In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Junior (41 page)

While Wood was away, something else occurred: the MCA agency tried to pluck Sammy from the Morris office. Sammy so liked being wooed. He invited a group of MCA agents to see his nightclub act. But a group of Morris agents also showed and spotted the MCA agents on hand, sitting at Sammy’s table. It was inelegant politics on Sammy’s part. The MCA agents were embarrassed. When Wood returned to Los Angeles, he asked Sammy to come see him. He was angered at the $25,000 that had been given to Sammy. But he told Sammy he would not take it personally, as long as Sammy renewed his Morris contract for another five years. Sammy said he could not do it, that he was considering signing with MCA. It was a brutal affront to Wood, a very tough character in his own right. George Wood’s face reddened. “
Sign!” he said to Sammy, “or I’ll throw you out this window.” It was the forty-first floor; George Wood was not a man to be trifled with; Sammy signed. Then he tried to chuckle the imbroglio away.

In the nightclubs he played, Sammy—like Sinatra—didn’t meet any Nobel Prize winners. But he met men who could give him money. He didn’t walk
shoulder to shoulder with mobsters as Sinatra did. But he often waltzed into the dark rooms. He played it with the giddiness of a mascot. And his name wound up in the FBI files with all the other hoodlums.

Stepping from the shadow of Will Mastin, Sammy stepped into another shadow—darker, wider, far more pernicious. Money and debt began to grease parts of the lining of his soul.

And Skinny D’Amato became a friend.

His real name was Paul Emilio D’Amato. He was a little over six feet, weighed around 185, wore glasses, and had a distinguished air. He was in the rackets as a teenager. He began pimping women. His stint in the big house—Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary—was for white slavery. Not long after the Depression ended, he was back on the streets of Atlantic City, a city so rife with corruption that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had once sent in federal forces to try to clean it up. Not long after his release from prison, D’Amato took a table at the hood-scented 500 Club. Soon enough he had a stake in the place. (And who knows, it’s quite possible that during some of those nights he brushed shoulders with the honey-colored barmaid whose name was Elvera Davis over at the Little Belmont nightclub.) Skinny enjoyed booking acts for the club. Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin had had wonderful success there. And Sinatra: well, Skinny loved Frank; he couldn’t do enough for Frank, a Jersey guy; he loved Frank the way he loved the smell of the salt air whipping off the ocean down by the boardwalk. Skinny didn’t necessarily like the press, though. “He never let anyone point the camera at him,” says Jess Rand.

A lot of entertainers knew that Skinny liked helping out performers, stuffing advance dollars into their pockets. It was so generous, so kind. It meant he liked you, he loved you—and he owned a part of your ass. Rand says Skinny’s favorite line was always the same: “Need anything? Remember, if you do, come see me first—all right?”

Skinny liked Sammy. The way he performed, the way he sang, the way he aped Sinatra, which Skinny thought funny—very funny. Ha ha ha. And those tight purse strings Will Mastin had on Sammy—well, Skinny could certainly loosen those.

When Jule Styne and George David Weiss walked through the doors of the 500 Club, there sat Skinny, his criminal history sitting inside him like ink. Skinny always wore sunglasses—even indoors. Styne and Weiss just wanted Skinny to listen to their plea. And Skinny was game; he had nothing to lose. Skinny understood the need to listen. Skinny understood, because he had his claws into Sammy. Old debts.

And now the little nigger—that affectionate phrase the Italians used for Sammy—wanted to go to Broadway, take a pass on some old debts and promised nightclub appearances.

The Copa in New York City seated seven hundred; Skinny’s 500 Club seated a thousand. Nighttime at Skinny’s was such a fine time: overhead lights and drinking men, whispers in the corner and the flash of a cigarette case, the cigarette being brought up to some dame’s red lips. Inside Skinny’s, there was plenty of the plenty for everyone.

Styne and Weiss were beyond the doorway now, angling for the back, the table where Skinny sat, arms motioning them closer. Sammy sat next to the nightclub owner. He had one of those smiles on his face that read “God bless America and Skinny D’Amato is a great man.”

Skinny ordered some drinks. His whole body posture said just two words: Need anything?

“Jule said Skinny wants to be part of the meeting,” recalls Weiss.

Gangsters wowed Sammy. As did real guns. The gangsters around him at the 500 Club were surely real, and the scene itself surreal: Skinny transforming himself as background power broker, a kind of unbilled producer, outfitting his reputation with links to the legitimate theater; Jule Styne a character right out of
Guys and Dolls
, there to outwit the henchmen.

“All three of us start, off the top of our heads, telling [Sammy] about the show, how it starts,” Weiss says. “Skinny is sitting there listening to it, absolutely without moving a muscle on his face. Finally, Sammy says, ‘Whew, whew. Sing that song. Sing this song!’ Sammy could get like a little baby voice. It was so embarrassing to us. Sammy would join in with us. He knew some of the songs. He had been working with Jule. Sammy seemed to get embarrassed because Skinny was so unresponsive. He began to feel that Skinny hated everything.” There was awkward silence, eyes darting about, Sammy frozen in his childlike trance owing to the guns, the gangsters, the hope, Skinny, Jule. Someone finally asked Skinny what he thought of it all. “You got six months,” he said to Jule.

And that was it: Jule had Sammy, thanks to Skinny, because Skinny had a deeper version of Sammy. (Even before coming aboard the play, Sammy hit Styne up for a financial advance of several thousand dollars.) Sammy owned his talent, but he did not always own the direction in which that talent would be pointed.

There was still the issue of money to mount the production. Styne figured a budget of $250,000. He knew he could count on Dubonnet, but others were skittish. He was alarmed and hurt. Many potential backers laughed, believing a Negro male lead in a Broadway show was a recipe for a flop. Styne forged on, accepting investments even in the $500 range. Eventually, he raised his money from a wide assortment of “angels,” otherwise known as investors. Two hundred angels dropped money into Styne’s Sammy bucket. Sammy’s own salary was $3,500 a week, and 10 percent of the gross.

Styne began to assemble a cast and start auditions. Sammy had never been on Broadway, and Styne aimed to surround him with proven talent. He hired Jack Carter, a gravelly voiced stand-up comic who had already appeared on Broadway in
Call Me Mister
(produced by the gifted Melvyn Douglas) and
Top Banana
. Carter was also a veteran of early television, having made a reputation for himself on such shows as
The Colgate Comedy Hour
and
Texaco Star Theatre
. Then Styne went after and got Kay Medford, who had left Hollywood for the Broadway theater, where she distinguished herself in shows such as
Paint Your Wagon
,
Black-Eyed Susan
, and
Almanac
; in the latter she starred alongside the young Harry Belafonte. One of Styne’s more interesting choices was Olga James, a young Negro actress with a soprano voice who had made her Hollywood screen debut in Otto Preminger’s
Carmen Jones
. James’s singing was so accomplished that she was one of the few members of Preminger’s cast who did not have to have her vocals dubbed later. (
Carmen Jones
also landed its star, Dorothy Dandridge, on the cover of
Life
magazine, an honor never before accorded a Negro actress.)

For smaller roles Styne hired dancer Hal Loman—with Sammy’s backing, since Loman had been doing choreography work for the Mastin trio; T. J. Halligan, a veteran Broadway actor who recently had been seen in the revival of
Pal Joey
; and a twenty-three-year-old ingenue by the name of Chita Rivera, who had been a knockout in off-Broadway’s
Shoestring Revue
.

When Sammy landed in Manhattan on December 8, 1955, from a Miami nightclub engagement, Jule Styne took note it was his star’s thirtieth birthday. There must be a celebration.

“
What would you like to do tonight?” Styne wanted to know.

“I’d like to go to the ‘21’ Club,” Sammy told Styne, “but they might not let me in.”

Jule Styne would not let Sammy down. He immediately began imagining how he could get Sammy into “21,” which was so exclusive it had the feel of a private club. It did not have a “no-Negroes” policy, yet Negroes were not made to feel welcome. George Jessel once arrived at “21” with Lena Horne. The maître d’ looked at them, coldly, then asked just exactly who had made the reservation.

Sammy, his leading lady, Olga James, and Will Mastin, opening night of Broadway’s
Mr. Wonderful.
Sammy was eager to tackle Broadway, but he had to battle with Mastin, who believed the road was home
.
(
JESS RAND COLLECTION
)

“
Abraham Lincoln,” Jessel said.

Jule Styne put in a call to Pete and Jack Kreindler, the owners. Styne refreshed their memories about who he was, where he had been, his powers on Broadway—and told them he was bringing Sammy there because that’s where he wanted to celebrate his thirtieth birthday. And later that night, there sat Sammy inside “21,” his birthday rolling over him with champagne, a cake, and Jule Abraham Lincoln Styne slapping his back. If only Sinatra could see him; if only Belafonte and Poitier could see him now! “
I didn’t want anything negative to happen,” Styne would recall of the evening. “The Kreindlers made certain that Sammy was treated casually, yet royally. An every-night occurrence was how it felt, thank God.”

Styne announced that rehearsals would last for a period of three months. (Sammy had already informed Styne there had to be roles for his father and Will Mastin.) The show was given a title:
Mr. Wonderful
. Working out of his office, Jule Styne Productions, Styne had to receive unannounced visits by shady characters—Skinny’s men, not to mention Styne’s own acquaintances from the world of horse racing and betting. (“
Are we casting
Guys and Dolls
?” Styne’s general manager, Sylvia Herscher, once asked.) One of the guys was Will Mastin, who made sure he received proper billing—in addition to his normal cut of Sammy’s salary.

The Broadway and theater veterans Styne had hired could be forgiven if they had reservations about Sammy Davis. A Broadway stage was not some nightclub populated by dreamers, backroom operatives, schemers, and hucksters. “I remember being a little snob,” Chita Rivera says. “I was strictly from the theater. I heard that this fantastic nightclub entertainer was going to do a play and his nightclub act was the second part of the play. I wondered, ‘What about the plot?’ I wanted to know how a nightclub performer was going to fit in a book of a show.”

It did not take long for the first controversy to begin brewing. Young Negro dancers were being screened, and for some reason, they were not being sent to the theater to meet the director and the producers. Albert Popwell, himself a young Negro actor, sensed injustice and threatened to lead a picket to get Negroes hired in the chorus. “I went up to the audition for
Mr. Wonderful
in rehearsal clothes,” recalls Popwell. “I went up to the assistant choreographer. I said, ‘Are you hiring any blacks?’ I said, ‘See those blacks out there? Some of them took their lunch breaks to be here.’ I said, ‘Tell you what. You get to Sammy Davis, Jr., and tell him if there’s no black dancers in the show, there’ll be a picket.’ ” Popwell led ten dancers down to Equity. It was not custom, but he had the Negro dancers who auditioned mark “C”—for “Colored”—on their audition cards. Four of the ten dancers who had marked “C” were hired: Jerri Gray, Tempe Fletcher, Claude Thompson, and Sally Neal.

Sammy did not bother with race, integration, or protest. Nor did Will Mastin, nor did Sam Sr. Their protest was against the ticking of time: other acts were right behind them; money was everywhere and it was nowhere and they wanted more of it.

One might wonder why Sammy took the risk of Broadway. His income would surely drop. Sammy, however, not only had competitive juices, he was shrewd. In 1950s America, Broadway was powerful, even golden. Already, in the first half of that decade, the actors who had appeared on Broadway constituted an astonishing array of talent. Among them were Paul Muni (
Inherit the Wind
), Gwen Verdon (
Damn Yankees
), Andy Griffith (
No Time for Sergeants
), Robert Preston (The
Male Animal
), John Garfield (a revival of
Golden Boy
),
Helen Hayes (
Mrs. McThing
), Audrey Hepburn (
Gigi
), Henry Fonda (
Point of No Return
), Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy (
The Fourposter
), Yul Brynner (
The King and I
), and Claude Rains (
Darkness at Noon
). Negro males in leading roles were largely absent.