In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Junior (45 page)

Then Sammy turned to Blauner and asked him if he’d seen
Mr. Wonderful
yet. “Six times,” the starstruck Blauner answered.

Sammy introduced Blauner to the cast. Then he got dressed as Charlie Welch—he wore a sequined vest and tight black pants and looked like a matador—did the show, and quickly ushered Blauner into the waiting limo. They were returning to the Copa! To see Sinatra himself! Blauner couldn’t believe it. Hazel Scott, the glamorous pianist, was seated at Sammy’s table, along with Billy Rowe, one of Sammy’s press agents, and a dancer from the chorus of
My Fair Lady
who happened to be one of the few Negroes (she was light-skinned) appearing on Broadway other than those in Sammy’s show. “In the Copa I’m looking around,” says Blauner. “It seemed every white woman in the club wanted to fuck Sammy. Onstage Sammy was ten feet tall.” After the show, Blauner, summoning the nerve, asked Sinatra for an autograph. It was always tricky with Frank—depending on the moon, the stars, how his last drink went down, his attitude. “He signed it, which was a lot of class.”

Sammy grew up listening to cowboy Tom Mix’s radio shows in the 1930s, and he loved twirling six-shooters. After the loss of his eye in the 1954 automobile crash, Sammy deemed his return to quick-drawing the ultimate proof to himself that he was back to form. Here he demonstrates for the son of eye surgeon Fred Hull at his San Bernardino home
.
(
COURTESY FRED HULL
)

Everyone got dropped off. There was just Sammy and Blauner in the limo. Sammy directed the driver to the Colony Records store, then he vanished inside. He reappeared with stacks of albums under both arms. He gave Blauner one of the stacks, the one with all the Sinatra albums. The tender Sinatra album—
In the Wee Small Hours
—quickly caught Blauner’s eye. And with that, Sammy had Blauner, another recruit to the Sammy cause, the Sammy train.

Blauner would return to New York City in the weeks ahead and go straight to the Gorham. He was
in
now, with Sammy and his gang. “We’d play nickel-and-dime poker. There were always people around Sammy. A lot of his generosity had to do with trying to buy love. I never smoked a cigarette in my life. He gave me a solid gold cigarette case from Dunhill.”

Jule Styne was an ardent Democrat, like his friend Sinatra. It was Styne who introduced Sammy to Jacqueline Kennedy and Senator Jack Kennedy at a Manhattan party. Sammy couldn’t resist: if the Democratic Party was good enough for Jule and Frank, then it was good enough for Sammy.

Adlai Stevenson was running for president against Eisenhower, who had
beaten him in 1952. Stevenson was a poetic man, but poetry did not win national elections. Hard knuckles did, and many believed Stevenson lacked them. Phoebe Jacobs, once the secretary to Sy Oliver, the celebrated music arranger, was working in New York City for Columbia Records when
Mr. Wonderful
was playing on Broadway. She joined the Stevenson campaign as a volunteer in New York City. At Columbia Records she worked directly for Mitch Miller. “Mitch told me Sammy was an Adlai Stevenson fan,” she recalls. Jacobs had secured use of a mansion for a Stevenson fund-raiser, and she felt Sammy would be a terrific draw if she could snare him. She went to the theater, once, then again, leaving notes for Sammy, information about the event, where it would be held, all the particulars. But no response. She went back three times. Finally, someone called: “Sammy’s coming. He’ll bring a couple of people.” And there he was, walking into the mansion, with a busload of friends and
Mr. Wonderful
cast mates, moving like smoke, drifting here and there. “Everybody was so thrilled. This man chartered a bus and brought the entire company up and made them do a number. Sammy stayed until two or three in the morning, signing autographs, posing for pictures.”

Stevenson lost the presidential race in 1956, just as he had in 1952. He took the defeat coolly and went away as quietly as someone stepping back behind a curtain.

There were other events besides presidential politics that found their way into the newspapers.

Down in Alabama, the segregated city bus system—by virtue of a Supreme Court ruling—had come to an end. Before year’s end, Martin Luther King, Jr. climbed aboard a city bus near his Montgomery home.

“
I believe you are Reverend King,” the bus driver said.

“Yes, I am,” King replied.

Nine innocuous words exchanged between them. And yet, something gigantic seemed about to roll in Montgomery other than those buses.

Stevenson may have lost, but King rolled. And on Broadway, Sammy kept rolling too. A Negro was drawing the theatergoers to their seats. The show—even if Sammy had bastardized a Broadway musical—seemed to liberate, at least a bit, the thinking of Broadway producers. The reality had to be acknowledged that a Negro could carry a Broadway musical. Lena Horne was being wooed for a show for the upcoming Broadway season. (
Jamaica
would bow in 1957.)

It was a good time—and a good year—for Sam Sr. He was on Broadway with his boy—and he was deeply in love with Rita, who had also brought three children along with her in a rather discreet bit of adoption.

Rita had a dear friend, Eleanor Carter, who did domestic work, scrubbed floors, whatever she had to do to care for her three small children. Rita fretted
about the children, the long hours their mother was away from home. When she worried, Sam Sr. worried. Eleanor Carter wound up in Harlem Hospital. “My mother got sick. I wound up in the ambulance,” recalls her son Pierre. The illness was serious. And it was painfully clear to everyone at the hospital that Eleanor would no longer be able to care for her kids. At the hospital, Pierre looked up, and there was Sam Sr. standing next to him.

“You’re going with me,” the older man said. “I said, ‘I can’t leave my sisters.’ ” So Pierre found himself in the blue Cadillac, which soon parked outside the apartment building where he lived with his sisters. Sam Sr. told him to go get the two girls.

Pierre and his sisters moved into a large apartment in the Gorham. Upstairs was Sammy’s suite. The echo of children seemed to delight Sam Sr. “I been hungry,” he once explained to young Pierre. “I won’t have a kid around me who’s hungry. If a kid wants a cup of milk, I’ll get him a cow.” The children felt like they were in a fairy tale. “I’m a boy from 145th Street. Now I’m riding around in limousines going to Danny’s Hideaway for breakfast,” remembers Pierre. “That Christmas I must have had gifts from half the people on Broadway.”

That Sam Sr. suddenly had a new family with children seemed not to draw much attention from the
Mr. Wonderful
cast. “That was an era when you didn’t ask questions,” says Chita Rivera. “My ears would be open, but one doesn’t ask questions.”

Cast members began noticing a change with Sammy Jr. as the
Mr. Wonderful
run lengthened. There were sparks of rebelliousness, something they hadn’t seen before. The rebellion that was directed at his father seemed to be typical father-son squabbling. But with Will, the arguments were deeper, raw man-to-man confrontations. “The world was changing, and Sammy was changing,” says James, the leading lady. “At one point during the production, Will and Sammy had a big argument that you could hear all over the theater. Will said, ‘Boy, do you know who I am!’ Sammy stormed out, hollering for Chita.”

Chita loved him still. And Chita was still so beautiful. She was more beautiful than Eartha. Or was Eartha more beautiful than Chita? Eartha was pre-crash, so he had seen her beauty with both eyes. He had seen Chita’s beauty with one eye, but the one eye was now sharper than two eyes, just as the doctors had told him. Marriage to Chita? The idea had sounded so warm and sweet and tender in those midnight conversations, as they saw the moon rise over the East River. But none of it could hold a candle to the long leg of fame. And in his pursuit of fame, Sammy was as relentless as a barracuda. He let Chita keep the ring. It angered Sam Sr.

The year-long Broadway run had imbued Sammy with newfound powers, and with a streak of independence. The midnight nightclub shows he escaped to do gave him the chance to practice solo performing. In a way,
Mr. Wonderful
was the beginning of the end of the Will Mastin Trio. The night-after-night grind wore upon them, though more so on the elder Davis than on Mastin. Sam Sr. had started whispering to his son that he was going to quit. There was a woman in his life now. Sammy seemed torn. His father had the knack of catching things people said to the trio that Sammy didn’t catch: little inflections, body movements, letting Sammy know who meant them well, who did not. Sammy would feel lost without him, and he knew it, but he would not debate his father about staying if he wanted to give up his tap shoes. However, the wording of the playbill attested to Mastin’s continued power:

But Mastin, with the cane of a dead man (“Bojangles” Robinson died in 1949), seemed to believe he would live forever. He would hear no talk of his quitting the act. The warm and deep truth was that they were not rolling any more Will Mastins off the assembly line. He was not just of another time; he was of another world.

While in New York City just before the end of 1956, Sammy made his way over to the Friars Club. The club consisted of an avuncular group of popular comics, singers, and stars, and had been formed by George M. Cohan and William Collier. Sammy was given a pair of gold cuff links, presented to him by the legendary comic Joe E. Lewis. It meant that Sammy was now “in”; he was a Friar. Sinatra was a Friar, so was Dean Martin. Eddie Cantor was a Friar. And of course Mr. Television, Milton Berle, was a Friar. Sammy was one of them now; he had another tentacle of a family to claim. He must take not only their kindnesses, but their jokes. He must accept that the color of his skin was now open for laughter and hilarity.

Maybe he got in because of Sinatra, who pulled some behind-the-scenes strings. Maybe he got in because he nearly died on that roadway. Maybe he got in because of all of his combined gifts or his newfound religion. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson had performed for the Friars Club members years earlier, but
he wasn’t invited to join. Sammy, in 1956, was the first Negro to be inducted into the Friars. Sam Sr. and Will were there, grinning like two fathers.

To be a Friar. To be a Jew. To be loved by Chita. To be loved by Skinny. Ha ha ha. So much love.

By the time Sammy left New York City at the end of the
Mr. Wonderful
run, it was obvious that he had started to control the destiny of the Will Mastin Trio—if not the purse strings. The trio went out on the road with the Ted Firito tour. Sammy had hired George Rhodes as their new bandleader. Rhodes hailed from Indiana and had made his name as musical director for Joyce Bryant, a torch singer notable for both her voice and an ever-prominent blond wig on her head. Rhodes—who was married at the time—brought along an assistant. Her name was Shirley Vest, and Rhodes found himself falling in love with her. Shirley’s father, a Negro booking agent, had known plenty of show people in the Midwest. He anchored his business from Detroit. As a little girl in the mid-1930s, running around Detroit’s Norwood Hotel, one of the city’s Negro hotels, Shirley would often play with one of the guests traveling with his father—little Sammy Davis, Jr.

Shirley, who soon became Shirley Rhodes, rose in the ranks from assistant to road manager. Sammy trusted her. Like him, she was young. And she was very businesslike, formal and intimidating. Out on the road, she enjoyed herself and never looked back to Detroit, or Mansfield, Ohio, where she had graduated from high school. “I left Mansfield as quick as I could,” she would recall. “I told my mother the day I graduated, ‘This diploma is yours, and I’m out of here.’ ”

She was quite charmed at Sammy’s infatuation with his father. “He idolized his father. He was clean, dapper, knew how to act. His father took him when his mother didn’t want him.” She’d sit talking to Sammy. His life seemed to enthrall her. “He regretted he never went to school. He never played baseball. His father didn’t want him to get hurt.” She wanted to tell him that she had done those things, and yet, she was happier out on the road; but she did not, because she detected so much unhealed sadness about his childhood.

On the bus, other members of the troupe would snicker at Will Mastin, sitting alone, staring out the window. They’d stop in towns and wonder if Mastin had enough energy to get off the bus and get back on. It was the wheezing, the coughing, the slow walk, the way he’d touch his stomach—the ulcers. Sam Sr. had hoped he’d choose to retire to the West Coast. But there he was, climbing back onto the bus. Then another town and another theater, still polishing his shoes, brushing lint from his tux. The old man did not have a clue why the kids looked at him so strangely. “It was the joke of the road that Will came on the road with us still, and laid all his makeup out in the dressing room,” says
Shirley. In show business, she had found most performers gregarious, quite available to the all-night gabfests. She had never met a man more private than Mastin. “In all the years I knew Will Mastin—from the time I was a little girl—I never saw him with a woman,” she would recall. “Whatever he did, he did behind closed doors.”