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

by Davis, Sammy

  “Yes. I’ve written them all about you. And I know my mother has told my father how much she liked you.”

  “That’s great but I’d like to meet him in person and give him a chance to know me and make up his own mind. I was thinking, I’ll be playing London in June and you mentioned you might visit your folks in Sweden around then—is there any chance you could come over to London with your father? That way we could meet and get to know each other. It would be beautiful if we could get his official consent.”

  “Hey, that’s a great idea.”

  We watched television, cooked some steaks, and talked. I gave her a complete run-down on my money situation. “It’s pretty disgusting to know that after earning maybe six million dollars, I haven’t got at least a million dollars put away. All I can do is tell you that I’ll start right now toward becoming solvent and building something for you and for the kids we want. Money has a meaning, a value that it never had before. I’ve been in touch with Joe Borenstein in Chicago. He’s my lawyer. He’s a nice, nice man and he’s been giving me good, sound advice, which I haven’t had the sense to follow. But now we’re going to start doing all the things he and Jim Waters have been noodging me to do for years. I hate like hell to begin marriage on an economy drive …”

  “Sammy, I’ve sold stockings and washed dishes. I like luxuries but I can take them or leave them. Also, my salary is two thousand dollars a week. We can put our money together and be paid off that much faster.”

  “No. I appreciate it but I’ve got enough coming in so that we can be cleaned up in a few years. All I have to do is cut out the waste.” I told her about the setup with Will, my relationship to Mama, Loray—everything I could think of.

  “Sharlie Brown, I feel a little pushy listening to all this. What you did before we met is your business, and although I’m glad you’re telling me these things you certainly don’t have to.”

  “I know, darling, and I appreciate it, but there’s a lot of little things that should be said now. Let’s not have any fine print in the contract. I want you to know what you’re getting into. This kind of relationship is a first for me and I’m not sure if I can have a marriage in the fullest sense of the word. I really don’t know if I can be half of two people instead of all of just one.”

  “But you want to, don’t you?”

  “Yes. But it’s not that simple. First of all I don’t begin to know what marriage is going to be like. Not only have I never gone steady with a girl, I’ve never even done light housekeeping.” She looked puzzled. “That’s an expression for when a guy has a girl and he pays the bills. What I’m saying is, I’ve never had a day-to-day relationship with a woman, to the extent that I’ve never even spent a whole night in bed with a woman.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Never. When it was time to sleep either they’d go home or I’d fall asleep on the couch or on the floor. I haven’t slept in bed with anyone since I was a kid and my father and I used to share a bed on the road. I don’t begin to know how to be around a woman like a man is around his wife or someone he cares for dearly. For example, I remember once I was going to an opening with a married couple. It was two blocks away and I felt like walking. We were in evening clothes and the husband said, ‘We’ll take a cab and meet you there, Sam.’ I thought he was a nut and only later did I learn that he was hip to the fact that it was a damp night and it was going to ruin her hairdo. A thing like that makes me realize there must be a million and one little things I’ve never even begun to think about. Plus the fact that I’ve never in my adult life had to think about anyone’s desires but my own. I could make my mistakes without affecting anyone except me. I’ve never had anybody I’d tell ‘I’ll be home at six.’ And, if I was with fifty people and I felt like bringing them home I’d bring fifty people home. I may start off as the inconsiderate husband of all time so you’ll have to bear with me. I’ve had thirty-four years of one-way living—on the other hand I’ve waited thirty-four years before I fell in love with somebody so have no fears about how much I love you and how much I want to be Charley Married, but there’s a danger: I don’t know how much I dare to change.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Look, I make a lot of money and I’m big in the business because of three things: I’ve got talent, I’ve worked hard, and every bit as important, I have let myself remain an individual. That doesn’t mean I’ve been a non-conformist deliberately making myself different, but neither have I been Charley Chameleon who permits his own ideas and tastes to be overwhelmed by the ‘accepted way’ of doing things until finally he blends into the masses and he ain’t never seen or heard from again. We’re all born as individuals and in a million and one little ways I’ve managed to remain Sammy Davis, Jr. I don’t go by a slide rule and a set of plans. I go by what I see works best for me. I do things on a stage that defy the common-sense rules of the business: I stay on too long, I do too many things—and if there were a book on how to be a hit it would definitely say ‘Hold it! Don’t do these things!’ but the book would be wrong because I don’t stay on too long for me and I don’t do too many things for me and the proof is in the audiences. Whether the people know it or not, my individuality is part of what they’re buying when they come to see me. What I’m saying is, I know I’m not perfect but whatever I am in sum total, my faults and my virtues have combined to make me one-of-a-kind, and it works for me. Somewhere in the overall scheme of things everything has its value. Maybe if I’d had an education I wouldn’t have had the desire to do all the reading I’ve done, maybe if I’d had a little more religion as a kid I’d never have gone out and found one I could really sink my teeth into. If I’d been born white, things would have been easier but maybe I wouldn’t have tried so hard and made it as I have. Who can say? All I can know is that I’ve got a winning combination and I dare not mess with it.

  “Something has stayed in my mind since the first time I read The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oscar Wilde had a theory that when you love someone it must take away from you as an individual. I never before loved anybody enough to feel they’re as important as I am or more important so for their happiness I’ll change. But now that I’m in that position I can see that I’ve got to be extra careful. I’ve seen so many marriages where the husband or wife blended into each other until there’s no way to tell them apart except he buttons his coat from left to right and she buttons hers from right to left. One has changed the other and maybe it’s fun—but for me it would be death. I live in dread of the day I turn around and find I’ve been made over and I’ve lost my individuality.”

  The wisdom of a sensitive woman is a marvelous thing. I could see as I was telling her these things that she already knew them. Or at least she understood.

  “Darling, if my business weren’t so closely related to my personal life I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure it’s nowhere near as serious as I’m making it out to be. I’m deliberately exaggerating it so that I’m positive I don’t make the mistake of unconsciously slipping into a different personality.”

  “I can certainly understand that you can’t afford to be changed and I wouldn’t want to change you anyhow. I must say I don’t want to be blended with anybody either so that I just come out like a piece of macaroni with no shape of my own.

  “Sammy, do you think you’ll hate losing your independence?”

  “I was never independent until I met you.”

  The seriousness in her face yielded to a smile. “Is that really true?” She clasped her hands behind her neck and leaned back against the couch, sighing contentedly, “Boy oh boy, I must be a wonderful person for you to love me so much.”

  I smiled. It didn’t exactly require an answer.

  “Sharlie Brown? Why do you love me?”

  “Darling … ask Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”

  “Seriously. I don’t mean the usual stuff like I love you and you love me. I mean what do you like about me?”

  “You’re really going to put me through
this, right?”

  “Come on. Be a sport.”

  “Your honesty, independence …”

  “You think I’m honest?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded, like she was caught and had to admit it. “You’re right.”

  “I dig the idea that you’re beautiful.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “When you look at me do you think Oh boy, she’s beautiful’—or do you accept it automatically, because I’m in films?”

  “Darling, Edna May Oliver was in films but I didn’t ask her to marry me. I may only have one eye but that’s all I need.”

  “Well, if I weren’t beautiful, would you still love me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She gasped. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “Why? Being beautiful is a part of what you are. It’s not the reason I love you but it’s one of them. I also dig the idea that you’re an exciting personality, I mean commercially like ‘Hey, there’s May Britt.’ Let’s be honest. I’m a showman first, last, and always, in everything I do, and I’ve got to admit that I dig the kick of the combination of personalities so that when we walk down a street it won’t be just ‘there’s Sammy and his wife’ but it’ll be ‘there’s Sammy Davis and May Britt’ and there’s an extra excitement to it. I love you for all the dozens of things you are—and being May Britt instead of Maybritt Wilkens or Maryjane Smith is a part of what you are. By the same token I expect you to love me, in part, for my professional self. I spent my whole life trying to become a star. I started off in the world as fat, bone, and a gallon of water and I think it would be ridiculous to expect you to love me for that or for what I was when I was twenty. I love you as I want you to love me: for the sum total of what I’ve made of what I started with.”

  She told me some of her feelings. “For one thing I want a house that’s filled with kids. And I don’t intend to be one of those Hollywood mothers who stops by the nursery for ten minutes every day. Sure, we’ll have a nurse if we can afford one but I want to raise my own kids. I want them to know me and I want them to know you.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. And I’ve been thinking, even if God lets us succeed in having our own child I want to adopt children too. There are too many kids, particularly colored kids, who don’t have homes, and nobody comes to give them one and they grow up hollow inside because they never had anybody to love them. I think it’s inexcusable if somebody can afford it and they don’t take a child into their lives, a child who’s already living and breathing and who needs them. I know that I have enough love stored up in me to lavish it on you and on all the kids we can physically handle.”

  “I agree with you one hundred per cent. I don’t care how many we have of our own I’d still love to adopt some, too.”

  “Then we’ve got no problems there.”

  She said, “I realize that you’ll have to be on the road a lot and when I can be with you then I want to be, but I know there’ll be places too expensive to travel to for only a short time or I’ll want to be at home with our children so at least when you are home I’ll expect you to try to create the atmosphere of a real home. I know you have a lot of friends and business guys to see when you’re on the coast but I want us to have a certain amount of privacy, too. Maybe it’s corny but I’d like to sit down at a dinner table with just my husband and have dinner with him. Particularly when we have children. I want them to have the security of being able to see as many of the traditions of home life as we can possibly make for them.”

  “I agree completely. And I’m hoping the day will come when the debts are paid and I won’t have to spend forty weeks a year traveling around the country. Sy Marsh has kicked down the door for me in dramatic television, the ratings I’ve gotten have been unbelievable—they definitely prove that the whole South isn’t turning off its television sets the minute I come on—so eventually I should be able to count on maybe three or four good TV shows a year. That, plus a picture a year and we’ll have it made.”

  “You mean that? When we’re out of debt, you’ll be able to stay home?”

  “No. I’ll never want to cut out clubs entirely. I’m primarily a nightclub performer and I’ll always want to spend a certain amount of time facing audiences, both to keep myself up as a performer and because I enjoy it. Besides, the clubs have enough trouble finding acts that can draw without me walking out on them, too. But it’ll be beautiful to play just certain places, to pick and choose without being financially pressured to play every good offer that comes along.”

  We sat near a big window in the living room, eating ham and eggs and talking, watching Sunday spreading over the city.

  Jim took her back to her hotel, then picked her up again around noon. At two o’clock he said, “Our plane is at three-fifteen. We’d better leave here in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Baby, get us on the next flight, will you?”

  There had seemed, on the plane and in L.A., to be so many urgent things to discuss with May, but now the fact and joy of being together was more important than the details and problems of the future. She was wearing slacks and a bulky sweater and although the weather outside was clear and sunny and we were in a New York apartment, I had the feeling I knew I’d have had if we’d been sitting in front of a stone fireplace in New England with mountains of snow outside, lulled by the flames of a blazing, crackling fire. “Hey, let me ask you something. How come you didn’t come over to the house that night after Dinah Washington’s closing? Didn’t I impress you at all?”

  She laughed and gave me one of those reluctant compliments. “I must confess I was a little sharmed by Sharley Sharming. But I couldn’t just say, ‘Sure I’ll come up,’ the first time we’d met.”

  “But you wanted to?”

  She was embarrassed. “The next day I went out and bought your album ‘Sammy Davis, Jr. at Town Hall.’ I played it so much that my mother finally said, ‘Don’t you have anything else to play?’ Then, when you said you’d call me from Vegas,” she hesitated, “I really shouldn’t tell you this …”

  “Yes you should, we’re engaged. Come on.”

  “Well, I sat by the telephone waiting to hear from you, and whenever I had to go out of the house, I made my mother swear she wouldn’t leave … oh boy, was I mad when you didn’t call right away. Then I started getting worried you weren’t interested and—listen, I’ve told you enough. Now you tell me something. What did you think of me?”

  I described the trouble I’d had making connections with her. “And let’s not even discuss how I put together a whole party just to meet you and you walked in with George Englund and sat with your back to me all night. Then I left town and did a whole tug-of-war with myself, ‘Should I invite her to Vegas? Maybe she’ll say no.’ ”

  She burst out laughing. “I had my bags packed for two days.”

  “And I want to thank you for having your mother’s bags packed too.”

  Jim came into the living room. “Okay, kiddies, this is it. TWA is running out of planes.”

  The car swung down Park Avenue, to 57th Street, then west to Fifth Avenue. It was one of those gorgeous winter Sundays with people strolling Fifth Avenue in couples. At the Sherry Netherland May got out. “So long. See you, Sharlie Brown. Good-bye, Yimmy.” As the car pulled away, I watched her through the rear window. She was standing on the sidewalk, waving good-bye, making a beautiful picture in a sporty, cream-colored fur coat with the collar pulled up and a large alligator purse slung over one arm—Mary Moviestar all the way.

  Frank was Charley Raised Eyebrows on the set Monday morning. “How’d everything go in New York?”

  I hadn’t told him why I was going but obviously he knew. “Frank, we’re going to get married.”

  “So what else is new?”

  “I mean it.”

  His voice was gentle, “I know you mean it, Charley.”

  He must have known it before I did. He’d probably suspected something when I’d asked him to cover for
me in Vegas, knowing I’d never ask him to do anything like that with just another chick.

  Frank is two people: one, his public image—the swinger, the legend, the idol, the “ring-a-ding-ding” and “wowoweeewow” guy who says, “Let’s get the broads and get the booze and be somebody!” The other is the serious businessman, the father, the friend. The façade of fun, the atmosphere of laughs comes off like a coat, the looking everywhere at what’s going on stops dead, his attention is fixed on one thing and his lifetime of hard-earned experience comes forward. He was studying me, evaluating, balancing the factors involved, weighing one against the other, understanding—as only a friend and another performer could—exactly what I stood to gain or possibly lose by such a marriage.

  Finally he spoke and the words were deliberate. “Yeah. It’s a good thing. Do it, Charley. Get yourself some happiness.”

  There was no pontificating. Just simple. He’d thought about it and he agreed with it.

  I took a last look around the living room. Jim, Luddy, Rudy, Etheline, and I had spent the morning blowing up balloons and hanging streamers around a huge sign: “Welcome Home, Peanuts.”

  It was time to leave for the airport. I was nervous. I yearned to be standing at the gate when she got off the plane. But someone would point “Hey, look” like he couldn’t believe his eyes, or there’d be a slur, or she’d catch a hard look that would hurt her. Maybe nothing would happen—but I couldn’t take that chance.

  I drove my new Rolls Royce. Jim was looking over the upholstery. I’d put all kinds of pressure on the Rolls people so that I’d have it in time to pick her up in it. He grinned, “You wouldn’t by any chance be trying to impress her with this car would you?”

  I gave him a look. “I’ll say this about them, Mary, they’ve got rhythm, and they love big cars.”

  He blushed. “I wish I’d had this car when I was courting Luddy.” He was talking fast. “On the other hand I got her anyway …”