In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Junior (20 page)

By early spring of 1945, American forces had taken Iwo Jima, liberated Manila, then Paris. General Douglas MacArthur, in sunglasses, mythical and brilliant, had returned triumphantly to the Philippines. Momentum was clearly on the side of America and its allies. But then, on April 12, President Franklin D. Roosevelt—he was smoking a cigarette, doing work at his desk in Warm Springs, Georgia—suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. The death was announced at 3:55 in the afternoon. Next day, the train that bore him began its ride back to the nation’s capital. Thousands stood alongside the railroad tracks. When the train reached a place near Gainesville, Georgia, a group of Negro women in a cotton field all seemed to drop at once to their knees, shrieking in awful cries of agony.

Sammy had been diagnosed in the army with a jumpy heart, and it qualified him for an early release. On June 1 he packed up his belongings and collected his release papers, his musician buddies guffawing in his ear, slapping him on the back.

He wanted to remember the army shows, the way he danced onstage, how he held the microphone, how he interacted with the other musicians. How the pristine Wyoming air felt hitting his face as he stood before his fellow soldiers. He wanted to remember the smiles that climbed from the soldiers and reached him as he mimicked someone. He felt so comfortable on those army stages. He wanted to remember all of that—Abe Lafferty’s laugh and horn playing too—and not the sting of the fists that had floored him, fists that had come flying out of the darkness of history.

A train whistle blew, and the eleven-month army vet—who never rose above the rank of private, first class—was on his way back to Los Angeles, where he’d trade in the army boots for his old tap shoes.

Two months later, President Harry Truman would order the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, effectively ending the long and unmerciful war in which America had lost more than 290,000 men.

On the home front, Sammy’s idol, Frank Sinatra, was bigger than ever. His wartime concerts were sellouts. “
It was the war years, and there was a great loneliness,” Sinatra would come to explain of it all. “I was the boy in every corner drugstore who’d gone off, drafted to the war. That’s all.”

H
e had been too jittery to sleep on the train ride from Cheyenne to Los Angeles. On the train he was still in uniform. His army experiences aside, he was so very proud to wear it. Ever since Sammy had felt life—laughter and tears, the shift of seasons in the weather, the smell of food atop a stove—he had been in vaudeville. Being away from it had hurt, had torn at his sense of motion and self-esteem. Being back would provide a sense of balance.

His father and Will Mastin were at the train station to pick him up. Sam Sr. had beautiful and large white teeth; Mastin’s teeth were smaller, but with gold; and there the two men stood, smiling their Sammy—in Uncle Sam’s uniform—into their outstretched arms and back into show business.

They dined and they laughed, and they listened to Sammy’s army stories. (Keenly aware of how emotional they both were about him, Sammy spared the tales of his fisticuffs.) They told Sammy about Pudgy Barksdale, how she came and went, and they laughed some more. Sam Sr. told Sammy that Pudgy, in fact, was back in town, was convalescing from an illness and staying over at the Morris Hotel. Sammy hustled over to see her. “He stood at the foot of my bed and did all of his imitations for me,” Barksdale remembers.

There was news to share with Sammy. Mastin had signed with a booking agent, Arthur Silber, who had an independent agency in Los Angeles. Mastin had known Silber from his days in vaudeville when Silber was a traveling performer. Silber’s best-known client was Big Jim Corbett, who was far from being famous. Sammy had never heard of Arthur Silber. Silber wasn’t connected to the big agencies in town—his was a virtual one-man operation—and Sammy wanted to be with one of the big guns. But it was Will Mastin’s show, and he couldn’t complain. Silber got them work—a quick USO trip to Honolulu; sixty-six-year-old Will Mastin boarded a plane for the first time in his life—but it was a quick tour, and there they were, right back in Los Angeles.

In the late 1940s they were often on the edge of penury. Then would come the sudden notice of an engagement, and they’d have to borrow money to get their clothing out of the dry cleaners. The kindness of others helped them survive; agents and acquaintances occasionally slipped them small amounts of cash. Sammy never forgot such gestures. And there they’d be, onstage, the cane in Mastin’s hand, Sammy in the middle, their suits—white mohair, in this instance, for Will and Sam Sr.—looking like a million. They had style like a bank has money. “Ladies and gentleman, the Will Mastin Trio
—”
(
JESS RAND COLLECTION
)

Sammy beat the pavement. Every waking hour now he was but a dancer looking for a stage. He had always been driven and determined; he seemed more so now. The war was over; things were humming. He could not sit around and wait for a phone to ring. He bounced in and out of nightclubs as if scouting possible venues: the Moulin Rouge, the Mocambo, gliding along the back walls like a spy. (It was at the Mocambo that canaries whistled from cages, causing waiters to carry nets over the food trays in case of bird droppings.) Sammy’s friends noticed his frenetic pace. Leroy Myers was another dancer in Los Angeles, just out of the war. He caught the Mastin trio as part of a large bill at the Orpheum in Los Angeles. “They were doing a bang-up job,” he says. And of Sammy: “He was on his way.”

Even though it lay years in the future, Myers says he felt Sammy had already
begun calculating his solo adventure by incorporating new moves into the act. “He was able to exploit his talent by working with the trio. [The club promoters] just wanted you to do a hot nigger dance. They didn’t want you to be clever.” Myers watched carefully for signs of resentment by Mastin and Sam Sr. regarding Sammy’s rambunctiousness. “I imagine they didn’t encourage him. They probably gave him hell for stepping outside the act.” Mastin and Sam Sr. had their pride, their honed skills. “Not that they were jealous of him,” Myers says. “They were just trying to protect their jobs.”

Ernest Cooke, another war veteran, had also seen Sammy perform before he went into the army. “When Sammy came out of the army,” says Cooke, “he was even more sensational.”

The act did a couple of weeks at the Cricket Club in Los Angeles. Sammy had started doing cakewalks. He’d dance on all fours. Then he’d hop up, place his hands behind his back, and move his feet furiously in front of him. Mastin and Sam Sr. were astonished by some of his improvisations.

Musician Tracy McCleary had toured the country with various bands before the war. After the war, he says, names of certain performers seemed to be on everyone’s lips. One was Sammy Davis, Jr. “Everybody was so taken with Sammy,” recalls McCleary. “He was just terrific. He would sing, dance, you name it. You couldn’t help but notice this young guy was carrying these two older guys on his back.”

Arthur Silber was Arthur Silber, and Abe Lastfogel was Abe Lastfogel, who just happened to be part of the team running the William Morris Agency. Behind Mastin’s back, Sammy wormed his way into Lastfogel’s graces, and there they were one afternoon at the swanky Hillcrest Club in Los Angeles, Lastfogel gliding Sammy around the room: meet Groucho Marx, meet Jack Benny, meet Al Jolson himself. Face to face, there were Sammy and Jolson; Jolson, the man whom Sammy had impersonated as a child onstage in blackface—whom he was still impersonating! After the war, and with Negro rights taking on more urgency, memories of Jolson’s blackface routine were more hushed than loudly remembered. Still, Sammy couldn’t contain the grinning, the exuberant hand-pumping. These were the men he listened to on the radio, the performers he had watched in darkened theaters in his youth. Marx, along with his brothers Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo, had risen to fame with riotously funny movies, highlighted by the spoof
Duck Soup
, in 1933; Benny had been a violinist in his youth and now had a popular radio program that featured Rochester, his Negro valet; Jolson was Jolson, aging now and desperately trying to hold on to the fame he had once known. All former vaudevillians, all born—as Will Mastin had been—in another century; all pressed into show business—as Sammy had been—in their youth. Sammy stood among them swooning, listening to their snappy one-liners, admiring the clothing
they wore. Marx and Jolson were rather aloof, but Benny told Sammy he had heard his name around town. Sammy didn’t know if it was true or not, but he liked hearing it. Lastfogel wanted to sign him, then reality set in for Sammy. He couldn’t sign, because Will Mastin had signed him up with Arthur Silber. A part of Sammy was owed to Will Mastin, and Will Mastin had portioned off that part to Silber. It was akin to one of those tricky vaudeville contracts—a mirror and plenty of smoke.

But Abe Lastfogel, one of the cagiest operatives in Hollywood, had no intention of forgetting young Sammy Davis, Jr.

While onstage now, Sammy had begun working more seriously at singing. He had a clear voice, full of lung strength. Jesse Price, a drummer friend—in ten seconds flat Sammy could own you as a friend, hurling compliments, offering cigarettes—introduced him to the brass at Columbia Records. Sammy cut a single in 1946—“The Way You Look Tonight”—and no one exactly had high hopes for it, but it managed to catch on when it was released that year.

The first recognition of his breakaway talent came that year as well when
Metronome
magazine named Sammy “Most Outstanding New Personality.” He didn’t know what it meant, but he was so excited he went and found the magazine owners to thank them personally. One of the things it did not mean was an instant leap to more money; the Will Mastin Trio continued to scuffle. In any event, Sammy’s fan base grew.

Elliott Kozak, a young William Morris agent, had begun hearing of the Will Mastin Trio shortly after the war ended. “It was word of mouth: ‘You gotta see Sammy Davis, Jr.’ ”

The act now looked more lively and more animated. Sammy was rising, and he was taking the trio with him.

The
Metronome
honor brought Sammy to the attention of young Mickey Rooney, himself home from the war and trying to reenergize his career by taking to the nightclub circuit.

Rooney, born Joe Yule, Jr., five years before Sammy, had had a celebrated career as a child actor. Between 1927 and 1933 he charmed audiences while appearing in the
Mickey Maguire
two-reel comedy series based on the comic-book character. In 1935—now working as Mickey Rooney—he drew critical raves for his performance as Puck in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. Two years later he made his first two screen appearances as Andy Hardy, a winsome young boy living a life of domestic sweetness alongside his father, played by a curmudgeonly Lewis Stone. Andy Hardy became every American boy, with a cowlick and a mischievous grin on his face. By 1939, Rooney had replaced Shirley Temple as America’s number 1 box office star. His ego seemed a dangerous
thing. In 1944, Rooney was drawing plaudits alongside Elizabeth Taylor in
National Velvet
. But wartime service seemed to have derailed his momentum. He made no movies in 1945 or 1946, so to reignite his career, he decided to take an act on the road. Rooney’s manager, Sam Stefel, recommended the Mastin trio to Rooney as an opening act. It sounded fine to Mickey—he didn’t ponder things very long.

Sammy, his father, and Mastin got themselves to Boston, where the tour would begin. Rooney said he’d meet the trio in the lobby of the Copley Plaza Hotel. He mentioned noon. And at noon he bounced in. “
Now that’s a pro for you,” Mastin said to young Sammy. Rooney was always full of heat and anxiousness. He sized people up quick, then boom, he was off. He walked like a man fleeing the scene of a crime. Sammy said he’d like to do impressions. Mastin grimaced about the impressions, as they made him nervous. Nervous because Mastin sometimes felt Sammy was pushing the limits by mocking white entertainers as he imitated them. Stefel said his Mickey did the impressions, but Rooney overruled him and said it would be okay for Sammy to do impressions. And when Sammy did his impressions, the audiences loved it. Mickey himself cackled.

At night, on the road, Sammy and Mickey played cards, sang songs, wrote songs in their minds, sang those songs out. Sammy would watch Rooney, and whenever he watched someone he admired, he took mental notes. He liked Rooney’s style and was determined to steal what he could from the performer. Dance steps weren’t nailed down; a certain walk wasn’t nailed down. Sammy was a mimic. He loved the way Rooney would just walk out onstage—boom, there he was, gliding toward the microphone, no announcement or anything—just whoosh from behind the curtains and there’s Mickey, the Mick, Andy Hardy with the cowlick, in the raw flesh. Sammy liked the way the applause rose at such an entrance.

He and Mickey talked show business, movies; Sammy wanted to know all about Liz Taylor. Days rolled by, and Sammy was happy. Shooting the breeze with Mickey; Will in the dressing room, tugging at his French cuffs; Sammy listening to the pink-cheeked giggling white girls; reading the reviews over his father’s shoulder; watching Mickey shoot by backstage, boom, just like that, just gone, and watching the applause drape over him out there onstage, and listening to the shrieks. Timmie Rogers—Sammy’s vaudeville friend—remembers catching Sammy on the bill with Rooney. “The first show, Sammy did twenty minutes. The manager was mad at Mickey because they’re paying Mickey all that money. Mickey said, ‘Hey, this guy’s got a lot of talent.’ Sammy was on fire.”