Sammy Davis Jr. Read online

  “Dr. Chester Pierce, a black professor from Harvard Medical said, and I quote: ‘The chief vehicle for proracist behaviors are microaggressions. These are subtle, stunning, often automatic, and nonverbal exchanges which are “put-downs” of blacks by offenders.’

  “He couldn’t be more correct. I attended liberal private parties with buffet tables: lobster Newburg, pâté de foie gras, a tin of caviar resting on shaved ice, and then something ‘special’ for the ‘token colored star’ . . .”

  Family photos, with Mom and my brother Mark—our rainbow tribe.

  Dad as a guest of Johnny Carson, 1968

  Bandleader Sammy Kaye visits Dad backstage at the Majestic Theater during the run of Golden Boy, November 1964.

  “Like a platter of fried chicken?” I added.

  “And they didn’t make it like Lessie Lee or Colonel Sanders either!” Pop chuckled. “There were upper crust restaurants in New York that still wouldn’t let me through the front door and Fifth Avenue doormen who turned me away from private parties we were invited to.”

  “And we lived off Fifth Avenue ourselves.”

  “Microaggressions. The token liberal line was no longer, ‘my best friend is black.’ It was: my son goes to school with Dr. Ralph Bunche’s son. Both were lame attempts to make us feel assimilated. Even my own people—the colored press—turned on me, calling me an ‘Uncle Tom’—just like they called Dr. Bunche when he was the first black man to win the Nobel Peace Prize. As if we didn’t fight any racial battles to become successful. I was living proof that black folks were not the stereotype of a slow, lazy, shuffling Stepin Fetchit. But the black press never appreciated that—just claimed we sold out.” Pop shook his head.

  “I read a book about Judaism once, and it said: ‘The difference between love and hate is understanding.’ Unfortunately, for us colored folks the understanding was obstructed by prejudgments without due examination. Hey, if white folks were so afraid of color, why hit Florida every year and bake in the sun to darken their skin, right?”

  Harry Belafonte, Martin Luther King Jr., Golden Boy producer Hillard Elkins, and my father in New York, 1965

  Pop guest-starred on some of the most popular shows of the ’60s, including I Dream of Jeannie.

  Jerry Lewis, Dad, Hugh Hefner, and Anthony Newley on the short-lived TV show Playboy After Dark

  “I remember in college reading Marcel Proust,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “A French writer. We had to memorize a quote for my English Literature class. I’ll never forget it because it always reminded me of you, Pop,” I said. I recited the quote from Proust aloud to my father: ‘We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him. . . .’”

  “Well, thank God you learned something in college!” Pop said.

  “I am the only one in the family to go to college so far.”

  “I am proud of you, Trace Face. Like this cat Proust was talking about—prejudgments. And during my Broadway days, Lord, did that come into play. I used to run around with George Rhodes like a chicken with my head cut off. We’d go around from one press conference to another, one colored critic to another, one white liberal socialite to another, trying to ‘fix’ the prejudgments that were stacked against me in the press.”

  Dad and Lucille Ball in an episode of Here’s Lucy aptly called, “Lucy and Sammy Davis, Jr.”

  The Hollywood Palace—Pop sang with Diahann Carroll in a 1968 episode.

  My parents in the early ’60s

  “Did it work?” I asked.

  “Heck no,” Dad said, “The only thing that worked was one day, my father sat me down and said to me with a despairing voice, ‘Son, you ain’t gonna get away from it till you die.’ He was right. The roots of racism were still deeply grounded; the weeds were hacked here and there, but the weeds still grew at a terrorizing pace.”

  Things became more frightening when my father’s grandmother—Mama—passed away during the run of Golden Boy. I was quite young, so young. Both Dad and Mom were devastated. Reflecting on this time, my dad said, “Mama was my rock. After my real mother abandoned me as a baby, Mama was everything. I was beyond crushed when she died,” Pop said.

  “I wish I had been old enough to know her better,” I said.

  “Mama lived with us on Evanview Drive for a spell back in the day. Then, I bought her Judy Garland’s old house in the Hollywood Hills. I didn’t buy the house as some contribution to racial harmony—but it was a beautiful extra that the neighbors could see a prosperous black family and say, ‘Look, it’s not really true that those colored folks live eighty of ‘em in a room.’” Pop smiled.

  “One Christmas, I walked in with a gift for Mama. I handed her keys to a new car. I said, ‘Hold on, Mama, don’t move!’ I ran outside to open the garage door, all excited to show her the new car. Smeared in paint across the garage door was: ‘Merry Christmas Nigger!’ I wasn’t surprised, but it broke my heart, truly. I just wanted to see Mama smile that Christmas, that’s all,” Pop explained with dismay.

  Dad’s appearance on the controversial TV show All in the Family was one of his most memorable. He actually sat in Archie’s chair!

  “I’m sorry, Pop,” I replied.

  “One time I was doing some nightclub somewhere and a white supremacist mob was outside chanting, ‘Where’s that nigger Jew boy?’ I walked outside and started to sing ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin . . .’—danced a lick, killed them with talent! That’s the only way I knew how to fight it.”

  “I’m proud of you,” I said.

  Dad said, “My father’s voice rings in my ears every single day of my life. I used to call your grandfather ‘scrambled eggs’—he shook so much after he got Parkinson’s disease. When your grandfather passed, I remember thinking at the funeral, at last, my father is free to be a man, not a colored man, just a man.

  Dad and President Nixon. Nixon was signing a document appointing him to the National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity, 1971.

  Pop and Richard Nixon in the Oval Office, 1973

  With Edward Cox, Tricia Nixon Cox, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, and David Eisenhower, at the Republican National Convention, August 1972

  “Popsicle, you’re not going anywhere. We’re kicking this Davis style, remember?” I replied.

  “Your grandfather always called you his ‘only-est’ granddaughter,” my father muttered. He was fading.

  “I know, Dad.”

  “Think I’m going to take a quick nap, baby. Gas tank is on low.” Pop took his hand off his trachea tube and gently curled up in a ball, closing his eyes.

  “I’ll be here when you wake,” I said.

  The most talked-about kiss in television history was delivered by my father on All in the Family in 1972. Pop planted a kiss on the right cheek of Archie Bunker, the narrow-minded bigot played by Carroll O’Connor. It was my father who changed the weak script ending, and set the country ablaze, underscoring the hypocrisy of the times.

  Pop was a gun enthusiast. He even won fast-draw competitions.

  Dad on Laugh-In, one of the most popular TV shows of its day. I thought he was hilarious in it and he obviously enjoyed himself filming it.

  Five years earlier, in 1967, Pop planted one of the first black-white kisses in US television history. NBC broadcast a variety special entitled Movin’ with Nancy. In addition to the Emmy Award–winning musical performances, the show is notable for Nancy Sinatra and my father greeting each other with a kiss.

  In the early 1970s, Pop startled the nation when he physically hugged Republican President Nixon during a live television broadcast. The incident was controversial and Dad received a hostile reaction from his peers. My father also performed on a USO tour of Vietnam at the behest of President Nixon’s administration.

  I thought about how my father used his talent mixed with kindness to fight prejudice.

  My father loved comic and dramatic acting and did so from the ’50s on. In the early
days, Pop continued to entertain at the country’s hottest nightclubs, while taping dramatic roles in two television anthology series, General Electric Theater and Zane Grey Theatre.

  In November 1958, Pop played the role of escaped convict Glenn Griffin in the staged play The Desperate Hours. The same year my father was in two feature films: Anna Lucasta with Eartha Kitt and Samuel Goldwyn’s big-budget production of Porgy and Bess, starring Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge.

  On September 9, 1967, a one-time special of Laugh-In aired. Pop was comical, dressed in a white wig and black robe, playing a judge. He entered the courtroom saying, “Here comes the judge! Here comes the judge! Order in the court room! Here comes the judge!” My mother got such a kick out of the Laugh-In show, she had T-shirts custom-made for me and my brothers to wear on a trip to London with HERE COMES THE JUDGE! printed on the front.

  The nurse came out to check on my father and give him his medicine. He woke as she fumbled around with his IV. She asked him how he was feeling and he shrugged.

  “You’re still here, Trace Face,” Pop said.

  “Still here, Pop. How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Okay, till that darn nurse woke me up!” he replied.

  “So, Pop, tell me, when are you getting rid of that gun collection upstairs? I got a baby on the way here!”

  Dad was a sharpshooter and fancy gun spinner. He treasured his gun collection. Pop made appearances in western films and was a guest star in several westerns. He even showed James Dean a few tricks, but always felt guilty after his untimely death that he had ignored him as the weird, quiet kid in the corner at so many of his own private parties.

  “Let’s not get carried away now. Heck, I won fast-draw competitions. Johnny Cash said I was capable of drawing and firing a Colt Single Action Army revolver in a quarter of a second! My guns are here to stay! Let’s change the subject, what else is on your mind?”

  “The divorce . . . ,” I said.

  “From your mom? Such happy thoughts you have on your mind today, Trace Face!” Pop replied.

  “I heard Mom’s side, but only parts of yours.” I looked him straight in the eye, and he knew I was serious.

  “Oh God! Haven’t we been through that?” Pop shrugged.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I just couldn’t be what she wanted me to be, Trace Face.”

  “What was that?”

  “A family man. My performance schedule was rigorous. I was moving at a breakneck pace. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I had perhaps an unhealthy commitment to show business—for me, there was always another mountain to climb, another movie to do, another place to play. I gotta be the biggest, I gotta be a star, a megastar—in the meantime, your mother and you kids were suffering.”

  Even when he was “off” at parties, Pop loved to entertain.

  Laughing it up with photographer Milton Greene and Marilyn Monroe.

  “You missed a lot of our childhood, Pop,” I said.

  “And every time I would get a guilt feeling, I’d play ‘Father Knows Best’ for two weeks out of a year. What kind of life was that? Finally, your mom, who went through so much pain because of me, who I am delighted to have remained dear friends with, told me, ‘I can’t take this anymore and I never want to get to the point that I hate you. You are a good person just pointed in another direction,’” Pop explained.

  “She understood,” I said.

  “Your mother did a remarkable job raising you kids; you are super kids. I am thrilled to finally have a relationship with each of you, based on honesty. But back in the day, I was like a mouse caught in a habit trail; I couldn’t get off the treadmill. The wheel just kept spinning. Naturally, everything was taken care of for your mother financially. That was my saving grace—I provided for my family,” Pop said.

  At the Mayfair Hotel in London, 1966, Dad reads a newspaper that claimed his marriage to my mother was headed for a divorce. He tossed it in the air to show what he thought of that!

  “And your mother let me see you whenever I wanted. But it was when I was in town, which wasn’t that often. I was working forty weeks a year because that was my need, to work. See, I always needed to work. It was ingrained in me from the day I started show business at three years old. Work, work, work. Not to mention that I was spending more than I was making. Really, I was a fool, in my book. But that was me. I realized it too late.”

  “I always thought the divorce was because Uncle Frank was divorcing Mia Farrow at the same time?” I joked.

  “Ha. Trace, I loved your mom. Always will. In ’66, I even named a little recording company after her: MBD for May Britt Davis,” Pop said lovingly.

  “I remember your mother announced to the Las Vegas press that we would do a trial separation after seven years of marriage. The press hounded me with questions. All I could tell them was ‘May told me she wanted a trial separation, and I must admit it comes as a big blow to me.’ I was hoping we could reconcile, but deep down I knew it was futile,” Pop said sadly.

  Mom and Dad were very close. When Dad dragged the divorce on for months—his lawyers refusing to answer any calls—it was because he never wanted to divorce my mother. “I was hoping she would change her mind,” he always told us.

  “I moved out and left her with you kids in the old Selznick estate for a spell. Later, I moved the family down the street to a house I bought your mother on Angelo Drive around Benedict Canyon Drive. I moved into this house, 1151 Summit Drive. I bought me a house on Harridge Drive at the top of Summit, too, you know,” Pop said.

  “But we grew up in Lake Tahoe,” I said.

  “We vacationed there every summer. Your mother loved Lake Tahoe, it reminded her of Sweden. By 1970, your mother felt it was important to move to a quiet place where you children could see me as much as possible. Your Mom chose to raise you there, knowing that—two times a year, for extended runs—I would do a show in Tahoe and two in Reno, in addition to trips to Vegas and vacations. I got myself one of those Harrah’s villas in Tahoe for a spell, but it was so quiet there by the lake. Do you remember how I hated that place?”

  “Too peaceful for a city boy?” I chuckled.

  “No joke. So I moved to the sixteenth floor of the Harrah’s hotel, the ‘Sammy Davis, Jr. Suite,’” Pop explained. “Your Mom was kind enough to let me move Lessie Lee into this house here on Summit Drive—so when you kids came down from Tahoe to visit, you would have a nanny. She said, I needed a nanny more than she did.” Pop chuckled. “I imagine I did.”

  “Lessie Lee loves it here because she has her own quarters,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Pop impersonated Lessie Lee. We both laughed.

  “I remember Lessie Lee flew everywhere with us on vacations. If I was scared she would lay in bed with me. What a gem,” I added. “You know, Pop, Mom never said a bad word about you after the divorce.”

  In a three-minute hearing on December 19, 1968, Mom got an uncontested divorce in Santa Monica Superior Court.” She told Judge Ritterband, “I asked my husband to stay home but he never could because of his hectic schedule. There was no family life to speak of.” She was awarded custody of the children. I was seven; Mark, eight; and Jeff, four.

  Over the years Pop recounted to me and in many published interviews, that it took him years to do a 360, to watch his life change, come around and realize, “Boy, I’ll never make that mistake again.” When my parents were married and my brothers and I were young, Dad was one of the most famous and in-demand entertainers in the world. We didn’t stand a chance. At that time in his life, he just felt this intense desire to get out there and be the best. Being the best had always been his best weapon to fight ignorance and intolerance. He had to keep going.

  Dame Margot Fontayn hands Pop a mini statue (of himself!) as a thank you from the Royal Academy of dancing in 1968.

  My father in his element, singing and dancing. He gave everything in him to each performance.

  “See, if I walked on the stage,
” Pop told me, “I could fight the prejudice in everyone’s mind—that was my thinking. Boy, I’ll stay out here till I get ya. In Vegas, I would do a two-and-a-half-hour show and think nothing of it. Folks in the audience were looking at their watches. The manager would tell me, they don’t come to see you; they come to gamble, so get off the stage! Ha! I didn’t even realize the time passing. I had captured my audience and gained their respect. Then, after the show, I still felt the need to keep the audience—have a big party, have them around me.”

  “By the late ’80s, everything changed. My great joy in life was to go home, have Altovise fix me a little something, warm up some soup or something in the kitchen, lie with my feet up, grab my clicker, and talk back to the television. Click, click, click. Now that is joy. Pure joy!” Pop laughed.

  Whenever Dad came to Tahoe or Reno for work, Mom was there. She would go with friends to see my father’s show. Dad frequently hung around our house with good friends—the Apocotos’ and Louise Hames. Mom looked forward to my father coming and so did we. During each visit, Mom would go off and have dinner alone with Dad. I caught a glimpse once backstage in the dressing room and my father had his hand on Mom’s cheek. I will never forget the look he gave her. Everyone should have someone look at them like that—just once. Although she had many offers, Mom did not remarry for twenty years after the divorce and three years after my father’s death.