by Davis, Sammy
Will built up a new show called Struttin’ Hannah from Savannah. Curvy, sexy Hannah was struttin’ from Savannah to New York. On the way, she’d pass a house with a picket fence, see me playing in the yard with a pail and shovel and do a slinky Mae West kind of walk over to me. “Hi, Buster. Any place around here where a lady can get a room?” She’d turn to me and roll her eyes, but the audience could only see me wildly rolling my eyes back at her. “Hey, are you a little kid or a midget?” Then she’d wink, also without the audience seeing it, and I’d wink back hard and long.
Between shows I’d stand in the wings watching the other acts, like Moss and Fry, Butterbeans and Susie, The Eight Black Dots, and Pot, Pan & Skillet. It never occurred to me to play with the pail and shovel, they were my props, part of the act, and I didn’t think of them as toys. At mealtime, I’d sit with my father, Will, and the other performers, listening to them talk show business, hearing about the big vaudeville acts that played the Keith “time.” Keith was far over our heads. Shows like ours, Connors’ Hot Chocolate and McKinney’s Cotton Pickers played small time like TOBA and Butterfield but there was no end of stories to be heard about the great acts who worked the big time.
We always rented the cheapest room we could find, and my father and I shared the bed. He’d turn out the light and say, “Well, good night, Poppa.” Then I’d hear a scratching sound. I’d sit up, fast. “What’s that, Daddy?”
“I didn’t hear nothin’.”
The scratching would start again. I’d be suspicious. “Lemme see your hands.”
“Fine thing when a kid don’t trust his own daddy.” He’d hold both hands in the air and I’d lie down, watching them. The scratching would start again.
“Whatsat, Daddy? Whatsat? Lemme see your feet, too.”
He put his feet in the air along with his hands. “Now how d’you expect a man to sleep like this, Poppa?” The game was over then and I’d snuggle in close to him where it was safe.
We were playing the Standard Theater in Philadelphia when he said, “Good news, Poppa. There’s a amateur dance contest here at the theater day after we close. Course, there’s sixteen other kids’d be against you. And all of ‘em older’n you. You suppose you c’d beat ‘em?”
“Yes.”
I was only three but I’d spent hundreds of hours watching Will and my father work, and imitating their kind of dancing. They were doing a flash act—twelve dancers with fifteen minutes to make an impression or starve. The other kids in the contest were dancing in fox-trot time but when I came on, all the audience could see was a blur—just two small legs flying! I got a silver cup and ten dollars. My father took me straight over to A. S. Beck’s shoe store and bought me a pair of black pumps with taps.
We hung around Philadelphia hoping to get booked, but our money ran out and my father had to call Mama for a loan. She told him, “That’s no life for Sammy if you gotta call me for money. I’m sending you fare to bring him home.”
He told Will, “Guess she’s right. This ain’t no life for a kid. Trouble is, I can’t bring myself to leave him there and travel around without him now. I’ll just have to get me a job around home doin’ somethin’ else.” I saw tears in my father’s eyes. “I’ll always wanta be in show business, Will. It’s my life. So anytime you need me, just say the word.”
Massey picked me up and hugged me. “Be a good boy, Mose Gastin. And don’t worry. We’ll be working together again someday.”
Mama was waiting up for us when we got home. I put on my shoes and ran into the front room to show them to her. My father proudly explained how I’d won them. Mama turned on her player-piano and I did my routine. She smiled. “My, oh my! You’re a real dancer now.” She shook her head at my father. “You buy him shoes when you don’t have money for food. I always knew you was smart.”
My father left the apartment every morning and came back at dinner time, but after a week he was still without a job. “I couldn’t bring myself to look for nothin’ outside of show business, Mama. I’ll do it tomorrow. I really will.”
But each day it was the same thing. He was spending his time hanging around backstage with the dancers at the Odeon Theater. When he came home he’d just stare out the window, shaking his head. “I can dance circles around them guys. I’m over them like the sky is over the world, and they’re making $150 a week.”
Before I was born he’d driven cabs in New York, shined shoes, cooked, pulled fires on the Erie Railroad, and run an elevator at Roseland Dance Hall. Then he’d won some Charleston contests, met Will, and from then on there was only one way of life for him.
One night he looked over and saw Mama and me dancing. That was the first thing that brightened him up. “Mama, just whut’n hell do you call what you’re doin’ with him?”
“We’re doin’ the time step.”
He laughed. “Hell, that ain’t no time step.”
Mama snapped back. “Maybe so, but we like it. And if Sammy likes it, then anything to make him happy.”
I couldn’t stand the way he was laughing at me. I tried harder to do it the way he’d shown me but he kept shaking his head. “Damnedest thing how he can do some tough ones and can’t do the easiest of all. Here, lemme show you again.” He did a time step. “Now you do it.” I tried to copy it. “Hell, you ain’t doin’ nothin’.” I kept trying, harder and harder but I couldn’t get it right. He said, “Here, looka this.” He showed me his airplane step and some of the really hard steps I’d seen him and Will do in the act. “Some day maybe you’ll be able to do that, too, Poppa.” Then he went back to the window.
I heard Mama laughing excitedly. “Look at your son flyin’ across the room.”
I was doing a trick of his with one hand on the floor, the other in the air and my two feet kicking out in front of me. He snapped out of his melancholy and almost split his sides laughing. The harder he laughed the harder I kicked. He bent down and put his face right in front of mine. “Betcha I can make you laugh, Poppa.” He made a very serious face and stared at me. I bit my lips and tried desperately to keep a straight face, but that always made me die laughing.
He lost interest in me again and went back to the window, staring at the street, leafing through an old copy of Variety which he’d already read a dozen times. Suddenly he smacked the arm of the chair and stood up. “Mama, I’m wiring Will to send me a ticket. I’m in the wrong business here.”
She snapped, “You ain’t in no business here.”
“Maybe so, but it’s better to go hungry when you’re happy than to eat regular when you’re dead. And I’m good as dead out of show business.”
A few days later a letter arrived Special Delivery from Will. My father pulled his suitcase out from under the bed. I ran to the closet for my shoes and put them in the suitcase alongside his. He took them out and I held my breath as he stared at them, balancing them in one hand. Then he slapped me on the back, put them in the suitcase and laughed. “Okay, Poppa, you’re comin’ too.”
Holding hands we half-walked, half-danced toward Penn Station, smiling at everybody.
“Where we goin’, Daddy?”
“We’re goin’ back into show business, Poppa!”
2
We rarely remained in one place more than a week or two, yet there was never a feeling of impermanence. Packing suitcases and riding on trains and buses were as natural to me as a stroll in a carriage might be to another child. Although I had travelled ten states and played over fifty cities by the time I was four, I never felt I was without a home. We carried our roots with us: our same boxes of make-up in front of the mirrors, our same clothes hanging on iron pipe racks with our same shoes under them. Only the details changed, like the face on the man sitting inside the stage door, or which floor our dressing room was on. But there was always an audience, other performers for me to watch, always the show talk, all as dependably present as the walls of a nursery.
We arrived in Asheville, North Carolina, on a Sunday, and Will gave everybody the da
y off. We were doing the three-a-day, from town to town, so most of our troupe spent the time catching up on sleep, which was also the cheapest thing they could do. I wasn’t tired so I wandered into the parlor of our rooming house. Rastus Airship, one of our dancers, was reading a paper, and Obie Smith, our pianist, was rehearsing on an upright. I started doing the parts of the show along with him. Rastus left the room and came back with Will and my father and I did the whole hour-and-twenty-minute show for them, doing everybody’s dances, singing everybody’s songs, and telling all the jokes. People were coming in from other rooms and from the way they were watching me I knew I was doing good. When I finished our closing number, Will said, “From now on you’re going to dance and sing in the act.” My father picked me up, “Damned if he ain’t,” and carried me around the room introducing me to everybody we’d been living with for the past year. “This is my son. Meet my son, Sammy Davis, Jr.”
She was much prettier than any of the girls in our show. I started to shake hands with her but she knelt down and hugged me and when she kissed me her eyes were wet.
“You cryin’?”
She touched her eyes with a handkerchief. “I’m happy to see my little boy, that’s all.”
My father told me this was my mother and that I wouldn’t be doing the show that night so I could spend time with her. Then he left us alone in the dressing room.
I looked up at her. “I can dance.”
“No kidding. Let’s see.”
I did one of my father’s routines but she started crying again. “Don’t you like the way I dance?”
“Darlin’, I love everything you do. I know that dance and you did it real good. As good as your daddy.”
That was more like it. I did half our show for her. Then we went outside and she held my hand while we walked.
“You like show business, Sammy?”
“Yes.”
“You happy?”
“Yes.” From the moment we’d left the theater all I could think of was my father and Will would be doing the show without me.
She asked, “How’d you like a nice ice cream soda?”
“No, thank you.”
We came to a toy store. “Let’s go in and buy you a present.” I didn’t want a present. I just wanted to get back to the theater, but she bought me a ball. Outside, she said, “Let’s see you catch it, darlin’.” I’d never done it before and I put my hands up too late and it hit me on the cheek. It didn’t hurt but it scared me. I just watched it rolling away.
“Get it, Sammy.”
“I don’t want it.” I was sorry as soon as I’d said it.
We walked a few more blocks. “Is there anything you’d like to do?” I didn’t tell her, but she understood.
I ran ahead of her into the dressing room. My father was putting on his make-up. “You do the show yet, Daddy?”
“Nope. You’re just in time.”
I ran for my costume. My mother started to leave but I grabbed her skirt. “Don’t go.”
As I danced I saw her watching me from the wings, and smiling. She liked me and I hadn’t even done my tricks yet. When I went into them I could only see her out of the corner of my eye, but she wasn’t smiling any more. I wasn’t able to turn around again and when I got off she was gone.
My father picked me up. He was hugging me very tight, patting my back, as he walked toward the dressing room. “Your mother had to leave, Poppa. She said to tell you she loves you.”
For no reason I could understand I started to cry.
Mama smiled at the truant officer, “Yes sir, I’ll bring him over tomorrow.” But when he’d gone she told me, “You’re five years old and they want you at the school but I don’t want you to go. You’ll meet all classes of children and I don’t want you playing with nobody’s children.”
From then on she watched at the window for truant officers. The first time she spotted one she told me, “Sammy, now we’re gonna play a game called Fool the School. There’ll be a knock on this door but just sit in your chair and don’t make a sound. We can wait long as he can knock.” Mama stayed at her post near the window until she saw him go down the street. Then, she put a roll of music on the piano and we danced to celebrate how we’d fooled him.
That night, she told my father, “You gotta get him a tutor when you’re on the road ‘cause the bulls are going to lock me up sure if they catch me!”
I stayed around the apartment listening to the radio while my father and Will were at the booking offices looking for work. Sometimes I sat at the window watching the kids skating or throwing a ball around but I had no desire to join them. I didn’t think of things like skating and football or any of the sports kids played, nor did I miss them. They just didn’t fit into my life.
Whenever they could, Will and my father found someone around the theater to tutor me in how to read and write. We’d go into the dressing room between shows and work, and nobody else was allowed in until it was time to dress for the next show.
We moved from New England into the Midwest, working steady, covering most of Michigan in theaters, burlesque houses, and carnivals, changing the size of the act to as many as forty people depending on what the bookers needed. We were in Lansing doing a “Four and a Half”—Will, my father, two other dancers, and me as the half—when a woman came storming backstage with the theater manager. “There he is. It’s shameful.” She was pointing at me. She knelt down and put her arms around me. “Everything’s going to be all right now,” and, glaring at Will and my father, “You Fagins! You should be in jail for what you’re doing to this poor, suffering child.”
I had no idea what a Fagin was, but I knew for sure that I wasn’t suffering. My dancing was getting better, the audiences liked me, and I was always with my father and Massey—I had everything I wanted.
The manager paid Will off that night. “Sorry, but I can’t fight her. She’s too big. If she says the kid’s too young to be on the stage then he’s too young even if he was fifty.”
Will asked, “How about if Sammy don’t work?”
He shook his head. “With the kid you’re a novelty, but I’m up to my ears in straight dance acts.”
Weeks passed as we hung around the parlor of our rooming house hoping for some booker to call, but my benefactor was powerful enough to have closed off all of Michigan to us and all we heard was the landlord telling us: “You owe me twenty-eight dollars now.”
We went to dinner at our usual restaurant and Will looked at the menu hanging on the tile wall.
“The Special is beef stew.”
“That’s what I want,” I said.
My father went to the steam table and brought back a Special. I’d half-finished it when I noticed that they weren’t eating. “Our stomachs are a little upset, Poppa. But you clean your plate. You needs food to stick to your ribs in this kind of weather.”
They watched me eating my stew and the roll that came with it. My father snapped his fingers. “Hey, Will, maybe a cup of soup’d do our stomachs some good.” He finished his soup and crackers. Then he wet his finger, ran it around the inside of the cracker paper and licked off the crumbs that stuck to it. He took a small piece of my roll. “Maybe I’ll just mop up a little of your gravy, Poppa, to see if it’s fresh cooked.”
The next night the Special was chicken and rice but they only had coffee.
“You still sick, Daddy?”
“I’m just not up t’snuff, Poppa.”
“Massey, too?”
“Now Poppa, just eat your dinner and don’t worry none ‘bout us. It’s just bein’ out of work and not doin’ nothin’ for so long, well, we older men don’t need food ‘less we uses up the energy at somethin’.”
The landlord sprang out of the parlor just as we hit the stairs. “No point tryin’ to get into y’r rooms. You’re locked out! I’m holding your things ‘till you pay up.”
Will was stunned. “In all my years in show business nobody ever had to hold my clothes to get paid….”
/> “Well, I’m holding ‘em now. I’m sick of you show business dead-beats. Maybe you wanta go through life happy-go-lucky without doing a day’s work t’get a day’s pay, but I’m a businessman and I mean t’be paid for my room. If you’re not here with my money in a week I’ll sell your things for junk. Now get outa here before I have y’locked up.”
We stood on the sidewalk outside the rooming house. The temperature had dropped below freezing. Will said, “We’ll go over to the railroad station. It’ll be warm there.”
While I slept on a bench wrapped in my father’s overcoat they took turns walking around the waiting room pretending to use the telephone and asking the station patrolman questions like: “You mean there’s no train out of here ‘til morning?” so we wouldn’t be arrested for vagrancy.
My father was shaking me, gently. “Wake up, Poppa. They’re lockin’ up for the night. We’ll go over to the bus station.” When that closed at midnight we started walking, looking for any place that would be warm and open, stopping in doorways every few minutes for a break from the fierce wind. Finally we saw a building with a lighted sign, and we ran until we were in front of a small hotel.
My father said to Will, “Lemme handle this.” He sauntered over to the room clerk. “Good evening. I’d like to rent two of your best suites for the night.”
The clerk didn’t look up at him. “We don’t have rooms for you people.”
My father was pointing toward me. “Look, I have a six-year-old boy—can we at least stay in the lobby?”
“You can’t stay here.”
“How ‘bout if we just leave the boy for a few hours? It’s freezing cold outside.”
My father patted my head. “They don’t like show people here, Poppa.” He picked me up. “How’d you like a free ride?” He unbuttoned his overcoat and closed it around the two of us.
Outside, a woman came running up to us. “Excuse me, my name is Helen Bannister. I was in the lobby and saw what happened. I’m on my way home and you’re welcome to come with me, if you like.”
