Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr.

by Davis, Sammy

  I turned around. He was standing in the doorway. “No, John. I’m fine. I’m sorry about dinner, baby, but something came up.”

  “Oh … okay.”

  I went after him and stopped him in the hall. “Look, Johno … I’m sorry. I didn’t forget. I just couldn’t make it.”

  He was looking at me, not with anger, but confused and hurt. “Sammy … D.D. spent the whole day cooking a turkey for you. Couldn’t you at least have called?”

  “I’m sorry, John. I couldn’t. I really couldn’t.”

  His eyes became veiled, just as surely as if a stone wall had risen between us. “All right, Sam. We’ll do it some other time.” He turned and I stood there watching him walk away from me.

  I smiled with satisfaction at the first line in Earl Wilson’s column: “The B.W. and I had dinner with Jack Benny who is as tight as Sammy Davis, Jr.’s pants.” The pants were on their way to becoming a trademark for me. I opened an envelope of newspaper clippings. The top few were from the Negro press. The first was a three-panel cartoon: two colored guys were standing near a lamp post which said “Harlem.” One of them was asking “Howcum we never see Sammy Davis hangin’ on the corner up here?” The other was shrugging, “You crazy, man? Sammy ain’t colored no more.”

  After a while I looked at the next one, an article: “Sammy Davis Jr. Starring in ‘I’d Rather Be White.’ ” My thoughts kept drifting back to only a few years before, to other stories, to newspaper clippings hanging over Mr. Peterson’s counter and the pride Mama had taken in me. I didn’t want to think about her seeing these, but I knew she would; she read the Negro papers religiously, looking for stories about me.

  I kept going through the clips, picturing the disapproval in the faces of the people who wrote and read them, unable to stop reading, like a gambler on a losing streak who stays in the game hoping the next roll of the dice will bail him out. I stopped at a Robert Sylvester column from the Daily News: “Dropped in to see Sammy Davis, Jr. in Mr. Wonderful. Sorry, but I just can’t get excited over him. Maybe it’s me because throughout his nightclub act—the last scene, Mr. Davis’ talents were not lost on the rest of the screaming, applauding audience.”

  I called Jess on the coast. “Baby, when we first played the Riviera, can you remember what Bob Sylvester said about the act?”

  “Yeah … he said you were ugly as a shovel but you could dance like a son of a bitch! Something like that.”

  “Do you still have the clipping?”

  “It’s probably in one of the early albums. You want me to send it to you?”

  “No. I’ll hold on till you find it.”

  It was a rave, just as I’d remembered. I hung up and stared at Sylvester’s name. What the hell had happened?

  I lit a cigarette and watched Cliff Cochrane’s face as he reread the recent Sylvester clipping. He handed it back to me. “I’ve read worse.”

  “You’re wrong, Cliff. I’m in big trouble. That’s the most serious thing that’s ever been written about me. I need some public relations. Fast! You can’t see what I see in it, but it’s not a typical rap; there’s nothing racial about it, nothing snide, no snipe job—just a simple, honest statement: ‘I don’t like Sammy Davis, Jr.’ It’s more than honest. The man even bent over backwards to be fair by saying that other people did like me.”

  “So?”

  “If Bob Sylvester saw my act for the first time and he didn’t dig it I’d say, ‘Crazy, you can’t win ‘em all.’ My act is not like water which everyone must like. But Sylvester used to like the act. And the act hasn’t changed! You were there when we opened at the Riviera. I did everything I do now except I’m technically better today than I was then, I’m more polished, more mature. And I’ve got to assume that Sylvester’s taste hasn’t changed, either. Let’s face it, he was a pro then—it wasn’t like he was seeing his first nightclub act and he got carried away by the excitement. So, if the act didn’t change, and Sylvester didn’t change—what did? There’s only one thing left. Me! My image.”

  “I don’t see the connection. The man was reviewing the show.”

  “Cliff, there’s no separating a performer’s public and private life—not with a ‘personality.’ It all weaves together. Whatever people believe I am from what they hear and read must have an effect on what I’m trying to say as a performer. Obviously all the bad publicity, the constant ‘wild kid’ bit has been hammered at so often that it’s hardened into fact and created an image so strong, so vivid and distasteful, that a guy like Sylvester doesn’t like me any more.

  “When he saw me on the stage in Mr. Wonderful he saw a better version of everything he liked a few years ago, but instead of the-sweet-kid-who-loves-his-father-and-his-uncle-and-isn’t-it-nice-he-doesn’t-push-them-aside, he saw a monster who bleaches his skin white, sits in bars with a bottle of whiskey and six blondes on his lap, shouting ‘Drinks for the house.’ And his sense of morality made him dislike me enough as a person, so that he just couldn’t feel what I was doing as a performer.

  “Okay, I lost Sylvester. And I know for a fact I lost Hy Gardner. When I opened at the Riviera there was nobody more in my corner than Hy. He’s been a friend, in his column and personally, right down the line. Now even he’s shooting little zingies at me, like he’s crossed me off. That’s two important guys I’ve lost, two that I know about. But how many others are starting to turn away from me? People who can’t let me know it in a column, people who just stop coming to see me.”

  Cliff said, “I never thought it was this serious. Sure, I didn’t like your lousy press but I didn’t give it much thought; you seemed to be getting only bigger as a result of it.”

  “Baby, how could you see it if I didn’t? When it first started happening I got scared but then I saw that it wasn’t hurting me—on the contrary, it was adding something, making me more interesting. There were times I even secretly gloried in it. When all the bedroom scandals started, a lot of chicks began looking at me like: ‘Let’s find out what he’s got!’ and I didn’t exactly chase ‘em away. But that’s over now. I can’t let it run wild any more.

  “The other side of it, which is horrible, is it’s killing me uptown. I’m being isolated from my own people. I’m an outcast. Obviously I’m not white, but now it’s gotten so the colored people don’t want me, either. It’s like I’m the man without a country.

  “I’ve got to completely remake my image. The first step is to straighten out with the guys who reach the people, guys like Sylvester and Hy. I want to go about it methodically, man by man, with every paper, every magazine: the columnists, editors, feature writers—everybody! You’ve got the connections. I need you to set it up for me to meet every single one you can get to.”

  He was stirring his coffee slowly. “That’s going to be a tremendous job for you.”

  “Baby, I eat dinner every night. Let’s make use of that time. Let’s make every dinner count. I’m available any time of the day and night except when I’m on the stage.”

  He nodded, staring past me into space, evaluating, planning. “What about the Negro press? I can’t do you much good there. I just don’t know them.”

  “I’ve already spoken with a buddy of mine, Billy Rowe, a top press agent. His wife is Izzy Rowe. She writes a very important column in the Courier and she’s always been fair with me: if I do something she likes she says so, by the same token she never misses beating my brains out when she doesn’t dig something. The important thing is that because of Billy, I always had a liaison with her so she could at least check with me and find out if such and such is true. I’ve got the same thing with Ebony and Jet because I made it a point to meet the publisher and they’ve been completely fair with me. That’s all I can hope for, and between you and Billy maybe I can get it right down the line.”

  Cliff nodded. “We should hit it from another direction, too. You should start appearing at every benefit for every important cause. The new image needs that kind of dimension.”

  The next evening
Billy Rowe met with Cliff and me at Danny’s.

  “I don’t know where I went wrong with them, Billy. I cherished their acceptance when I had it, but I sure lost them somewhere along the way. Like Evelyn Cunningham. Cliff, this woman is our Hedda and Louella put together but with a little Dorothy Kilgallen thrown in. Now I never even met her, but for some reason I happen to be her personal choice for President of the White Citizens Council.”

  Billy nodded painfully. “The general impression around the Negro press is that he’s got it made and he just doesn’t give a damn. Maybe we should start off our campaign with the Negro press by having a little get-together. Let them see how you feel. It might break the ice a little before you tackle them individually.”

  I smiled at him. “Beautiful. We could do a special thing just for them—family style. No business, no interviews, none of the ‘Hey, put my name in the paper’ jazz. Strictly a thing for us all to relax, have a little booze, a little food, and get to know each other.”

  Evelyn Cunningham’s column jumped up out of the Courier and slapped my face.

  Dear Sammy,

  Right off I can’t think of anything I dislike about you. Not only are you one of the greatest entertainers in the world but from what I hear and what I see you also seem to be one of the nicest. In a way I’m as proud of you as I am of Ralph Bunche, Thurgood Marshall and the rest of the guys who will be written about in history books.

  So, when you invited me to your press party I was real tickled to get a chance to meet you. I didn’t expect that you and I would get to be boons on sight or that you would even remember my name after we’d met. All I wanted was the kicks of being in close quarters with you and maybe getting a small idea of what makes you tick. You see I’m a 14-karat fan of yours. Anyway I got the most awful sinking of the stomach when I got to the party and saw at a glance that it was a press party for people on the colored papers. My stomach turned over again when I suddenly realized that it had been a long, long time since I had been through this type of all-colored press party in New York. Seems they went out with ankle strap shoes.

  But I’m crazy about you. So after my stomach turned up I made excuses. I said to myself he’s got something special to say to us that’s exclusively for us or something really big is coming because this doesn’t make sense. Nothing came. You were charming, gracious and entertaining. You hopped from guest to guest and you went to the trouble of engaging in small talk with us. But you weren’t happy. Neither were we. Every now and then I got the feeling that you were embarrassed, that you didn’t think the party was such a good idea after all. And then you made a short talk. You said with great sincerity, that you were deeply appreciative of the Negro press and the Negro patrons who were helping to keep Mr. Wonderful running on Broadway. You intimated that despite the negative reviews of the show when it opened, Negroes were in a large measure responsible for making it run. For this, thanks. But Sammy, wouldn’t it have been a gasser if you had said the same thing at a press party to which you had invited people from both the daily and weekly papers. It wouldn’t have offended the daily boys. In fact I’ve got an idea they would have respected you even more. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want you running down to Montgomery and jumping on buses or yelling and screaming about your civil rights. But in many, many quarters integration is fashionable and chic and you have access to these quarters. In short I don’t think the press party was necessary, but I love you anyway. Love and kisses,

  E.C.

  P.S. Ain’t it rough being cullud? There’s always something!

  I got Billy on the phone. “Did you see what that bitch wrote? Did I have to throw a party for that?”

  “Sammy, she’s right and we were wrong. Read the column again and you’ll see it.”

  “Holy Toledo. Is it against the rules to be friendly and just say hello? Isn’t ‘Have a drink and let’s be friends’ enough of an announcement? What the hell does she want from me?”

  George glared at me as I got into the limousine. “Do you realize I’ve been sitting in this hearse for almost an hour?”

  “I’m sorry, baby. I really am. But Will called a meeting.”

  “My God, what do you talk about in those meetings every night?”

  I sat back in the seat. “Trio business.”

  He gestured toward the chauffeur. “Have you any idea where Jeeves is taking us?”

  “Brooklyn.”

  He groaned. “Couldn’t you have found a benefit a little closer?”

  “Baby, it’s a drag and I don’t like it any more than you do.” I pulled out the jump-seat and rested my feet on it. “It’s just a quickie ‘Glad to be here folks,’ a song, and good-bye. But I’m going to catch thirty winks or I may not make it up the stairs to the stage.”

  As I turned and got comfortable, he muttered, “Don’t worry about me. I’ll hum to myself.”

  The MC was saying, “… the moment we’ve all been waiting for, here he is, Mr. Wonderful himself …”

  I did two songs. The audience was applauding, calling for more. The M.C. tried to help me off. “We can’t impose on Mr. Davis any longer. He has no more arrangements with him, he wasn’t able to bring his own accompanist along….”

  Their reception had been so warm that I hated to leave. I held up my hands. “Thank you, but I like to think of myself as an ‘entertainer’ not just a performer, and if I can’t come out here and entertain you with no more than a pocket comb and tissue paper then I should get out of the business. So, if you’ve got nowhere to go….”

  An hour later George was in the wings as I came off. “Just a quickie song and good-bye? Really.” He wanted to play it chic and bored but he was having trouble. “You’d think I see you perform enough in Mr. Wonderful. Whatever that is.”

  I handed him the plaque. “Just a little something to let you see what people think of your star.”

  The car headed for New York and I asked the driver to take us to the Harwyn. I turned to George. “Now here’s the skam: it’s a little sip and sup over champagne and steak sandwiches—a definite see and be seen.”

  “By which columnist this time?”

  “George, while you’re concocting your vicious remarks old Sam is thinking, thinking—always thinking. Now, it happens that waiting for us at the Har are Milton and Amy Greene, Chita, Michael, plus a model by the name of Harlean Harris whom I happened to meet on the cover of Ebony magazine.” I closed the window between us and the chauffeur. “Aside from the fact that she’s a very wholesome, sweet kid and one of the great-looking chicks of all time, she happens to be colored. Y’dig? Let ‘em just try to say ‘He was with a blonde.’ ”

  “Well, just don’t do any table-hopping.”

  “Baby, I’m going to stick so close to her that she’s gonna forget she’s colored and think she’s Siamese!”

  The Harwyn’s doorman held the front door open; the hat check girl smiled admiringly at my plaque as I handed it to her; Ed gave me a tremendously warm hello and as I hit the main room the band swung into Mr. Wonderful. I waved to them and slid onto the seat next to Harlean. Sorry I’m late. Good evening, everybody.”

  Mac, the table captain asked, “What’ll it be, Mr. Davis?”

  “Ah, yes, innkeeper. The best champagne in your cellars and be done with it.”

  He bowed and played straight. “A jug of wine, sire. Any particular year?”

  I gave him a little Bogart. “Whattya? One of them fresh guys? Nobody says ‘jug’ to Little Frenchy! Bring us the best you’ve got and you’re on your honor ‘cause I been in stir so long I won’t know the difference.”

  Michael gave me a raised eyebrow. “Oh? You’re drinking tonight?”

  “Just enough to make me suave and sophisticated.” Mac was pulling out the table next to ours, for a middle-aged couple who’d just arrived. I smiled at them Charley Gracious Star style. The man turned away. I heard him tell Mac, “I’d prefer to sit over there.” He was pointing across the room. I looked away, but Mac saw that I’d
caught it. George plunged into conversation. “Well, our ‘Mr. Wonderful’ here was a smash tonight …” Obviously he’d caught it too. I glanced at Harlean. She was chatting with Michael. George continued ad-libbing wildly. Mac came by. “The characters you run into in this business.” He made a face. “ ‘The air conditioning is too strong.’ ” I smiled my thanks for his sensitivity. I glanced over to where the couple was seated. They looked away. I tried to catch the attention of someone at the next table, but I couldn’t; I tried the next table, and the next, but nobody was smiling at me, and I had a punch-in-the-stomach awareness of Harlean and me being the only colored people in the place.

  I slid out from behind the table and went up to the bandstand. I shook hands with the pianist. “Okay if I sit in with your guys?”

  He grinned. “You kidding?”

  The drummer smiled and moved out from behind the drums and I sat down and picked up the beat. The people on the dance floor began nudging each other and I heard a growing murmur: “It’s Sammy Davis … Sammy Davis….” The sound was rolling toward me in waves, swirling around me, bathing away the tension, soothing every hot nerve end until I felt my arms loosening, my neck relaxed….

  “Mr. Davis?” A college girl was smiling up at me. “Would you sing something?” Her date, a kid with a bright face and a short haircut said, “Would you?”

  I nodded. “Thanks for asking.” I waved for the drummer to come back, took the mike and began singing, standing back so it wouldn’t look like a performance. The people started dancing again; the whole room was focused on me; Ed Wynne was standing in the doorway, beaming. More and more people were coming to the dance floor until it was so crowded they could only stand in place, swaying back and forth.

  As I slid into my seat, George asked, “Giving away free samples?”

  “Don’t knock it. I could’ve sold a dozen tickets right from the floor.” The waiter poured a glass of champagne for me. “C’mon, let’s go back to my place.”

  I sat behind my bar at the Gorham. Harlean was across from me, Michael, Chita, and George were watching the Late Late Show. A pleasant drowsiness crept over me as I relaxed in the knowledge that I didn’t have to be tuned in all over the room trying to catch what everyone was saying or thinking.