrong of me to boycott one of the best neighborhoods just because the people who live there are white.” He was smiling. “And about the hotels: they haven’t yet figured out how to build one as good as I want to live.”

  “Sammy, there’s no arguing with this kind of thinking, but you must see that it contributes to the impression which the average Negro has, that you have removed yourself from Negro life and have turned away from him.”

  “I haven’t turned away from anyone or anything except living in the gutter.”

  “But your way of living, your associations … the man on the street can only interpret them as—well, they’ll certainly never conclude that you’re proud of your race.”

  “Why do they have to conclude anything? People I never even met sitting around deciding what I oughta do! They’re out of their minds. The white cats are saying ‘He oughta live there’ and the colored cats are saying ‘He oughta live here’ and it always ends up with both of ‘em saying ‘Hell, he thinks he’s white’ and ‘Y
eah, he’s ashamed he’s colored.’ Bull! If I was ashamed of being colored would I present myself at the best hotel in town and expect them to let me in? And I don’t exactly go into those places figuring I’m going to pass!

  “Last year I made three quarters of a million dollars in an industry that’s ninety-five per cent white. Now seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars ain’t exactly a shoeshine boy! And while I’m raking it in I’m taking extra glory in the fact that I’m a Negro and I beat the odds—I made ten the hard way. I’m not so damned thrilled over the unnecessary problems I’ve had because I’m a Negro; that I had to work harder because I’m a Negro, and that I had to be better at what I do than if I were white. Sure, I’ve suffered because I’m a Negro, just like you’ve suffered, and a lot of us have, but I have never for one breath of my life been ashamed that I’m a Negro.

  “I’ll tell you this though, I’m plenty disappointed in the kind of support I’m getting from a lot of our guys. It’s lousy enough when I walk into a hotel and I’ve gotta feel a white guy looking at me, thinking ‘Why does he want to push his way in?’ and I’d love to sit down with him and ask ‘Why should I have to push my way in?’ But when I’m convicted by my own people, who should know better, what kind of acceptance can I hope for from the rest of the world?

  “I want my people to like me. I really do. It kills me when I pass a colored cat on the street and he gives me a look like I’m Benedict Arnold. But I can’t win him wrong. I’m not about to live by his rules or anybody’s. I refuse to be put in a bind and told ‘this is right and this is wrong’ by any group of people. If a guy says, ‘You gotta eat dinner at six o’clock,’ I want to know why do I have to eat dinner at six o’clock? Why can’t I eat at ten if I feel like it? ‘Well, that’s the way everybody else does.’ Bull! Who is it that makes these rules to run my life? And what makes him better than me? Sure, I obey laws made for the well-being of all people, I hurt no man except myself and I ask no man to hold his dinner hour until ten just to suit me. He likes to eat at six? Crazy. Let him eat at six. And I observe the customs of kindness and decency like holding doors open for ladies and lighting people’s cigarettes. But I refuse to recognize rules that try to tell me where to eat and whose cigarettes I’m going to light.” I pulled a wad of bills out of my pocket. “Y’see this money? It’s mine! Nobody gave it to me, Johnny, so there ain’t nobody gonna tell me how to spend it.