by Davis, Sammy
“… the land of the free … and the home of the brave.”
As we stepped off the stage reporters swarmed around me. “Why do you think they did that, Sammy?” I excused myself and found Frank and told him I wasn’t going to stay for the rest of the ceremonies.
“Okay, Charley.” His hand was on my shoulder. I could feel the tension in his fingers but his face showed nothing, like a man who couldn’t be surprised by people any more.
I stood on the street in front of the convention hall, looking for a cab, hearing bursts of applause from inside.
A cab pulled up. I’d planned to spend a few hours with May before going back to Boston but she’d been watching it all on television and I couldn’t face her sympathy. I told the driver to take me to the airport.
I closed Boston and had a week free on the coast before opening in Washington at the Lotus Club. As I walked through the TWA gate I saw May running gaily toward me. I hugged her quickly, “Come on, darling, big stars don’t hang around airports.” She clung to my arm as I hurried her through the terminal building.
“How come Jim didn’t come with you?”
“I told him to meet us at the house. I was dying to meet my fiancé alone.”
“Where’s Rudy?”
“In the car. Out front.” She was holding a piece of paper. “Guess what this is?”
I saw a woman nudging her husband, motioning for him to look at us. He gaped, shaking his head, like “How dare they!” May hadn’t caught it. Her face was flushed with excitement. “It’s our wedding invitation. It’s only the sample the printer sent back but boy it’s beautiful! Look.”
I took it from her and put it in my pocket. “When we’re home, we’ll look at it like ladies and gentlemen, right? Let’s save it and enjoy it.” I could feel the attention building around us and I kept her moving quickly through the hum of whispers, of conversations breaking off in the middle of sentences, faces staring openly, accusingly, like: if we had any class we’d break up to make them happy.
As we came to the luggage counter May slowed down. I pulled her along. “Darling, your fiancé is much too big to stand around waiting for his luggage. Rudy’ll come back for it. I mean, if you’re going to be a star be a star.” As we cleared the front doors I saw, gratefully, that Rudy was parked directly in front of the entrance.
At home I sat her down on the couch, “Darling, it was beautiful of you to meet me and I dug it, but I don’t think you should do that any more. Let’s wait a while.”
“But it’s not a secret now, we have nothing to hide.”
“I know, but let’s keep attention on us down to a minimum. The other day Lee Mortimer ran a thing about ‘Hey, it’s just a publicity stunt, folks.’ What do we need that for? The less they see of us until after we’re married the less of that jazz we’re going to get.”
She nodded, like a kid. “I guess you’re right.” Then she perked up, “Can we look at it now?”
I took the invitation out of my pocket and held it for both of us to see.
Mr. and Mrs. Ernst Hugo Wilkens
request the pleasure of your company
at the wedding reception of their daughter
May
and
Sammy Davis, Jr.
on Sunday, October Sixteenth
Nineteen hundred and Sixty
at six o’clock in the evening
Beverly Hilton Hotel
L’Escoffier Room
“It’s beautiful. Incidentally, I spoke to Frank and asked him to stand up for me.”
“What did he say?”
“He knew it before I asked him. It was just a formality.
“Y’know,” I said, “I’ve been thinking, we should redecorate. Let’s face it, it’s not exactly feminine around here.”
“What about our economy drive?”
“I think this is important. I won’t feel that the place is yours if we leave it this way. I think we should at least do the bedroom, the living room and the kitchen. I can pay it off in a year with no problems.”
“You don’t have to do that. This will be my wedding present to us.”
“Hold it. I pay the bills around here. Maybe I’ll be a little slow but I’ll pay them.”
“Holy Toledo! Who cares whose bank account it comes out of? And the few thousand dollars it’ll be isn’t a drop in the pail compared to what it’s going to cost you to support me all my life.”
“Darling, it’s a drop in the bucket.”
“Right, so what do we accomplish by getting more deeply in debt when we have the money?”
“I know, but …”
“In the words of Sharlie Brown ‘there’s no buts.’ ”
“Look, I realize I sound like an idiot doing the ‘no woman will ever support me’ bits because obviously you’re right, but frankly, I’m pretty shook … no woman ever gave me change.”
She hugged me. “Oh, thank you.” Then, gazing at the area in front of the windows, “Do you know what I’d love? A dining set right there so we could have dinner and look out at L.A. With only six chairs so we can’t possibly have great big dinner parties. I hate it when there are so many people that there are ten conversations going on at once.”
“I’m with you on that. The crowd scenes’ll be in the Playhouse. Up here we’ll keep it strictly family and the few really close buddies.” I walked over to the bedroom. “I’m not going to sleep in here again until we’re married and we move in together.” I liked the romantic gesture, myself. “I’ll use the Playhouse or I’ll stay at the Hilton.”
“Boy,” she sighed, “that’s beautiful.” She was looking at me like I was D’Artagnan.
I had a bunch of people over for a Sunday afternoon. A long-time friend grabbed me by the arm, “I have to talk to you.” He steered me upstairs to the bedroom of the Playhouse, into the bathroom and closed the door. “Are you and May Britt really on the level? It’s not a publicity stunt?”
“You know I don’t do publicity stunts.”
He clutched his head with both hands. “You don’t know what you’re doing.” I waited for him to say something else, not wanting to accept what I had heard. Not from a friend. “Sammy … you’re out of your mind. You can’t do this. It’s no good.” He was holding me by the shirt. “You’ll ruin your life! And what happens when you have children? Have you thought about that? And you’re just getting started in pictures. Why ruin everything? She’s just a kick. You’ll get over her. If you want to get married, find yourself a nice colored girl. Can’t you see what I’m trying to tell you?”
“I see it. Thank you for telling me.”
I watched him going back to the party. How could I have known him for so long but not at all?
I glanced through the morning papers. Louella Parsons had: “His best friends have been unable to talk Sammy Davis Jr. out of the May Britt marriage. The reception will take place at one of the Hollywood hotels.”
We were in almost every column. Approval and disapproval were cropping up all around us. It’s a strange thing to find that your engagement is a case history, something to which each person was attaching his own significance—ten different things to ten different people, each starting from the point of seeing it as an interracial marriage, each viewing us as either hero or villain, none seeming to grasp the basic point: you can hate by color but you can’t love by it; that I’d asked May to marry me, I had not said, ‘Will you intermarry me?’ ”
Rudy brought in the mail. In it was the usual assortment of letters from strangers—the few who took the trouble to write and let us feel their support, and the familiar-looking envelopes with no return addresses, the hate letters. One was addressed to both of us and I wondered if May was getting any of them at the studio.
“Rudy, while I’m out of town, May is going to be coming in and out of here with the decorator. Please check the mail carefully. Make sure none of this filth is lying around.”
I had the day free so I called May, to ask her to come over
but there was no answer. A few minutes later she called. I laughed, “I just called you. Where are you?”
“Sammy, guess what? I was passing a store on Wilshire and there in the window was exactly the kind of dining set I was telling you about. Six chairs. It’s beautiful! I’m in the store now. How would Sharlie Brown like to drive over here so we can look at it together?”
“Darling, I’d love to but I can’t … I’ve got a heavy day. But if you like it then go ahead and order it.”
“No, I want to be sure you like it, too.” Her excitement had paled. “Do you think maybe you could make it tomorrow?”
I hesitated, despising the situation that was forcing me to refuse her such a simple pleasure, stealing what any engaged girl was entitled to. But what could be gained by giving her the pleasure of looking at some furniture if in the middle of it somebody cuts her in half with a lousy look or an out-and-out insult? There was enough attention, opinion, and snipes at us without me putting her in the line of it by doing “engaged couple” bits all around town. “Darling, I’ll tell you what. It’s in the window, we’ll run over there tonight and take a look.”
“Okay.” There was a pause, then “Hey, that’s a great idea!” Her voice was overcheerful. “Oh boy, I like that idea much better. If we do our window shopping at night we can have privacy, we won’t be bothered by a lot of autograph jazz. Gee, I’ve got a brilliant fiancé.”
I hung up heartsick from the realization that she was beginning to catch on, that it was inescapable, that the atmosphere of fear and caution and compromise, of walking on eggs, was surrounding her, slowly dragging her into the web, stifling all that love for life—forcing it into the prison of my skin.
Will stopped by a while later and we discussed some Trio business, some dates that had to be firmed up. Then I braced myself. “Massey, the wedding is on the sixteenth and I’d like to take off a few days before and then a week after. I’ll need some time around here for last minute things and I’d like to have at least a full week honeymoon.”
He nodded. “I was thinking that myself. We can’t move the date of the Huntington Hartford one man show ‘cause they’re already selling tickets or I’d say you should take off a month. But we can cancel the two weeks before in Detroit and play them next year. I’ll take care of it. And, you’re going to be having more responsibility so I think you’d better start drawing an extra five hundred a week expenses.”
We sat silently across from each other. It was the first glimpse in a long time of the man I’d begun calling “Massey” so many years before, and I felt a flicker of the unity we’d had when we were starving but pulling in the same direction trying to keep each other alive.
“Massey? What the hell happened to us?”
“I don’t know, Sammy.” He shook his head slowly, sadly. “I guess when people put their hands on something new they’ve got to be extra careful not to drop what they already had … I don’t know….”
I tried to remember when all the fighting and arguing had started. It was when we’d started making it, when things should only have been better.
I walked across the room and put my arms around him. “Thanks, Massey.” Whatever the reason, or whoever was at fault, I was glad to have that warmth and friendship again.
One by one all the details had been handled. The decorator had been at the house every day, a dressing room was being built for May, a TV set had been suspended from the ceiling so we could watch from bed, and a large marble fireplace was being built in the living room. I had only Washington and Vegas to play before the wedding.
I went down to see Mama. I’d said good-bye to her like this a hundred times but for some reason this time it reacted on me. It wasn’t as if she groaned and said she was having trouble with her legs as she sometimes did, she was smiling happily, “Get your sleep, take care of yourself, Sammy,” but as she was saying it, it was like a Zoomar lens that goes shoooom, close-up! and you see things you didn’t see before, that were always there for you to see. I looked at her face and it suddenly hit me: she’s not going to be around much longer. She has to die someday and the older she gets the sooner it’s going to be. It could be any day. I thought of all the times I’d known I should go downstairs and sit with her and talk awhile but hadn’t because I was too tired or involved in something, or because I had nothing in particular to say. I kissed her and hugged her and held onto her and I managed to say, “Good-bye, Mama, see you soon.” But when I left her room I fell apart.
I drove slowly around the curves of the hill, watching the road, May beside me, each of us with our own thoughts.
“Sammy? How come you never asked me to convert? To become Yewish?”
“Well, for openers if you keep giving it that Swedish ‘J’ I don’t think they’d even take you.”
She was smiling, pleased with herself, as she handed me a piece of paper. I pulled over to the side of the road. It was a certificate of conversion from Temple Israel in Hollywood. “I was always very satisfied being a Lutheran. But when you were on the road I started thinking about the children we want and I decided that whatever extra unity and support we could provide for them would mean just that much more emotional security built-in. So, I went to see your rabbi. We can be married in a religious ceremony, now.”
“Darling, there’s no nicer present you could ever have given me.”
“Then you wanted me to convert? Why didn’t you say so?”
“I didn’t feel I had the right to. I knew that if you thought I wanted it you’d convert and I didn’t want you to unless you personally had the desire to do it. You know how much I’ve gotten out of Judaism—for me it’s everything, but I’d be the last person in the world to say: Do it my way because my way is better.”
“Well, I must say that I started looking into Judaism strictly because I wanted our kids to have the same religion as the two of us, but now that I’ve studied it, I’m getting to really love it.”
I took her hand in mine and kissed it. “Thank you.”
34
Conversation in the cab died off. Big John was staring through the windshield, straining to see ahead as we moved through traffic, toward the Lotus Club. Murphy and I followed his gaze and saw them. Nazi storm troopers picketing me in the middle of Washington, D.C. They were wearing khaki shirts with swastika armbands and carrying signs: “WHAT’S THE MATTER, SAMMY? CANT YOU FIND A COLORED GIRL?” … “GO BACK TO THE CONGO, YOU KOSHER COON.” They had a little black dog walking with them. He was wearing a swastika and they’d attached a sign to his back: “I’M BLACK TOO, SAMMY, BUT I’M NOT A JEW.” Another sign said, “MARRIAGE TO MAY BRITT WILL BE AN INJUSTICE TO THE NEGRO RACE.” It was not being carried by a Negro.
I’d anticipated this, thought about it a hundred times, but when it finally, actually hit I could only stare at them, thinking: This is happening. It’s really happening. Thank you, God, for not letting May be here to see it.
My first impulse was to pull up in front of the club and walk through their midst even though normally I’d use the stage door, but that’s just what they wanted. They didn’t expect that their picket line would keep my customers away; they were hoping for an incident that would, combined with my name value, land them on page one, draw attention to them, help them spread their doctrine and get new recruits.
Big John put his powerful hand on my arm. “Sammy, you know I’m not afraid of them mothers, and I’m with you in whatever you do, but if you swing at them then I’m going to break a few of their skulls, and we’d only be playing their game. A riot’s what they want.”
“I know, John. Thanks.”
As I walked onstage the audience, as a body, rose to its feet, applauding, shouting: “The hell with ‘em, Sammy. We’re with you.”
“Thank you. Thank you for what you’ve given me. I’ll make a quick statement and that’s all because I don’t think they deserve any more of your time. They’re idiots. They don’t bug me. I hope they don’t bug you.”
The wir
e services carried the story and the phone didn’t stop ringing with calls from buddies all over the country. The local papers all took the attitude of Harry MacArthur of the Washington Star: “That self-appointed Nazi leader should live so long as to make as many people happy in a lifetime as Sammy Davis does in one night….”
Murphy put down his paper and looked across the table at me, his face a study in bewilderment. “What I don’t understand is that those Nazis can get a license to do this.”
“The law works for everybody, baby. I guess they’ve got a right to their opinion.” There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it.”
“No, I’ll get it, Sammy, it’s just the mail. I called down for it.” He rushed ahead of me.
I laughed, “Hey, I admit I’m a big star but I can open a door, right?”
He stood back reluctantly as I took the mail from the bellman. I sat down at the breakfast table and opened the first envelope that didn’t have a return address. “Dear Nigger Bastard, I see Frank Sinatra is going to be best man at your abortion. Well, it’s good to know the kind of people supporting Kennedy before it’s too late, (signed) An ex-Kennedy Vote.”
“Sammy, why do you bother to read those lousy things? I can take care of them for you….”
“Baby, if you thought it would hurt me you wouldn’t tell me, right?” He didn’t answer. I handed him the letter. “Have we gotten many of these?”
“They don’t mean anything. They don’t even sign their names.”
“They don’t have to sign their names when they vote. Now I appreciate the fact that you were trying to protect me but please don’t keep things from me. I have to know what people are thinking. Do me a favor. Find an out-of-town newsstand and get a dozen or so papers, particularly from the South and the Southwest”
The first mention I saw was: “Show business and politics have merged more heavily in this election than ever before. Notable (and noisiest) among the vote-swayers is Frank Sinatra, who’ll give you an autograph if you’ll vote for Kennedy. The crooner, a close friend of JFK, will take time off from politics only to serve in the coveted capacity of best man at the wedding of Negro entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr.—another Kennedy booster—to blonde movie star May Britt.” I combed the papers every day. The already stale news that Frank would be my best man continued making the front pages and too often by “coincidence” right next to it were stories about Frank campaigning for Kennedy. The Broadway and Hollywood columns were alive with jokes and political rumors: “If Kennedy’s elected his big problem is: should he appoint Sammy Davis, Jr. Ambassador to Israel or the Congo?” … “Public opinion experts say that when Frank Sinatra appears at pal Sammy Davis, Jr.’s interracial marriage it will cost Kennedy as many votes (maybe more) as the crooner has been able to swing via his immensely successful JFK rallies.” … “Insiders hear that Frank Sinatra has informed Sammy Davis, ‘I can’t be your best man. It’s too hot.’ ”