Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (25 page)

“I’ll process these shots myself. Nobody’ll even see them.”

I felt foolish. Here I was telling another Negro to be careful, as if he didn’t understand.

Will, my father, and I went up to Mama’s to say good-bye. Nathan Crawford was there but he was a different Nathan. There was no drunk act, no laughs. His face lit up when he saw us but a minute later he was down in the dumps. When he left the room my father asked, “Mama, what’s wrong with Nat?”

“He’s been laid off his job, Sam.”

“But he was foreman!”

“Well, he got to be an
old
foreman so they fired him six months ago and he can’t find work.”

When he came back my father took out his wallet. “Look, Nat, I been keepin’ track of the money you been lendin’ Mama all these years and now that we’re doin’ good I’d like t’give you a thousand down on it. I can’t give you all we owe you, not right off …”

“No, Sam, that money wasn’t a loan. But seeing as how you’re
doing big and meeting so many people, well, maybe you know somewhere I could get a job?”

My father snapped his fingers. “Hell yes. Us. Now that we’re startin’ to build we need a good all-around man like you to help us.”

“Well, I
could
look after your clothes and things for the show …”

Will smiled. “How much time you need to pack?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Grab a cab to your place on the expense account. We’ll be by for you in half an hour.”

His steps on the wooden staircase sounded like a kid running a stick against iron bars. We looked down to the street and saw him hurrying out of the building, waving both hands to stop a passing cab. He jumped in, stuck his head out the window, looked up at us and waved. The old smile was back.

Mama was pleased. I pulled her over to the couch and sat down next to her. “I’ve got something special to tell you. Do you remember that place we used to listen to on the radio? The one Dad and I used to go downtown to look at all the time?”

“You mean where they wouldn’t let you in to see Frank Sinatra?”

“That’s the one. The Copacabana. Well, we’re coming back to New York in one month and we’re opening there.”

She didn’t let me down. Her face expressed all the “of course” I’d hoped it would. Then, just the faintest doubt. “You’re really going to be working there?”

“Starring
there. Will signed a contract today. For five thousand a week. We go in on April first as the headliners! The top act! This is the beginning, Mama. Once we make it at the Copa—from then on we’re on our way and there ain’t nothing can stop us. You’ll come out to California with us, and we’ll have a house of our own … we’ll be so big that everybody’ll treat us good … we’re really going to have everything.”

I sat at a table on the upper level of the Copacabana. A hard light from two large, bare bulbs illuminated the room which was a mass of plain wooden tables with chairs stacked on top of them. A man was pushing a vacuum cleaner between the tables, and another was washing the mirrored walls of the staircase. I ran my hand over the unfinished wood table top. I wasn’t surprised that the Copa was just a nightclub, but that I’d never before thought of it as one. All these years it had been an intangible, a place without definition. I’d feared and lived in awe of it but now being there to work, seeing it without its illusion-making white table cloths, its shiny black ash trays, the silver, the glassware, and the beautiful people, it was just another room where people come to be entertained. Okay, it was
the
club and they were
the
people but still they were only people.

Morty was running through our opening number with the band.
They were playing it well—loud and flashy the way it was supposed to be. I listened carefully to music I’d heard a thousand times but suddenly I didn’t like it. It was jarring me. I disliked what it was saying.

When they finished the number, I walked over to Morty. “Baby, can I talk to you for a minute?” He gave the guys a break and we say down at a table. “Morty, I want to change the opening number.”

“Not for tomorrow night?”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s a hell of a thing to ask at the last minute, but please don’t fight me on it. I don’t care if I have to pay ten guys to stay up all night copying new music—I can’t use that opening number.”

“But what’s wrong? I don’t understand. What would you rather have?”

“I don’t know. I only know that I don’t want to come running onto this stage tomorrow night the way we always have. I don’t want to come on with panting and puffing and fighting for my life like ‘Is this good enough, folks?’ I want to do something that no Negro dance act has ever done before. From now on I’m going to
walk
onto the stage.”

I waited for him to say something, hoping I wouldn’t have to draw a picture, to explain, “… with dignity. I’m a Headlines I want to walk on like a gentleman.”

He was looking past me, thinking. Then he said, “There’s a number from
Street Scene
. It’s soft, New Yorky, and it has an importance to it.” He hummed it.

“That’s perfect. Start off with twelve bars of what you were just rehearsing, to get their attention, then drop into
Street Scene
and I’ll walk on.”

“I’ll ask the guys to ad-lib it right now. See if you like the way it sounds.”

As I sat there listening to it I felt like a Headliner.

My father and I left our hotel at six-thirty Thursday night and I told the cab driver, “The Copacabana.” As we turned off Madison Avenue into 60th Street I said, “Driver, stop on the other side of the street.” My dad and I got out and walked over to our old doorway. I didn’t have to explain what I was doing. He could appreciate the corny “show business” mood of the moment. We were five or six hours earlier than we used to be, and it was ten years later. My
father was staring across the street and back through the years as I was. I remembered the hundred times he’d said, “If we’re supposed to play it, we’ll play it.” I remembered Buddy saying, “You’ll dance on their tables someday.” I remembered the doorman’s face when he was chasing me away, and the captains with their “This way,
Sir.”
I tried to remember something pleasant about those years, but it seemed that the first real happiness to come out of all that time was this ten-minute period when I stood there looking back on it.

My father put his arm around my shoulder and we walked across the street.

People were pouring into the dressing room, grabbing for my hand, reaching out to smack me on the back. “Tremendous!” “Great opening.” “You were fantastic.” But their words were shrouded by what I knew to be true. We hadn’t made it. We’d stayed on for an hour and twenty minutes and I’d never tried harder in my life, I’d thrown everything I had at them, I’d dug down deeper than ever but I hadn’t been able to find that extra half ounce that lifts the show off the ground. They’d given us strong applause, but they’d only been thanking us for a good, solid performance. They hadn’t been cheering us for a great one.

People were filling the room, smiling, shouting how well we’d done, but I couldn’t focus on their faces or listen to what they were saying. All I could hear was the big hollow where the applause had ended just below the level I had hoped for. I’d blown it. I had wanted to explode them through the roof with my performance but I hadn’t done it.

Our dressing room was a suite in the Hotel Fourteen above the Copa. I was taking my shirt off in the bedroom when Sam Bramson came in with some other men from the Morris office. “You were great, Sammy. They were calling for more even after you left.” I looked into their eyes as they continued praising our performance and I could see they meant it. Sam patted me on the shoulder. “Get some rest before the next show.” I was grateful to him for that. I could have listened all night if it had been true or if I thought they could convince me I was wrong, but nobody knew better than I exactly how well I’d done. They closed the door behind them and I fell on the bed doing cop-outs to myself: it was the first time in a new room, I was nervous, it was a lousy audience, the music wasn’t right. But the music was perfect and there’s no such thing as a bad
audience if there’s a great performance. And what if it was a new room? I’m supposed to be a pro.

I heard the door open and Jess Rand whisper, “You sleeping, chicky?” I kept my eyes closed until I heard him shut the door softly behind him.

I went over every move I’d made, trying to understand what had gone wrong. It could be only one thing: I’d run scared and tried to kill the ball. I’d been out for blood and I’d stood offstage waiting for my cue, thinking, “I’m gonna give them a performance like the world has never seen.” I’d reached so deep and desperately and belted so hard, I’d been so involved with making my performance letter perfect, that I all but forgot the audience. I never created a relationship with them. It was inexcusable. For years I had known the importance of touching the audience and I had finally started doing it. Now, when it counted more than ever—I hadn’t done it.

I had one more chance. The top people in the business always waited for the second show. If I could just get across to
them …
but I couldn’t remember what it feels like to touch the people. Or how to do it. I’d never really known how. I could control the rest of my performance, but this was nothing I could try to do, it was something intangible that happened by itself between me and the audience. What if it never happens again?

The door opened. “You sleepin’, Poppa?”

“No, Dad. C’mon in.”

He handed me a slip of paper. “Ronnie, the maître d’ downstairs just sent up this list of celebrities that’s here for the second show, in case you wants t’introduce ‘em. This way you won’t leave nobody out.”

I looked at the first few names, Milton Berle, Red Buttons, Jackie Miles, Eddie Fisher…. Just what I need. I crumpled it up. “Dad, this is very efficient, but where the hell would I get off asking people like this to stand up and take a bow? Maybe for the next opening. If there ever is one.”

“Whattya mean if there ever is one?”

“Nothing, Dad. Just talk. Anybody in the other room?”

“No, they all cleared out.”

I went into the living room and poured a coke. Will was rattling around like I was. “Well, Massey, this is the big one….” I was hoping for support from his steadfast attitude that it was just another show, but he nodded, “Sure is.”

I went back into the bedroom and sat on the bed. I turned on the television set and tried to get involved in a movie. After a while I noticed Will getting dressed. I looked at my watch. Page and Bray, the opening dance act were about to go on. Then there’d be a production number, then Mary Small, then another production number, then us. I had about an hour, but I started dressing so I could be downstairs early. Maybe another feel of the room would help.

Jules Podell was standing near the cash register in the kitchen. He beckoned to me and I walked over.

“Have a drink, kid.”

“Thanks, Mr. Podell. I’ll have a coke.”

His eyes narrowed. “Kid, I said have a drink! It’ll do you good.” He rapped the bar hard with his heavy star-sapphire ring. “Bring us two scotches.” He didn’t even look up to see if the bartender was there. He knew he would be. Two shot glasses were placed in front of us and filled. Mr. Podell raised his. “Good luck.”

I reached for mine. He growled. “What the hell are you shaking about?”

“Well, you know, opening night nerves, I guess….”

“What’s there to be nervous about? You’ve
got
the job!” I couldn’t believe my ears but damned if he wasn’t yelling at me. “What the hell do you think I hire? Amateurs? If you didn’t belong here, you wouldn’t be here. Do you think you’d be starring at the Copacabana if you were a bum! Let me tell you something, kid. Don’t worry about them out there. The hell with ‘em. The only one you gotta worry about is me. And my contract with you says you’re a
star!”
He shrugged and threw out his hands. “So what’s there to be nervous about?” Then, his eyes, which had looked like two steel balls, softened, his jaw relaxed, his face lit up with an angelic smile and his voice was like a kid on his first date asking his girl, “Will y’have another drink?”

The first one had gone down so easily I didn’t even feel it, but one was enough and he didn’t push me for a second one. I heard applause. The last production number had ended. Morty was probably already out there and Nathan would be setting up the drums and putting my dancing shoes under the piano. Mr. Podell put out his hand. He was rough and gruff and hard as nails, yet he’d shown untold warmth and understanding in those few minutes.

I walked over to my father and Will. We hugged each other.
None of us spoke—we’d said it all a hundred times in the last few weeks and there was nothing left to say.

We stood at the top of the three steps leading toward the stage. I watched a man squeezing himself between tables, hurrying to get back to his seat. The tables all had large cards with our names and pictures on them. The stage was dark. I closed my mind to everything.

The announcer was saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Copacabana proudly presents:
The Will Mastin Trio …”
Morty brought the band in on the button, stinging the audience with loud, sharp notes, the stage lights came up full, my father and Will slapped the stage with their opening steps and stood back exactly on beat as Morty stopped the music dead. Every sound and movement in the room stopped with it. He let the absolute silence hang in the air for a full two seconds, he dropped into “Street Scene” and the announcer said, “Featuring
Sammy Davis, Jr.”
The audience was turning around, looking, anticipating, applauding in welcome. I waited for three bars—and I walked onto the stage.

The time I was onstage might have been a minute or an hour or my lifetime, it was as unreal, as immeasurable as a dream which covers a year but takes only seconds to happen. There were no clocks in the world, no tomorrows, no yesterdays. I was welded to the emotions of the audience. Suddenly the bond between us was snapped by a tentative crackling of applause answered by a sharp burst from across the room. Another picked it up and it began spreading, gaining urgency, ripping through the stillness like something wild breaking loose, rolling toward me with such force that I couldn’t hear the music playing or the words I was singing—only that monumental roar growing and growing and finally wrapping itself around me, penetrating until it filled every inch of my being.