In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Junior (74 page)

So Sammy wanted to play Isaac Murphy. He had the requisite physical attributes for a jockey—Sammy flinging the whip, kicking the stirrups! But the Murphy legend meant nothing to the Hollywood power brokers. Those exploitation movies were profitable. The studios turned Sammy down.

Isaac Murphy died at his Kentucky home on February 12, 1896. He had left his wife, Lucy; the couple never had children. In his later years he was bedeviled by drink and debt. It was estimated that during his lifetime Murphy won 530 races; his winning percentage was put at 34 percent, an astonishing rate for a jockey. For years after his death, Murphy remained as distant from the public mind as Bert Williams, as Florence Mills. But in 1967—in the swirl of the civil rights movement and in an effort to reclaim the Murphy legend—he was reburied at Man O’ War Park, near Lexington, in a public ceremony. “I am as proud of my calling as I am of my record, and I believe my life will be recorded as a success, though the reputation I enjoyed was earned in the stable and saddle,” Murphy once said. “It is a great honor to be classed as one of America’s great jockeys.”

Sammy’s presence in the civil rights movement grew more and more hypnotic. Just as he had brought juice and a byzantine gallantry to Sinatra’s Rat Pack, he
brought similar qualities to the growing struggle for equal rights. “Sammy brought a constituency of power and visibility,” says Harry Belafonte. “Dr. King said, ‘Let us not alienate people.’ America watched Sammy Davis, Jr. People tuned in to Sammy. If you told people, ‘Sammy Davis, Jr., will be at this or that benefit,’ you got more people coming.”

Sammy never asked for money to perform at a benefit. But having slept in bungalows and one-room motels as a struggling vaudevillian, he did have one request: that he and his crew be given suites in a hotel. In larger cities, the presidential suite was demanded. Little Sammy would not be treated as Will Mastin and his father had been treated.

Would Sammy marry Jean Seberg?

The Iowa-born actress had caught his eye. She first caught the public’s attention in 1957, when Otto Preminger cast her in his
Saint Joan
. Two years later she starred in Jean-Luc Godard’s
Breathless
and became genuinely famous, especially in Europe. In America, Seberg became more notable for something other than her film roles: she had a real fascination with the Black Panthers and their cause. The white actress’s obsession ensured that she was followed by FBI agents. She took Sammy to a Black Panther gathering. She seemed so much more comfortable than he did. Sammy’s lack of radicalism did not appeal to the black-white Jean Seberg, and the two drifted apart.

Would Sammy marry Romy Schneider?

The international screen star—she galloped among French, Italian, and German cinema—came to the attention of American audiences in
The Victors
, a World War II drama released in 1963 that also starred Peter Fonda, George Peppard, Senta Berger, and Albert Finney. Sammy met her in Paris: “We would laugh, we would giggle. There’s something about staying up late in Paris, drinking French 75s, being upstairs at the Calvados, coming down to the bar after dinner and the cat’s playing the piano late, it was like a movie.”

He would not marry Seberg or Schneider. Sammy’s black friends began telling him he had to marry a black woman. Image was at stake. Black America was coming on now.

Lola Falana—appearing in her own nightclub dates now—was once in the audience of a Los Angeles club, listening to comedian Redd Foxx. When Foxx spotted Falana, he went on to tell the audience that she had been linked romantically in the past with Sammy. Foxx sounded a little snarly; he sounded a little jealous of Sammy. “
Sammy’s a white guy in black skin,” Foxx said by way of a punch line. Falana rose and left.

Sammy’s musical director, George Rhodes, had gotten into several heated arguments in bars about Sammy’s racial preference: men swirling their beers wanting to jawbone with him about Sammy and white women.

Just as he lifted himself out of vaudeville, and just as he lifted himself out of a life without religion into Judaism, now he’d lift himself up and away from white America. Sammy had a chameleon’s abilities, along with his slyness of a mimic. Black looked to be going mainstream, where Sammy had always been. So black looked to be so beautiful now.

There was no one better at survival than Sammy.

“After May, white women were out,” says Lolly Fountain. “He told me that. Sammy let me know he was going to marry a black woman.”

Sammy thought Altovise Gore might be just another fling—flesh upon flesh—something that began in London during the
Golden Boy
run. In London he had even suggested she room with his costar, Lola Falana, and how he loved that: the three of them seen out in London, two tall leggy Negro girls and Sammy. Cruising Piccadilly Square. They kept him giggling; he kept them feeling fussed over, admired, cherished. Bottles of champagne to the room! “Altovise,” says Lolly Fountain, “didn’t want to be famous. She wanted to be ‘moneyed.’ ”

Once back in the States, Sammy started traveling around to his engagements with Altovise. She had cocoa-colored skin, large expressive eyes, and he said she reminded him of an Egyptian queen—of Queen Nefertiti, to be exact. He’d look at her and just marvel. Frank had a young girl; Dean had a young girl. Youth was the coin rolling down the boulevard of American life now. Altovise Gore was twenty-two years younger than Sammy. She was like some feral creature rising and reflecting in his glass eye. The gift-buying began—jewelry and more jewelry. And there were trips, zooming through the clouds.

His Queen Nefertiti was actually a child of Queens, New York. Altovise Gore—father a career navy man, mother a homemaker—attended the High School for Performing Arts. Afterward she found work in the theater as a gypsy dancer, once dancing in a production alongside Harry Belafonte, once getting a dancing role in
High Spirits
, a Noël Coward play. But now she was with Sammy Davis, Jr. “I fell for him because of his mind,” she would say.

She was partial to high-heeled boots, in which she stood nearly six feet tall. She had the chirpy voice of a little girl—a voice that charmed the childlike Sammy. And yet the voice was so at odds with her physical countenance. (Some dancers—out of earshot—had taken to calling her “Baby Huey,” after the cartoon character.) Gliding through airports, tall and short, they looked odd, trailed by loads of luggage, Queen Nefertiti drawing stares and taking long strides, her Sammy double-stepping to keep up. The more he bought for her, the more he felt she was becoming his creation. Whereas May had shrunk from attention and publicity, Altovise reveled in it.

He introduced her to everyone—Shirley and Murphy, his father, Will when he came around. He introduced her to his Hollywood friends, to Swifty Lazar, Lucille Ball, Loretta Young, of course Sinatra. He took her to his tailor, Sy
Devore, and then there they were, in his-and-hers matching outfits. On the streets, the soul brothers went wild at the sight of Altovise. She wasn’t a classic beauty, but there was no one who could have told her that. Her own self-confidence was quite seductive. Sammy did not grow jealous at the attention she drew from men. In that manner, he was so unlike Sinatra. He swooned at the lasciviousness; he was sweetly giddy at the sight of her in hot pants, and thrilled as other men looked at her with raw lust in their eyes. (Hot pants notwithstanding, Sammy bragged that he was going to turn Altovise into something he believed did not yet exist—“the black Jacqueline Kennedy,” as he told Molly Marsh, Sy’s wife.)

Wherever they were—Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles—he’d ball a fist, showing his Black Power salute, and raise it to the soul brothers eyeing him and Altovise. Ha ha ha. Black Power, baby.

Altovise found it amazing how he could sleep on airplanes. They would take off, and he’d be out, next to her, in first class. The world in Technicolor one moment, dark the next—the entertainer weary and asleep to the world.

In Philadelphia on May 11, 1970—he had just completed an engagement at the Latin Casino—Sammy was invited by his longtime friend Jerry “the Geator” Blavat, the local radio personality, to join him at his home for dinner. Sammy arrived at 5859 Overbrook Avenue along with Altovise and Elvera, his mother, who had come over from nearby Atlantic City. Blavat’s mother cooked wonderful Italian dinners—“She cooked for Frank, Sammy, all of them,” says Blavat.

“Geator, what are you doing tomorrow?” Sammy asked the deejay.

“Why?” said Geator.

“I wanna get married,” Sammy blurted, turning to Altovise. “Altovise, let’s get married tomorrow.”

Altovise began to shriek with howls of joy. There were looks of stunned surprise at the table as Sammy and Altovise embraced. Blavat, seated next to Elvera, felt a swift kick under the table. It was Elvera getting Blavat’s attention. “That stupid-ass son of a bitch doesn’t know what he’s doing,” she whispered in his ear.

Sammy told Blavat he wanted to go right to the courthouse the next day, and there they all stood—Blavat; the justice of the peace; Carl Barry, a comedian friend of Sammy’s; and Sammy and Altovise.

Later that night there was a dinner party at Cinelli’s Restaurant in Cherry Hill.

Blavat and others were surprised that Sammy had married Altovise. “Everyone thought he would marry Lola,” Blavat says.

Sammy’s two other marriages—to Loray White and May Britt—had been elaborate ceremonies, and what did that guarantee? Not a thing. So he settled for a bare-bones courthouse affair. There had been no family present. Elvera had been at the dinner the night before, but on the day of the wedding, she skipped away, back to Atlantic City, unwilling to participate. It was what it was: Elvera had now been absent from all three of her son’s weddings.

In Altovise, his last wife, Sammy had someone in lockstep with the powerful flavor of the sixties: she was black, prideful, and über-stylish
.
(
ASSOCIATED PRESS
)

The marriage surprised Sy Marsh and made him suspicious. “Jesse Jackson thought it would be good if he married a black woman,” says Marsh of Sammy. “He thought blacks would come around.”

Jerry Lewis knew quite well Sammy’s preference in women, and the marriage also surprised him. “I never saw him with a black chick until he married Altovise,” says Lewis.

Sammy’s wedding gift to Altovise—as it had been to Loray—was a mink.

There was, however, a slight difference: Loray’s mink was white; Altovise’s black. In for a dollar, in for a diamond. Love was love, and glitter was glitter.

Altovise loathed the gold-digger talk. Why, she fell for him because of his intellect, as she had reminded one and all. Actually, he had tons of questions for her. “He’d always quiz me: ‘Who was the thirty-seventh president of the United States?’ I’d say, ‘I don’t know.’ He’d say, ‘You went to school!’ ”

The newlyweds needed a home.

For years Sammy had visited Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh at their Spanish-style house on Summit Ridge Drive in Beverly Hills, which they had purchased in 1958. It had a circular driveway, a lovely view of the hills. One had to drive past the old Mary Pickford–Douglas Fairbanks mansion to get there. “Sammy was there all the time,” remembers Leigh. “He lived in that house. He said to me, ‘Someday I’m going to buy this house.’ ”

After the breakup of the Leigh and Curtis marriage, the house was purchased by actress Constance Towers. After Towers’s ownership, the house was sold to Joan Collins and Anthony Newley. When Collins and Newley put the house on the market in 1970, Sammy began negotiations. “The minute it was done,” says Leigh, “he called and said, ‘Guess what? I bought 1151.’ ”

Sammy now had a fabulous address. Old Hollywood had long been in his bones, and the ghosts of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were neighbors. He summoned decorators, designers, and watched gleefully as Altovise gave instructions, whizzing around the property like a mannequin come to life. While the decorators went to work, the newlyweds retreated to the Ambassador Hotel for a respite.

The sixties had now closed around him. That explosive and unpredictable and history-making decade had opened with Sammy having a white bride, and closed with his taking a black one. All his life, rummaging for respect and acceptance, he had been able to impersonate any decade: in his youth he had been as bouncy as the 1940s; as dreamy and homespun (
Mr. Wonderful
) as the 1950s; as wickedly inventive—given his Chicago
Golden Boy
incarnation—and conscience-touched as the 1960s. “He always sort of embraced what was new, what was ‘in,’ ” says Janet Leigh. “I always thought he incorporated all of that so he wouldn’t seem old hat.”

As a singer, Sammy sang from the neck up. The peerless Sinatra, on the other hand, seemed to sing from the heart up. Sammy was a throat singer. His mimicry controlled the singer inside him. “He always seemed to be doing Billy Eckstine,” says producer Buddy Bregman—by way not of criticism but explanation. Eckstine, of course, was an amazingly gifted singer. “To me a singer had to put you into the picture,” Bregman adds. “I don’t think [Sammy] ever did that. He performed. He was the world’s ‘best’ performer.”