by Davis, Sammy
I looked around the living room of Jule’s suite in the Bellevue-Stratford in Philadelphia, at the director, writers, our press agent, the producers, manager, general manager—all linked together by a common bond: panic. One by one they’d come in, glanced at the others, tried brave smiles and taken seats, all with the self-consciousness of entering a funeral chapel. There was a room service table with sandwiches, coffee, and a few bottles of liquor, and occasionally somebody stood up and browsed disinterestedly through it to spare themselves the necessity of speaking.
Jule looked sick as he called the meeting to order. “Well, we’re in trouble. We got one good one out of three. Sammy’s personal reviews are fabulous so at least we’ve got that going for us. And they liked Jack Carter and Chita Rivera. But on the other side of it two of the papers slaughtered us on the racial thing….”
Somebody in the back of the room ventured, “Maybe they’re right. Maybe it’s something that doesn’t belong in the theater.” The one voice triggered the others: “It’s dangerous.” … “Like they say, let Western Union deliver the messages.” … “Yeah, the racial thing should be softened.” … “It’s touchy.” …
I stood up in the middle of the cross-fire. “May I say something? If we take the racial theme and just sweep it under the carpet, then what’ll we have left?”
“An entertaining show. That’s all we need.”
“Well, God knows I want to entertain people, but this isn’t a nightclub, it’s a play, and it’s got to say something or it’s got no reason to exist. I mean … isn’t that true?”
“Sammy, if nobody comes then who’ll hear what we say? Our first concern must be to sell tickets. And apparently we won’t do it with the racial angle as is. You know we all feel as you do, that it’s worth saying, but it’s too hot.”
“But if we’re the first ones to come out with a hard-hitting story like this—isn’t that good?”
“Sammy, maybe the reason it’s never been done before is that nobody wants it.”
“But there’s got to be a first time….”
The room sunk into a fuzzy silence of uncertainty and indecision. A voice broke through. “I think that if we change the basic story line we take the heart right out of the show.” It was George Gilbert and his words cut through the air with the true ring of logic, making hard straight lines. “As Sammy said, we’ll have no reason to exist if we don’t have a point of view.”
The room burst into action again: “Our point of view is to stay alive.” … “Sammy, you’re new to the theater, it’s a different art form.” … “We know what the critics will buy.” …
I felt the helplessness of a man getting mugged by a gang.
Jule turned to me consolingly. “Sammy, we’re not going to throw our theme away entirely, but maybe we should bring it down a little, take some of the heat out of it—without losing our ideas or changing them. Let’s see what we come up with.”
I looked at George. He was young, too, and the others had a lot of shows under their belts. “Okay. I can’t argue with your experience.”
The voices that had been peppering away at me became a chorus of assurance: “Sammy, we really do know what the critics want.” … “Leave it to us, we understand the theater.”
I sat down, nodding acceptance, but uncomfortable in being completely dependent upon other people’s knowledge instead of my own. After a lifetime in show business I was a beginner again.
Someone was saying, “Now the big problem is, we can’t have him afraid because he’s a Negro. We could solve everything by moving Charley Welch out of Paris. Let’s kill the expatriate thing and make him a rock and roller working in New Jersey when Freddie Campbell finds him and wants him to come to New York.”
George gasped, “New Jersey? Giving up the great life he has in Paris and coming to America on a ‘maybe’ is our conflict. If he’s big and he’s already here then where’s our story?”
“So, let’s not make him big. Let him be a local hit in a jukebox joint. But he’s a big man around his own bailiwick.”
I stood up alongside George. “But if he’s not a hit anywhere except in one lousy little club then what’s he got to lose by going to New York and trying for success—bus fare? If it’s not racial then why else would he be afraid to make the move?”
“Well … he’s afraid because he’s afraid. Don’t worry about it. It’s a detail. Right now the thing is to get him out of Paris. We can build our story from there.”
Jule said, “Bringing him to Jersey would mean new songs, a new set, new costumes—the French stuff can’t be used in Union City.”
Someone offered, “Why not? Why can’t it be a French-type nightclub?”
George groaned. “Are we all going crazy? How can an American rock and roll singer in a small-time gin mill that has a jukebox, possibly do a number like ‘Jacques D’Iraq,’ wearing the French costumes with the billowing sleeves …”
We rehearsed every afternoon, played the show at night and then had meetings in Jule’s suite. Everybody’s agent was in town trying to get more lines and songs for his client, and new scenes were being put in and thrown out in the same day. I was in the dressing room, trying to memorize the eighth new set of lines they’d given us, when I heard people arguing in the corridor. I shoved the door closed with my foot. It swung open and Will stormed in: “That line’s gotta come out. I don’t intend to argue. It’s plain out!”
“Hey, what’s going on?”
He didn’t even notice me. Jule was right behind him. “Mr. Mastin, it’s only a play … it’s make-believe.”
Will sat down in a chair and folded his arms like he was going on a hunger strike. “It comes out. It’s a lie. I did it, I‘m the one—not Jack Carter.”
George was standing in the doorway. I slipped out of the room. “What the hell’s going on?”
He gave me a nervous smile. “You know the line where Freddie Campbell says, ‘I’ll make this kid a star. I’ll teach him everything I know.’ Well, when your uncle heard that he jumped up and said, ‘Nobody taught Sammy anything but me. I’m the one who taught him.’ ”
“Baby, do me a favor. Will you and Jule cut the line? This show won’t be a hit or a flop because of it.”
I followed Will into the dressing room. “Massey, do we really have to have another meeting? We’ve had one every night this week and I can’t imagine what could be more important than giving me time to learn my new lines.”
He closed the door. “We’re a Trio, and there’s Trio business to be talked over.” My father and I sat down. “Now the first matter is about the Trio becoming a corporation.”
“We already agreed on that, didn’t we?”
“We did. But we should go over the details again.”
“I don’t get it. Maybe I’m crazy, but I’ve been rehearsing all day, I’ve been with the newspaper guys, I just finished a show, I’ve got new scenes to memorize for tomorrow—it’s panic-in-the-streets, and you want me to sit here and shoot the breeze about something we already settled?”
“There’s no shoot the breeze about it. No point being in a show if you don’t know what’s happening to the money. Now, as I was saying, the way we agreed to set it up …”
As he spoke, I kept trying to understand why he was rehashing it like this. We’d always had meetings, but never so often and never about unimportant things. There was something in his face, something I hadn’t noticed was missing until I saw it reappear. He had the look of a man in control, a man exercising authority to which he was accustomed, and he was enjoying it. He was his old self and I realized how unlike his old self he had been during all the days of rehearsals.
“Now the next thing we should take up …”
I’d been too wrapped up in the show to see what should have been so clear to me. He was the manager of the Trio but there was nothing to manage—all decisions were the producer’s to make. And he had little or nothing to do on the stage. He was neither the star, nor the manager except in
name. He was in the same position my father had always been in, and it was eating away at him, so he was calling meetings, making issues out of situations he’d never have bothered with six months before, repeating things that had been settled—anything to give himself purpose, to hold onto the position he’d earned and held all his life, until I had taken it away from him.
It hadn’t been enough to say, “You’re in the show and you’ve got the billing and we still split the money three ways.” No one knew better than he how little reason he had to be on the stage or to have his name up. By accepting the awkward, embarrassing situation, he was giving me more than everyone thought I was giving him. And he was keeping his bargain of a year on Broadway. When the reviews had come out bad he could have used them as an excuse to say, “You see? It’s a mistake. Let’s quit while we still can.” But he hadn’t even hinted at it. He was sticking to his word, trying to live with something that was killing him.
The stagehands were striking the scenery and hauling it into New York-bound trucks before we’d taken our last bow. I changed clothes and George and I waited for Johnny Ryan, our stage manager, and his assistant, Michael Wettach, to finish seeing the last of the stuff onto the trucks. Then the four of us and Johnny’s wife, D.D., went for supper at our usual place, a little Italian restaurant a few blocks from the theater.
George was staring into his plate, quietly humming something from Pal Joey. I glared at him. “At least you could hum one of my hits.” Johnny made a whole production out of breaking a bread stick exactly in half and buttering the end of it like he was painting the Mona Lisa. D.D. said, “Sammy, as soon as we’re in New York I’ll get you some of that verbena soap I was telling you about.”
I nodded ruefully and looked from face to face. “In other words, nobody wants to discuss the corpse, right?”
Johnny said, “It’s not that bad.”
“Baby, it ain’t good. Do you realize what’s happened, what we’re bringing to New York? Instead of a story about a sophisticated, sensitive guy who doesn’t want to live with prejudice, Charley Welch has become a shnook who doesn’t have the guts to try for success. Why spend $300,000 to do a show about that?”
George cocked his head. “Shnook? You’re getting to sound more Jewish every day.”
“No joke, they’re completely out of their minds. They threw out scenes and put new ones in so fast that nothing in the whole show makes sense any more.”
“Don’t complain. At least no one suggested they call in Donald O’Connor to play Charley Welch.”
“You don’t want to be serious, right?”
“Well, I don’t want to be, but if it’ll make you feel any better the fact is we’ve still got something left—”
“I’ll tell you what we’ve got left, baby: the last half hour of the show, the Palm Club scene—a $25,000-a-week nightclub act that I’m now doing for six thousand.”
Nobody argued with me. We finished eating and started back toward the hotel, walking in bleak silence, all of us knowing that the story was shot, morale was shot—that we were nothing more than a patched-up mongrel held together by string.
We passed a theater where workmen were pulling down the signs for My Fair Lady. “Do you think this show’s as good as they say?”
George shrugged. “We’ll see soon enough. They open a few days before us in New York. I know that they didn’t have anywhere near the advance we had here.”
I stopped in front of the Latin Casino. “The last time we played here you couldn’t get in with a shovel and a wedge. There were people piled up on the sidewalk. I must be losing my mind. I actually gave up all that for this.” We continued walking. “What the hell am I doing a show for? Certainly not for the money. If nobody can possibly respect what we’re trying to do then why the hell am I doing it?”
George buttoned his overcoat tighter around the neck. “Please. I’ve got my own troubles. I own a beautiful hotel in the mountains, the Raleigh. I can take all winter off and be in Florida, instead of freezing my …”
“Cheer up, you guys.” Johnny put his arm around my shoulder, “We’ve still got better than a fighting chance. The fact is that in addition to the Palm Club scene we’ve got lots of entertainment, lots of flash, some good songs, dances, jokes….”
“Yeah, Johno—everything but integrity.”
On opening night the chorus kids were all but skipping through the stage door of the Broadway Theater, carrying flowerpots, curtains, and framed pictures to decorate their windowless little dressing rooms. With two previews under our belts the word around town was “Mr. Wonderful‘s a smash” and the cast was settling down for a long run.
At seven o’clock I started making the rounds of the dressing rooms wishing everybody luck. They were drunk on optimism and the corridors rang with kid-yourself lines like “They screamed at everything we did last night. Our trouble is we’re so close to it we don’t see what great entertainment we’ve got.” I played it Charley Optimist, smiling back, trying to keep the morale up where two previews had miraculously raised it.
George looked into my dressing room fifteen minutes before curtain time. He’d been making the rounds, too, and he still had the Happy Hypocrite smile on his face, as I did. He put out his hand. We nodded. He said, “I’ll see you after the show. I’m going to stand out front at intermission to listen for comments.”
I stood in the wings, waiting. The kids were hurrying into position onstage, the stagehands were moving to their places ready to raise the curtain and the lights. Jack Carter was standing off in a corner by himself, blotting his face with a handkerchief. The music rose to a peak as the overture neared the end and the screaming, gorgeous brassiness of it suddenly overwhelmed me with the immensity of a Broadway musical. I watched all the pieces of the living machine preparing to swing into line, all these people straining forward, waiting for the moment when they would contribute themselves to the hugeness of it all. And, abruptly, I understood that even as the star I was only one part of it. A red light flashed, two stagehands grasping a steel cable heaved their weight onto it, the curtain rose, and the chorus rushed on. I leaned against the wall, chilled by the finality of the realization that it wasn’t entirely up to me—I was confined, tightly imprisoned by the design of the show, and if I saw I wasn’t making it with the audience, if I wasn’t touching them, I couldn’t just slip Morty a cue and switch into “Birth of the Blues.”
The clock on the Paramount Building showed 3:00. In a few hours the whole city would know we were a flop. I looked out at the buildings, most of them dark except for occasional lighted windows, and I wondered if the people inside near those lamps were reading our reviews. George was sitting at my bar. He poured himself another scotch and stared at the bottle. He picked it up and started reading the label. Our eyes met but there was no reason to speak, we’d said it all: the cliché cop-outs like “They didn’t understand what we were trying to do” when both of us knew too well that they had understood. Maybe the techniques were different on Broadway, but it all boiled down to the one thing that worked anywhere—honesty. I gazed blankly out the window at the past weeks, seeing myself so awed by “theater” and “Broadway” that I’d sat back and let myself fail on other people’s decisions. I’d put my career in other people’s hands—the career I‘d built. I’d gambled my past and my future on other people’s opinions and judgments, letting them override my own. I’d known enough of right and wrong to become a star but I’d chickened out and permitted other people to tell me, “We know best.” At least one thing was sure: if it meant doing my shows on street corners I’d never make that mistake again. I was so disgusted with myself for seeing the inexcusable wrong of it—but too late. I’d had the greatest opportunity in the world and I’d blown it. The lights of the city became hazy as tears began filling my eyes. I was aware of George watching me and I hid behind a Garfield bit. “Sure, sure … y’see those lights up and down Broadway? Well, I’ll give ‘em to you for a necklace, I’ll have this town on its
knees.” I shook my fist out the window. “Big town, I’ll get you yet!”
I heard George blowing his nose. He’d seen that movie, too. “If you’d done that onstage maybe we’d have been a hit.”
I turned, amused by his boundless irreverence. “George, you’re rotten. You’re rotten to the core.”
He lowered his eyes, pleased by the compliment. “I know.” He picked up the reviews but lost heart for reading them and looked away from them, despondently; then, remembering that I’d been watching him, fearful that he’d been caught admitting that something was beyond joking, he spun around on the bar stool, holding his knees up with his arms like a kid taking a ride, and dropped the papers, sighing “All gone.” He made about two turns and let the stool slow to a stop, his attempted abandon gone. He poured another drink.
“Man, them mothers didn’t use up any of their good words, did they?” I read aloud: “ ‘If you want to see “Mr. Wonderful” we suggest you get over to the Broadway Theater this week. He won’t be around very long …’ ”
“Well, thank God at least you got great personal reviews.”
There was no point explaining that I could find little satisfaction in seven critics discovering I do a good nightclub act; that I’d come to Broadway to accomplish something and I’d been told, “Stay in nightclubs where you belong.”
“I suppose you’ll be going back to clubs.”
“I signed a contract to be on Broadway for one year, and I intend to stay for one year.” I crumpled the reviews into tight wads. “The votes aren’t all in yet.”
“Sammy, even if the afternoon papers are good …”
“I don’t mean the critics. I’m talking about the people.”
He was looking at me sympathetically. “I know how you feel, but it’s impossible. You can’t beat the critics. Nobody ever did—except Hellzapoppin’ and that was only because Walter Winchell decided to plug them every single day. He made them a hit, but we don’t have him and …”
“Baby, I know everything you’re going to say, so don’t bother. I’m hip that when the critics come out against you everything changes—all the heat comes out of you. I’m hip that where just last night we could call our shots with the press, now we’ll have to fight for every inch of space we get.”