by Davis, Sammy
He nodded. “The world hates a loser.”
“The world doesn’t hate losers, George, it just has no time for them.” I walked over to him. “But did you ever see a guy get beaten bloody and then get up off the floor and start fighting? Did you ever see what happens to the crowd when he starts winning?” I felt the cool edge of excitement biting through the sogginess of failure. “Ten things that should have finished me in the business, didn’t: the accident, the scandals, the constant ‘white girl’ bit—each of them should have been disaster, and if they didn’t finish me then you’d better believe that I’m not about to lay down dead with my feet in the air just because a handful of critics say I should. Our show is going to run. I came to Broadway to get something and I’m not leaving without it.”
He sighed, negatively. “I only wish it could be true but the chances are a million to one.”
“Baby, hock your shirt and take those odds. I’m going to beat them.”
The kids began straggling into the theater at around seven o’clock. They weren’t due until “half-hour” at eight, but when you’re a flop there’s no fun in hanging around the show business bars. At the theater, they had refuge from the embarrassing sympathy of friends, and the smug looks from people who are glad there’s no reason to be jealous any more. By the second night of a flop you’re tired and sick like you’ve got a hangover, and there’s no one you want around except maybe someone else who has one. I could picture them sitting around in those pathetically gay little rooms they’d fixed up, like people who’d bought ice cream and paper hats for a party and then nobody showed up.
I asked Johnny Ryan to have the cast gathered onstage at ten minutes before curtain. I deliberately didn’t change into my first act costume which was designed to make Charley Welch look like a loser. I wore my own clothes, my own jewelry. I wanted them to see success talking.
They were standing around like lost souls, clustered in little groups of defeat. I walked to center stage. I remembered a scene from The Great Dictator in which Hitler made Mussolini sit in a very low chair so that he had to look up at Hitler and subconsciously got the feeling of looking at strength. I motioned for them to sit on the floor in front of me.
“… I’ve got no plans to be Charley Flop Came to Broadway. But either we play like we’re the biggest hit in the world or we’re going to die, because with the people pre-sold against us we’re only as good as what we give every song, every line, everything we do on this stage for every audience. Now, nobody can keep the people away from what they like and want to see. And they like me or they wouldn’t pack the nightclubs to see me. I can bring them into this theater but I can’t entertain them without you. So if you give me the word, if I can count on you, I’ll go out and get us audiences with my bare hands; I’ll go on television and radio, I’ll use every friend I’ve got, I’ll do every interview, from the network blockbusters to if there’s a cat on Broadway and Fiftieth with a megaphone I’ll be his guest. The people will come to see me and if we work a mile over our heads, if we kill ourselves to entertain them, they’ll talk about us and I guarantee that we’ll run….”
One of the boy dancers jumped up. “We’re with you all the way.” Another was on his feet. “We’ll work our heads off …” The mood swept through the crowd, catching them up in it until all of them were standing and cheering. It was straight out of an MGM musical. They were shouting and waving their fists in the air, a pack of losers changed into fighters. It had turned into a cause.
I’d just finished doing the impressions in the Palm Club scene, when a woman in the audience stood up and shouted, “The critics are crazy. We love you, Sammy.” I threw her a kiss. “So tell your friends!” The audience cheered. It was eleven-fifteen and I was ready to go into the last number but I cued Morty and I did an extra thirty minutes.
Mike Goldreyer, our company manager, was waiting in the wings, wringing his hands. “Sammy, it’s no good. It’s no good. We can’t keep the stagehands so late. We have to pay them overtime….”
Jule Styne burst through the fire door between out front and backstage. “Sammy, that business of ‘tell your friends.’ It’s terrible. Terrible. It’s not ‘theater.’ You can’t do it.”
I closed the dressing room door behind us. “Jule, for the last few months I’ve listened to everybody telling me how to do a show: writers, directors, producers, chorus boys’ parents, out-of-town critics—everybody! But that’s all over. From now on I do it my way. Maybe I didn’t do the chic thing out there but I didn’t see anybody walk out, and I sure as hell heard a lot of people yelling bravo when we took the curtain calls. So don’t tell me about overtime or ‘theater.’ I’m not in the ‘theater’ any more. I’m back in the entertainment business!”
The elevator opened into the reception room of the Morris office. I waved to the girl behind the desk, “Darling, will you tell Mr. Bramson I’m on my way in, please.” I smiled at the performers waiting to see their agents, pushed the double doors open and walked down the corridor to the television department.
“We’ve been talking to Sullivan, Sammy. We knew you’d want that exposure for your show …” Sam Bramson looked down. “But, he doesn’t want you.”
“You’re joking!”
“It’s not exactly that he doesn’t want you … look, why don’t you speak to him yourself? I’ll get him on the phone.”
Ed said, “Sammy, I can’t use your father and your uncle. Naturally, I’d love to have you on the show, but I want you alone. I’m sorry, I really am, but if I buy you and put aside eight minutes for you I don’t want that time split up. You’re what my audience will tune in to see and that’s what I want to give them.”
“But Ed, we’ve always been a …”
“They’re dead weight, Sammy. I can understand your loyalty to them and it’s wonderful and there’s no reason why you still can’t split the dough with them if you want to, but from a strictly show business point of view it’s lost its value, and frankly, it’s becoming uncomfortable.”
“You don’t understand …”
“No, Sammy, I’m afraid it’s you who don’t understand. When Babe Ruth was playing ball you didn’t see his father and his uncle on the field. Maybe they helped put him there, maybe they trained him, but when it was game time he walked out there alone. You’re not the first performer who had a situation like this. It was the same with Willie and Eugene Howard, and Al Jolson and his brother Harry. Al had the big talent, so Al worked alone. But it wasn’t easy for him. You’d go into a town where an Al Jolson movie was playing and across the street from it there’d be a vaudeville theater with a marquee saying ‘Jolson’ in the biggest possible size, then over it in little tiny letters it said ‘Harry.’ I’ll never forget the day I bumped into Harry Jolson and I said, ‘Isn’t it great how well Al’s doing in the movies?’ Harry looked at me like I was crazy, and said, ‘Ed, that son of a bitch is making such lousy pictures that I can’t even get booked.’ All I’m trying to point out is that Al had his problems too, but he never let them interfere with what he did on the stage. I understand your situation, Sammy, it’s a sympathetic one and I apologize for saying as much as I have, but I wanted you to see my side of it.”
When I hung up, Sam Bramson said, “Steve Allen’s been after us for you. He’s fighting hard to compete with Sullivan and he’s offering $10,000 instead of Sullivan’s top of $7500.”
“No. Sullivan was the first network show I ever did and he’s always been a gentleman to his fingertips. I can’t just run for the money. Keep trying. Maybe he’ll change his mind.”
When I got back to the hotel, there was a telegram for me: “WELCOME TO NEW YORK. PLEASE DROP IN AND VISIT US. ED WYNNE, THE HARWYN.” I called George at his office. “What kind of a place is the Harwyn?”
“East Side supper-clubbish. It’s the hot place. Whatever that means.”
I read him the telegram. “That’s damned nice of them.”
“Well, really! You are the star of a Broadway
show.”
“Baby, I admit I’m one of the great stars of our time. I even admit that I’m adorable. But I’m not exactly in demand around the chic nightclubs.” As I spoke, the tone of his voice caught up with me and I realized that he’d understood; I could picture him smiling, but he was considerately playing it cool. “Anyway, the least we can do is accept the man’s invitation, right? Will you have your secretary make a reservation for me for twelve-thirty, baby?”
“Sure, baby.”
“And call Johnny and D.D. and Michael and tell them we’ll all go over to Chandler’s after I get off tonight—I’ve got the Barry Gray show—and then we can swing over to the Harwyn and be chic and East Side-ish.”
“Is that little schvartza going to sit with us?”
The words, whispered contemptuously, cut through the restaurant sounds, zinging their way to me as I walked into Chandler’s. It came from a club-date comic sitting at the performers’ table. I scanned the room for somewhere else to sit but the place was packed and the captain was at my side. “This way, Sammy. Barry’s expecting you.”
The comic looked up, feigning surprise at seeing me, smiling big, arms outstretched, long-lost-brother style. “Sammy, baby, great to see you again.”
“Hello, Jackie.” He was in his forties but still Charley Almost, just another stand-up comic off an assembly line, using everybody’s jokes, everybody’s style, with no change or improvement in his act for fifteen years—but watching with bitterness the young, inventive guys who offer something fresh and make it big. He represented the great paradox of the business: a failure who earns $1500 a week.
His face had the strained, desperate look of a man beginning to understand he’s never going to make it, a man aware of his positive and final classification in the business as a second-rater. He didn’t hate me, he hated himself. He resented everybody’s success, but the fact that a colored guy had made it devastated him.
“How are you doing, Jackie?”
He shrugged. “I’m still the best-paid secret in the business. You know the bit: I play Boston during Lent, Miami in July, and in Vegas I play roulette.” It was an old joke, but his genuine bitterness, the built-in apology for failure, killed any possibility of humor. He leaned forward anxiously. “Listen, Sam, I don’t like to impose on our friendship but you could do me a favor. If you were to ask for me when you go back to clubs, like Vegas or the Copa … I mean if you said you wanted to use me on the bill with you …” His ingratiating smile was the picture of a man committing moral suicide.
I heard my name and saw Barry waving for me. I stood up. “I’ll be in town for a year, Jackie. Keep in touch.”
Barry Gray gave the show an enormous plug as he’d been doing every night since we’d opened. Then we got down to the interview. “Sammy, do you mind if I get personal with my questions?”
“Anything you like.”
“Is it true that you’ve become a Jew?”
A hush fell over the restaurant. The people were leaning in, listening. “Yes, Barry, I am a Jew.”
He extended his hand. “Welcome aboard, lantzman. When did this happen?”
“I think I have always been a Jew in my thinking and my own undefined philosophies which I found so clearly spelled out when I began reading about Judaism a few years ago.”
“How do you think people will react to Sammy Davis, Jr. being a Jew?”
“I guess everybody will react differently, if they’re going to react at all. And judging from the past—they’ll react. I don’t think my departure will set Christianity back. As for the Jewish community, I’m aware of the possibility that they might be offended by a Negro becoming a Jew. Maybe it’ll turn them against me, I don’t know. It’s a pretty frightening thought, because they make up more than 50 per cent of my audiences. But I’ve found something in Judaism, and I’m not about to give it up. I have to believe they’ll accept me according to Jewish law and custom which sees no color line or any lines other than between belief and non-belief.”
“I’ve heard it said that you wanted to be a Jew because all your friends are Jewish.”
“Barry, Frank Sinatra is my closest friend and I never yet saw him wear a yamalka. I’ll admit he eats a bagel every now and then …”
“I read a joke in one of the columns that said you were playing golf on Long Island and the pro asked you for your handicap and you told him, ‘I’m a colored, one-eyed Jew—do I need anything else?’ How do you feel about the Sammy Davis, Jr. jokes?”
“They’re a hazard of the business and the fact is you’re glad people know your name well enough to do jokes about you; but some I despise because they are destructive and insidious.”
“Can you remember—or would you rather not remember—any you’d classify that way?”
“I’m not about to forget them.”
“Would you tell us one?”
“Yes. But in order for it to serve a purpose I’d like to say a few things first so that maybe you’ll be able to see this kind of humor as I see it. I was reading a book about Judaism and I came across a statement: ‘The difference between love and hate is understanding.’ That understanding is obstructed by the images which are imbedded in people’s minds. Obviously it’s not the dark skin that’s unattractive to white people or they wouldn’t spend a hundred dollars a day in Florida trying to get it, right?”
“In other words, Sammy, you believe that what separates people is a lack of knowledge of each other?”
“Isn’t that the definition of the word prejudice, Barry? Prejudgment without due examination. Wasn’t there a time when people thought all Jews have horns? Now, the only Jew I ever met with horns was a Jewish bull I got to know in South America once. But he’s the only one.”
He smiled, “So when you saw that all Jewish people don’t have horns you became Jewish?”
“Right, Barry. And as long as we’re discussing it I don’t mind saying it was a pretty big shake-up that after I decided to become a Jew only then did I learn the Jews don’t really have all the money. When I found out Rockefeller and Ford were goyim I almost resigned.
“Anyway, I believe a very large chunk of the racial thing is a question of changing the images that remain in people’s minds and certainly not contributing to them. You’ve noticed that there are no Step’n’Fetchits any more, no more Parkyakarkases, none of the characters which were caricatures of entire groups? It didn’t happen because they weren’t fine performers, but pressure groups went to work and they asked Hollywood, ‘Hey, don’t use a Step’n’Fetchit any more. Let’s not have any more kids growing up thinking of Negroes as slow, lazy, shuffling characters.’ Groups like the American Jewish Committee fought against stereotyping Jews as greedy, grasping, and money-mad, just as the NAACP got Little Black Sambo, and all those damned pancakes he ate, out of the school books and out of our lives.
“Now, getting back to me and the jokes: I get myself to the point at which I’m able to own a beautiful home, we keep our house and grounds looking well, and although I certainly didn’t buy the house as my contribution to racial harmony, it’s a beautiful extra to know that the neighbors can see a colored family and they’ve got to say, ‘Gee, it’s not really true they live eighty of them to the room.’ The next thing I know a guy tells me a joke that’s circulating: One of my neighbors tells her husband, ‘Strange about the house next door: The maid comes and goes all the time, but the people who live there never leave the house.’
“Now, I’m not so hard-nosed and bitter that I can’t see the humor in a well-constructed joke. But I have to detest humor predicated on the assumption that all colored women are maids. My grandmother was a maid, and a lot of guys dug ditches until they became president of the company or until their families made it and pulled them up with them. There comes a time to forget humble origin. Mr. Armour isn’t a butcher anymore, right?”
“Sammy, did you rap the guy in the mouth, I hope?”
“No. He wouldn’t have known why I was hitting him. Most
of the people who tell these jokes are not haters; they’d never yell a dirty name, they’d get sick if they saw a mob throwing rocks at a colored kid trying to go to school, they’d be repelled by racial violence, yet—intentional or not—they are perpetuating the legends which perpetuate the prejudice which causes the racial violence.
“Charley Joke-teller doesn’t understand that violence is the smallest part of prejudice. He’s standing in the middle of a social revolution, telling his little jokes, thoughtlessly assuring people that we all carry knives and steal and lie, until it’s hardly any wonder that when we try going to school with you, some guy who’s been convinced is ready to crack open our skulls to prevent it.
“As awful as violence is, at least it’s out in the open where it can be recognized and handled and eventually it’s ended. But the jokes keep on, quietly, subversively, like a cancer, rotting away the foundations of hope for the Negro, stealing the dignity on which we can build respected lives.
“And as bad as the jokes, are the words—the put-down words like ‘nigger,’ ‘kike,’ ‘chink,’ ‘wop,’ ‘spick.’ I hear them used between buddies, good-naturedly, but anyone who thinks he’s above prejudice, so he can use them affectionately or humorously is missing the point: If a person sincerely desires to stamp out a sickness he can’t keep a few of its germs alive just for laughs. Before we can reach a Utopia in human relations those jokes and those words and the legends which they perpetuate must die.
“You can pass legislation for desegregation, but you can’t legislate people’s minds and that’s where the progress must finally be made, in people’s minds and in their hearts. Opening school doors and job opportunities is the first step, but it’s like hacking off the top of a weed: After we do it we’ve got to get down and pull out the roots so that it won’t keep growing. We’ve got to get to the source of racial intolerance, of prejudice—the ignorance, the clinging to long outdated legends which continue to distort the picture of the American Negro. When people reach the point at which they examine the facts then there’ll be little or no need for laws that say colored kids can go to school with white kids because I really believe there won’t be anybody suggesting that they shouldn’t.”