In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Junior (58 page)

In addition to his not wanting to fly in small airplanes, there was something else that Sammy needed to talk to producer about. “He had one major problem. He always needed money,” recalls Koch.

Dean Martin, during the early ’60s, had an onstage joke that drew howls: “At night we say, ‘Smile, Sammy, so we know where you are.’ ”

A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., and labor and Jewish leaders had finally secured permission to hold a massive rally in August 1963 on the lawn of the Lincoln Memorial to rally for Negro rights in America. President Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy did not welcome the event, imagining chaos and disaster right under their noses.

Indeed, fear gripped the nation’s capital during the weeks leading up to the planned march. In an article that hit newsstands before the event,
Life
magazine said that Washington was agonizing about “
its worst case of invasion jitters since the First Battle of Bull Run.” The government had made preparations for what they imagined would be a possible insurrection: nineteen thousand troops were at the ready. Hollywood showed in force: Marlon Brando, James Garner, Charlton Heston, Eartha Kitt, and Sammy were all there. Sammy had on a Nehru outfit—jacket and slacks—and his oddly hip Buddy Holly spectacles. He waded through the throngs, touched, acknowledged, his lower chin working in greetings. “I remember,” recalls Julian Bond, working the affair as a young NAACP media assistant, “going to get a Coke for Sammy Davis. He said, ‘Thanks, kid.’ ” Dancer Billie Allen couldn’t take her eyes off Sammy as he paraded about. “He was fervent and into it,” she recalls, immediately sensing that his civil rights fervor was now more alive than it had ever been. “He was a chameleon. I feel he changed group to group, environment to environment. He had a profound need to.” Allen served as chaperone to Josephine Baker, the
Negro chanteuse, who had come from Paris to take part in the event. “Josephine wore her uniform from the army of the French Resistance, this wool thing,” says Allen. “Didn’t sweat a drop. That’s discipline.”

The Kennedys listened in the White House to the speeches from the Lincoln Memorial. They were fidgety. King’s sweeping and lyrical oratory, delivered in the hot sun, ushered in a new way for America to think of herself. It was nothing less than a moral call to arms, delivered sermonlike with the cadences of a gospel hymn. More than 250,000 were listening at the Lincoln Mall, “all God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles.” The event marked a potent culmination of a Negro and Jewish alliance that had long been tackling social ills in America. And there stood Sammy Davis, Jr.—Negro by birth, Jew by choice—the very embodiment of King’s oratory. If King’s words had immediately been adopted by all, Sammy would have stood as a shining example of brotherhood rather than as a cultural oddity—a Negro and a Jew, a man colorless to himself, who happened to be married to a white woman.

Afterward, Sammy, the fans rushing him, hustled toward his limousine. In the flesh he elicited squeals and curiosity and wonder. He was a one-man parade gallivanting across the boundaries of race and sex; a singing and dancing figure in Sinatra’s shadow, true enough, but riveting on his own; a television personality, a Broadway veteran; a familiar face to the grandmothers and grandfathers of America who remembered him growing up onstage, the little Negro in the middle of that trio. Up close, in Nehru suit and horn-rimmed glasses, he was a star, and a star was like lightning to the senses. The eyes of those crowding around him went from Sammy to the limousine, and then back to Sammy again: power. Sammy had an after-party to get to. He spotted Josephine Baker—he was ever the sycophant—and yelled at her to hop in his limo. But the fans were rushing and crowding, and she couldn’t get close enough, and the limo was getting more crowded, and the driver was getting nervous. The great Josephine Baker was left standing as Sammy’s driver pulled away.

Sammy went on location to shoot his next movie,
Robin and the 7 Hoods
. It was a gangster spoof with music, all Frank’s show again. Sinatra played the leader of a Chicago gang. Dean was in it, and so was Bing Crosby. Edward G. Robinson had a cameo. The beautiful Barbara Rush played the female lead. Sammy, as a member of Frank’s gang, wore a derby and a long coat. Beneath the coat, he wore a pearly pair of six-shooters. Sammy dazzled cast and crew with not only his voice but the way he handled his guns. “I was in awe of him,” Rush says of Sammy. “I think he was the most talented man I had ever seen perform.” Edward G. Robinson is killed in the movie, and the grips had set up
the cameras for his funeral scene. “We were in the cemetery burying Edward G. Robinson, who played my father,” recalls Rush. “Howard Koch drove into the cemetery and said, ‘I want you to know President Kennedy has been shot.’ ” Heads dropped. Sinatra closed down filming for the day. He had a mind to close down the whole damn production. “High Hopes” suddenly seemed just a sad, sad song.

They all wanted to get away to retreat someplace. It was but the beginning of a time of assassination, and no one could see such a thing coming. Frank took his crew and retreated to Palm Springs. Sammy took his crew and headed east, to New York City. The Gucci luggage, the Tiffany jewelry, the beautiful tailor-made suits, everything was packed up. And how he loved traveling, moving across the country, free as a bird, just him and the sky, the sun, and the moon, whirring and whirring, unable to stop, just the way Sam Sr. and Will were unable to stop. The song of vaudeville lay deep in his mind. He’d show May’s mother and father that Sammy Davis, Jr.—never mind the death threats—was the best thing for their daughter in all of America. “He always liked to say, ‘If we ain’t going first class,’ ” recalls Shirley Rhodes, “ ‘the boat don’t leave the dock.’ ”

If one thing bothered Shirley Rhodes about Sammy, it was his relationship with his mother, which was virtually nonexistent. “I used to push him: ‘Call your mother. It’s your
mother
,’ ” she says.

During the second week of June in 1963, Sammy, back in Los Angeles, had to board a flight quickly. His mother, Elvera, lay in a hospital, having been viciously assaulted. “
Sammy Davis’ Mother Beaten,” screamed one headline. The story said that she was “brutally beaten by a Harlem bartender described as her boyfriend.” Reporters had gathered at the New York hospital where Elvera Davis was being treated. On his arrival, they all lunged in Sammy’s direction, but he refused to speak with them. He was shaken enough at the sight of his mother that he canceled a scheduled appearance on
The Ed Sullivan Show
.

H
illy Elkins had been chasing Sammy since 1961, and Sammy had been hard to catch. But there were not many, no matter which side of the Atlantic Ocean, who could elude the grasp of Hilly Elkins for long. Elkins was a New York City theatrical producer. Brooklyn-born, he was a rebel as a child, too mischievous for his own good. He ran with gangs and “was knifed a couple of times,” he would recall. There were confrontations with juvenile authorities, but he brushed them away, and let their dire warnings float through his ears. Teachers wondered if the bravado might not be concealing deeper, more productive talents. Hilly was dimunitive but hardly shy. He had a gift of gab and could entertain and enthrall with words. He also loved books; he had been seduced by the lyricism in Thomas Wolfe’s
Look Homeward, Angel
. In his mid-teens Elkins found himself in a radio workshop for talented students. Microphones and stages, which rattled so many, seemed to calm and soothe Hilly Elkins. By his senior year of high school, he had already written, directed, and performed in a play. Like so many born of the Depression, Hilly Elkins concluded the world would not give him anything. He would have to browbeat, hustle, take. He would have to have fire under his heels.

By the age of nineteen he had talked his way into a job at the William Morris Agency. Office boy. The job description was laughable, because as soon as he got inside, he started kicking his way up the ladder.

Theater, when he started out in the early 1950s, was still its own king and had its own kingdom. There were genuine talents—José Ferrer, Judith Anderson, Helen Hayes, Burl Ives, Montgomery Clift, and Paul Muni among them—appearing on the New York stage. Elkins gravitated toward the theatrical department at the Morris agency. Now and then he’d peek into TV and motion picture work—he discovered a young Steve McQueen; in time he counted Mel Brooks and Gypsy Rose Lee among his clients. Television could be lucrative, but his love lay in theater.

There was an army stint, after which he left William Morris and bided his time with another agency. But he seemed to burn with too many ideas, and the more ideas he offered, the more he kept hearing the same words: no, no, no. So he began his own New York agency, set up shop on East Sixty-second Street. Self-educated, Hilly Elkins started producing plays. He also dated beautiful women, wore fine clothes, and drove fancy cars. He was five foot seven, but he stood much taller. It was the way he carried himself, as if a hurricane were at his back, in his mind, pushing him every which way, forcing belligerent words to sometimes spill from his mouth. A picture of Napoleon hung in his Manhattan apartment. Visitors got the impression it wasn’t merely hanging there for decorative purposes.

Hilly Elkins finally caught up with Sammy at a midnight matinee at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. Midnight matinee performances were for theatrical folk who couldn’t get off to see the hot shows in London because of their own stage commitments. Among the thousands to catch Sammy’s act was a floppy-haired rock band, the Beatles. “There was no place Sammy couldn’t draw a crowd,” remembers Elkins. Sitting in the elegant theater—there were twelve hundred seats; Sir Lew Grade owned it along with his brothers; Sammy sold the place out night after night—and listening to the cries of applause rushing over Sammy, accompanied by shrieks and giggles, and Sammy, as always, unable to leave the stage until he had exhausted himself, Elkins grew nostalgic and sentimental, remembering the legwork he had done when he was one of those young Morris agents sent through the revolving door to look after the Mastin trio when they were on the road. But Hilly Elkins did not cross the Atlantic because of sentimentality. He had a theatrical idea on his mind. “I was anxious to find something that would work for Sammy,” he says. After the final curtain—and it was now hours past midnight—Elkins bolted from his seat.

“I went backstage and said, ‘Sammy, I got an idea. It’s
Golden Boy
.’ ”

A rabid movie fan, Sammy was familiar with the movie version of Clifford Odets’s play. But Hilly Elkins was not talking about a movie remake.

“What do you mean?” Sammy asked.

“I said, ‘If we can get the rights, it can be a great story. About a guy coming out of his neighborhood who uses boxing to break out of his environment.’ ”

They talked and talked. And Elkins promised Sammy he would get the rights; it would be no problem; he’d rush back to California and see Odets himself.

Sammy was flattered. Eye to eye with each other, the two men seemed to connect: two onetime kid performers, Sammy dripping in his own sweat, their chests heaving now with excitement, the autograph-seekers waiting to see Sammy, only now they’d have to wait a little longer because Sammy liked listening
to Hilly Elkins, and, most of all, Sammy loved being wooed. He told Elkins he liked the idea, but he would not yet make a commitment. Sammy had learned from disappointment. More than one producer had tossed an idea at him, only to have it vanish in the wilderness of flattery. There were producers who could not deliver. There were producers who produced more beautiful words about productions than productions themselves. Hilly Elkins might follow through with his intriguing idea, and he might not. Sammy hugged him anyway.

Elkins rushed back across the ocean. There were two young musical talents he had under his wing, Charles Strouse, a composer, and Lee Adams, a lyricist. Both had worked on
Bye Bye Birdie
, the 1960 musical starring Dick Van Dyke, that was a spirited mockery of an Elvis-like figure and all the teenage hysteria he had set loose. Their reputations soared. Hilly asked, cajoled, and pleaded with them to join his
Golden Boy
.

Strouse’s background was eccentric. In his youth he had traveled the Deep South as a pianist with Butterfly McQueen, the Negro actress who appeared in
Gone with the Wind
. Some bigots spat on him in Alabama as he was attempting to buy food for her in a whites-only restaurant. After her movie career, McQueen had had trouble finding work. She washed dishes. She clerked at Macy’s. She bent her back in a factory. Eventually she went on the road and closed her eyes and sang as Strouse, the white kid, tapped out tunes for her. Barely out of college, the kid cowrote the score for
Bye Bye Birdie
. That musical also featured Chita Rivera, her talents from Sammy’s
Mr. Wonderful
now in full flight.
Birdie
ran for 607 performances. Strouse had friends going to graduate school, and other friends working ordinary jobs. And suddenly, he was famous, his name on Broadway billboards. He did not mind the money, because the money was fine. But fame, rolling as fast it did toward him, was a scary thing. “It was as if I got a limousine and didn’t order it.”

When Hilly Elkins cornered Strouse and Adams, he told them he had Sammy Davis’s commitment for
Golden Boy
. Strouse’s face lit up; he marveled at the possibility of working with Sammy. Elkins had lied, of course. He had Sammy’s enthusiasm, but not his full commitment. But it was a Hilly Elkins lie: rather charming because it was so energetic, so energetic because he fully intended to make it all come true. Then it wouldn’t be a lie anymore.

All along, Hilly had been zigzagging. First he got to Sammy. Then Strouse and Adams. But now he had to go to the playwright. A less confident producer—guarding against calamity—might have started with Odets himself. But Hilly Elkins, child brawler, did not lack confidence. He dragged Strouse and Adams aboard a plane. The destination: Beverly Hills. They’d have to go to Odets. Odets wouldn’t come to them. He hated flying.