Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (88 page)

I looked out at the people jamming the club. I’d prepared myself to find them gone, but there they were, en masse, as much as saying, “Yeah, Sam, go. Do what you want to do. We like you any way you play it.”

When you look at people and you feel the great good fortune of what they have done for you, and you realize that here you are by their grace and here you may stay by their grace you begin to understand the meaning of humility. All the books I’d read, the philosophers, the poets, all the careers I’d studied, the plays, the movies, all these never taught me. I guess you can’t learn it that way. It just happens to you one lucky day when God gives you pause to appreciate what surrounds you. Suddenly you see the beauty and the cooling shade of a tree instead of the fact that leaves fall and have to be raked up.

When it happens to you the word “humility” is thrown away. You can’t use it any more, certainly not commercially, for effect on a stage. It becomes something felt deep inside you which may transmit to the people in its own unspoken way.

I moved around the tightly packed dressing room saying hello to the people who’d come upstairs. As the crowd shifted, making room for new arrivals, I walked over to where George Gilbert was sitting
with Jane and Burt. I lowered my voice. “Shall we discuss how a small, colored, Jewish lad has become the darling of the 400?”

“It’s wonderful,” muttered Jane, squashed into a corner, “but must you have them here all at once?”

I saw Evelyn Cunningham at the door and hurried across the room to greet her. She introduced me to her husband Cam. We talked for about fifteen minutes and when they were ready to leave I said, “Evelyn, I appreciate you coming up here like this.” I smiled. “I never exactly enjoyed being an outcast.”

As we shook hands she said, “I’d love to meet your wife. Why don’t you bring her up to our apartment some night next week?”

Her visit and the invitation to her home seemed to crystalize the approval I’d been sensing from areas where I’d never before had it. It seemed incredible that marriage to a white woman would bring the Negro people so solidly behind me. Yet, the same person who’d battered me bloody in her column for as long as I could remember seemed to have been trying to let me know, “I don’t care who you married as long as it’s on the level.” Certainly not all of the white or Negro people believed in what I had done, the only logical answer was that they respected the honesty of it and, at least,
my
right to believe in it.

May said, “Sammy? What is it you want more than anything else in the whole world?”

“I want you to get your Swedish fanny on a plane and get here, fast.”

“What else?” She was stifling a giddiness that kept creeping into her voice. “Something we want
so
badly….” I could almost see her smiling through the phone.

“Darling … do you mean little brown babies?”

“That’s what I mean, Sharlie Brown. I knew about it this morning but I wanted to tell it to you when I saw you so I didn’t say anything the other times you called but I just couldn’t keep it to myself any longer.”

Her plane landed at seven in the evening. I drove out with Jane and Burt, and Paul, to meet her. It was close to show time as the car neared the city. I said, “Darling, you’d better drop me at the club. Paul will go back to the hotel with you and Jane and Burt; you can get comfortable, rest, and I’ll come over between shows.”

“But I was hoping I’d see your second show tonight.”

I tensed, “Well … I figured you’d be tired after the trip….”

“Sammy, I haven’t seen your show since we’ve been married. Don’t you want me to see it?”

“Of course I do.” I’d been completely wrapped up in the excitement of seeing her and the happiness of a baby coming, but now there was the sobering realization that subconsciously I’d been hoping to avoid her coming to the club. I was dying to have her sitting out front, but lurking behind that pleasure was the question of how the audience would treat her when they saw us in the same room. It was one thing for them to say, “Wonderful. Be happy,” but it was something else for them to actually see us together. That’s the part that even some of the liberals couldn’t take, the contrast. That’s what bothered them.

“Well, then, do it this way: Jane and Burt can drop you and Paul at the hotel, swing back to their place and change clothes, the car can wait for them, they’ll pick you up and you’ll all come to the dressing room. You’ll sit with me ‘til I’m ready to go on and then you’ll go downstairs.”

“And at eleven forty-five we’ll have shuffleboard on the Promenade Deck.”

“What’s that, Jane?”

When I got to the club I called downstairs to Bruno, “Baby, hold a center ring for my wife for the second, please. For four. And Bruno, do me a favor, be sure you know exactly who’s sitting at the tables to the left, right, and directly behind her.”

At 11:45 I walked them from the dressing room to the elevator and watched the door close after them.
Please, God
.

I called Bruno again. “Baby, she’s on her way down with Burt and Jane and my guy Paul. Will you make sure she doesn’t get caught in a crowd? Can you have some of the guys escort her to the table?”

“I’ve had two captains waiting at the elevator for the last ten minutes. Relax. Khrushchev couldn’t get to her.”

Murphy had filled my cigarette case and was holding it out to me. I put it in my pocket and stood in the living room, staring unseeing at the television set.

Murphy called out, “Sammy, it’s Bruno.”

I grabbed the phone. “What’s wrong?”

He was shouting over the crowd noises in the background. “Nothing.

I just thought you’d like to know that when she came in the audience applauded her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the people applauded the missus as she walked to her table. They stood up and gave her a hand. In all my years I never saw it happen. Except for DiMaggio.”

The second I hit the stage I could see the audience glancing from me to her and back again. Despite the protection of Paul and every captain and waiter in the room, seeing her in the midst of a crowd was even worse than when I’d known she was at home on the coast. I went through the act, leaning on professionalism—watching, looking for pressure spots, dreading the moment somebody would have one drink too many and say or do something he might not do if he were sober. I did an hour and ten minutes and left the stage, drained, exhausted by the impossible chore of trying to be an entertainer and a bodyguard at the same time.

I told the room service waiter to put the table in front of the window overlooking Central Park. When May was seated I stood back a few feet and adjusted the view-finder, getting her into focus.

She frowned. “Are you going to take my picture before breakfast?”

“Yes. I want to get a picture of my wife sitting at a breakfast table, no make-up, pregnant, and the most beautiful sight in the world.”

She beamed. “Do you really think that?”

I caught that smile and put down the camera. “Yes, I do. And that’s the last compliment you’re going to get until three o’clock this afternoon.” I sat down across from her. “Do you wanta know what a thrill it is after thirty years on the road to look across the table in a hotel room and see you instead of Murphy Bennett?” She smiled happily and began opening a boiled egg. I said, “I don’t want to do expectant-father bits, but what kind of a diet did the doctor say you should be on?”

“Just good food.” She looked up. “Do you have to go anywhere today?”

“Nope. Today it’s a definite sit-around, lazy-style, just me and my wife. We’ll watch a little television, read the papers …”

“Boy, that sounds
great.”
She smiled, “Mr. and Mrs. Sharlie Brown at home.” She tapped the second egg with her spoon, and
studied it. “I’m really not too dying to have this egg. I sure wish I hadn’t ordered it …” She stared at it, spoon poised indecisively. She put down the spoon. “My husband makes twenty-five thousand dollars a week. I don’t have to eat this egg.” She pushed it away. “Boy, I’m sure glad to get that off my neck.”

I stared at her. “You’re really going to do ten minutes on that egg?”

“I won’t say another word about it.” She glanced across the table. “But I hope I haven’t hurt its feelings.”

“You’re a nut. Now, here’s the skam for tonight: around five-thirty we’ll dress, Jane and Burt’ll be here at six-fifteen, then it’s a little dinner at Danny’s. At seven forty-five I’ll cut out and do the show while you guys take your time over coffee and brandy. When you’re finished you’ll come by the dressing room between shows and keep me company. There’ll be no crowd scene, just the four of us.”

“Can we catch the second?”

“Of course.”

The phone rang and she answered it. “I’m wonderful, thank you, Murph. Here’s my husband.”

I took it from her. “Murphy, I’m
trying
to have a little breakfast with my wife.”

“I know, Sammy, and I’ve been taking all the calls but I think you’d better take this one. It’s Sid Robinson at the Copa and he says it’s important.”

“Put him through.” I waited while the call was transferred to my line.

“Sammy, we just got word that the Nazi party got a license to picket us tonight …” May was gazing out the window. I held the phone tightly against my ear. “… Julie tried to block it but the law says the bastards can picket. I thought you’d want to know. It’s a damned shame, particularly with everything else going so beautifully. We couldn’t take another reservation tonight if it was for the Mayor himself.”

May was watching me. I smiled into the phone. “Well, if he comes in you can give him my table. Thanks for calling, Sid. I appreciate it.”

When I hung up she asked, “Is anything wrong?”

“That was Sid Robinson. He’s Julie Podell’s brother-in-law and second in command at the Copa. We’re sold out to the rafters.”

“That’s marvelous.” She motioned for me to look out the window
at an ice skating rink. “Sammy, how do you feel about our child learning to ice skate?”

I sat down at the table again. “Gee, I’m glad you mentioned that because just yesterday I went to buy ice skates but I didn’t know if I should get them in pink or in blue.” She blushed. “Darling, I want our baby to do anything and everything any healthy child can and should do. And, speaking of health I think maybe you shouldn’t come to the club tonight. It’s going to be a crowd scene and somebody could bump into you by mistake. Why take chances? Besides, professionally, I don’t want it to get around town ‘May Britt is at ringside every night’ like it’s our bit.”

She nodded, disappointed. “Well, I can understand that … I guess.”

“And as long as you’re not going to be coming to the club then it seems pointless for you to get all dressed up for dinner. We’ll make Danny’s another night. I’ll tell Jane and Burt to come over here slacks-style, and we’ll have room service.”

“Okay. But can we come to the dressing room in slacks?”

“Darling, it’ll be jammed with people doing drop-ins. What do you need it for? It’s cold as hell outside. Stay here where you’ll be much more comfortable. You can watch television, sit around and talk …” I picked up the phone. “May I have the bell-captain, please?”

“Sammy, I don’t care about the crowd if I can be with my husband. And I’ll feel like a weight on Jane and Burt if they have to stay in just because I do.”

“Darling, they won’t mind. They’re friends. Please, don’t fight me on this. I know what’s best … hello, this is Sammy Davis, Jr. Will you send up all the papers, please.”

I was skimming through the
Journal-American
and May had the
Post
. She gasped excitedly, “Would you like to see something so beautiful that it’s unbelievable?” She was pointing to Earl Wilson’s column: “The Sammy Davis, Jr.’s are expecting. If it’s a boy they’ll name him Mark Sidney, and Tracey if it’s a girl.”

I looked at the words, but the pleasure of having the news be known was muffled by the awareness that from the moment the newspapers hit the streets our troubles would increase. May was clutching my arm, smiling with all the gaiety of champagne bubbling out of the bottle. “Tell the truth, now: you’ve seen your name in the papers plenty of times but this is pretty darned marvelous, isn’t it?”

I drew her close. “Darling, it’s beautiful. It really is.”

For several days I didn’t look at the mail, not wanting to let it intrude on my pleasure. But more than a hundred unsigned letters had piled up in the dressing room and they had to be got rid of. As I skimmed through the predictable threats and obscenities from the haters and fanatics, I was aware that I felt only tired of them. I’d already been as afraid, as humiliated, as hurt, as disappointed as I could be, so that now, after all these years, these people and their hatred had become little more to me than a big fat bore.

There were some, however, that disturbed me. The thinking behind them was unfathomable. “God will strike you down for what you are doing. You have sinned against God’s will.” I read, finding it impossible to understand how an obviously religious person could accuse God of hatred—a pettiness invented by man.

“He will make you pay for what your children will suffer. You have thought of yourselves but have you thought about your children?” Letter after letter asked the same cliché question: “What about the children?”

Don’t they understand that they who are so “concerned” for the welfare of my future children, they who are actually angry at us for our intention to bring children into such “unhappiness”—they are the ones who are going to cause the unhappiness? The same people who ask, “What about the children?” could solve the problem as easily as they have created it. All they have to do is
forget about our children
and there won’t
be
any problem. They don’t have to go out and do anything, all they have to do is
nothing
. But it won’t work that way. They’ll ostracize them: they’ll be inwardly suspicious and openly unkind in exercising every one of the current day’s methods of discrimination. If there’s a school party maybe they’ll forget to invite my kids. I don’t know the form it will take, times change, but I do know that as the years pass they’ll make my children cry. Then, those same people will shake their heads and say, “How
dare
they bring children into the world to face such unhappiness.”