Speaker 1: This episode is about a man who has been called
Speaker 1: the greatest entertainer of the twentieth century. Jeez, look at that.
Speaker 1: So naturally I wanted to talk to a car expert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a gorgeous vehicle, beautifully restored.
Speaker 1: I'm with my friend Matt Anderson, he's the curator of
Speaker 1: transportation at the Henry Ford Museum, and we're in a
Speaker 1: suburb of Detroit looking at a stunning, shiny red nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three Cadillac El Dorado with the car's owner, Neil Porter.
Speaker 1: A lot of the parts of the car were handbuilt.
Speaker 1: The wrap around windshield is cool. The curve in the glass,
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 3: The very first of the wrap around windshields nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 4: Bottom.
Speaker 1: Neil invited me to sit behind the wheel for you
Speaker 1: to get in in. These seats are what leather? Leather, leather,
Speaker 1: not leave. This is one heck of a car, the
Speaker 1: height of luxury. And can I just point out that,
Speaker 1: like power windows were a big deal in the late seventies,
Speaker 1: but there's a prominent design flaw. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: steering wheel.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things he's notice is that at the
Speaker 2: center of the steering wheel the hub. There looks like
Speaker 2: the nose cone on a missile.
Speaker 1: Almost that's right jutting out from the center of the
Speaker 1: steering wheel is a comical chrome protrusion, and straight at
Speaker 1: the driver's face.
Speaker 2: It has no functional purpose. It's simply there to kind
Speaker 2: of look cool.
Speaker 1: And cool certainly describes the man who was driving his
Speaker 1: own El Dorado in the wee small hours of November nineteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four. Sammy Davis Junior was a twenty eight
Speaker 1: year old, fast rising nightclub performer, singer, comic and boy
Speaker 1: What a dancer heading from a show in Vegas to
Speaker 1: a recording gig in Los Angeles when he collided with
Speaker 1: another car in San Bernardino, California, and the left side
Speaker 1: of his face collided with that steering wheel. The car
Speaker 1: had no seat belts.
Speaker 2: This is what caused Sammy Davis Junior to lose his eye.
Speaker 2: In his accident, he did not have time to react
Speaker 2: it out of the way, so he went flying. His
Speaker 2: head came and hit against that protrusion and went right
Speaker 2: into his left eye socket and in fact knocked the
Speaker 2: eye out of the socket.
Speaker 6: My father had been calling in the middle of the
Speaker 6: night to go to Saint Bernardine's Hospital to take care
Speaker 6: of a man who had a very serious car accident
Speaker 6: and injured his eye and needed some help.
Speaker 1: Nancy Gollup is the daughter of the late doctor Frederick Hall.
Speaker 1: He was the surgeon who rushed to the hospital to
Speaker 1: work on Sammy. Nancy was thirteen years old at the time.
Speaker 6: And so what my father basically did was to save
Speaker 6: Sammy from losing the other eye. But the first question
Speaker 6: that Sammy purportedly asking my dad was were his legs?
Speaker 1: Okay, wow, that's very telling, right, Yes, I thought that
Speaker 1: was Poigners. Also, the traumatic event opens Sammy's autobiography, Yes
Speaker 1: I Can. Here's a passage read by his co author
Speaker 1: Bert Boyard. As I ran my hand over my cheek,
Speaker 1: I felt my eye hanging there by a string. Frantically,
Speaker 1: I tried to stuff it back in, like if I
Speaker 1: could do that, it would stay there and nobody would know.
Speaker 1: The ground went out from under me, and I was
Speaker 1: on my knees. Don't let me go blind, Please, God,
Speaker 1: don't take.
Speaker 5: It all away.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 1: When Sammy says don't take it all away, he's not
Speaker 1: praying for his life, at least not the way you
Speaker 1: or I might be he's talking about his life in showbiz,
Speaker 1: all the beautiful things, all the plans, the laughs. They
Speaker 1: were lying out there, smashed, just like the car. Sammy
Speaker 1: spent almost two weeks in the San Bernardino hospital recovering.
Speaker 1: Later on, he'd famously be fitted for a glass eye,
Speaker 1: and the outpouring of love was almost like a memorial service.
Speaker 6: There was a telegram from Marilyn Monroe which just thrilled Sammy.
Speaker 1: Two pieces, Eddie Canter, Jackie Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald. They all
Speaker 1: sent telegrams, even the waiters at the Hollywood night club Zeros,
Speaker 1: where he'd become an overnight sensation just three years before.
Speaker 1: The admiration of his friends and peers mattered, But in
Speaker 1: a life of dramatic ups and downs, was the adulation
Speaker 1: of audiences that would sustain him, in the words of
Speaker 1: one friend, nourish him. And he gave those audiences everything
Speaker 1: he had.
Speaker 8: I've got a lot of living to do.
Speaker 9: This is what he was trained to do. It was
Speaker 9: in every atom of his DNA. It's what he did.
Speaker 9: He did it well, he did it graciously, He did
Speaker 9: it gratefully, and he wasn't trying to bludget anybody over
Speaker 9: the head. And he wasn't just in his performance, it's
Speaker 9: just what he did, it's who he was. I gotta
Speaker 9: be me. Who's me, the world's greatest entertainer, Sammy Davis Junior.
Speaker 1: I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries, this moment, Sammy Davis Junior.
Speaker 1: May sixteenth, nineteen ninety death of the entertainer.
Speaker 10: I think that it's probably the best thing that's ever
Speaker 10: happened to me.
Speaker 8: It's probably an odd thing to say.
Speaker 10: My friends rallied around me and convinced me that it
Speaker 10: was still a lot to be done and that I
Speaker 10: probably probably wouldn't matter. And as it turned out.
Speaker 1: That's Sammy Davis Junior talking about the crash that nearly
Speaker 1: killed him. I'm not surprised by the outpouring of love
Speaker 1: at that hospital. I've been a correspondent on CBS Sunday
Speaker 1: Morning for over ten years now. I've interviewed probably over
Speaker 1: one hundred celebrities, and there's one name that's popped up
Speaker 1: more than any.
Speaker 3: Other, Sammy Davis Junior.
Speaker 1: Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown told me about his
Speaker 1: friend's command over an audience.
Speaker 3: When he was on stage.
Speaker 11: You would be overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Kim Novak and Nancy Sinatra each talked about what a
Speaker 1: joy Sammy was to be around.
Speaker 12: He was such a fun person. Sammy was part of
Speaker 12: the family.
Speaker 1: LeVar Burton and Ben Vereen revered Sammy as a role model.
Speaker 13: It wasn't all the time that I saw people on
Speaker 13: TV who look like me.
Speaker 10: If there was a black actor on TV in those days,
Speaker 10: we'd watched Sammy would.
Speaker 5: Come on on The Ed Sullivan Show and.
Speaker 14: Do everything, and I was bleed everything.
Speaker 15: He did everything.
Speaker 1: Yes, when the subject turns to Sammy, the superlatives start
Speaker 1: flying easily.
Speaker 5: The greatest.
Speaker 1: He was everything.
Speaker 16: He could play any instrument, he could sing, he could
Speaker 16: dance like a maniac.
Speaker 1: That's Broadway legend, Cheeta Rivera. Is there anyone like Sammy
Speaker 1: Davis Junior today.
Speaker 16: I have not ever seen anybody. I just never saw
Speaker 16: anything like him in my life.
Speaker 1: It says it right there on his tombstone in Hollywood's
Speaker 1: Forest Lawn, the entertainer. He did it all.
Speaker 10: Daddy was a new sensation, got himself a congregation, built
Speaker 10: up quite an up ration down band.
Speaker 1: And he did singing, dancing, acting, comedy. He was at
Speaker 1: least a quadruple threat quintuple if you count his gun
Speaker 1: spinning routine or upplog. It helped that he started early.
Speaker 10: I won an amateur contest at the Stanley Theater in
Speaker 10: Philadelphia when I was three and a half years old,
Speaker 10: singing I'll be glad when You're dead, You rascal.
Speaker 1: You that seven year old Sammy singing the same song
Speaker 1: in the movie musical short Rufus Jones for President. Sammy
Speaker 1: Davis Junior was born in Harlem, Woman in nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 1: His mother, Elvera Sanchez, was Latin and a dancer. His
Speaker 1: father was a hoofer. His parents split up early, and
Speaker 1: just when most kids start school, Sammy hit the road
Speaker 1: the vaudeville circuit with his father, Sam Senior, and Will Maston,
Speaker 1: a family friend he called his uncle. They were billed
Speaker 1: as the Will Maston Trio. Here's Sammy reminiscing with his
Speaker 1: father in a nineteen seventy three TV special.
Speaker 10: What Place We plainly who?
Speaker 3: We were playing?
Speaker 10: Minsky's Lynsky's, Yeah, Minskis Berlin's House, forty second Street, doing
Speaker 10: jigleson right.
Speaker 14: And I used to add a cigarette, yeah, And.
Speaker 3: I was passing off as a midget.
Speaker 8: I don't want midget.
Speaker 15: With that then, but you were five.
Speaker 1: The trio was a success, but it was the diminutive
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Junior even as an adult. He was just
Speaker 1: five foot five who stood out. Shirley McLain remembered Dean
Speaker 1: Martin and Frank Sinatra sneaking her into ceroes to see
Speaker 1: this dynamo who.
Speaker 17: Was dancing and singing and performing in the middle of
Speaker 17: a trio.
Speaker 1: She told this story on stage to Sammy had a
Speaker 1: tribute show in his honor in nineteen eighty nine, towards
Speaker 1: the end of his life.
Speaker 17: The two people on either side of you were terrific.
Speaker 17: But I could not believe my eyes and my ears
Speaker 17: never had so much come out of something so small
Speaker 17: for so long.
Speaker 1: She's right, there was a light that came out of
Speaker 1: him that made it impossible not to look at him,
Speaker 1: that made him more than the sum of his mad
Speaker 1: individual talents. Let's talk about his impressions, which I loved,
Speaker 1: his Bogey perfect.
Speaker 10: I'd like to say that it's really been a pleasure
Speaker 10: entertaining all of you nice folks shot there.
Speaker 11: It's really been one of the great thrills of my time.
Speaker 1: His Cagney spot.
Speaker 10: On yes, wing that great h all in love, that's
Speaker 10: in you, you dirty.
Speaker 1: Rat, and now listened to his marvelously muttering Marlon Brando A.
Speaker 18: Baby kisses, I will personally deliver if you will only
Speaker 18: sing this morning roof over day.
Speaker 1: His friend, the Oscar winning songwriter Leslie Brickis told me
Speaker 1: that growing up, Sammy spent a lot of time in
Speaker 1: movie theaters. It became sort of his school, since he
Speaker 1: never spent a single day in an actual school.
Speaker 14: He used to speak along with the actors, imitating them,
Speaker 14: you know, carry Grant or Humphy Bogat. He learned the accents.
Speaker 14: He'd do the voice with them, and that's how he
Speaker 14: perfected it. He couldn't let anything go by.
Speaker 1: There's this bit I've seen from an old Julie Andrews
Speaker 1: Variety show. Julie Andrews Variety Show. Don't you just love
Speaker 1: the sound of that? Anyway, On the show, Sammy and
Speaker 1: the impressionist Rich Little engage in a friendly competition.
Speaker 16: Why don't we forget about impressions and just see?
Speaker 1: Oh Sammy sings as an acting cole.
Speaker 7: I've just found joy.
Speaker 1: I'm as happy.
Speaker 7: All you, blaye the bar.
Speaker 1: Rich does liberacim parvised and Sammy does his Jerry Lewis
Speaker 1: to Riches Dean Martin, You.
Speaker 19: And the way.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, you know I'm watching it, and rich
Speaker 1: Little is technically better, but Sammy is just better. I'd
Speaker 1: rather watch Sammy. So what's happening there?
Speaker 9: The genius of Sammy's when he imitated someone, He imitated
Speaker 9: them from the inside out, and rich Little imitates someone
Speaker 9: from the outside inn and Sammy gets to the essence
Speaker 9: of that person.
Speaker 1: This is Larry Maslon. He's the writer and co producer
Speaker 1: of the film American Masters. Sammy Davis Junior. I've got
Speaker 1: to be me and he's super smart.
Speaker 9: Nobody imitated musicians and singers the way sam That's.
Speaker 1: Really interesting because you've got to be able to have
Speaker 1: the talent of channeling them and have their talent as well,
Speaker 1: right right, right.
Speaker 8: Lo Wie, where You're.
Speaker 1: Sammy's talent as a singer is often well undersung. It's
Speaker 1: not so much that he had a technically beautiful voice,
Speaker 1: but cliche alert. He knew how to make a song
Speaker 1: his own. And in this episode, we're going to use
Speaker 1: three of the songs he famously sang to tell his story.
Speaker 8: Whether I'm right.
Speaker 1: Larry Maslon calls I've Got to Be Me the ultimate
Speaker 1: Sammy song.
Speaker 9: I mean, it's everything, and that's who he was.
Speaker 8: I gotta be mean.
Speaker 1: And yet the song wasn't written for Sammy.
Speaker 9: Or Settle falls.
Speaker 14: As long as there's not much charms.
Speaker 1: But Steve Lawrence sang it first in a musical called
Speaker 1: Golden Rainbow, about a single dad living in Vegas. The
Speaker 1: musical also starred Steve's wife, Evie Gourmet incredible voice. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Steve thought this song, written by Walter Marx might be
Speaker 1: more powerful coming from his friend.
Speaker 20: The lyric content was like whether I'm right, whether I'm wrong,
Speaker 20: whether I find a place in this world or never belong.
Speaker 20: It interpreted this black man in this society at that time,
Speaker 20: this man who is different than everybody else. I called him.
Speaker 20: I said, sam You're going to do this your own
Speaker 20: way and better. It meant more coming from him than
Speaker 20: it did from me. He recorded it, bang, he went
Speaker 20: to the top of the chots.
Speaker 8: We'll go it alone.
Speaker 1: So it must now being me for Sammy Davis Junior
Speaker 1: was a complicated matter. For one thing, he was an
Speaker 1: African American man who would later convert to Judaism.
Speaker 8: My mother is a Puerto Rican, so that means I'm
Speaker 8: colored Jewish and Puerto Rican.
Speaker 10: When I move into a neighborhood, I wipe it out.
Speaker 1: That's a joke he told a lot when he was
Speaker 1: performing with the rat Pack in the nineteen sixties. FYI
Speaker 1: were not spending a lot of time with the rat
Speaker 1: Pack in this episode. It's been done to death. Throughout
Speaker 1: his life, Sammy mined his unique identity for humor and
Speaker 1: to diffuse tension. Remember Warren Batty announcing the wrong Best
Speaker 1: Picture Oscar winner in twenty seventeen. Sammy was ahead of
Speaker 1: his time. Here he is in nineteen sixty four announcing
Speaker 1: the Oscar for movie scoring.
Speaker 10: And the winner is John Addison for Tom Jones.
Speaker 1: Except that it wasn't. Sammy handled his snack for me
Speaker 1: without skipping a beat.
Speaker 8: They gave me the wrong envelope. Wait till the NAACP
Speaker 8: hears about this.
Speaker 1: But earlier in his life his talent played a much
Speaker 1: more vital role. It helped him survive.
Speaker 5: They painted you white, they poured urine in your beer,
Speaker 5: things of that name.
Speaker 9: I mean, did these things really happen? Yes, they really happen.
Speaker 1: That's Sammy talking to our senior Hall. In nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: eighteen year old Sammy came off the road when he
Speaker 1: was drafted into the army and into one of the
Speaker 1: first integrated units. Until then, his father and uncle had
Speaker 1: tried as best they could to shell him from racism.
Speaker 1: Now there was no one to protect him.
Speaker 10: I was in a kind of an odd situation because
Speaker 10: I'm going, hey, I don't know anything about.
Speaker 8: This outside world.
Speaker 10: I belonged to show business. Show business says, hey, I
Speaker 10: got a bar, and let's put the show on here.
Speaker 10: You know, all of those cliches I lived, you know,
Speaker 10: and the other guys are going, you'll be doing that.
Speaker 10: You gon'll get us in trouble. You know, I got
Speaker 10: my nose broke three times and it hurt, and you
Speaker 10: couldn't do anything about it. You had nobody to back
Speaker 10: you up.
Speaker 1: Trips to the infirmary were regular. That's how many fights
Speaker 1: he was getting into. But when he got transferred to
Speaker 1: an entertainment unit, things got better for him. He once
Speaker 1: told his daughter, talent was my only weapon.
Speaker 10: With a white situation of a black situation, you do
Speaker 10: it with humor. I tried to do it with entertaining,
Speaker 10: to try to get some doors open, because all of
Speaker 10: them were closed in those days, all of them were closed.
Speaker 1: Well, sammy them open. Remember those impressions he did. They
Speaker 1: weren't just funny, they were bold. Back in the late forties,
Speaker 1: black performers didn't do impressions of white performers in front
Speaker 1: of white audiences, that is until Sammy did.
Speaker 10: My dad Will said, big interest, one of these days
Speaker 10: you keep doing white.
Speaker 1: People, you know.
Speaker 10: And I went on and did it now in the
Speaker 10: Strand Theater. The first time I went, you dirty rat,
Speaker 10: a guy in the audience said, my god, he sounds
Speaker 10: just like him. What he was really saying, I'm looking
Speaker 10: at a black man for the first time, do a
Speaker 10: white man. Well, it was so good that we went
Speaker 10: from opening act to closing.
Speaker 1: Now. Imitating white performers was one thing. Dating a white
Speaker 1: woman was another. His relationship with screen siren Kim Novak
Speaker 1: was considered scandalous. In nineteen fifty seven, I talked to
Speaker 1: Kim recently on her horse farm in Oregon. That was
Speaker 1: its explosive back then.
Speaker 12: At that time, it was it certainly was so ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And what was that like for you?
Speaker 12: At that time, Harry Conbe threatened to take his other
Speaker 12: eye out.
Speaker 1: Harry Khane was the much feared head of Columbia Pictures,
Speaker 1: and he really did. Oh, of course.
Speaker 12: However, we saw each other, but I was never in love.
Speaker 1: Certainly it was Sammy. Do you think that he was
Speaker 1: infatuated with you? Oh he was.
Speaker 12: He had a good crush on a nice crush. I
Speaker 12: mean we had such fun times together, we really did.
Speaker 12: But it certainly not worth losing an eye over.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to square this sort of drive to
Speaker 1: make an audience happy and the public happy, and then
Speaker 1: doing these things that are really ballsy.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not sure he viewed them as ballsy.
Speaker 1: That's Sammy's friend, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown.
Speaker 3: I'm sure he viewed them as being just Davis junior.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen seventy two, being Sammy Davis Junior meant
Speaker 1: embracing President Richard Nixon during his reelection campaign. Quite literally,
Speaker 1: Sammy hugged Nixon, and let's just say much of the
Speaker 1: public did not hug back.
Speaker 3: You've had a lot of criticism from some black groups,
Speaker 3: right because I bothered you.
Speaker 7: Yes, of course.
Speaker 1: Do you think that he was shocked at the reaction
Speaker 1: he got when he embraced Nixon.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think that shocked him.
Speaker 1: But Willie Brown says, Sammy knew exactly what he was doing.
Speaker 3: Many African Americans in this country were Republicans. Sammy was
Speaker 3: conscious of that because some of them were his friends.
Speaker 1: And contrary to most tellings of this story, Brown says,
Speaker 1: it wasn't primarily African American fans who were outraged.
Speaker 3: They were basically white liberals who could not understand how
Speaker 3: such as symbolic black could be embracing somebody like Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: So most of the disapproval you think came from white liberals.
Speaker 3: I know it came from white liberals. Black people didn't
Speaker 3: give a shit about whether or not he embracings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sammy still felt the need later that year to
Speaker 1: address a less than warm audience at Jesse Jackson's Push Conference,
Speaker 1: a gathering of social justice activists.
Speaker 10: Man, disagree if you will with my politics.
Speaker 1: It was a dramatic appearance.
Speaker 10: But I will not allow anyone to take away the fact.
Speaker 8: That I am black.
Speaker 9: It's moving because he's honest with his audience.
Speaker 1: That's Larry Maslon again.
Speaker 9: Basically, he's saying, whatever you think of me and Richard Dixon.
Speaker 9: You know I'm a black man. You know what I've
Speaker 9: been through in the last forty years.
Speaker 8: I'm right, ah, rather wrong.
Speaker 9: If you don't want to take me, fine, but I'm
Speaker 9: going to put me out there. I gotta be me.
Speaker 9: What more of a statement can you have than that?
Speaker 8: I gotta be me, gotta be me?
Speaker 4: What else can I be?
Speaker 21: It seems like showbiz for him was kind of like
Speaker 21: a rocket ship that took him on a voyage and
Speaker 21: helped him sort of overcome so many obstacles.
Speaker 9: His talent is a rocket ship, but gravity was being
Speaker 9: black in America, and that's what brought him back to
Speaker 9: Earth time and time again. This is his own words.
Speaker 9: I want to be so good that no one will
Speaker 9: notice I'm black. That's not really possible, is it?
Speaker 5: What kind no.
Speaker 8: Lives are they?
Speaker 15: Do?
Speaker 1: You have a favorite Sammy song?
Speaker 7: That whispered Empty were Birds?
Speaker 1: What kind of fool am I? That's Dion Warwick's favorite
Speaker 1: Sammy song. It's about someone unable to find lasting love.
Speaker 19: That's the story he tells from the very first note.
Speaker 19: I mean, you cannot but believe every single word he's
Speaker 19: giving you. He floored me with that.
Speaker 14: What time because he was forever on tour and on
Speaker 14: the road. He never could sustain the relationship because he
Speaker 14: was never there for more than two weeks.
Speaker 1: Leslie Brickis wrote what kind of fool Am I? With
Speaker 1: Anthony Newley for the musical Stop the World? I Want
Speaker 1: to Get Off? But Sammy made it famous when he
Speaker 1: sings it. There's a great performance in nineteen sixty two
Speaker 1: on Andy Williams Show, and it's just so plaintive, almost anguished.
Speaker 4: What.
Speaker 14: Am well? He wasn't good act to too. But it
Speaker 14: also may have been a little bit of autobiography in there.
Speaker 1: You know, why can I cast away.
Speaker 14: This mask of play.
Speaker 10: And live my life? How do you make it thresh?
Speaker 10: Whatever I walk on that stage with that night, I
Speaker 10: try to translate into that rendition of the song, and
Speaker 10: it's a true, honest feeling.
Speaker 1: I Sammy's romantic history was tumultuous. After Kim Novak. There
Speaker 1: was a short marriage to the African American actress Lay White,
Speaker 1: and then he married the white Swedish model and actress
Speaker 1: My brit That wedding was such a scandal he got
Speaker 1: disinvited from the JFK inaugural. Yes, that might have had
Speaker 1: something to do with his hugging Nixon. Later on, he
Speaker 1: and my had two kids before splitting up.
Speaker 3: My wife left me.
Speaker 5: You know, I took the kids.
Speaker 10: Nothing was more important than being a star.
Speaker 8: So I've lost them.
Speaker 10: I lost every ounce of what was valuable.
Speaker 8: I'd made the wrong choices.
Speaker 1: Sammy was married three times in all, and dated plenty
Speaker 1: in between. Cheeta Rivera met Sammy when they worked together
Speaker 1: on the musical Mister Wonderful.
Speaker 16: And I was a snob when they asked me to
Speaker 16: do it. I went, he's from nightclubs. I mean, what's
Speaker 16: he going to do on a stage?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 16: And boy did I did? I eat my words?
Speaker 1: And you were lovers? You were boyfriends and friend and
Speaker 1: what was that like? It was fabulous.
Speaker 16: He's as talented in that area as he was as
Speaker 16: he was otherwise.
Speaker 1: But things got he did on one occasion.
Speaker 16: I know this doesn't sound too crude, but we must
Speaker 16: have had some words which I don't remember ever having
Speaker 16: with him, but I remember he took his.
Speaker 1: Eye out, that would be his glass eye.
Speaker 16: The words that are in my head are is this
Speaker 16: what you want now? That sounds like an hour interview
Speaker 16: in itself. I know how dramatic that sounds, but I
Speaker 16: do remember that, and I'm not even sure that we
Speaker 16: were alone.
Speaker 1: Okay, sidebar. I was obsessed with glass eyes growing up.
Speaker 1: A relative of mine actually had one, or maybe his
Speaker 1: was rubber, I can't remember. It was a fake eye anyway.
Speaker 1: Recently I spoke with the fabulous Sandy Duncan. She performed
Speaker 1: with Sammy but never dated him, and she talked about
Speaker 1: the rumors that she had a glass eye.
Speaker 22: Contrary to urban myth, I do not have a glass eye,
Speaker 22: so that'll put this to rest.
Speaker 1: But she did lose sight in one eye, and Sammy
Speaker 1: reached out to her.
Speaker 22: She was very concerned about my having lost my vision
Speaker 22: through a brain tumor when I was twenty four, and
Speaker 22: he made contact immediately.
Speaker 1: Do you think that there is something in the recovery
Speaker 1: for him and for you that, actually, I don't know,
Speaker 1: made you even better as an entertainer.
Speaker 22: I don't know if any better as an entertainer, but
Speaker 22: I certainly developed a discipline that nothing stops you. I've
Speaker 22: never missed a show in my life. I just didn't
Speaker 22: let it bother me. I had to get up and
Speaker 22: get out and do it.
Speaker 6: So he was very helpful.
Speaker 10: What kind of fool am I?
Speaker 1: Well, of course Sammy did fall in love and stay
Speaker 1: in love with his audience. I know it's a cliche.
Speaker 1: Well here comes another one. He's just so at home
Speaker 1: on stage. If you look at videos of him performing
Speaker 1: on variety shows, he does this thing where he'll end
Speaker 1: a big number and then he just sort of doubles
Speaker 1: over with laughter. He's had that much fun, almost like
Speaker 1: a kid showing off to his friends. But make no mistake,
Speaker 1: it might all look and sound off the couff. He
Speaker 1: knows exactly what he's doing with your.
Speaker 8: Kind of mission.
Speaker 10: May I simply stated how very wonderful and thrilled and.
Speaker 9: Scared I am.
Speaker 19: You had to see this man's own a stage and
Speaker 19: an audience. He actually owned you. He put you into him.
Speaker 1: Dion Warwick wasn't just his friend. She studied him. Well,
Speaker 1: that is a really interesting word when you say he
Speaker 1: owned the audience. What does that mean?
Speaker 19: When he worked on that stage, he knew that we
Speaker 19: were in the palm of his hand.
Speaker 8: People have to trust you.
Speaker 1: For Sammy, this relationship with the audience was deeply personal.
Speaker 8: People don't trust you. You ain't got to shut it
Speaker 8: and They've invested years in me, so I'm part of
Speaker 8: the family as long as I don't let them down.
Speaker 1: Do you think that he was pretty much always happy
Speaker 1: on stage?
Speaker 19: Yeah, that was just domain.
Speaker 14: We heard the bereze through the Trees.
Speaker 1: Here's Leslie Brickis again.
Speaker 14: Nineteen seventy seven New Year's Eve and he and Eliza
Speaker 14: Manelli did it at midnight New Year's Eve act, which
Speaker 14: went on for three hours. We went up to Sammy's
Speaker 14: Sweet afterwards and he said, let's do it all again,
Speaker 14: and they did the whole show again for just four
Speaker 14: people and it was another three hours.
Speaker 4: What is that?
Speaker 1: Was that a need to perform or was that just pure.
Speaker 14: Joy or was it joy more than anything?
Speaker 7: Joy joy?
Speaker 14: He was so high on the audience reaction that the
Speaker 14: only way he could come down was to perform more.
Speaker 1: I want to hear it one moon Dion Warwick told
Speaker 1: me that he described applause as nourishment.
Speaker 14: Yes, that was that. That was breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Speaker 1: Wo You know, people romanticize the entertainer who just gives one,
Speaker 1: but then the cliche is, you know, they give, they give,
Speaker 1: they give, but there was nothing left for themselves, and
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: But no, no, no, no no no, he gay, but
Speaker 3: he used. He enjoyed every penny that he ever earned.
Speaker 3: Sammy Davis Junior enjoyed it period.
Speaker 1: That's Willie Brown again. Now it turns out that what
Speaker 1: kind of fool am I might also describe Sammy Davis
Speaker 1: Junior's relationship with money.
Speaker 3: My most expensive pocket watch with the chain came from
Speaker 3: Sammy Davis change.
Speaker 1: And that's you think it just made him feel good
Speaker 1: to be that generous.
Speaker 3: I think it was that way. I think he wanted
Speaker 3: to share his wealth.
Speaker 15: Sammy Davis was one of the worst people I ever
Speaker 15: saw him any kind of money. He had no idea
Speaker 15: what money was and what it was worth.
Speaker 1: That's Sammy's former agent Larry Auerback. He told me a
Speaker 1: lot of things, including an amazing story about Elvis that
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to repeat.
Speaker 15: It my whole life story for his cut on anything
Speaker 15: You're doing. It's a podcast that's even worth Okay.
Speaker 1: One thing he made incredibly clear Sammy was bad with money.
Speaker 15: I was going to London on vacation. Next thing I know,
Speaker 15: he put a lovely leather case and then it was
Speaker 15: a night time chamer, which was the highlight of the day,
Speaker 15: and I said, well, am I going to do it this?
Speaker 15: I literally felt that he had no idea what he
Speaker 15: was spending or it was what it meant.
Speaker 1: Almost everyone I talked to had a story about Sammy
Speaker 1: giving them a ridiculously expensive present, and.
Speaker 14: I already had a go Watch. I didn't need a
Speaker 14: go watch. He had this impulse to spend money.
Speaker 9: Are you bad with money?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 8: I think I'm pretty good with it.
Speaker 1: Sammy himself talked about his spending habits with Dick Cabot.
Speaker 10: And I'm entitled to blow maybe five ten thousand dollars
Speaker 10: out of the year.
Speaker 7: Just blow it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, where are you going to do that?
Speaker 9: Next day? When he died, he owed more money to
Speaker 9: the Irs than any single individual in history up to
Speaker 9: that point.
Speaker 14: He had to impress people on stage, on off. You know,
Speaker 14: he'd wear the most outrageous clothing. He had six rings
Speaker 14: on his hand. You saw the pictures.
Speaker 1: Sure, some people are going to hear that and think
Speaker 1: was he compensating for something?
Speaker 14: Yes? I think he was compensating for what he wasn't
Speaker 14: given at the beginning, that he had no start in life,
Speaker 14: and it was largely show he was showing off.
Speaker 15: I think he was sheltered by his uncle and his father.
Speaker 15: He was now had some freedom, and he saw an
Speaker 15: opportunity to give gifts. Why not?
Speaker 1: Okay, that's interesting though, giving extravagant gifts. I mean, what
Speaker 1: do you think he wanted from that? Nothing? I grew
Speaker 1: up with the Sammy of the nineteen seventies. Artistically, this
Speaker 1: wasn't a high point for him, But what.
Speaker 15: Did I know?
Speaker 14: Oh, fast, fast fast.
Speaker 1: I loved hearing him sing commercial jingles.
Speaker 3: They can laugh, but put an extra wing on the house.
Speaker 1: This was the Sammie of Talk to the Animals, my
Speaker 1: favorite single on my Sammy Greatest Hits album. I still
Speaker 1: dance around my apartment to.
Speaker 5: It with a cheetah.
Speaker 10: What an it would be.
Speaker 1: And of course candy Man. Now, at first Sammy didn't
Speaker 1: like Handy Man. It was originally from the movie Willy
Speaker 1: Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but he liked that it
Speaker 1: went to number one. He's only number one. Let's just
Speaker 1: say Sammy knew how to turn lemons into groovy lemon pie, make.
Speaker 10: A groovy lemon pie.
Speaker 4: The candy Man.
Speaker 1: He does something I think is very brave, which he
Speaker 1: never makes fun of the material. It's total commitment. I
Speaker 1: see that he did a cover of Chico and the
Speaker 1: Man of the cheeko on the Man These song, And
Speaker 1: that's one of the things where you go, oh God,
Speaker 1: and then you start listening. It's really good.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's really good.
Speaker 8: Chico, it's good.
Speaker 15: Yeah.
Speaker 7: He did Maud too.
Speaker 9: He covered the themes on to mad I.
Speaker 1: Have to listen to that. Lady Could Diver was a
Speaker 1: freedom ride up.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Lady godive Or was a freedom right up.
Speaker 3: She didn't care of the whole world.
Speaker 1: Look, I check any cynicism at the door.
Speaker 9: When he starts performing, well, you check your cynicism because
Speaker 9: you know immediately he's bearing his soul to you. It's
Speaker 9: not an act. He's not too cool for school, right.
Speaker 9: Sinatra had that right, a little bit of a distance,
Speaker 9: there's no distance there.
Speaker 7: I don't think.
Speaker 9: Sammy had an ounce of irony in him, that kind
Speaker 9: of detached look at me irony. He was like all
Speaker 9: in as a performer. And maybe the problem is not
Speaker 9: Sammy's enthusiasm, but certain generations skittishness about enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: Right, fear that will make them look uncool. Right. And
Speaker 1: Dion Warwick says he was as enthusiastic and playful off
Speaker 1: stage as on, and.
Speaker 19: I started having in my rider a misspact Man.
Speaker 1: Machine, Miss pac Man, which is much better than pac
Speaker 1: Man by the way.
Speaker 19: Yeah, it was the cocktail table type, the.
Speaker 1: One the flat one, so that right, you can sit
Speaker 1: across from each other.
Speaker 7: Yep.
Speaker 1: Turns out Dion Warwick and Sammy Davis Junior both loved
Speaker 1: playing Miss pac Man and I beat him up. That
Speaker 1: is fantastic.
Speaker 19: He would get up and stop around how to be.
Speaker 7: Very easily.
Speaker 1: But the Sammy of the seventies also had edge. When
Speaker 1: he kissed Archie Bunker on the cheek on all in
Speaker 1: the family, it made headlines. What I hadn't seen until
Speaker 1: recently was his appearance from nineteen seventy five on the
Speaker 1: Carol Burnett Show. And this is a sketch where you
Speaker 1: play a woman eleanor Simpson.
Speaker 4: You let's not talk.
Speaker 7: About poor little o me. That's right, that's the.
Speaker 1: One Carol told me all about it on the phone.
Speaker 7: Well, she's was a passive, aggressive racist.
Speaker 10: Johnny, your diction.
Speaker 4: It was just perfect.
Speaker 7: Sammy plays this entertainer, so she was in the audience.
Speaker 7: Now he's this big star and she's all excited but
Speaker 7: still has that underlying prejudice.
Speaker 18: And I tell you you just tossed off those polysyllables
Speaker 18: like you were born to them.
Speaker 7: They grew up together because his mother was their maid.
Speaker 9: I know she just couldn't wait to come back in
Speaker 9: and work for you again.
Speaker 7: She was talking about when they were kids, and she said, Oh,
Speaker 7: and we used to play hide and go seek. Oh
Speaker 7: that was such fun. But it wasn't good in the dark.
Speaker 8: Honey.
Speaker 7: You could just be standing right in front of me
Speaker 7: and I never would have known it.
Speaker 10: Lash you smile.
Speaker 1: Sammy doesn't actually talk much during the scene. He doesn't
Speaker 1: really need to. His look says it all. Mostly he's
Speaker 1: just biting his tongue, struggling to be gracious until he's
Speaker 1: finally hot enough. O Gee.
Speaker 7: But Sammy loved that sketch.
Speaker 1: And do you think he loved it because he could
Speaker 1: relate to it somehow?
Speaker 7: Perhaps you remember all.
Speaker 1: The fun we used to have when we was kids.
Speaker 7: Do you remember that?
Speaker 8: I am beginning to remember a lot of things.
Speaker 1: Hey, let me ask you. There's gotta be a reason
Speaker 1: you remember that sketch in such detail.
Speaker 7: It was because there were no jokes in there. It
Speaker 7: was all character.
Speaker 8: You know, something Melani. I think you're right.
Speaker 7: I am a little tight, oh that there was an
Speaker 7: underlying truth.
Speaker 3: Some people would say that the one great hit he
Speaker 3: had was keny Man, But mister bo Jingles is this
Speaker 3: definition of Sammy Davis.
Speaker 1: That's Willie Brown. I have to confess I always thought
Speaker 1: mister Bojangles, our third SAMI song was about Bill Bojangles Robinson,
Speaker 1: the great African American tap dancer who died penniless in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine. In fact, mister Bojangles, and you may
Speaker 1: have known, this was originally a country music song. The
Speaker 1: writer Jerry Jeff Walker says it's about a guy he
Speaker 1: met in a New Orleans prison, and Walker never really
Speaker 1: thought the song would go anywhere.
Speaker 8: When I got to Atlantic Records, they said, who held
Speaker 8: would want a four and a half minute song about
Speaker 8: a old drunk and a dead dog and six eight
Speaker 8: times right right?
Speaker 7: Apparently everyone dan.
Speaker 1: The song spoke to Sammy. He'd been struggling for years
Speaker 1: with drugs and alcohol and dance, dance, dance, please dance.
Speaker 4: I got the fear at that time I was going
Speaker 4: to die. I was going to wind up like mister Buchang,
Speaker 4: a drunk without recognition without anything, and the song helped
Speaker 4: motivate the three hundred and sixty mister.
Speaker 1: Jang Goose.
Speaker 3: When he was on stage, totally dark on stage, Why
Speaker 3: can't you wear in a bullet And all you'd get
Speaker 3: it is a spotlight and then the light would go
Speaker 3: out and you'd see him take two or three steps
Speaker 3: and he'd be in another circle of light, still continuing
Speaker 3: and tell them the story.
Speaker 11: And mister James until he danced, dance, dance. Nothing for
Speaker 11: me to that you would be, I mean, just overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: After Sammy was diagnosed with cancer, the doctors told him
Speaker 1: he needed surgery, but surgery would involve removing his voice box.
Speaker 1: As far as Sammy was concerned, that wasn't an option.
Speaker 13: So I'm just okay watching cartoons. I come down to
Speaker 13: get a soda from the living room.
Speaker 1: That's Manny Davis, Sammy's son with his third wife, Alchevi's.
Speaker 1: He remembers the procession of dignitaries coming through their home
Speaker 1: during Sammy's final months.
Speaker 13: They got Jesse Jackson in the living room, they got
Speaker 13: Franks and I just come over to say hello. You
Speaker 13: just have all these celebrities coming around all the time
Speaker 13: because they knew what was happening to Sammy, and I didn't.
Speaker 1: Here's Kim Novak again. When is the last time that
Speaker 1: you saw him?
Speaker 12: Well, when it was sick, you know, And I went
Speaker 12: to the hospital to see him.
Speaker 4: And what was that like?
Speaker 15: Oh?
Speaker 1: It was hot. I didn't know what. I don't know
Speaker 1: what to say.
Speaker 12: Really, he sat there and looked at each other, and.
Speaker 1: What did he say? In November nineteen eighty nine, his
Speaker 1: best friends, no surprise, they included some of the greatest
Speaker 1: living performers, rushed to organize a tribute show. A very
Speaker 1: gaunt Sammy sat in the front row. He was sixty
Speaker 1: three years old, making this his sixtieth anniversary in showbiz.
Speaker 15: Sixty years.
Speaker 10: And I knew that you would amount to something, but
Speaker 10: I didn't feel that you were gonna amount to everything.
Speaker 1: That's Frank Sinatra and I say, here's to you.
Speaker 8: Sam You know I love you. I can't say it
Speaker 8: any more than that. You're my brother.
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson is there too. As a young boy, Michael
Speaker 1: had stood in the wings studying Sammy. On this night,
Speaker 1: he sang a song specially written for the occasion.
Speaker 11: Before he came.
Speaker 9: You took the hurt, you took the shame.
Speaker 14: I am here because you were there.
Speaker 16: It was too lucky.
Speaker 14: I'm free as a performer to do what I want
Speaker 14: because you made it happen before me.
Speaker 1: There's now a dude.
Speaker 9: We all dude.
Speaker 1: And halfway through the show, the great tap dancer Gregory
Speaker 1: Hines comes on.
Speaker 15: It's hard to put into words.
Speaker 8: I feel so much love for you that I'm going
Speaker 8: to try to dance to that for you.
Speaker 1: Heinz dances and the crowd goes wild. Then he approaches Sammy,
Speaker 1: who isn't scheduled to perform. He looks so weak, but
Speaker 1: out of these pulls out Sammy's tap shoes. Sammy can't resist.
Speaker 1: He puts them on and gets up on stage.
Speaker 9: Greg Hines whispers to Sammy, says, what do you want
Speaker 9: to do? And Sammy says, greg just make it easy
Speaker 9: on yourself, and.
Speaker 1: They bring him the tap shoes.
Speaker 8: There.
Speaker 1: It's clearly planned it. You don't think it's fine.
Speaker 14: No, this beautiful little guet together and it tore the
Speaker 14: place apart.
Speaker 1: Well, it's impossible to tell that this was all pre arranged.
Speaker 1: But frankly, who cares same comes alive in that sequence.
Speaker 1: I swear when you watches, you forget that he's dying.
Speaker 14: That's the last step seventy of the Dons.
Speaker 19: He made a statement that my mouth year open. One
Speaker 19: night he felt that he wants to die on stage.
Speaker 19: He wanted to end his life right there on stage.
Speaker 19: How could you think that he's just that's my life and.
Speaker 1: You think he really meant it.
Speaker 19: I know he did.
Speaker 5: If there's a little less spring in the American step today,
Speaker 5: it is because Sammy Davis.
Speaker 8: Junior is gone, as you no doubt.
Speaker 10: I've heard.
Speaker 12: Sammy Davis Junior passed away yesterday after.
Speaker 1: A w I was born in a Harlem into a
Speaker 1: family of vaudeville performers, working from age three in a
Speaker 1: world where whites expected blacks to dance.
Speaker 5: Funeral services will be held tomorrow.
Speaker 15: Smile.
Speaker 5: Sammy Davis Union was sixty four to know their place
Speaker 5: in Hollywood. Flowers stand guard over Davis's star on the
Speaker 5: Walk of Fame in New York.
Speaker 1: His name, Sammy Davis Junior died at home in Billy
Speaker 1: Hills on May sixteenth, nineteen ninety.
Speaker 8: I would like to think of myself as the entertainer
Speaker 8: whatever it takes to make the people happy.
Speaker 1: If Hollywood ever does produce a biopic about Sammy Davis Junior.
Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine who could play him. I mean,
Speaker 1: who's around today who can do it all? Maybe it's
Speaker 1: because the world that created Sammy is gone.
Speaker 8: Vaudeville was. It was a fraternity of performers, and you
Speaker 8: saw the greatest performance in the world out there applying
Speaker 8: their trade. And you could learn just by standing in
Speaker 8: the wings and watching very special and I was lucky enough.
Speaker 15: To catch it.
Speaker 1: Sammy's was a time when the most exciting performers were
Speaker 1: proud to be known as more than just singers or
Speaker 1: comics or television personalities. They aspired to be remembered as entertainers.
Speaker 8: Every once in a while I run into Donald locottor
Speaker 8: Micky Rooney.
Speaker 15: We all have the same.
Speaker 8: Upbringing, and we talk about it. You remember the old days,
Speaker 8: You remember the sudden such an act, you remember the dact.
Speaker 8: And sometimes I look at young people today and I go,
Speaker 8: I wonder what they'll talk about. Who will they remember?
Speaker 8: Gone a build a mountain from a little the hill.
Speaker 1: We hope you'll join us as we raise the curtain
Speaker 1: on the next episode of Mobituaries. Our topic Neanderthals with
Speaker 1: special guest my friend Michael ian Black.
Speaker 9: If they had told me only how much Neanderthal I am,
Speaker 9: I would have paid one the amount for the test.
Speaker 1: I certainly hope you enjoyed this episode. For more great content,
Speaker 1: please visit mobituaries dot com or follow us on Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 1: or follow me on Twitter at Moroka. If you like Mobituaries,
Speaker 1: please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I promise it's free.
Speaker 1: This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Alison Byrne and
Speaker 1: Gideon Evans. Our team of producers also includes Megan Marcus,
Speaker 1: Kate mccauliffe, Megandetrie, Justin Hayter, and me Moroka. It was
Speaker 1: edited by Alison Burn and engineered by Bart Warshaw. Indispensable
Speaker 1: support from Hillary Dan Genius, Tenesski, Kira Wardlow, Zach Gilcrest,
Speaker 1: the team at CBS News Radio, and Richard Rarer. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Matt Anderson, Manny Davis, Michael Cantor, Neil Porter,
Speaker 1: and Alberto Robina. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart.
Speaker 1: Exclusive interview outtakes of Steve Lawrence plus Cheetah. There is
Speaker 1: amazing glass eye story. We're from American Masters. Sammy Davis
Speaker 1: Junior I've Got to Be Me, premiering Tuesday, February nineteenth
Speaker 1: at nine pm on PBS. Check local listings and as always,
Speaker 1: undying thanks to Rand Morrison and John carp without whom
Speaker 1: Mobituaries couldn't land.
Speaker 15: But you got to promise.
Speaker 1: We're CBS News.
Speaker 15: I don't care where you are. You I am not
Speaker 15: given the rights. Today I vis Presley Story.
Speaker 1: Hi, It's mo. If you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast, may
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Speaker 1: in the towel for good, forgotten fashions, defunct diagnoses, presidential
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