Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (54 page)

I moved slowly with the crowd up the stairs toward the lobby.
The group had drifted ahead of me in the stream of people and they were in front of the hat check room. A semi-name singer was holding the coat he’d just been handed and smiling ingratiatingly at George. “You like the show?” The smile twisted into a smirk. “I saw you sitting down there—in Africa.”

The crowd pushed past me. I watched George’s astonishment build to an anger of which I hadn’t thought him capable. He said something and turned away. The singer’s face blanched. He reached for George’s arm. “Hey, Georgie, what’re you all excited about? Hey,” he feigned a laugh, “how can I not talk to you? I’m opening the season for you at the hotel.”

“You just got canceled.”

George was climbing into our limousine. I drew him aside. “Thank you.” I could see him thinking, remembering I’d been way behind him. I smiled. “Baby, I may have only one eye but I
hear
everything.”

On Wednesday morning I read with sadness the grim, giant headline: “HUMPHREY BOGART DIES.” Frank wasn’t taking calls. I left word that if he needed me for anything I was available.

I got a call from Julie Podell. “Sammy, Frank can’t go on tonight. I’ve got Jerry Lewis for the first show. I need you for the second.”

I was back in a nightclub again. I didn’t have my father and Will on the stage with me, there was no chorus, no supporting cast, no story; I was alone—making it on my own again, and it was glorious.

Frank was back the next night and I was at ringside again. As I cut into my steak a voice behind me snarled angrily “… little nigger in front of me.” I continued cutting my food and without raising my head shot a glance around my table. They hadn’t heard it. The voice demanded “Waiter, let’s have the captain over here.” Then he was saying, “You got any authority around this place?”

“Is something wrong, sir?”

“Damned right there is. I want a table without such a lousy view.” A woman was trying to quiet him down. Jane glanced past me, then at me, smiled nervously, and went back to her food. George took a shot glass of scotch in one swallow and closed his eyes in pain as it seared through his chest. The captain must have signaled up above because I heard Bruno asking, “Can I help you, sir?”

I kept cutting away at my steak.

“Maybe you can do better than your flunky here. You look like a man who knows right from wrong.” The voice softened, becoming fraternal, conspiratorial. “It’s obviously some kind of a mistake. I come in here thinking I’m spending my money in a first-class place, so you can understand my surprise when I find my wife and I seated behind that little jigaboo. Now I’m sure that you …” The words ended in a gasp. George was staring past me, his face chalked by shock. I turned. The table was empty. Bruno and the captain had the man under each arm and were already halfway out of the room with him. A woman was hurrying after them. People all around us were leaning together, whispering, looking toward me, speculating on what might have happened.

The group was sitting in their chairs, limp. They were doing self-conscious smiles of relief, not knowing if they should look at me or away from me, and I felt the sympathetic stares burning into me from them and from behind like I was caught in the headlights of a dozen converging cars.

A hand was on my shoulder. Julie Podell was looking at me sympatico. “The bum is out on the street where he belongs.”

The kids were starting to get their wind back and they were talking, but their voices were like a record being played at the wrong speed. Michael had said something to me. “I’m sorry, baby, what did you say?”

He blushed. “It wasn’t worth repeating. It was just something insipid, like ‘keep a stiff upper lip, things’ll be better someday.’ ”

I sympathized with their impossible position, but I hated my own. “Baby, if you’ll excuse a little well-earned bitterness: colored people don’t really have big lips, we just look that way from
keeping
them stiff for so long.”

The lights had dimmed and Joey was onstage. I looked up and put a smile on my face because people would be watching me as they always watch celebrities. Joey looked at me curiously. “Don’t I know you from somewhere, sir?” The crowd roared, and I played the scene of enjoying myself, laughing, stamping my feet hilariously.

As Frank sang I thought: if I can make myself remember the first time I ever came in here, how I felt watching him from that table in the back of the room, if I can appreciate how far I’ve come … I looked at the brochure on the table, forcing myself to stare at the
picture of me wearing the Copa Bonnet with all the other stars. I
did
it. It took fifteen years but I did it. I’m not in a corner any more. I’m a star. It’s all different now. So much has changed.

But nothing had changed. Not really. And I had the sensation of slipping helplessly backwards through the years, hearing my father’s voice despairing, “You ain’t gonna get away from it till you die.”

The meeting started the same as all the others: my father and I sat down and Will closed the door and began dragging up subjects. But I had a feeling it wasn’t just another meeting; there was something in his face, something he was holding as a surprise or a trump card, and as he covered a half dozen issues I sensed even his own impatience to get past the preliminaries and into the main event. He finally laid it on me, very casually. “By the way, Sammy, tonight Big Sam and me left the Palm Club scene fifteen minutes before you finished.” He said it as though it were an afterthought and I suddenly understood that he hadn’t been holding it for last, he’d been hoping I’d noticed and would ask him about it, or better still, complain.

“I was going to bring that up when you were finished, Massey. How come?”

He shrugged. “No special reason except that’s what we felt like doing. No need for us to be there anyhow, no one notices us….” He was steaming himself or trying to steam me but when I heard the driving unhappiness in his voice, the anguished defeat, I lost track of what he was saying, recalling the same voice twenty or thirty years before: “Mose Gastin, we’re booked and I got an advance.” … “Here’s your meal ticket too, Sammy.” … “Now the first thing to remember about show business—” … “Never let ‘em know they got to you….” The man now speaking merged with the man who had been a tower of strength, who’d owned the name Will Mastin and had earned the unwavering respect of the people working for and around him, whose reputation had gotten us work so many times when our talent hadn’t. I was focused on the same man all these years later and I saw what had happened to him through no fault of his own, and as I listened and saw what he was doing to himself I had to restrain myself from shouting: Why don’t you retire? Quit, Massey! Retire. The words were formed in my mind: Okay, this is it. You still keep your cut but no more performing.
I’m doing a single. Can’t you see that it degrades you to stay in the act? It’s for your own good!

“… and tomorrow night we may not show at all. How do you like
that
?”

He was challenging me and all I had to say was “Well, if that’s how you want it.” They wouldn’t be able to back down and from then on I’d be doing a single. It would be that easy. They were watching me, anxiously, waiting, and I saw how badly Will needed me to shout back and fight him as I used to when we’d had something to fight about—when I’d needed him. He was starving for the importance of being fought, but if I did it I’d only be sweeping everything under the carpet. Why prolong their agony? I was trapped between the impossible premise that something good could come from something wrong, and my absolute belief that if it’s for their own good, then it’s their decision to make, that I have no right to tell them how to be happy.

They were waiting.

My fist crashed into the dressing table catapulting make-up in every direction. “Goddammit, Massey, if you guys can’t be there to give me the support I need, if you think I’m going to do it
all
, you’re out of your minds. I’ll walk off the lousy stage with you …”

Tears began welling in his eyes.

I pounded the table again. “That’s it. I won’t discuss it. You’ll
be
there!” I slammed the door behind me and ran into my dressing room, locked the door and sat down and cried.

“Oh?” George exclaimed. “Are they wearing pajamas to chic parties these days?” I said hello and went back to my juice and coffee and the Sunday
Times
. He helped himself to some coffee. “Didn’t you say we were due there at four o’clock?”

“They’ll still be there at five, baby. Unfortunately.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Hmm. The bloom is off the rose?” I began dressing. He asked, “If you don’t want to go, then why bother? I mean, going to parties isn’t exactly compulsory.” He mumbled, “Except for me: the Jewish Monty Woolley.”

“And what, exactly, does that mean, George?”

“Only that every hostess in town looks at me like I’m bad news. They invite you and they get me—I’m America’s Guest.” He looked
at me seriously. “It would be one thing if at least
you
enjoyed them.”

“Baby, if people are nice enough to say, ‘Hey, I want to throw a party for you,’ what am I supposed to do, be Charley Boor and tell them no?” I jabbed a cuff link into my shirt. “Do I have to tell
you
that it also happens to be good business? I’m getting seen around town and it’s showing at the box office, right? I mean the limousine jazz. But most important, I can’t live in a vacuum. I can’t spend my time only with hippies. I need diversity. I’ve got to be tuned in to everybody.”

I closed the door and pressed the elevator button. “We don’t have to stay eight hours. Just a drop-in, a little being charming until it’s time to meet the kids at Danny’s.”

I spotted the doorman from a block away: another Concentration Camp Gerhardt, in full dress uniform. I let myself get caught on a traffic light and watched the cars headed the other way, down Park Avenue. I was tempted to make a U-turn and go back to the hotel.

“I’ll take care of it for you, Mr. Davis.” He was smiling as he opened the car door. He rushed ahead of us and held open the front door, then he ran ahead and bowed me toward the elevator. I smiled, “Thank you.”

He turned to the elevator man. “Mr. Davis and this other gentleman are going to the penthouse.”

I hadn’t said where I was going. He hadn’t recognized me and been courteous out of respect, he’d been expecting me, I was getting “safe conduct”: someone had warned him, “Sammy Davis, Jr. is coming here. He’s colored. Watch for him and don’t embarrass him.”

There was only one apartment on the floor and the party sounds floated through the open door. The host hurried over. “Sammy, welcome, welcome, welcome.” His eyes tensed. “You didn’t have any trouble … finding us, did you?”

“The number was right on the building. This is George Gilbert, my producer.”

“Glad you could make it, George.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “Come on in, Sammy, everyone’s dying to meet you.” He walked me around the living room introducing me to attractive people who were smiling, being courteous. A group formed around me. Somebody said, “I saw
Mr. Wonderful
and you really are. You were just marvelous.”

My host said, “He’s only the finest performer in the business, that’s all.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “Let me get you a drink, Sambo. What’ll it be?”

I took out a cigarette. “I’ll have a coke, thanks.” Before I could reach for my lighter somebody had one flaring in front of me. “Thank you very much.”

“My privilege. I’ll light your cigarettes any time. I wish I knew where you learned to dance the way you do.”

A woman interrupted. “Oh, Biffy, don’t be ridiculous. No one
learns
to dance like that. Some people are …”

There was a death pause and I tried to take them off the hook. I smiled. “Well, you know what they say about colored people having rhythm.”

Biffy wouldn’t take the out. He was looking at me blankly. He couldn’t imagine what I was talking about. Not the foggiest. “Oh? I’m surprised I never heard that.”

I shrugged. “It’s just an old cliché.”

“Say, that’s very interesting. I mean, do you think there’s anything to that? I mean, about colored people … do you think that the Negro people”—he lowered his voice as he said the words “colored” and “Negro”—”really do have rhythm? I mean, now that I think of it I do recall hearing something about the background of jungle life? Naturally I’m referring to centuries ago….”

George mumbled, “I
hope
so,” and wandered off to the bar.

“Uh, what I’m trying to get across, is …” He was staring into my eyes, afraid I’d think he was looking at my skin, talking like a man struggling to get out of quicksand. Beads of perspiration were forming around his forehead.

The merciful thing was to play it straight. “I doubt it. I know some Negroes who can’t dance the foxtrot. On the other hand there are people like Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor….”

Someone said, “I’m going to look at the buffet table.”

I smiled. “But don’t eat anything. Just look!” They roared, relieved, the pressure released.

A man with a plate in his hand said, “Sammy, my name’s Endley. Funny that I should meet you. My kid goes to school with Ralph Bundle’s son.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Bunche.”

“Well, neither have I, actually. But his son’s a fine lad. I’ve never
exactly met him but I hear nothing but the finest things about him … the finest things.”

It was a dead end. I excused myself and walked over to the buffet table. It was beautifully laid out. There was a large silver chafing dish of Lobster Newburg, something elegant looking like pâté de foie gras, a tin of caviar resting on shaved ice, and a platter of fried chicken.

The hostess came over to me. “I do hope you can find something you like. I didn’t know … I wasn’t sure what you like to eat.”

I smiled. “Anybody who can’t find something to eat here just plain ain’t hungry.”

She picked up a chicken leg between two fingers and smiled. “I adore this. Just adore it.”

Her husband came by. “Come on, Sam, I’ll give you the fifty-cent tour.”