by Davis, Sammy
She cooked bacon and eggs and as we all sat around the table Will explained that we were in show business and told her about the trouble we were having. She said, “I have an extra room you can use until you get on your feet.”
Two days later Will burst into the house holding up a handful of money. “We’re booked in Atlanta, Georgia, and I’ve got an advance.” He tried to pay Miss Bannister at least for our food, but she wouldn’t accept anything. “What happened to you the other night was inexcusable. I’m embarrassed by it. We’re not all like that. I’m happy that I was able to help you.”
As we left my father said, “Once a year we oughta say the name of Helen Bannister. That lady saved our lives.”
We were playing a roadhouse in Hartford, Connecticut. My father said, “Tell y’what, Poppa. We got the day off, whattya say we take in a movie?”
Halfway through the picture he leaned over and whispered, “You stay here and watch the picture, son. I’ll just be next door at the bar gettin’ me a few skull-busters. Be back for you like always.”
The picture was going on for the third time when I felt his hand on my arm. “You ready to go now, Poppa?”
We stopped for dinner, then he took me back to the hotel. “See you later, Poppa. I’ve got some things to do.”
I knew he was going out drinking. He’d been doing it for some time.
The next day, in the dressing room, I asked Will why. “Your daddy’s lonely, Sammy, that’s all it is. There’s no one he cares about and it makes him feel bad. The whiskey makes him feel better.”
“Don’t he care about me?”
“He cares the whole world about you, Sammy. But he needs a woman to love, too. You’ll understand some day….” He took hold of my hand and made me stand up. “Take off your clothes and hang them up. Never sit around in what you wear on the stage. We’ve always had the name of the best-dressed colored act in the business and we’re gonna keep that name.”
I undressed immediately, embarrassed because I’d known better. One is about all we ever had of anything but you’d never see wrinkles in our pants or make-up on our shirts and we shined our shoes every time we came off so they were ready for the next show.
As I started my big number my father slipped out into the audience and on cue, a half-dollar flew toward me and clanged noisily onto the stage. I danced to it, picked it up, flipped it in the air, caught it, put it in my pocket and nodded. “Thank you,” without losing a beat, and it started raining money.
My pockets were so heavy with coins that I could hardly dance in our closing. When we got to the dressing room I dumped the money onto a table, “Hey, Poppa, this looks like our best night yet.” He stacked the nickels, dimes, and quarters. “Twelve eighty-five! You realize this is as much as we get in salary for a whole night’s shows?” He swung me in the air, laughing. “You’re the breadwinner, Poppa. Damned if you ain’t. You, I, and Will are gonna bust loose tonight. We’ll put on our best clothes, go over to the Lobster Restaurant and have us some real full-course dinners.”
Our party was going full blast when my father was suddenly very drunk. I tried not to let him see I’d noticed but he snapped, “Why’re you lookin’ away from me?” All the laughter was gone and he was glaring across the table at me. His eyes narrowed. “You’re holdin’ out money!” Before I could deny it he slapped me and I fell off the chair. “I’ll teach you to cheat your own father….” I lay on the floor waiting for something to happen. I opened my eyes and looked up. He was standing over me, crying, his arms hanging loose at his sides, staring at me, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he’d done. He knelt down, picked me up, and carrying me in his arms walked out of the restaurant hugging and kissing me. “Oh God, I’m sorry, Poppa. I didn’t mean it. Honest I didn’t mean it.”
“I didn’t hold out money, Daddy.”
“I know, Poppa, I know.”
In the middle of my big number the next night I saw him watching me from his place behind me. He looked sadder than I’d ever seen him. I kept trying to let him see me smiling at him so he’d know it was okay.
When we got off Will took me aside. “You didn’t have your flash tonight. And you weren’t dancing, neither. Now I know you’re troubling and you’re worried about Big Sam, but you can’t take any thoughts onstage with you except the show you’re doing. That’s the first rule of show business. Always be thinking when you’re out there or the audience’ll start to out-think you and then you’ll lose them.”
I knew I’d done badly. “I’m sorry I lost ‘em, Massey.”
He put his arm around me. “We all have troubles sometimes, Mose Gastin, but those people out front don’t want to know ‘em. No matter how bad you’re hurting, leave your troubles here in the wings, and come on smiling.”
I’d seen a lot of show business by standing in the wings watching the other acts in theater after theater and I couldn’t fail to learn from them. I’d been on the stage for almost four of my seven years and I was developing a feeling for “timing.” I could watch other acts perform and anticipate when a gesture, a fall, or an attitude would or would not work. I remembered everything I saw. If anyone in our troupe missed a cue or forgot a line I’d remind Will and he’d have it put back in.
I was seven and we were in New York when Will started taking me with him to the booking offices. “I want you to listen carefully to everything that’s said, Sammy. There’s two words in show business, ‘show’ and ‘business,’ and one’s important as the other. The dancing and knowing how to please the audience is the ‘show’ and getting the dates and the money is the ‘business.’ I know you like to dance and sing and be on the stage in front of the people but if you don’t get money for it, then you ain’t doing nothing but having a good time for yourself. You have to know how to make deals, which to take and which to let go by.”
The man behind the desk, Bert Jonas, said to me, “You’re learning the business from the right man. Follow his ways. His handshake is all the contract anybody needs.” He looked at Will. “I’ve got a great spot for you with Minsky in the Liberty Theater here on Forty-second street but I didn’t realize Sammy was still so small. I’m afraid he’s going to be a problem. The Geary Society’s got that law that no kid under sixteen can sing or dance on the stage.”
My father laughed slyly. “Don’t give no thought to that, Bert. We been workin’ Sammy under the cork. We blacks him up, he’s got a Jolson suit and we bills him as ‘Silent Sam the Dancing Midget’ and the way he dances there’s no chance of anyone catching wise.”
As we started to leave, my father gazed longingly at the large diamond ring Mr. Jonas was wearing, and sighed wistfully, “One day I’m gonna have me a ring just like that.”
Two women and three cops climbed onstage, over the footlights. My father yelled, “It’s the Geary Society. Go to Mama.” I slipped between the cops and was halfway home before I stopped running. As soon as I was with Mama, surrounded by the safety of our apartment, I burst into tears.
Mama looked me in the eyes. “What’s wrong, Sammy? Somebody hit you?” I shook my head and sat down in my chair. “Then why you crying?” I didn’t say anything. “Well, wash up for dinner and stop crying because if there’s nothing wrong then there’s no need to be crying.” I walked toward the bathroom. “Sammy, where’s your father?”
I couldn’t keep it from her any longer. “I don’t know, Mama. We were doin’ the act when some cops came …”
Will walked in and Mama turned on him. “Mastin, is Sam in jail?”
“Well—uh, yes, Mrs. Davis.”
“What’d he do?”
“Well, it’s a long story….”
“I think it’s a short story. I told him don’t take Sammy downtown on that stage. That’s a burlesque theater you’re in and he’s right in the center of attraction with people packed in on both sides waitin’ to see those naked girls and this little child….”
An hour later, my father came in smiling, but one look at Mama
and he sat down and stared at the floor.
“So you finally got yourself locked up, Sam. That’s lovely. That’s fine things to show a little child. That’s really good bringin’ up.”
“Come on, Will, we better get outa here.” He turned to me, “Start gettin’ your stuff together.”
I stood up. Mama snapped, “Don’t you do it, Sammy.” I sat down again, fast. “Sam, where do you think you’re going?”
“Hell, Mama, they wants me in front of a judge tomorrow, so I’m gettin’ as far outa New York as I c’n get. And I’m taking my son with me.”
“You ain’t takin’ Sammy nowhere, or I’ll have the Thirty-second Precinct bulls on you. You got no booking, you got no money, you got no nothing. You think I’m gonna let you take this child running from the bulls, wandering to beg food with no place to sleep? Not while I’m willing and able to work. I don’t want him hungry and naked.”
“Mama, you got no say. Sammy’s my son and I say he comes with me.”
“Well, he ain’t going to be your son. I’m takin’ him from you. And from Elvera.” She put her arms around me. “You’ll have to kill me before I let him go with you like this!”
The judge glanced around the courtroom. “Where’s the mother?”
Mama stood up. “No tellin’ where she is, y’honor. She’s chorus girling somewhere.”
“Who are you, madam?”
“I’m the child’s grandmother, Mrs. Rosa B. Davis, sir.”
“Oh yes. I received a telephone call from your employer. I’m told you’re a fine woman and you have a nice little boy. She said you’ve cared for her children for years and she feels you’re capable of raising this boy, too.”
“Yes, Judge, I love him and I can do it. I want to give him a home like a child should have and keep him out of show business where he doesn’t eat every day and sometimes has no place to sleep, but I can’t do that ‘less he’s mine.”
Back at the apartment Mama laid down the law to Will and my father. “You heard with your own ears. The judge said his own father and mother ain’t capable of raising him and he gave Sammy to me. Legal! So, from now on, you can’t just pack up Sammy and go to this place and that place and just leave me a note.”
My father didn’t say anything. He just looked miserable. Will cleared his throat “Uh—Mrs. Davis, I just got us a fine booking up in Boston next week. Naturally it’s your say if we can take Sammy along with us.”
Mama looked at me and stroked my head. I wanted desperately to go with them. After awhile she said, “All right, Sammy. I know you want to sing and dance and be in show business more than anything, so you can go. Mastin, you and Sam sit there and listen to me tell you how you’ll take care of this child. You won’t let him eat no hot dogs, and no hamburgers neither. Give him chicken and be sure and give the leg, not the breast, it’s too dry. And don’t let him eat close to the bone. And when he says he’s had enough don’t you tell him There’s food on the plate.’ Let him leave it. He’ll eat as much as he wants and that’s enough. And don’t give him no pork chops. You and Sam can eat all the pork you want and all the pigtails but don’t you give none to Sammy. If you can’t get him chicken legs, then give him a piece of beef. Don’t you upset his stomach. If he gets sick on the road, you won’t have the money to call a doctor and you’ll kill my child.”
“All right, Mama, we’ll do just like you say.”
She handed him a bottle of Scott’s Emulsion. “Always keep a bottle of this and give it to him three times a day ‘til he’s sixteen. There’ll be times you don’t have heat in the room and this’ll keep him from catching cold….”
After dinner Mama gathered up the dishes and washed them. I helped her dry them. She seemed tired. “You work hard, don’t you, Mama?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I work hard, too.”
“But you make more money than me. Let me ask you something, Sammy. Does your father take your money to a table where he puts it down and sometimes he can’t pick it up?”
“Sure, Mama, he gambles.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“But he gives me what I want.”
“While you’re on the road—you ever been hungry?”
“No. Daddy and Massey been hungry, but never me.”
She nodded, satisfied. “But the first day you come home and tell me you been hungry then that’s the end of show business. And don’t let nobody sew up nothing for you or put patches on you. You understand what I’m talkin’ about? If there’s a little hole in your stocking, then you tear it and make it such a big hole that nobody can sew it up for you. You don’t need to wear nothing mended. I’ll always buy you whatever clothes you need. You’re my little boy now, Sammy, and I love you like I always loved you and I’ll always be here ‘til you don’t need me no more.”
I tugged at my father’s arm as he, Massey, and I approached Grand Central Station. “Where we goin’, Daddy?”
“We’re goin’ to the railroad station.”
“But where else we goin’?”
He winked at Will. “Well, let’s see … from there we’re catchin’ the smokey to Boston.”
“I know that, but where else?”
He hoisted me onto his shoulders, laughing, “We’re goin’ back into show business, Poppa. Back into show business.”
3
My father came into the dressing room and before he even said hello to me he spoke to Will, “I just got word that Timmy French give up the ghost. Let everybody go and he’s runnin’ a elevator at some hotel.”
Will sat down and slowly twirled his hat on the tip of his finger. It slipped and fell to the floor but he didn’t reach down to pick it up. He spoke, but to neither of us, “Timmy had a good show.”
There was a silence in the room, the same sad and hopeless kind of quiet that I’d been hearing since we’d come to town. Vaudeville was dying. Wherever we went, for meals, or between shows in the Green Room, backstage, there was none of the usual atmosphere of clowning around that had always been so much fun. Everybody seemed afraid and they spoke only of acts that had been forced to quit the business.
A performer from the next dressing room looked in and saw me brushing our high silk hats. “Not much point in that,” he said, “there’s hardly anyone out front to see ‘em. They’re all across the street at the goddam talkies.”
I put down the hat, half finished. Will turned to me. “Sammy, brush that hat ‘til it gleams.” He was speaking with controlled anger. “And remember this like it’s your Bible. If there’s one person or one thousand sitting out there, you gotta look as good and work as hard for that one man as you would for the one thousand. Never sluff off an audience. They paid their money and you owe them the best you got in you.”
My father and Will burst into Mama’s in the middle of the afternoon. “C’mon, Mose Gastin, you’re gonna be in the talkies.” My father took my suit out of the closet. “Ethel Waters is doin’ a two reeler called ‘Rufus Jones for President’ and you’ve gotta audition ‘cause they’re looking for a seven-year-old who c’n sing and dance to play Rufus. And that’s gonna be you.”
We filmed it at the Warner studios in Brooklyn. The idea of the picture was that Rufus Jones falls asleep on his mother’s lap and dreams he’s elected President. When Rufus Jones attended a Cabinet Meeting, there were signs saying “Check Yo’ Razors at the Door.” He appointed a “Secretary in Charge of Crap Shooting” and a Secretary of Agriculture to “Make sure the watermelons come in good and the chickens is ready fo’ fryin’.”
I made another movie right after it with Charlie Chaplin, Jr., who was about my age. His mother, Lita Grey, starred in it. On the last day of shooting she told my father, “Mr. Davis, the way more vaudeville houses are changing over to movie theaters every day you soon may have no place left to do your act. I adore Sammy. If you’ll agree to let me adopt him legally, I’ll take him to Hollywood and I promise you I’ll make him a star.”
Mama made the decis
ion. “Sammy’s my son now and I don’t want nobody telling me I can’t see my own son.”
“That’s how I feel,” my father said. “We come up together as pals. Movies’d only pull us apart.”
I went downstairs to the candy store below our apartment to buy comic books. Some kids from the neighborhood were sitting at the table in the back. I walked over to them. “Hi.” They were looking at cards with pictures on them. I watched for a while. “What’re those?”
One of them looked up. “You kiddin’?” I didn’t answer. “Boy, anyone don’t know what these is must be pretty dumb.”
“Well, it ain’t dumb just ‘cause I never saw somethin’ before!” I looked around the table hoping to find someone who’d agree with me but they all just shook their heads like I was too stupid to live. I was dying to walk away but I knew if I said, “Well, so long,” nobody’d answer.
“These’re baseball cards, dopey! Where y’been all your life?”
The most any of them had was about a dozen. I had a ten dollar bill in my pocket. The bubble gum the cards came in was a penny apiece. I bought a hundred of them.
They all stopped talking. I played it big, pulling the cards out of the packages, piling them into one tall stack. The boy who’d first called me dumb came over and looked eagerly at my cards. “Y’wanta trade?”
“Sure. Whattya wanta trade?”
He picked out three. “I’ll take these.”
“Okay, but what’ll you give me for ‘em?” I didn’t care but I didn’t want to look dumb again. He handed me three of his cards and I looked at them as if I knew one from the other.
“Fair ‘nuff?” he asked. I nodded. He shouted, “Trade’s off ‘n no trades back!” and all the other kids burst out laughing. He grinned. “Boy, you really are dumb. Anybody who’d give up a Babe Ruth or a Lou Gehrig for less’n five cards—boy, that’s the dumbest thing I ever saw.”
This time I even felt dumb. I ran out of there leaving my cards on the counter. I closed the door to my room and played a record, loud, so Mama couldn’t hear me crying. I sat on my bed, mad at myself for running out like that and for letting them get the best of me in the first place. And to make it worse I hadn’t gotten the comic books. I hated to face them again but they weren’t going to keep me from getting what I wanted.
