Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (38 page)

“Dave, you ain’t never gonna quit this job, right?” He was gone before I’d finished saying it.

My father was standing near the bar. “Sammy, can I talk to you a minute?”

“Something wrong?”

“Let’s go into the other room where it’ll be quiet.”

The bedroom was jammed. “Come on into the bathroom, Dad. No one’ll bother us there.”

He locked the door and took a newspaper clipping out of his pocket. “Maybe you better give this a look; that’s not nice things they’re sayin’ in there.”

The headline was:
“Is Sammy Ashamed He’s A Negro?”
I sat down on the edge of the tub.

“Sammy Davis, Jr., who recently sparkled like a 14-carat gold star on the stage at the Fairmont, was a rare pleasure to us as a reviewer and a pride to us as a Negro. But, unfortunately, persistent reports of his offstage performances leave much to be desired. During his stay in San Francisco he never once came by the neighborhood where he stayed in days before he was able to make the move to the less dark, more glittery side of town. Clearly, Mr. Davis is doing nothing to discourage rumors that success has erased his memory for friends who knew him ‘when.’ His all-night, all-white, orgy-style parties are the talk of Las Vegas, where he is currently appearing. We are sorry to be the ones to remind Mr. Davis of his obligation to the Negro community, but even sorrier for the necessity to do so.”

“I don’t get it. Why should they want to write lousy stuff like this about me?”

“Well, the fact is you never did come by the old neighborhood … you had a coupla buddies from around there.”

“And every last one of them was at the hotel with me almost every night. They came to me, so what was there for me to go across town for? Ask Charley. He was there every night. He can tell you there were as many colored cats as ofays, maybe more.”

“Well, this newspaper didn’t hear about ‘em.”

“Hold it. Am I supposed to send them a guest list every time I wanta have some people over? Should I mark the names ‘colored, white, colored, colored, white’?”

“Sammy, you gotta go along with the fact that … well, right there in the other room, just look who you got around you. There ain’t nothin’ but ofays. Now if one of them writers was to walk in here …”

“Dad! Where in the goddamned hell am I going to find colored people in Vegas? Y’want me to invite Mrs. Cartwright? Should I go over to Westside and find cats I don’t know and invite ‘em to a party just to dress up the room? Or maybe you’d like me to send a plane into L.A. for buddies so this paper’ll be happy?”

“Well, maybe you could cut down on the parties some.”

“What else am I supposed to do? I kill myself on that stage every night, I drain myself dry. Don’t I have the right to unwind? Okay, I can’t do it like everybody else; I can’t go around town doing dropins at the Desert Inn, and ‘Hey, let’s catch the new Lounge act at The Sands.’ I’m not complaining, but let’s not forget I’m on an island here at the Frontier. I shouldn’t have to draw pictures for you why I bring people over.”

He didn’t fight me and my anger turned to a rotten, hollow feeling. “They don’t mention that because of me, colored people sat out front in a Las Vegas hotel for the first time in history. Not a word. Just that I have parties.”

“Well, Poppa, they just don’t know all the facts of what’s behind everything.”

I stared at the paper that was face up on the floor. “I don’t get it. I swear to God I don’t. I’d have thought they’d be happy every time one of us breaks out and lives good.”

I took the towel from Charley as I came offstage, and wrapped it around my neck. “There’s no party tonight. Let everybody know.”

“But I’ve got fifty sandwiches.”

“I hope you’re hungry.”

I hung around the casino for a while and then went back to my room. The door opened and Morty stuck his head in. “You feeling okay?” I nodded. “Y’mean …” A smile of hope was tentatively spreading over his face. “… no party tonight?”

“That’s right, Morty. And stop grinning like that or you’ll tear your mouth.”

Dave rushed in, “Hey, where
is
everybody?”

“It’s a quiet night at home for old Sam, baby. Why don’t you take a look around the town?”

They both sat down and watched me tuning in the television set. I looked around at them. “What’re you guys, a couple of nitwits?
You’re
always looking for a good night’s sleep, and
you’re
always saying how you want to see the town. Well, this is that great come-and-get-it night. Go on, you don’t have to sit around with me. I appreciate it but I really don’t need a nurse.”

They closed the door and I caught a local disc jockey. “… dynamic. I don’t know where he gets all the energy. And he’s the same offstage. Always going, always moving. Came up from nothing and now he’s sitting on top of the world … the greatest Negro performer to come along since Bill Robinson….” I turned the station. “Looking for the best odds in town? Try the Lucky Buck on Fremont Street. Every player’s a winner.” I turned it off and went into the living room. Charley’d left the booze and the glasses set up. I took one of the sandwiches back to the bedroom and got into bed.

I opened a new book about the Nuremberg Trials, but the Negro press rap kept running through my mind. Isn’t it
my
life? Why should I have to live by other people’s rules? Who am I living for—me, or some guy who sits behind a desk and wants to tell me how to live? What makes his rules better than mine? Why should I let myself be forced into a mold? I’ve worked all my life toward the day when no white man could tell me how to live—now the colored people are trying to do it. I looked through the door, at the empty living room. I had no desire for it to be empty. What was the point of making it if I’ve got to wind up sitting alone in a room like an outcast? I didn’t have to become a star to accomplish
that!

I telephoned Charley’s room. “Baby, come on over to the suite, will you please? I’m going to have some people coming over and
I’ll … what’s the difference what time it is? … yeah, right away.”

The room was swarming with people laughing under the wail of the hi-fi set. Morty was standing in his doorway, hair rumpled, wearing candy-striped pajamas and a stunned look as a chick rode by on a room service table. The word had spread from hotel to hotel down the length of the Strip and the kids were arriving like volunteer firemen, all but climbing in the windows.

The train swerved sharply and Morty muttered, “Sonuvabitch!” He caught my involuntary smile at the slash of ink his pen made across the music he was writing, and grinned like thanks-a-bunch. He looked at the cover of the book I’d been reading. “You gonna become Jewish?”

“Baby, I’ll do the jokes and you write the music.” I continued reading, but I could feel him watching me, dying to say something. I put the book down. “Okay, Morty. What is it?”

“Can I ask you a straight question?”

“You’re gonna ask it anyway, right?”

“Seriously. You’ve been hung up in that all day. You thinking about converting to Judaism?”

“Morty, I’m interested in guns, but I didn’t become a cowboy, did I?”

He shrugged. “I don’t dig. When I read that stuff it was like dullsville.”

“Baby, you’d better read it again. These are a swinging bunch of people. I mean I’ve heard of persecution, but what they went through is
ridiculous!
There wasn’t anybody who didn’t take a shot at ‘em. The whole world kept saying, ‘You can’t do this’ and ‘You can’t do that’ but they didn’t listen! It’s beautiful. They just plain didn’t listen. They’d get kicked out of one place, so they’d just go on to the next one and keep swinging like they wanted to, believing in themselves and in their right to have rights, asking nothing but for people to leave ‘em alone and get off their backs, and having the guts to fight to get themselves a little peace. But the great thing is that after thousands of years of waiting and holding on and fighting, they finally made it.”

He was looking past me, reaching back to his Sunday school days. “I don’t remember any of that.”

I slipped on the tweed patch that matched the suit I was wearing and it was a definite kissing-the-mirror. It did away completely with the medicinal look of the plain black one. I set the elastic band at the most rakish angle I could find and went over to Lindy’s to find someone to try it out on.

Milton Berle was just paying his check. He waved me over. “Come on to the Friars Club with me and take some steam. It’ll help get rid of all that flab.”

Jack E. Leonard was sitting around the Friars shmoosing with some other comics. He walked over. “It’s nice to see you again, Sammy—but I think I should tell you, your tweed beret slipped down over your eye.” He gave me his glare. “Either that or you’ve got lint on your monocle.” He turned on Berle. “Hello, Milton. I saw your show last night. Keep it up and one of these days you may own your own gas station!”

Berle nodded. “That’s very funny, Jack. Will you stand still please. We were going to the gym but we’ll just take a walk around you.”

“That’s funny, too, Milton. You’ve got a very familiar style.
Mine
!”

When they’d finished they smiled pleasantly at each other; Jack went back to the comics he’d been sitting with and Milton showed me around. “We’re getting a new clubhouse soon. Y’know you really should become a Friar.”

“I’d love to—but can I?”

“Why the hell not?”

“Milton, this isn’t exactly a
sunburn
I’m wearing.”

He grabbed my face with one hand and slapped me lightly with the other. “Repeat after me: ‘I do the singing, and Milton does the jokes.’ … Once again … Okay, that’s better. Now, let’s go upstairs and find Carl Timin. He runs the club and he’ll get your membership started.”

When I got to the dressing room at the Copa and told them about it, Will shook his head. “They never had a colored member before, and if they wouldn’t have Bill Robinson and Bert Williams, then where do you get off thinking they’ll have you?”

“Massey, there’s gotta be a first time for everything. And with Milton Berle and his manager Irving Gray sponsoring me—”

“Just don’t get your hopes too high on it. Oh, I know Milton means well, but there’s enough of the others who won’t let it happen. They’ll smile and be polite to you but all of a sudden they won’t be taking new members. You’ll see, they’ll think of something. You can’t get in there.”

Dave turned off the television set. I put down the Cleveland
Plain Dealer
. “Who told you to turn that off, Dave?”

“But you weren’t watching it. You’re reading.”

“I don’t have to be watching it. I catch glimpses, I hear it, and it all goes into me like I’m a sponge. I absorb everything, then discard what I don’t want.”

“Hey, sponge. Look at this.” He was looking at a large picture, in the
Courier
, of a line of girls all wearing white ball gowns. “I didn’t know there were colored coming-out parties.”

“Baby, we’re not all dancers and bootblacks!” The door opened and Morty came in. He seemed upset. I asked, “Rehearsal go okay?”

“The band was fine, but when I left, Will was having a big argument with the guy who owns the club. I think it was over the sign out front. It just says ‘Sammy Davis, Jr.’ ”

“You mean
only
my name? Oh boy.” I went into the bedroom and started dressing.

Dave followed me in. “Y’know, I don’t want to butt in …”

“But you’re going to anyway, right?”

“Well, I was thinking that from a purely business point of view maybe the club is right. After all
you’re
the attraction, not the Trio.”

“Baby, from a purely business point of view the club is dead wrong because the contract they signed says the billing will be Will Mastin Trio, 100 per cent, Featuring Sammy Davis, Jr., 75 per cent.”

I looked around for Will but couldn’t find him. The owner of the club was standing near the dressing room. He waved me in and closed the door. “Sammy, am I glad you’re here. I don’t know which way to turn any more.”

“What did you say to my uncle?”

“Look, I admit the old contracts always said ‘The Will Mastin Trio Featuring Sammy Davis, Jr.’ so for sentiment that’s how we’re still signing them, but times have changed, the act has changed, so I took it upon myself to give you the billing you deserve.” He shrugged. “Sammy, I’ve got to sell what the people want to buy. Isn’t it foolish to be selling Sammy Davis and have to advertise Will Mastin Trio?”

“You still haven’t told me what you said to my uncle.”

“Who could say anything? He flew into my office and he says, ‘Change the sign or we don’t go on,’ so I say, ‘I’ll change the sign.’ That was our big discussion. The painters are on their way over, but Sammy, before they do something we’ll all be sorry for, tell me, isn’t it ridiculous? You’re the act Sure, they each do a dance with a few of their tricks and who could love the old show business better than me?—but then they spend the rest of the show standing behind you keeping the beat. Look, don’t I know they’re great guys? They’re troupers and I love them for it, but we have to worry about you, too. Maybe you don’t hear what people are saying, but you wanta be smart? Listen to me. I’ve been in this business since the year One and I know whereof I speak. I’m only thinking of you. Before I change the sign, maybe you should have a nice talk with Will and your father. Maybe you could explain it so he’ll see a little reason….”

I listened to him trying to steal from a man in the name of reason, labeling cold business as sentiment, when we both knew there was no other way he could have gotten us except as The Will Mastin Trio. Our entire engagement was already sold out, but he was trying to squeeze even a few more dollars out of it. But ugliest of all was the attempt to cut Will’s throat with my ego.

“So, Sammy? You’re the star. Tell me what to do. I only want to do what’s right.”

“Change the sign, sir.”

“But, Sammy, those guys—”

“Do you mean my father and my uncle?”

“All right, I’m changing it. But at least do me a favor. Tell Will I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings. I’m just trying to keep my head above water.”