In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Junior (22 page)

I
t is an ancient art. Performers in open-air Greek theaters engaged in the practice of mimicry, cottony pieces of cloth draped around their shoulders, becoming someone else. The best mimics were great imitators, as were many of the earliest vaudevillians and silent-screen stars. There exists, in addition to the traditional definition of “mimic” (“To copy or imitate closely”) a biological definition of “mimicry”: “
The resemblance of one organism to another or to an object in its surroundings for concealment and protection from predators.”

To conceal the black Sammy, Davis became the white Sammy. There were no predators after the white Sammy. He was Al Jolson, blessed with the uncanny ability to turn the white minstrel performer inside out of his own self. He was Boris Karloff. He was the spangly Jerry Lewis. He was Jimmy Cagney, feet spread apart, hands cocked. Yew dirty ratttt … He was Barry Fitzgerald, the old Irish character actor—
How Green Was My Valley
,
The Naked City
—whose own accent often got mighty close to the ethnic Irish stereotype. Concealing one stereotype only to offer another, Sammy possessed a magician’s confidence—and shrewdness. It took enormous skills to perform such feats, and he had them. He could be a southern tobacco auctioneer. He had the perfect auctioneer’s shuffle. (Actually, he stole the shuffle from Stepin’ Fetchit.) He could be Frankie Laine, the velvety-voiced crooner who made a reputation singing cowboy songs. (All things with a cowboy theme fascinated young Sammy.) And, of course, he could imagine himself and Sinatra. But he couldn’t be Sinatra. He didn’t have the right skin color. Only by turning himself inside out could he be Sinatra. Get up close to the microphone, just like Frank. Kiss the thing, breathe into it. Just as Frank had done at the Capitol Theatre. The white Sammy could do whatever he wanted to do. He could lose himself inside others. Prince Spencer knew why Sammy’s appeal was on the rise. “Sammy came and excelled at what the white guys were doing. He excelled on their territory.”

Will Mastin didn’t understand the mimicry, just as Lionel Hampton didn’t understand the mimicry.

Mastin wanted to bolt Los Angeles. Idleness made him nervous. But Sammy began to grow fond of the place. Once you got a whiff of the Hillcrest Country Club—even if some of those there had, during the walk around the golf course with Abe Lastfogel, thought you were just another Negro caddy—it was hard to let the place go from your senses. The sunshine, the homes, the big fat gates outside the movie studios, the lovely cars gliding into and beyond the gates—it all enraptured Sammy.

Sammy didn’t have a car yet, so he hopped buses, bummed rides. And he walked a lot up and down Central Avenue, snapping his fingers, hi to everyone, rushing by, chasing glory.

He was desperate for Los Angeles friends of his own. He liked the way Sinatra had always had an entourage around him. Sammy spent his time with his father and Will Mastin’s friends, men who were entertainers but far older than Sammy, men from another generation. He’d sit with them in hotel rooms and talk into the night; then, just like that, he’d bolt, go play his records. He had a certain fondness for these men, after all they were workers, hoofers. But they were on the way down—it was a cruel business—and he was on the way up.

On the nightclub circuit, he befriended Jeff Chandler, who introduced him to Tony Curtis. All had been born in New York; all were World War II vets. And all became fast friends. Chandler had been a radio actor who moved into movies in 1947, appearing in three that year—
Johnny O’Clock
,
The Invisible Wall
, and
Roses Are Red
. He had also been a nightclub performer. Nightclub acts intrigued him. He had looked upon Sammy with immediate fondness—the kid dancing with the two older men. Curtis had come to Hollywood in 1947 and signed a contract with Universal. Dark-haired and handsome, he began in small roles in studio movies. He and Sammy often talked about movies, about New York, about their individual hurts in life. Sammy could be a fan even of actors who had yet to make it. “I grew up in New York City,” says Curtis. “I was a handsome Jew. I understood someone who had been picked on because of his color, size, whatever. That made us instant friends.”

Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz; Chandler, Ira Grossel. Many actors changed their names, hoping the new name would sound better, easier on the tongue. The attitude didn’t transfer to Negro performers. Their family names had been earned, they felt, taken from distant places, something dragged—yes—from slavery, but still, theirs. Belafonte was born a Belafonte; Poitier a Poitier; Paul Robeson a Robeson. “Sammy Davis” was as American as a name could be; the “Jr.” gave it its extra kick.

Sammy Davis, Jr.’s name was just fine; it was his interior that would bedevil him: a Negro with his face pressed against the white world. “He felt inferior,” says Curtis. “People treated him as inferior.”

Except when he was onstage. Onstage was a different matter. The Hollywood nightclub crowd had never seen anything quite like Sammy, says Curtis. “He was unusual. There was not anybody around who could amuse and fascinate people like Sammy.” Sometimes Curtis would scan the nightclub audience, grinning with his broad grin, his eyes bouncing from Sammy to the audience and back again. “He was very gifted,” Curtis says. “He was able to do those things the white guys were doing—and better. I won’t say he was accepted, but he was tolerated.” To many in Hollywood, the trio was considered eccentric. “It was amusing and unique,” says Curtis. “There was a guy with his father and [Mastin] and out dancing with them—but with graciousness. He wasn’t trying to show them up.”

Some of Sammy’s long talks led to melancholy moments. He talked of the movies he wanted to break into—just the way Curtis and Chandler were doing—and he talked of the fancy nightclubs he wanted to appear at. “There was a lot of unhappiness there, sadness and pain,” says Curtis.

Sammy seesawed between coasts now. A train ticket for either coast would bring a smile to his face. He liked movement. “I remember a couple times we’d take the train, the Super Chief, back to New York,” Janet Leigh recalls of herself, Tony Curtis, and Jeff Chandler. Leigh was a young actress who began dating Curtis shortly after he met Sammy. “We’d have two compartments. We’d play Monopoly the whole trip. We ate in the compartment. We changed trains in Chicago. We changed to the Twentieth Century.”

Sammy exhausted Mastin and his father, but he was determined to elevate the act, to take it where it had never been. And he was cultivating friendships wherever he could: he looked up Buddy Rich, a wickedly talented drummer; he hooked up with Billy Eckstine, a crooner, to see what he might steal. He hung out at the Brill Building in Manhattan, which a lot of singers and songwriters were known to frequent. “We did begin to have a rhythm of constantly bumping into one another around the Brill Building,” remembers Harry Belafonte. “People hung out in restaurants. People hung out till two, three in the morning. Then we’d all gang up and go to some other place. I called us ‘shepherds of the night.’ Really all just show folk. In the late hour there’d be ham and eggs and girls. Finally you’d get home around five or six. It was in that environment that I kept running into Sammy.”

The trio got a gig at the El Rancho in Las Vegas. It was a new town, right there in the desert, built by gangsters. But the treatment, off the strip, was terrible. Sammy told himself he’d come back someday with more respect. The city was harsh on Negroes; Sammy and his father and Will couldn’t stay in the casinos, had to drive over the bridge, to the Negro side of town.

After Vegas, Mastin bought a big truck and sent his equipment ahead in it. There was an advertisement painted on one side of the truck:
THE WILL MASTÍN TRIO STARRING SAMMY DAVIS JR
. Other drivers would see the truck, the advertisement, and could be forgiven if they thought it some kind of traveling carnival.

In a bewildering way, movement calmed Sammy. For it was in confusion and cacophony, in the everyday debris of old ideas he was trying to vanquish and new ones he was trying to foster, that he would find order. One day he’d be bypassing a wheat field, the next striding along the hard cold cement of Chicago, two old sturdy men beside him; and still days later he was back at the Brill Building in Manhattan hustling up recording contacts. The noise and disorder of his youth had washed inside him deeply, until his whole life, to have meaning to him, seemed worthwhile only if he was moving, galloping, scanning entertainment periodicals—eyes rolling right over the words he could not decipher—then tossing the periodical in the trash and moving onward. Never a stroll for the young Sammy, always quick-stepping. Sometimes ideas came to him like firecrackers—pop, pop—and he wanted to grab at something, then he’d look beside him, and there were the two old men. The Four Step Brothers were all in their twenties and early thirties. They, like Sammy, had youth; they flew like eagles. But Sammy had two aging men, and they could be heavy on his wings.

His looks bothered him. It was all the standing in front of the mirrors, practicing the mimicry, that showed him his face at long stretches. He did not like what he saw. He began considering plastic surgery. He thought all crooners—Billy Eckstine, Frankie Laine, Sinatra—looked far more handsome than he did. So he convinced himself a better nose would improve both his looks and his career: “
I just don’t feel like the type who can sing a romantic song convincingly,” he said as he pondered the surgery.

Some nights, back in Los Angeles, Sammy would stroll by Ciro’s, the swanky nightclub on Sunset Boulevard. Stars hung out there. It was like a movie set from one of MGM’s dazzling musicals. He’d hang out front, blowing smoke, dreaming. Herman Hover was the king behind Ciro’s. Nightclubs and entertainment had long cast a spell upon Hover. He had once been a chorus dancer in New York City’s fabled
Vanities
show. (It was considered the strongest competition to the Ziegfeld Follies.) Hover graduated to manager of the show. In 1936 he came to Hollywood, forgoing studies at Columbia Law School, to take over another theater, not yet Ciro’s, on Sunset Boulevard. Hollywood thrilled him. “
Hollywood is booming!” he told his wife back in New York. “I’m coming to get you.” In 1942, Hover leased Ciro’s. He shrewdly capitalized on a heady mix of wartime spirit and glamour. On any given night one might see Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball. Hover liked class, and his
club reeked of it. On the tables sat foot-high lamps, each with a velvet purple-and-green shade. Behind the chrome bar stood bartenders dressed in uniforms with military buttons. Gorgeous cigarette girls floated about the club. Rich men came just to ogle young starlets. (Hover hosted crooner Dean Martin’s marriage to his wife, Jeannie, at his home in 1949.)

Hover was quite adept at coming up with little staged events, something unique to draw the media’s attention. He was not above having a bathtub placed onstage and a sultry dancer rising out of it—barely clothed. For Academy Awards night in 1951 he decided to book Janis Paige, a rising Hollywood musical star who had more than a dozen films to her credit. Trained as an opera singer, she had been discovered as a singer-waitress at the Hollywood Canteen. With Paige signed up, Hover went casting about for an opening act to precede her. Arthur Silber suggested the Will Mastin Trio. Hover, who had seen the trio at Slapsie Maxie’s nightclub and had a soft spot for old vaudeville acts, agreed. But then, before anything was signed, there was a tense bit of business about the fee. Hover offered $500, Mastin wanted $550. It went back and forth. Hover wouldn’t budge; Mastin shook his head no, and kept shaking it: no, no, no. The vaudevillian was defiant. It wasn’t about the fifty dollars—it was about Hover, another powerful nightclub owner, trying to take advantage of him and his trio, and not giving in, not budging at all, which, in the recesses of Mastin’s mind, meant that Hover was quite possibly conjuring up a way to steal Sammy. Sam Sr. sided with Mastin. They were proud men, and would as soon hit the hustings again rather than give in. Pride was at stake; they were always ready to pack up and move on. But Sammy nearly cried. Ciro’s was Ciro’s. The neon of that club had flashed and flickered in his own eyes. He argued with his father and Mastin—to no avail. Silber sensed Sammy’s anguish. He went back to the phone. He told Mastin that Hover had relented; $550 it would be. (The elder Silber actually had chipped in the extra fifty himself.)

It was a year, Oscar-wise, when Hollywood turned an eye on itself.
All About Eve
competed against
Sunset Boulevard
for best picture, along with
Born Yesterday
,
Father of the Bride
, and
King Solomon’s Mines
. José Ferrer, for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac, and William Holden, in
Sunset Boulevard
, were favorites in the best actor category, with Spencer Tracy, in
Father of the Bride
, the sentimental choice. Both Anne Baxter and Bette Davis were nominated in the best actress category for their performances in
All About Eve
. Judy Holliday had to be taken seriously for
Born Yesterday
—she had played the role to raves on Broadway—and Gloria Swanson, as an aging actress in
Sunset Boulevard
, gave a performance both wicked and sultry.

The Oscar event was set for the RKO Pantages Theatre on March 29, 1951. The stakes were high for Sammy, his father, and Mastin. They were booked on an “if come” basis at Ciro’s, a famous term nightclub owners used when they
were uncertain of an act. It meant, simply, that once the customers saw you on opening night, if they came back the next night and the next night, you’d stay on the card. So, in essence, you had only the opening night to pull them back—lest, the owners’ thinking went, the opening act continue to be a drag on the featured act.

“
I knew it that night,” Sammy would remember, “this is my last chance to do it. Do it now if you’re ever gonna do it. Or it’s small time the rest of your life. You’ll be workin’ little joints around and never get that big opportunity, ’cause this is as close as you’re gonna get.”