Sammy Davis Jr.

by Tracey Davis

Despite the support from my father’s fans, family, and close friends, my mother’s parents were forced to send a telegram to all the guests invited to the wedding:

  The wedding of Miss May Britt Wilkens and Mr. Sammy Davis, Jr. will be postponed until Sunday, November 13. We sincerely hope your attendance will be possible for the wedding reception at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on this day at 4:00 p.m. RSVP 9057 Dicks Street, Los Angeles 46, California.

  —Mr. and Mrs. Ernst Hugo Wilkens

  My parents on their wedding day, 1960

  The thoughts of my parents’ unyielding love was disrupted by a nurse who came outside to check on my father. He woke up as she tried to quietly adjust his IV and trachea tube. Lessie Lee had already placed some beverages and snacks on the table by his chaise lounge.

  “Hey, Trace Face, you get uglier every time I see you.” His eyes sparkled with joy as if I had just entered.

  “How are feeling, Pop?” I asked.

  “How are you feeling is the question, Ms. Pregasaurus?” Pop said.

  “I’m fine. Sam’s kicking a bit.”

  “Learning how to kick butt early, that’s my grandson!” Pop replied, holding his trach hole to speak.

  I thought about how exciting it was that here I am, married and having my first child. I recalled a story my father had told me about his wedding to my mother.

  First of all, since my father had to postpone the wedding for almost a month, thanks to death threats, demonstrations, and JFK’s election, by the time they got married, my mother was already pregnant with me.

  My parents wanted a dignified wedding, not a publicity circus about this taboo interracial marriage. So they had a small, private ceremony at their Hollywood home on Evanview Drive off the Sunset Strip. The reception was at the Beverly Hilton Hotel with around two hundred guests. Some of the press claimed my mother was twenty-four but she was really twenty-six. My father was thirty-four. Since my mother had already converted to Judaism the Jewish rites were performed by Rabbi William Kramer of Hollywood’s Temple Israel. It was beautiful, so I heard.

  Frank stood up with my father. Mama, my Grandfather, Uncle Will, my grandparents from Sweden, were there, among others. The guests watched on in the living room with a canopy of flowers by the windows—under which stood my parents as bride and groom. Shirley was the maid of honor.

  Pop was so deeply in love with my mother. His whole life, he said he felt alone, in the army and all. Once he met my mother, he didn’t feel alone anymore. She was the love of his life—his joy, his better half. When Mom appeared from the next room with her father, looking like a Swedish goddess in her dress, tears welled up in my father’s eyes. He was a superstar, but she was an icon, at least to him.

  The words of Rabbi William Kramer are words that should never be forgotten—ever. They should live on forever.

  This is what he said to my parents:

  “Almighty God, supremely blessed, supreme in might and glory, guide and bless this groom and his bride. Sammy and May, you are standing in front of me to join your lives even as your hands are joined together, and custom dictates that I, as your rabbi, give you some advice.

  “Your marriage is something more than just the marriage of two people in love, and it is most certainly that or I have never seen two people in love in twenty years of the ministry. But as you come together as man and wife something more is involved. You are people without prejudice. You represent the value of the society that many of us dream about but, I suspect, hesitate to enter. As such, because you are normal in an abnormal society—society will treat you as sick. To be healthy among the sick is to be treated as sick as if the others were healthy.

  “Through no fault of your own except your love, because both of you are greater than the pettiness that divide men, you become not simply a symbol of marriage, but because you both have accepted Judaism equally as your own you become representatives of Judaism because you are in the public eye; you are part of that from which the public gets its response and its value systems—either by acting along with or reacting to.

  “Also, because of the circumstances of your love, there is a symbolic representation to the fact that you are of different racial stocks originally and that now you merge your love as in a sense all mankind is merging its genes and chromosomes to the oneness which is inevitable. It’s not really fair that your love should have so much imposed upon it, but it must be a mark of greatness of your love to know that you must not only continue to love each other, but because circumstances beyond control—and all circumstances involved in real love are beyond control—make you representatives of Judaism and marriage to a world that watches with curiosity, with eagerness, almost with a will to see failure rather than success.

  “An additional pressure is on you in knowing that because of the different racial backgrounds you are a symbol, too, of the success that must come from such unions. If you are true to the story of your love, then your social role in our times will be an important one. Important for the future of the amity of races.

  “What I pray for you, May, and for you, Sammy, is the strength that you may fulfill either the public role or private role, because if you can do either, you will be doing both. If you are true to that which you have called upon yourselves or which has been thrust upon you by society, then your love will be a love story to join immortal love stories of the ages.

  “May the blessings of the patriarchs and the prophets, may the blessings of God Almighty be upon you and may you be worthy, my dear friends, of a historic trust and a great love.”

  Mom and Dad’s marriage was so controversial they required bodyguards.

  After that Rabbi Kramer led them into their “I do’s.” I turned to my father, who was smiling.

  “Thank you Trace Face. That lifted my spirits. It energizes me to think of the good ole days. Your mom was glowing in every wedding photo.”

  “She was glowing all right! Glowing with a one hundred three degree fever,” I said.

  “It’s true. Your mother was so sick. She was in bed before the ceremony and after!” Pop exclaimed.

  “Mom said the doctor told her she had an intestinal flu and had to stay in bed.”

  “And your mother told the doctor: ‘You’re crazy! It’s my wedding!’”

  “Mom always told me, ‘your poor father had to go to the reception by himself, without his bride!’”

  “What she said to me after the reception, in her Swedish decoding process was, ‘Poor Sharlie Brown had to go alone to his own wedding party!’”

  “Sharlie Brown, that’s funny. You were Charlie Brown, too. A solo groom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel with no bride and swarms of guests to entertain!” Among the guests were Peter Lawford and his wife, Diana Dors, Tony Curtis, Barbara Rush, Jack Kelly, Mr. and Mrs. Dean Martin, Peter Brown, Janet Leigh, Shirley MacLaine, Edward Robinson Jr., Milton Berle, the list goes on and on.

  The public outrage after the wedding was so vitriolic, my parents were forced to hire bodyguards—again! More frenzied hate letters, more death threats. Uncle Frank was hosting Kennedy’s inaugural party. Pop even got removed from the list of entertainers. He was deeply hurt by that. In her column, journalist Dorothy Kilgallen wrote at the time, “Scuttlebutt from the Clan indicates Frank Sinatra and chums will take over a whole floor of Washington’s best hotels for the inauguration ceremonies in January. Big question: Since the nation’s capital isn’t very integrated will Sammy Davis, Jr., be allowed to share a suite with his bride, May Britt?”

  I started to think about my own interracial wedding decades later. My husband, Guy Garner, was Italian; I am mixed, so the potential for future hardship ran through my father’s mind. Dad used to talk about his love for Guy. He gave us his wisdom about interracial marriage: “Just remember, it’s their problem, not yours.”

  When I got married, Pop and I had just overcome obstacles in our father-daughter relationship—my father had been too busy to attend childhood birthday parties, my college graduation, and such. T
o make up for the past, my father was determined to do everything right at my wedding. He watched Father of the Bride like he was studying for a role, to prepare for my wedding. It was sweet, and he nailed it.

  I remember when my husband and I were at Pop’s private pool at the Desert Inn one time in Vegas. We decide to head to the main pool to swim. Dad stopped us and screamed, “No!!!!!” Then he caught himself and said, “Sorry, kids, I forgot we’re not in the ’60s anymore . . . go on, have fun!”

  I glanced over at Pop in his chaise lounge. His head was down. I guessed he was still thinking about not being invited to the JFK inaugural party. I tried to cheer him up, “So not long after your wedding to Mom, I was born! Tee hee!”

  “July 5, 1961. Best day of my life after marrying your mom!” Pop perked up.

  “Mom said she went to the bathroom and realized her water broke,” I said.

  “A couple of weeks early at that! We jumped in the car along with our close friends, the Boyars. Anyway, I drove to the hospital, and your mom sat next to me in the passenger seat—moaning.”

  “Mom said in the car on the way to the hospital, you heard on the radio that you were on the way to the hospital!” I said.

  “Yeah, isn’t that a kick? We all got a good laugh out of that one!” Pop chuckled. “Once we got to Cedars, your mom was given a spinal. In those days the fathers had to wait in the waiting room, so that’s what I did.”

  “Mom says if you had been in the operating room, you would have fainted!” I said.

  “Your mom couldn’t be more correct!” Pop smiled.

  “But when I first laid eyes on you in the private room, I got so teary eyed, I just couldn’t believe how beautiful you were,” Pop said.

  “Mom said, all you kept saying was, ‘she’s so beautiful, she’s so beautiful . . .’” I replied.

  My parents agreed to postpone their wedding at the behest of Frank Sinatra, because they thought it might hurt JFK’s run for the presidency. By the time they were wed, my mother was already pregnant with me. I was born July 5, 1961, eight months after their marriage.

  Family photos with Mom, Dad, and my brother Mark, 1962

  “Correct again! But your beauty faded quick when you were a toddler, Trace Face,” Pop joked. “You liked to pee on me when you were pissed!”

  “But . . . for three days in that hospital, your mother and I were so touched, so moved by you, our first child, our only daughter, Tracey Hillivi Davis.” [Hillivi was my Swedish grandmother’s first name.]

  “When we left the hospital, press was swarming everywhere. They kept asking ‘What color is the baby?’” Pop said.

  “I heard they asked, ‘What color is IT?’” I chimed in.

  “Even worse!” Pop exclaimed. “We climbed into our Rolls Royce and took off, thrilled to leave the press behind. You know, Trace, I never used to let those type of comments get to me. Even when my own people would complain to me about racism, I would always say, ‘You got it easy. I’m a short, ugly, one-eyed, black Jew. What do you think it’s like for me?’”

  The nurse came out to give my dad some medication and check on him. Pop motioned her away, so we could continue our talk. He was enjoying our moment. He was having a good day, feeling better.

  My parents on the steps of the courthouse after adopting my brother Jeff, 1965

  “Your mother and I spoke about adopting kids way back when we were dating. We both believed in providing a good home for children in need. In November 1962, we adopted your brother, two-and-a-half-year-old Mark. A couple of years later, we adopted your brother Jeff. He was four months old. What joy they brought to our lives. What a kick to watch your white Swedish mom carting around three black children!” Pop said.

  “The rainbow tribe,” I replied.

  “As I recall, only you got to meet your grandparents in Sweden before they passed away. Your mother took Jeff to Sweden but only to visit her sister. Her parents were already gone.”

  “Did you go on the Sweden trips, too?” I asked.

  “Trace Face, I was working; my schedule was crazy hectic. First of all, even before you were born, I was juggling films in Hollywood, shows in Vegas, the Rat Pack gigs, and making albums! 1957 to 1960 was probably my busiest time with Decca Records, ever. I made a swinging album with the Count Basie Band, two duet albums with Carmen McRae, worked with Mundell Lowe, had arrangements by Buddy Bregman. Rigid schedule.”

  “Sounds like a good gig with Decca Records, though. Why did you leave?” I asked.

  “Uncle Frank. He created his own record label, Reprise Records. I left Decca; he left Capitol. Uncle Frank even got Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin to sign on his label. Uncle Frank looked out for artists’ rights, so we all felt safe. In our contracts, if you chose, recorded masters would become the property of the artist after a period of time, or you could cash out. Either way, Frank looked after us, took care of us. There was trust,” Pop said.

  “Trust is everything in the biz,” I replied.

  “Trust is everything in life. That’s why I chose Marty Paich. I trusted his work with my buddy Mel Tormé at Bethlehem and Verve. Paich had this West Coast jazz–style approach to music. Together we made some of the best recordings of my career: The Wham of Sam and my hit single ‘What Kind of Fool Am I?,’ which was on the 1962 Billboard charts for fifteen weeks . . .”

  “And won the Grammy for Record of the Year!” I added.

  My father’s musical recording career from 1961 to 1964 was at its height. He had Broadway show-stopper albums, a collaboration with Sam Butera and the Witnesses, a live album recorded at the Cocoanut Grove, an album of songs composed by Mel Tormé, one with Count Basie, and even the cast recording from his second Broadway musical, Golden Boy. In 1965, Pop became a Tony Award nominee for Best Actor in a Musical for Golden Boy.

  “My schedule was tight, but I did my best to make time for your mom, too,” Pop said. “We went to the rainy Hollywood premiere of West Side Story in December 1961. Not long after, at a New York nightclub, your mom impressed the crowds by dancing the Twist. She impressed me, too, since your mom had no rhythm at all.”

  “You go, Mom! And don’t forget the Funky Chicken.”

  “Oh,” Pop said. “let’s not do that . . .”

  “Never forget that April, [columnist] Hedda Hopper came up to me at the Sands and asked if me and your mom were separating. Can you imagine? She heard a rumor, she said. I told her, ‘Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m closing here and the next day we leave for Seattle for our first honeymoon,’” Pop said.

  Jeff Nathaniel Davis, my parents’ second adoptive son. I nicknamed him “Bumba.”

  “In May, we even took a week off for a vacation in Rome where I was working. Your mother mispronounced almost everything in English. But I found it endearing. I called it the decoding process—one of the reasons I loved her so.”

  “But oddly enough, when it came to other foreign languages, she could translate anything. In Rome, she translated the Italian so well. I could never have gotten by without her. I remember joking with your mother, that she spoke so many languages it was funny English wasn’t one of them.” Pop smiled.

  “I really didn’t like to travel without her to foreign countries, but when I did, I would always bring her back fabulous gifts. One time I was in Paris, I spent a fortune on some French couture Balmain dresses, coats—everything hand-sewn. Beautiful! When your mom found out how much it cost just to get the stuff out of Customs she almost cried!” Pop laughed.

  “Don’t make me laugh!” I was chuckling.

  “When you mother could join me in my travels, Lessie Lee took care of you kids like you were her own. She raised you children like my Mama raised me, over-protective!”

  “My Mama loved to tell this story: When I was an infant she would stroll me down the streets of Harlem. When the other mothers would see her coming, they would exclaim, ‘Here comes Rosa B with her Jesus!’”

  “At least Mama didn
’t smother you in vats of Vaseline like Lessie Lee did to us!” I told Pop.

  “Where’s the vat!” My father shouted toward the kitchen, “Lessie Lee! Get the vat out, my daughter’s got ashy black feet!” Pop said. In an instant, Lessie Lee marched outside with her vat of Vaseline. We all laughed.

  “Lessie Lee, do you remember smothering so much Vaseline on my face, I could barely see?” I ask.

  “Uh-huh.” Lessie Lee’s standard response.

  “My vision was so blurred, I couldn’t see my way back to the bed for ten minutes! No amount of blinking would get rid of that, it was like a coat on my eyeballs!”

  “Uh-huh.” Lessie Lee said again, and took the vat back into the house.

  My parents adopted my brother Mark in 1963, when he was almost three years old.

  “I love Lessie Lee’s strong-soulful-black-woman ‘Uh-huh’—letting you know she’s been around the block a few times. No explanation needed!” I said.

  My parents in 1966

  “I got that ‘Uh-huh’ from Lessie Lee when I told her that your mother and I were going to meet Martin Luther King for the first time. We attended a mass civil rights rally at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. Lessie Lee’s ‘Uh-huh’ translated to: it’s about time you and Dr. King meet, no explanation needed!” Pop said.

  In 1963 my father marched with Dr. King at the March on Washington. He campaigned relentlessly against segregation. By the time he was a superstar, Pop forced clubs and casinos across the country to integrate. Back in the day the only place colored folks could hang out in Vegas was the Moulin Rouge.

  Burt Boyar was a life-long friend who wrote about my father and the March on Washington in detail. This is what he recounted:

  “I was privileged to meet Sammy Davis, Jr. in the mid-1950s and had a friendship that deepened over the years until his death in 1990. Over the course of that friendship, Sammy and I conducted many conversations that were recorded and used for his autobiographies Yes, I Can and Why Me? But in neither of those books did we touch on his role in the Civil Rights Movement or his thoughts on August 28, 1963. I have since shared this story in a book of photos taken by Sammy throughout his life, Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr. Below, in his own words, are Sammy’s recollection of that momentous day: