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

by Davis, Sammy

  “Have you given your own religion an opportunity to fill that void?”

  “Well, my father’s a Baptist and my mother’s a Catholic but I wasn’t raised very close to either of those faiths.”

  “Wouldn’t you think it advisable to examine and understand what you already have before you trade it away for something else? What’s wrong, Sammy?”

  “Rabbi … I hope you won’t misunderstand this, but I want to be totally honest with you. I get a feeling that when I talk about becoming a Jew … well, nobody seems to get too choked up about the idea.”

  “Sammy, if I brought a grown man to you and said, ‘He hasn’t been able to make a living in real estate but he’s read a lot of books on show business and he’s thinking about becoming a performer, so I’d like you to put him in your act’—what would you tell me?”

  I felt the heat of embarrassment crossing my face. “I apologize for making an idiot of myself.”

  “Don’t apologize. But don’t be so sensitive either. Race has absolutely nothing to do with our reluctance to rush you into conversion. You should know that from the reading you’ve been doing. I’m sure you’ve come across Isaiah’s pronouncement ‘My house shall be a house for all people.’ You must have seen that one of the primary tenets of Judaism is a hospitality to differences.

  “Sammy, a rabbi is a teacher. I’m here to help you find what you want, not to act as a membership committee to accept or reject you. In your reading you must have seen that we do not urge people to convert. Would we, of all people, tell others ‘You should think our way’? But that does not mean we aren’t delighted to find someone who does. We cherish converts, but we neither seek nor rush them. We don’t want today’s enthusiasm to be tomorrow’s disappointment.

  “In the case of the majority of converts—people marrying into Judaism and wishing to be wed in a religious ceremony and to raise children in a home which has religious harmony—we put them through a course, teach them the essentials, and hope that it takes. If it does, wonderful, but if it doesn’t, we realize it was a conversion for practical purposes not motivated by the needs of the heart, therefore nobody can be hurt if the convert does not develop a true belief in Judaism. But yours is a much more delicate situation. You’re wide open. You come to us looking for something. You place a trust in us and we dare not betray it. We want Judaism to serve you, to bring you comfort, joy—everything a religion might mean to one—but it can only do so if approached properly, with the fullest possible understanding of what it offers. You may in a short while decide it’s not all you thought it was cracked up to be. On the other hand, and I believe this will be the case, I think that your appreciation and enjoyment of Judaism, your benefit from it, will be broadened by the extent to which you understand it.”

  “Well, I realize I’ve got to do a lot more studying, but … I don’t know, I just hate to put off doing something I feel so sure of.”

  “Don’t put it off. Identify yourself as a Jew. Study, attend services, associate yourself with whatever Jewish organizations your traveling will permit. When you come down to it, what is the act of being a Jew? It’s not a secret ceremony or a special handshake, it’s an approach to life, an adherence to a set of principles, to a moral code, the acceptance of a standard of human ethics and behavior. Obviously much of our thinking was yours before you even met a rabbi or you wouldn’t have related to it. But know everything you possibly can before you make up your mind. Read more. Take time. Come back and see me. I will always be available to you. We’ll talk about what you’ve read and about what you think, and we’ll explore what you believe in. But let me caution you not to expect to find Judaism in books. They’ll only present the philosophy, its history, its evolution; they will give you knowledge which may or may not translate within you so that some day you will come to me and say ‘Rabbi, I’m a Jew.’ ”

  The road was lined with so many trucks that I had to park a couple of hundred feet away from my house. The big CBS portable transmitter was parked directly in front.

  “Person-to-Person” had been in touch with Jess Rand about visiting me. They’d worked out a date, and although we’d barely begun to furnish the house, I couldn’t afford to pass up the importance of that kind of exposure, so almost overnight I had to get the house furnished.

  I stepped carefully over the cables that were leading inside, and stood in the foyer. Crews of workmen were swarming around the place hammering down carpet, putting up curtains and draperies, bringing in chairs, lamps, pictures, and parts of beds, working with hectic efficiency—like they were putting together a movie set.

  Mama was rushing around in the middle of it all, dusting things that hadn’t been put in place yet. I kissed her hello, ducked around a CBS engineer who was stringing wire from one room to another and retreated to a big, black leather couch. I took off my jacket, opened my shirt collar and sat there doing the “Squire of my castle” bit, looking around and beaming and watching it being created in front of me.

  The microphones and cameras were set up and ready to go on the air while the last pictures were still being hung. An engineer was going through the house taking telephones off the hooks. I got the signal from the director, I saw the little red light flash on the front of the camera and Ed Murrow was saying, “Good evening, Sammy. May we come in and visit with you for a while?”

  My father hugged me, lifting me off the floor. “Poppa, I’m the proudest, happiest man in the world that I lived to see this happen.” We were in the way of the CBS technicians who were taking down apparatus. I led him into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. “Poppa, I kept watching the set and telling myself that’s my son there talking to Edward R. Murrow, giving him that ‘won’t you come in, Mr. Murrow’ like you was Harry Truman, and him sayin’ ‘thank you for letting us come visit you.’ I guess I just come to take it all for fact ‘cause it all come so slow, but when I saw you on the TV set and I recalled the days we was glad to find a place to rest our heads—well, it just hit me all at once how big you got, and with the whole country seein’ it like that, it shook me so bad that I sat there cryin’ like a kid. The way you talked, everything about you … it was like what you always wanted.”

  The phones started ringing with calls from friends who’d seen the show. Around midnight it quieted down. My father watched me tying my tie and helped me into my jacket. “Goin’ out to take a few bows, Poppa?”

  I picked one of the show business hangouts on the Strip where I knew they had a TV set over the bar. A guy who works for the Morris office rushed toward me. “Hey, I just saw the ‘Person-to-Person’ thing. It was a gas. Jesus, your house looked like too much! That was a nice touch having your grandmother there. And those closets you got. Man, I’d like to have a hotel room that big.”

  “Thanks, baby. Glad you liked it.”

  “Listen, y’want a laugh? It’s a gag about your new house. It’s a little racial, but it’s so cute you’ll love it. The way it goes is your grandmother’s been living in the house for about a week when one of the neighbors says to her husband, ‘It’s the damnedest thing. I see the maid going in and out all the time but the people who live there never leave the house.’ ”

  He was laughing, waiting for me to laugh too. As he began to realize I wasn’t going to, the smile died on his face. “It’s just a gag, Sam … hey, you know I didn’t mean anything….”

  I’d thought I’d really accomplished something. But it hadn’t registered. He hadn’t seen what was on the screen, only what was already burned into his mind: Mama wasn’t a lady, in lovely clothes, at home with her grandson—she was a maid. And I wasn’t a guy who’d made it and bought a fine house—I was a colored guy who’d bought a house in a white neighborhood.

  “Sam, if I’d known you were so touchy …”

  I got into my car and drove away from there, away from the lights of the Strip. I was able to buy Mama a beautiful house and set her up in it like a lady. When she steps out of her house why should she look any more l
ike a maid than any other guy’s mother or grandmother? Sure, I could understand why … that was the horror of it. The image was so deeply carved. Here’s a guy who’d have bent himself in half not to offend me, if only for business reasons. He was actually trying to be friendly with that joke. It just never dawned upon him that anybody, including me, should expect a colored woman who walks out of a decent house to be anything but a maid.

  I pulled over by the ocean in Santa Monica and watched the waves breaking high over the beach, crashing to the sand, then rolling back out to sea. It had all been for nothing. I had a mental picture of the whole world split in half, with me standing in the middle, the Negroes on one side glaring at me and the whites on the other side, laughing. What do I have to accomplish before I can walk on both sides of the world in peace? With dignity?

  19

  I leaned across the dressing table at the Frontier, in Vegas, and put on my patch, letting my hair hang casually over the elastic band, making Charley Handsome faces into the mirror. Morty and Dave came in and caught me grinning at myself like an idiot.

  Dave turned to Morty. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Morty nodded. “Gorgeous!”

  “It happens to be my business to know what I look like … seriously, do you know of anything more distinguished-looking in this world than a well-dressed man wearing a patch? I mean it’s so damned swashbuckling. Like a Heidelberg scar.”

  Dave nodded. “Sam, let me ask you something. How do colored people blush?”

  Between phrases of “Black Magic” I caught a woman at ringside nudging her husband, pointing to her eye, whispering, “The patch is satin, it matches his lapels.” Instantly I heard Bogart’s voice again, “You want ‘em to say ‘There’s Sammy Davis,’ or ‘There’s the kid with the patch’?” I stopped singing and signaled Morty to cut the music.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, forgive me for interrupting the show. There’s something I’ve been wearing for the last year or so and I really dig it—maybe a little too much—but I think it’s starting to wear me so it’s time I got rid of it. I’d better do it now while I have the guts.”

  I slipped off the patch and tossed it to a corner of the bandstand. A woman at ringside closed her eyes and groaned. There was a gasp throughout the room. They were probably expecting to see nothing but a large hole.

  “I hope you’ll bear with me. I don’t know if it looks too good but I can’t wear that thing for the rest of my life. I waited a whole year and I still haven’t gotten one free shirt from Hathaway.” I cued Morty for the impressions.

  The audience was coming out of its shock; the applause began growing, and they began standing, table by table. The people were much too high for the impressions. I had to overpower them, steamroller over them to regain control. I snapped my fingers fast, cueing Morty for “Fascinating Rhythm.” The first notes burst over the heads of the audience, but it was hopeless, the music couldn’t begin to climb over the continuing, growing roar.

  The Frontier’s publicity guy burst into the dressing room. “Sammy, why didn’t you let me know? I could’ve had photographers, wire services …”

  “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t tip you off ‘cause it wasn’t planned. There was no ‘I’ll go and make a dramatic thing out of it.’ It’s the last thing I expected to do.”

  He was looking at me with disgust. “Well, at least let’s set up a shot now of you taking it off and throwing it away. I guess I can still plant it with one of the wire services.”

  “Baby, it won’t work. It’ll be phony and it’ll look like it.”

  “Sammy, please, I know what I’m doing.”

  I checked the morning papers. There were stories but no pictures. I called Jess to see if the picture had broken in L.A. It hadn’t.

  Dave asked, “What’s there to look so happy about?”

  “I’m happy to know I was right. That picture shouldn’t have run. It was posed and phony and the newspaper guys smelled it. The audience got hung up on the drama of the moment because it was real and they knew it. When you’re selling emotion then it better be real, daddy, or you ain’t gonna sell it. The picture was dishonest. And the cat who thinks he’s gonna fool the people is gonna wake up someday and find he’s out of the business.”

  Jule Styne came into the dressing room, shy, yet bristling with energy. “Sammy, I saw your show. Fantastic! You’re a great talent but you can’t play nightclubs forever. You’ll suffocate that talent in saloons. It’s out of the question. You’ve got to expand, spread out. You need dimension …” His enthusiasm was dizzying. “The place for you is Broadway!”

  I sat him down in a chair, careful not to interrupt him.

  “You should star in a musical. You must! You can sing and dance and do everything you do in clubs. I’ll produce it and we’ll get some good writers to do a modern musical comedy. We’ll build the story around whatever kind of a character you feel you could play best. Look at what you do to audiences every night on a bare stage and imagine what’ll happen when you have three hundred thousand dollars worth of scenery and lighting and costumes going for you. They’ll die over you on Broadway. You can’t possibly miss. And the stature and prestige would be enormous for you.”

  I was staring at him like he was Charley Messiah. “Jule, keep talking. But keep your distance or you may get a kiss on the lips.”

  “Then you like the idea?”

  “I love it.”

  “Great. We’ll get together tomorrow and discuss it. In the meantime try to think of the kind of a character you feel you could play best.”

  He left and I found myself walking around the room, smiling at the walls: if television and movies don’t want me, to hell with them—there’s nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity.

  I had a lunch table set up in the room and I’d put a “Don’t Disturb” on the phone when Jule arrived. “I think I should play someone like me. A performer. Let’s face it, that’s the kind of a character I really understand, plus the fact that it gives us a built-in excuse for me to sing and dance.”

  “I like it. He could be a kid who’s trying to make it against the odds, the racial thing … he’s alone in the world … he’s got nothing but talent going for him …” Jule’s face took on a dreamy, faraway look—he was leaving me. “… maybe he’s too sensitive to fight the race thing here so he goes off to Europe—Paris! He finds himself a little Left Bank club and he becomes the chic thing to do….”

  I didn’t touch the food on the table and neither did Jule. I listened to him ad-libbing a show, speaking with childlike enthusiasm—the truly creative man, completely forgetting past triumphs, involved deeply and only in the thing of the moment. I was swept up in his excitement and the ideas flew back and forth across the table.

  We took a breather and I said, “Jule, I’m not going to try to be a writer but I do have one strong feeling about the overall idea of the show: it’s got to say something racially. And, as you said, we should do a ‘modern’ musical. That means an integrated show with a mixed chorus.”

  “Naturally.”

  “I mean really mixed. Not like the typical thing where they have eight dancers and one of them is colored and the producer goes around saying ‘we have an integrated cast.’ That’s bull. Nobody’s ever done it right and we of all people can and should be the first ones.”

  “I’m with you all the way. Now, we should do it first class right down the line. For choreography let’s get Gene Kelly or Agnes De Mille …”

  “Jule, people like that are fabulous, but when they choreograph a show you don’t even have to look at the program to tell who did the dances—they’ve got their own styles, and they’re great, but not for me. I don’t want my audiences to watch me work and see Gene Kelly or Agnes De Mille dancing; I want them to see Sammy Davis, Jr. And I have the same feeling about the music. I’d like to use my own conductor, Morty Stevens. He’s young and he’s never done a Broadway show, but he’s good. I mean really good. Know now, I want guidance in the
areas where I’ve got no experience, but in certain things I could never have anyone dictate to me. I’ve got to dance my way and do songs my way.”

  Jule nodded approval. “There’s a very bright fellow who works with me, his name is George Gilbert. He’ll be my co-producer. You’ll like him, he’s young too, but he’s very astute, he has great taste, he’s creative and clever.”

  “Crazy. Jule, what about my father and Will Mastin? Do you think there’ll be anything in it for them?”

  “No. Not a chance. When you first come to Broadway you have to overcome the image of a nightclub guy—not that it isn’t great, I’m not putting it down—but when you walk onto a stage in a show, you want the audience to be able to accept you as the character you’ll be playing. I know you’ll be great and within five minutes we’ll have no problems, but anything that would remind them of you as a nightclub performer would be disastrous to the illusion of the show. If you came in with your father and your uncle … oh God, I can see Walter Kerr now: ‘Sammy Davis, Jr. arrived on Broadway with everything except the scotch-and-soda and cigar smoke.’ It would be terrible. He’d kill us with things like, ‘A funny thing happened to me on the way to the theater last night. I wound up at the Copacabana.’ Do you see what I mean?”

  “Well … I guess so.”

  “Fine. I’m doing a musical for Judy Holliday so I have to leave for New York on Tuesday. As soon as I get there I’ll sign the writers and get things in motion.”

  Will strode up and down the living room. “Sammy, who’s the manager of this Trio?”