Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (47 page)

I nodded ruefully and looked from face to face. “In other words, nobody wants to discuss the corpse, right?”

Johnny said, “It’s not that bad.”

“Baby, it ain’t good. Do you realize what’s happened, what we’re bringing to New York? Instead of a story about a sophisticated, sensitive guy who doesn’t want to live with prejudice, Charley Welch has become a shnook who doesn’t have the guts to try for success. Why spend $300,000 to do a show about
that
?”

George cocked his head. “Shnook? You’re getting to sound more Jewish every day.”

“No joke, they’re completely out of their minds. They threw out scenes and put new ones in so fast that nothing in the whole show makes sense any more.”

“Don’t complain. At least no one suggested they call in Donald O’Connor to play Charley Welch.”

“You don’t want to be serious, right?”

“Well, I don’t
want
to be, but if it’ll make you feel any better the fact is we’ve still got something left—”

“I’ll tell you what we’ve got left, baby: the last half hour of the show, the Palm Club scene—a $25,000-a-week nightclub act that I’m now doing for
six
thousand.”

Nobody argued with me. We finished eating and started back toward the hotel, walking in bleak silence, all of us knowing that the
story was shot, morale was shot—that we were nothing more than a patched-up mongrel held together by string.

We passed a theater where workmen were pulling down the signs for
My Fair Lady
. “Do you think this show’s as good as they say?”

George shrugged. “We’ll see soon enough. They open a few days before us in New York. I know that they didn’t have anywhere near the advance we had here.”

I stopped in front of the Latin Casino. “The last time we played here you couldn’t get in with a shovel and a wedge. There were people piled up on the sidewalk. I must be losing my mind. I actually gave up all that for this.” We continued walking. “What the hell am I doing a show for? Certainly not for the money. If nobody can possibly respect what we’re trying to do then why the hell am I doing it?”

George buttoned his overcoat tighter around the neck. “Please. I’ve got my own troubles. I own a beautiful hotel in the mountains, the Raleigh. I can take all winter off and be in Florida, instead of freezing my …”

“Cheer up, you guys.” Johnny put his arm around my shoulder, “We’ve still got better than a fighting chance. The fact is that in addition to the Palm Club scene we’ve got lots of entertainment, lots of flash, some good songs, dances, jokes….”

“Yeah, Johno—everything but integrity.”

On opening night the chorus kids were all but skipping through the stage door of the Broadway Theater, carrying flowerpots, curtains, and framed pictures to decorate their windowless little dressing rooms. With two previews under our belts the word around town was
“Mr. Wonderful
‘s a smash” and the cast was settling down for a long run.

At seven o’clock I started making the rounds of the dressing rooms wishing everybody luck. They were drunk on optimism and the corridors rang with kid-yourself lines like “They screamed at everything we did last night. Our trouble is we’re so close to it we don’t see what great entertainment we’ve got.” I played it Charley Optimist, smiling back, trying to keep the morale up where two previews had miraculously raised it.

George looked into my dressing room fifteen minutes before
curtain time. He’d been making the rounds, too, and he still had the Happy Hypocrite smile on his face, as I did. He put out his hand. We nodded. He said, “I’ll see you after the show. I’m going to stand out front at intermission to listen for comments.”

I stood in the wings, waiting. The kids were hurrying into position onstage, the stagehands were moving to their places ready to raise the curtain and the lights. Jack Carter was standing off in a corner by himself, blotting his face with a handkerchief. The music rose to a peak as the overture neared the end and the screaming, gorgeous brassiness of it suddenly overwhelmed me with the immensity of a Broadway musical. I watched all the pieces of the living machine preparing to swing into line, all these people straining forward, waiting for the moment when they would contribute themselves to the hugeness of it all. And, abruptly, I understood that even as the star I was only one part of it. A red light flashed, two stagehands grasping a steel cable heaved their weight onto it, the curtain rose, and the chorus rushed on. I leaned against the wall, chilled by the finality of the realization that it wasn’t entirely up to me—I was confined, tightly imprisoned by the design of the show, and if I saw I wasn’t making it with the audience, if I wasn’t touching them, I couldn’t just slip Morty a cue and switch into “Birth of the Blues.”

The clock on the Paramount Building showed 3:00. In a few hours the whole city would know we were a flop. I looked out at the buildings, most of them dark except for occasional lighted windows, and I wondered if the people inside near those lamps were reading our reviews. George was sitting at my bar. He poured himself another scotch and stared at the bottle. He picked it up and started reading the label. Our eyes met but there was no reason to speak, we’d said it all: the cliché cop-outs like “They didn’t understand what we were trying to do” when both of us knew too well that they
had
understood. Maybe the techniques were different on Broadway, but it all boiled down to the one thing that worked anywhere—honesty. I gazed blankly out the window at the past weeks, seeing myself so awed by “theater” and “Broadway” that I’d sat back and let myself fail on other people’s decisions. I’d put my career in other people’s hands—the career
I
‘
d
built. I’d gambled my past and my future on other people’s opinions and judgments, letting them override my own. I’d known enough of right and wrong to become a star but I’d chickened out and permitted other people to tell me, “We
know best.” At least one thing was sure: if it meant doing my shows on street corners I’d never make that mistake again. I was so disgusted with myself for seeing the inexcusable wrong of it—but too late. I’d had the greatest opportunity in the world and I’d blown it. The lights of the city became hazy as tears began filling my eyes. I was aware of George watching me and I hid behind a Garfield bit. “Sure, sure … y’see those lights up and down Broadway? Well, I’ll give ‘em to you for a necklace, I’ll have this town on its knees.” I shook my fist out the window. “Big town, I’ll get you yet!”

I heard George blowing his nose. He’d seen that movie, too. “If you’d done that onstage maybe we’d have been a hit.”

I turned, amused by his boundless irreverence. “George, you’re rotten. You’re rotten to the core.”

He lowered his eyes, pleased by the compliment. “I know.” He picked up the reviews but lost heart for reading them and looked away from them, despondently; then, remembering that I’d been watching him, fearful that he’d been caught admitting that something was beyond joking, he spun around on the bar stool, holding his knees up with his arms like a kid taking a ride, and dropped the papers, sighing “All gone.” He made about two turns and let the stool slow to a stop, his attempted abandon gone. He poured another drink.

“Man, them mothers didn’t use up
any
of their good words, did they?” I read aloud: “ ‘If you want to see “Mr. Wonderful” we suggest you get over to the Broadway Theater this week. He won’t be around very long …’ ”

“Well, thank God at least
you
got great personal reviews.”

There was no point explaining that I could find little satisfaction in seven critics discovering I do a good nightclub act; that I’d come to Broadway to accomplish something and I’d been told, “Stay in nightclubs where you belong.”

“I suppose you’ll be going back to clubs.”

“I signed a contract to be on Broadway for one year, and I intend to stay for one year.” I crumpled the reviews into tight wads. “The votes aren’t all in yet.”

“Sammy, even if the afternoon papers are good …”

“I don’t mean the critics. I’m talking about the people.”

He was looking at me sympathetically. “I know how you feel, but it’s impossible. You can’t beat the critics. Nobody ever did—except
Hellzapoppin’
and that was only because Walter Winchell decided
to plug them every single day. He made them a hit, but we don’t have him and …”

“Baby, I know everything you’re going to say, so don’t bother. I’m hip that when the critics come out against you everything changes—all the heat comes out of you. I’m hip that where just last night we could call our shots with the press, now we’ll have to fight for every inch of space we get.”

He nodded. “The world hates a loser.”

“The world doesn’t hate losers, George, it just has no time for them.” I walked over to him. “But did you ever see a guy get beaten bloody and then get up off the floor and start fighting? Did you ever see what happens to the crowd when he starts
winning
?” I felt the cool edge of excitement biting through the sogginess of failure. “Ten things that should have finished me in the business, didn’t: the accident, the scandals, the constant ‘white girl’ bit—each of them should have been disaster, and if
they
didn’t finish me then you’d better believe that I’m not about to lay down dead with my feet in the air just because a handful of critics say I should. Our show is going to run. I came to Broadway to get something and I’m not leaving without it.”

He sighed, negatively. “I only wish it could be true but the chances are a million to one.”

“Baby, hock your shirt and take those odds. I’m going to beat them.”

The kids began straggling into the theater at around seven o’clock. They weren’t due until “half-hour” at eight, but when you’re a flop there’s no fun in hanging around the show business bars. At the theater, they had refuge from the embarrassing sympathy of friends, and the smug looks from people who are glad there’s no reason to be jealous any more. By the second night of a flop you’re tired and sick like you’ve got a hangover, and there’s no one you want around except maybe someone else who has one. I could picture them sitting around in those pathetically gay little rooms they’d fixed up, like people who’d bought ice cream and paper hats for a party and then nobody showed up.

I asked Johnny Ryan to have the cast gathered onstage at ten minutes before curtain. I deliberately didn’t change into my first act costume which was designed to make Charley Welch look like a
loser. I wore my own clothes, my own jewelry. I wanted them to see success talking.

They were standing around like lost souls, clustered in little groups of defeat. I walked to center stage. I remembered a scene from
The Great Dictator
in which Hitler made Mussolini sit in a very low chair so that he had to look up at Hitler and subconsciously got the feeling of looking at strength. I motioned for them to sit on the floor in front of me.

“… I’ve got no plans to be Charley Flop Came to Broadway. But either we play like we’re the biggest hit in the world or we’re going to die, because with the people pre-sold against us we’re only as good as what we give every song, every line, everything we do on this stage for every audience. Now, nobody can keep the people away from what they like and want to see. And they like
me
or they wouldn’t pack the nightclubs to see me. I can bring them into this theater but I can’t entertain them without you. So if you give me the word, if I can count on you, I’ll go out and get us audiences with my bare hands; I’ll go on television and radio, I’ll use every friend I’ve got, I’ll do every interview, from the network blockbusters to if there’s a cat on Broadway and Fiftieth with a megaphone I’ll be his guest. The people will come to see me and if we work a mile over our heads, if we kill ourselves to entertain them, they’ll talk about us and I guarantee that we’ll run….”

One of the boy dancers jumped up. “We’re with you all the way.” Another was on his feet. “We’ll work our heads off …” The mood swept through the crowd, catching them up in it until all of them were standing and cheering. It was straight out of an MGM musical. They were shouting and waving their fists in the air, a pack of losers changed into fighters. It had turned into a cause.

I’d just finished doing the impressions in the Palm Club scene, when a woman in the audience stood up and shouted, “The critics are crazy. We love you, Sammy.” I threw her a kiss. “So tell your friends!” The audience cheered. It was eleven-fifteen and I was ready to go into the last number but I cued Morty and I did an extra thirty minutes.

Mike Goldreyer, our company manager, was waiting in the wings, wringing his hands. “Sammy, it’s no good. It’s no good. We can’t keep the stagehands so late. We have to pay them overtime….”

Jule Styne burst through the fire door between out front and
backstage. “Sammy, that business of ‘tell your friends.’ It’s terrible.
Terrible
. It’s not ‘theater.’ You can’t do it.”

I closed the dressing room door behind us. “Jule, for the last few months I’ve listened to everybody telling me how to do a show: writers, directors, producers, chorus boys’ parents, out-of-town critics—everybody! But that’s all over. From now on I do it
my
way. Maybe I didn’t do the chic thing out there but I didn’t see anybody walk out, and I sure as hell heard a lot of people yelling bravo when we took the curtain calls. So don’t tell me about overtime or ‘theater.’ I’m not in the ‘theater’ any more. I’m back in the entertainment business!”

The elevator opened into the reception room of the Morris office. I waved to the girl behind the desk, “Darling, will you tell Mr. Bramson I’m on my way in, please.” I smiled at the performers waiting to see their agents, pushed the double doors open and walked down the corridor to the television department.

“We’ve
been
talking to Sullivan, Sammy. We knew you’d want that exposure for your show …” Sam Bramson looked down. “But, he doesn’t want you.”

“You’re joking!”

“It’s not exactly that he doesn’t want you … look, why don’t you speak to him yourself? I’ll get him on the phone.”