Sammy Davis Jr.

by Tracey Davis

  Mr. Wonderful was a musical comedy written specifically to showcase my father’s talents as a Las Vegas nightclub entertainer. The story focused on the entertainer Charlie Welch’s struggles in the industry. The cast brought together the Will Mastin Trio, and Sammy recorded a sixteen-track vocal jazz album highlighting the staged play.

  Mr. Wonderful opened on March 22, 1956 at the Broadway Theater, closing on February 23, 1957 after 383 grueling performances. Joseph Stein and Will Glickman were the authors of the original book upon which the musical was based. The music and lyrics were composed by George David Weiss, Jerry Bock, and Larry Holofcener.

  Pop was back with a vengeance. He even hit the big screen in movies like Anna Lucasta and Porgy and Bess. By 1959, he was about to take over Las Vegas with the baddest and coolest cats in entertainment history, better known as the Rat Pack. But that was a story for another visit with Dad.

  After Pop’s accident and his conversion to Judaism, there were fans who supported his decision to become a Jew, and some members of the Jewish and African American communities that would not embrace him. But it made no difference to my father; he had fought bigger battles in his life.

  Pop always took the road less traveled, the road that takes you to the heart of human understanding, generosity, and fellowship. In Pop’s view, Jews and blacks not only shared a history of oppression, but were all related as seen by their darker complexions and curly hair from Northern Africa, Egypt, Israel, and neighboring countries. Why not embrace his own race as well as Judaism? In the Davis family, that is what we did.

  My mother, Swedish actress May Britt, converted to Judaism before she even married my dad. The Davis family would be raised Jewish. Every Friday night we would celebrate the Sabbath at sundown with my mother. We had a nonsecular Christmas tree, simply because my mom liked to decorate it.

  Our summer vacations were spent in Lake Tahoe, where Dad would perform at Harrah’s or in Reno. After their divorce, my mother moved us to Lake Tahoe permanently, and she continued to raise us Jewish. There was no Jewish community or even temple at the time in Lake Tahoe. We would travel over an hour away, to Reno, just to attend temple, go to Hebrew school—or to see Pop’s show. My brother, Mark, had a bar mitzvah, and we would celebrate the traditional Jewish holidays like Hanukkah and Passover with friends. We built our own little Jewish community in Lake Tahoe led by Dr. Phillip Charney, a Jewish dermatologist turned rabbi who graciously opened his home to us.

  The Davis family were Jews, period. Well, except for Mom’s soul food cooking! Not exactly kosher. Despite Pop’s best efforts—my Swedish mom had no rhythm, wasn’t very musical, and was always off-beat. Mom remembered being at Pop’s show at the Sands, the whole audience was clapping in rhythm, then came one off-beat single clap. Pop stopped the orchestra and said, “That must be my wife!” He got a big roar of laughter that night. Now as for her soul food attempt, as told to me by my mother:

  Mom said they we are in Lake Tahoe—for the family it was a summer getaway, although Pop, of course, was working. He was performing at Harrah’s, for his lifelong friend Bill Harrah. At the time, early ’60s or so, Harrah’s Hotel area was pretty barren, so they built a little place just for entertainers. It had a small kitchenette, with three burners, no oven. Mom got this idea that she would make soul food. Loving to cook and born in Harlem, Pop gave her some simple soul food tips—simple being the key word. Mother decided she was going to master this. Good Lord!

  Mother called the local Tahoe town market, “This is Mrs. Sammy Davis, Jr. I need pig tails.” Dead silence on the other end. Then she hears, “One moment, please.” Someone else picks up the phone. “I would like to order some pig tails,” she says again. Dead silence. “I want for six people,” my mother said in her Swedish accent. The six people included Dad’s musicians and some key staff. She tells the guy on the phone, “And also some neck bones please.”

  Finally, they tell her they don’t have any, but can get what she needs delivered in three days. She also gets some black-eyed peas, collard greens, and rice. She waits three days.

  When the pig tails arrive, they don’t look so good, but the neck bones looked okay. There was my mother in this little kitchenette with six pots, three burners. After cooking for four hours, she had created her first soul food dishes.

  When it came time for the dinner party she’d arranged, everybody sat down. Pop sat at the head of the table. Being a Harlem boy, he was thinking this is going to be sheer humiliation. So immediately my father announced to his guests—who were all on his payroll—“If you don’t eat it, you’re fired!”

  My father told me that my mother was the love of his life. She was a calm and loving presence in his life. They were married in 1960, amid a storm of controversy. In fact, their marriage was illegal in thirty one states.

  Dean Martin and Pop visit Frank Sinatra on the set of Sinatra’s film Some Came Running. The chemistry between these three men both on and off stage was one in a million.

  The crew ate every last drop! To my mother’s credit, her soul food creation was not half bad, so I was told, considering it was Lake Tahoe and made by a full-blood Swede.

  It was an early March morning and Pop was back resting at his home in a hospital bed upstairs in his master suite. Shirley, Lessie Lee, and I had become skilled bedside nurses. Today we were being given instructions from a home nurse as to how to clean Pop’s trachea tube. In case of emergency, the nurse wanted to be sure we knew how to prevent airway obstruction, impaired ventilation, and infection as well as other lethal complications.

  I was a germaphobe. I was pregnant. I was due in a month. It wasn’t just the sickness of it all, it was reality setting in. Dad’s hope of recovery was slim to none. But under no circumstance was my father going to let the fear of death stop us from spending time together. We sat in silence for hours, sometimes just holding hands, sometimes laughing our heads off, sometimes chatting about his nostalgic and heroic past, sometimes just smelling the sweet scent from the eucalyptus trees in his garden oasis. Whatever it was, we cherished every moment.

  Lessie Lee announced that Uncle Frank was here. Frank Sinatra, oh my! I knew Pop would be hesitant about his friends visiting him in the state he was. Dad didn’t like being seen like this but Frank would never take no for an answer and Dad would never say “no.”

  Uncle Frank entered and had a few comforting words with my father. You could tell he was destroyed by the impending death of his friend. He climbed down the stairs. I followed him down. Uncle Frank was crying like a little kid. I gave him a big bear hug. “How could my best friend be dying?” he said. I took Uncle Frank outside so Pop couldn’t hear. We paced around the circular driveway talking. Satellite press trucks and reporters swarmed outside the guard gate.

  I found myself comforting a legend, this tough guy. Uncle Frank saw the tears well up in my face and tried to change the subject. He kept repeating my bachelorette night and how much fun it was. Then he would break down again and say: “Trace Face, oh my God. Smokey’s dying. . . .” As Uncle Frank departed, choked up and in tears—the paparazzi shooting at him through his car—we made a pact to think of Pop as he always was throughout our lives, not as he was now.

  I assisted my father downstairs and out to the brick patio surrounded by his favorite lush emerald garden. We walked out together hearing the little wheels of his IV grind against the brick. He was wearing his hospital gown.

  “Grab the robe!” my father said. Lord really, Pop—like I would forget the hospital gown was open!

  Our talks outside became a daily ritual with Popsicle leading the way. Do we talk today or have silence? It was always his choice. My father was determined to foster strong emotional bonds between us now, to show me how much he loved me, share his most intimate life stories with me, and laugh and share a smile or two. I hovered and perched over his words like a hummingbird ready to lap up sweet nectar.

  Today we just laughed. They say laughter is the best medicine and laugh we did. W
e were cracking jokes, bantering back and forth, good belly laughs, clutching our sides till it hurt. I always hit Pop’s funny bone in just the right way, making him snort and cackle until he had to beg me to stop.

  “Pop, remember when you colored your hair with Kiwi shoe polish! It was running down the sides of your face! I laughed my ass off!”

  “I had ten minutes till showtime!” Pop was cracking up.

  “But Kiwi shoe polish? Really, Pop!”

  “Oh, and you never did anything foolish? Every kid wants a dog, right? I buy you a poodle and what do you do? You give it back to me! Now I got this poodle messing up my house!”

  “Our gift to you, Pop!” I laughed.

  “Charming!” He smiled.

  “Listen, Pop, I hate to put a damper on our party, but I got a baby checkup. I’ll be back in the morning. Let me get Lessie Lee or the nurse out here,” I said.

  “Okay, Trace Face, but don’t forget I’m ready. I’m gonna learn to change diapers, do bottles, I might even babysit!” Dad said happily.

  “Oh God,” I said.

  “And, Trace, plan to spend the whole day visiting tomorrow, okay?” Pop said, holding his trach hole.

  “Sure. Why, Pop, what’s up?” I said.

  “Gasser, chickie baby, we’re going to relive the glory days of the Rat Pack! In honor of Frank. You with me?”

  “I’m already packed,” I replied with a big grin on my face.

  My father in his prime, one of the biggest stars of his day

  CHAPTER 3

  STAR

  When I arrived the next morning, Pop was in his chaise lounge out in his emerald garden landscape, enjoying the simple pleasures of watching the butterflies flutter from flower to flower. He felt the new spring breeze wash over his face. He cherished the serenity of silence.

  I quietly sat down next to him, so as not to disturb his Zen-like state of spiritual healing. But I could feel the pain of the cancer weighing heavily on the life he was no longer living. I wanted to ask him how he felt, but I knew it would hurt him, so I kept my mouth shut and let it hurt me instead. He could feel my angst. He took my hand in his.

  “I earned my stripes with those cats. . . .”

  “What cats?”

  “The Rat Pack . . .”

  The ensemble of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, and their closest friends in the late 1950s and ’60s was christened the Rat Pack, as a successor of sorts to Humphrey Bogart’s 1950s Holmby Hills Rat Pack. Mom said she never liked that name. Actor Tony Curtis said: “We didn’t like the term Rat Pack. I hated it, so did Frank, so did Sammy, all of us hated it. Our group of friends was named that by the intelligencia of New York City—the Aryan population of the far right. Here we were all children of immigrants—Hungarian immigrants, Italian immigrants, Russian immigrants, and Sammy being black.”

  “The price of admission was talent, and most of all love and respect,” said Dad. I loved them like brothers. Before I was widely accepted by the world, I was accepted and loved by them. Off the stage, inside our circle, there were no color boundaries. Back in the day, when Frank was singing at the Copa, I was turned away at the door because I was colored. By 1954, the Copacabana ushered me through the door like a big star because I was with Frank Sinatra. He was not just ‘the Voice’; to me, he was the voice against racism,” Pop said.

  “He respected your talent,” I uttered.

  “We respected each other’s talent. I met up with Frank again in 1947 over a sandwich, when I was still just ‘the Kid.’”

  “I remember him studying Tommy Dorsey’s breathing, just to perfect his own voice.” Pop was starting to repeat himself, slip a bit, repeat stories he had long since told me, something I noticed, but wouldn’t let get in our way.

  “A class act,” I replied.

  “I remember telling Terry Wogan, about how Frank and I reunited. I called it the second beginning of our relationship,” Dad said.

  “What happened, Pop?”

  “I was just out of the army, still wearing my army suit with the gold bird on it. In those days, if you were a discharged soldier, you could get free tickets to shows at NBC, CBS, wherever. So I got tickets to the Old Gold Show with Frank Sinatra. I had been in the audience three weeks in a row, and Frank kept looking out at me—the black cat in the audience. Back then, not too many black folks were going to see Frank Sinatra.”

  “One day, Frank comes out of the stage door and says, ‘Didn’t we work together?’ I told him ‘Yes, it was only three days, we replaced an act when you were with Tommy Dorsey.’ He remembered! I couldn’t believe it!” Pop explained.

  Dad sure made a lot of close friends over the years of his career. Among them in these photos are James Dean, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Jerry Lewis, and Richard Burton.

  Dad in performance in the late ’50s

  “Then Frank said, ‘You were with your family?’ I nodded. Frank said, ‘Hey, you’re out of the army, want to come next week?’ I said, ‘Oh, could I?’ I was so excited. ‘Yeah, come and watch rehearsal.’”

  “Frank turned to his manager, who was Hank Sanicola at the time, ‘See Charley over here,’ so I broke in and said, ‘My name is Sammy.’ Frank replied, ‘It’s Charley. See Charley over here? When he comes here make sure he gets in for the rehearsal.’ He turned to me and said, ‘See you next week, kid,’ got in his car, and drove off,” Pop explained.

  “That’s a great story, Pop.” I smiled.

  “I was in heaven. After, I walked to the hotel we were living in, from Hollywood down to Fifth Street in Los Angeles. Man, it must have been twenty miles. I just walked like I was in heaven, floating lightly through the streets. I had met Frank Sinatra and he remembered me! It was the second beginning of our relationship,” my father said proudly.

  “You idolized him.” I laughed.

  “Heck, I wanted to be like him, I wanted to dress like him, I wanted to look like him, I took my hair and had it all done up, Sinatra style, with the little curl here and all.” Dad pointed to his hair.

  “That’s sweet, Pop.” I said.

  “I watched Frank’s climb to fame, his fall, his comeback, his obsession with JFK, and through it all he was always the voice. I can see him now, onstage, perched on the bar stool with his brim hat tilted back, jacket languidly tossed over one shoulder, with that smooth sultry voice that made girls scream.

  “During the Rat Pack days, Frank and I had a close camaraderie of musicians and entertainers, stage hands—colors and ranks would fade away. It was our home. Never a regret. That’s why I called one of my autobiographies, Why Me? I always looked to God, during the good times and the bad, and would say, ‘Why Me?’ Frank was a blessing from God. We got so in sync onstage, all I had to do was raise my eyebrow a certain way and he knew what I was saying. We honed our craft.”

  The great comedian Milton Berle later said, “Every one of them that were in the Rat Pack was dedicated to their art. I wasn’t part of the Rat Pack but I was friends with them all. They were so relaxed. Everything was ad lib. Everything was impromptu. I think that the success of the Rat Pack—besides loving what they did, making people laugh, and truly liking each other—was fun.”

  My father continued his stories about the Rat Pack. “After the shows at the Sands, baby, we were wild. Innocent compared to today maybe, but we were wild. Hey, we were the headliners, the ladies were the most attractive, the cats the coolest, the booze the best, the celebrities the highest profilers, the ragtag misfits the freakiest. But you learn. Now that I am older, wiser, it’s payback time, boy, on my body—for all those good times from the ’60s. Years later, every once in a while when I tried to get out of one of those low sports cars, my body said to me, ‘I told you to take it easy.’ I’d be like ew, ah, ow . . . well, I think I’ll just sit here for a while then!” Pop chuckled.

  All five core members of the Rat Pack teamed up to star in the movie Ocean’s 11, which went into production in Las Vegas in January 1960. The origin
al writer of the story, Jack Golden Russell, was a gas-station attendant in Vegas, and handed Sinatra the script while he was filling up. Just like Frank to accept it. There was, of course, a famous remake of Ocean’s 11, made in 2001 starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, and other hot stars of the day. In the 1960 edition, Danny Ocean (Frank Sinatra) gathers a gang of World War II 82nd Airborne compatriots to pull off the ultimate Las Vegas casinos heist. The plan is to rob five casinos on New Year’s Eve (Sahara, Riviera, Desert Inn, Sands, and The Flamingo).

  Pop always said, a huge portion of Ocean’s 11 was improvised, ad-libbed. The Rat Pack knew each other and the Vegas casinos better than any screenwriter could ever attempt to write. Much of the Rat Pack ad-libbed dialogue turned out to be far better footage than what they would have shot from the written script, so the producers went with it. Even Shirley MacLaine ad-libbed a tipsy uncredited cameo with a classic Dean Martin line, “I’m so drunk I don’t think I could lie down without holding on.” I’ve read that MacLaine received a brand new car from Warner Bros. as compensation for her memorable contribution.

  Angie Dickinson was the female lead in the movie. She later said, “Sammy is the one who recommended me for the movie . . . so Sammy told me. And I believe him! I was under contract to Warner Bros. and he said to Frank, ‘You know who’d be a gas as your wife? Angie!’ I got the part.” Frank had a lot of pull in the industry. Angie Dickinson continued to say that “Frank was a very kind man. We think he was all gruff . . . he could throw you out the window and over the balcony if you did something to deserve that, but he was a very tender guy—very!”

  Pop played a garbage collector, Josh Howard, in the movie. He said he needed wooden blocks attached to the pedals on the garbage truck he drove in the film so he could reach them. He also said the production team’s most challenging task was trying to get Nevada’s Clark County officials to lend them a garbage truck for the movie. Needless to say, they finally got the truck. Peter, Dean, and Frank have a scene near the end of the film where they attempt to disguise themselves by blackening their faces in the garbage truck. Pop, as Josh, says, “I knew this color would come in handy someday.” Forever more, Uncle Frank and Uncle Dean joked with Pop about that line, all in good fun.