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December 11, 2024 50 mins

This week, we’re celebrating the birthday of the legendary Sammy Davis Jr. by revisiting a special Mobit. From the age of three Sammy Davis, Jr. did it all better than anyone else - singing, dancing, acting, even gun spinning. Mo talks to friends and family about what drove him to keep performing, even after the car crash that nearly killed him. Featuring Carol Burnett, Chita Rivera, Kim Novak, Dionne Warwick and more.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This episode is about a man who has been called
the greatest entertainer of the twentieth century. Jeez, look at that.
So naturally I wanted to talk to a car expert.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Yeah, that's a gorgeous vehicle, beautifully restored.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
I'm with my friend Matt Anderson, he's the curator of
transportation at the Henry Ford Museum, and we're in a
suburb of Detroit looking at a stunning, shiny red nineteen
fifty three Cadillac El Dorado with the car's owner, Neil Porter.
A lot of the parts of the car were handbuilt.
The wrap around windshield is cool. The curve in the glass,
this is.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
The very first of the wrap around windshields nineteen fifty three.

Speaker 4 (00:42):
Bottom.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Neil invited me to sit behind the wheel for you
to get in in. These seats are what leather? Leather, leather,
not leave. This is one heck of a car, the
height of luxury. And can I just point out that,
like power windows were a big deal in the late seventies,
but there's a prominent design flaw. Let's talk about the

(01:04):
steering wheel.

Speaker 5 (01:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
One of the things he's notice is that at the
center of the steering wheel the hub. There looks like
the nose cone on a missile.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Almost that's right jutting out from the center of the
steering wheel is a comical chrome protrusion, and straight at
the driver's face.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
It has no functional purpose. It's simply there to kind
of look cool.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
And cool certainly describes the man who was driving his
own El Dorado in the wee small hours of November nineteenth,
nineteen fifty four. Sammy Davis Junior was a twenty eight
year old, fast rising nightclub performer, singer, comic and boy
What a dancer heading from a show in Vegas to

(01:47):
a recording gig in Los Angeles when he collided with
another car in San Bernardino, California, and the left side
of his face collided with that steering wheel. The car
had no seat belts.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
This is what caused Sammy Davis Junior to lose his eye.
In his accident, he did not have time to react
it out of the way, so he went flying. His
head came and hit against that protrusion and went right
into his left eye socket and in fact knocked the
eye out of the socket.

Speaker 6 (02:18):
My father had been calling in the middle of the
night to go to Saint Bernardine's Hospital to take care
of a man who had a very serious car accident
and injured his eye and needed some help.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Nancy Gollup is the daughter of the late doctor Frederick Hall.
He was the surgeon who rushed to the hospital to
work on Sammy. Nancy was thirteen years old at the time.

Speaker 6 (02:40):
And so what my father basically did was to save
Sammy from losing the other eye. But the first question
that Sammy purportedly asking my dad was were his legs?

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Okay, wow, that's very telling, right, Yes, I thought that
was Poigners. Also, the traumatic event opens Sammy's autobiography, Yes
I Can. Here's a passage read by his co author
Bert Boyard. As I ran my hand over my cheek,
I felt my eye hanging there by a string. Frantically,
I tried to stuff it back in, like if I

(03:12):
could do that, it would stay there and nobody would know.
The ground went out from under me, and I was
on my knees. Don't let me go blind, Please, God,
don't take.

Speaker 5 (03:20):
It all away.

Speaker 7 (03:22):
Now.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
When Sammy says don't take it all away, he's not
praying for his life, at least not the way you
or I might be he's talking about his life in showbiz,
all the beautiful things, all the plans, the laughs. They
were lying out there, smashed, just like the car. Sammy
spent almost two weeks in the San Bernardino hospital recovering.

(03:45):
Later on, he'd famously be fitted for a glass eye,
and the outpouring of love was almost like a memorial service.

Speaker 6 (03:53):
There was a telegram from Marilyn Monroe which just thrilled Sammy.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Two pieces, Eddie Canter, Jackie Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald. They all
sent telegrams, even the waiters at the Hollywood night club Zeros,
where he'd become an overnight sensation just three years before.
The admiration of his friends and peers mattered, But in

(04:19):
a life of dramatic ups and downs, was the adulation
of audiences that would sustain him, in the words of
one friend, nourish him. And he gave those audiences everything
he had.

Speaker 8 (04:33):
I've got a lot of living to do.

Speaker 9 (04:36):
This is what he was trained to do. It was
in every atom of his DNA. It's what he did.
He did it well, he did it graciously, He did
it gratefully, and he wasn't trying to bludget anybody over
the head. And he wasn't just in his performance, it's
just what he did, it's who he was. I gotta
be me. Who's me, the world's greatest entertainer, Sammy Davis Junior.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries, this moment, Sammy Davis Junior.
May sixteenth, nineteen ninety death of the entertainer.

Speaker 10 (05:22):
I think that it's probably the best thing that's ever
happened to me.

Speaker 8 (05:24):
It's probably an odd thing to say.

Speaker 10 (05:26):
My friends rallied around me and convinced me that it
was still a lot to be done and that I
probably probably wouldn't matter. And as it turned out.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
That's Sammy Davis Junior talking about the crash that nearly
killed him. I'm not surprised by the outpouring of love
at that hospital. I've been a correspondent on CBS Sunday
Morning for over ten years now. I've interviewed probably over
one hundred celebrities, and there's one name that's popped up
more than any.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Other, Sammy Davis Junior.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown told me about his
friend's command over an audience.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
When he was on stage.

Speaker 11 (06:06):
You would be overwhelmed.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Kim Novak and Nancy Sinatra each talked about what a
joy Sammy was to be around.

Speaker 12 (06:15):
He was such a fun person. Sammy was part of
the family.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
LeVar Burton and Ben Vereen revered Sammy as a role model.

Speaker 13 (06:23):
It wasn't all the time that I saw people on
TV who look like me.

Speaker 10 (06:27):
If there was a black actor on TV in those days,
we'd watched Sammy would.

Speaker 5 (06:33):
Come on on The Ed Sullivan Show and.

Speaker 14 (06:35):
Do everything, and I was bleed everything.

Speaker 15 (06:38):
He did everything.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yes, when the subject turns to Sammy, the superlatives start
flying easily.

Speaker 5 (06:46):
The greatest.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
He was everything.

Speaker 16 (06:48):
He could play any instrument, he could sing, he could
dance like a maniac.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
That's Broadway legend, Cheeta Rivera. Is there anyone like Sammy
Davis Junior today.

Speaker 16 (07:00):
I have not ever seen anybody. I just never saw
anything like him in my life.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
It says it right there on his tombstone in Hollywood's
Forest Lawn, the entertainer. He did it all.

Speaker 10 (07:13):
Daddy was a new sensation, got himself a congregation, built
up quite an up ration down band.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
And he did singing, dancing, acting, comedy. He was at
least a quadruple threat quintuple if you count his gun
spinning routine or upplog. It helped that he started early.

Speaker 10 (07:32):
I won an amateur contest at the Stanley Theater in
Philadelphia when I was three and a half years old,
singing I'll be glad when You're dead, You rascal.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
You that seven year old Sammy singing the same song
in the movie musical short Rufus Jones for President. Sammy
Davis Junior was born in Harlem, Woman in nineteen twenty five.
His mother, Elvera Sanchez, was Latin and a dancer. His

(08:06):
father was a hoofer. His parents split up early, and
just when most kids start school, Sammy hit the road
the vaudeville circuit with his father, Sam Senior, and Will Maston,
a family friend he called his uncle. They were billed
as the Will Maston Trio. Here's Sammy reminiscing with his
father in a nineteen seventy three TV special.

Speaker 10 (08:28):
What Place We plainly who?

Speaker 3 (08:29):
We were playing?

Speaker 10 (08:30):
Minsky's Lynsky's, Yeah, Minskis Berlin's House, forty second Street, doing
jigleson right.

Speaker 14 (08:36):
And I used to add a cigarette, yeah, And.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
I was passing off as a midget.

Speaker 8 (08:43):
I don't want midget.

Speaker 15 (08:44):
With that then, but you were five.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
The trio was a success, but it was the diminutive
Sammy Davis Junior even as an adult. He was just
five foot five who stood out. Shirley McLain remembered Dean
Martin and Frank Sinatra sneaking her into ceroes to see
this dynamo who.

Speaker 17 (09:05):
Was dancing and singing and performing in the middle of
a trio.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
She told this story on stage to Sammy had a
tribute show in his honor in nineteen eighty nine, towards
the end of his life.

Speaker 17 (09:17):
The two people on either side of you were terrific.
But I could not believe my eyes and my ears
never had so much come out of something so small
for so long.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
She's right, there was a light that came out of
him that made it impossible not to look at him,
that made him more than the sum of his mad
individual talents. Let's talk about his impressions, which I loved,
his Bogey perfect.

Speaker 10 (09:46):
I'd like to say that it's really been a pleasure
entertaining all of you nice folks shot there.

Speaker 11 (09:51):
It's really been one of the great thrills of my time.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
His Cagney spot.

Speaker 10 (09:56):
On yes, wing that great h all in love, that's
in you, you dirty.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Rat, and now listened to his marvelously muttering Marlon Brando A.

Speaker 18 (10:10):
Baby kisses, I will personally deliver if you will only
sing this morning roof over day.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
His friend, the Oscar winning songwriter Leslie Brickis told me
that growing up, Sammy spent a lot of time in
movie theaters. It became sort of his school, since he
never spent a single day in an actual school.

Speaker 14 (10:35):
He used to speak along with the actors, imitating them,
you know, carry Grant or Humphy Bogat. He learned the accents.
He'd do the voice with them, and that's how he
perfected it. He couldn't let anything go by.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
There's this bit I've seen from an old Julie Andrews
Variety show. Julie Andrews Variety Show. Don't you just love
the sound of that? Anyway, On the show, Sammy and
the impressionist Rich Little engage in a friendly competition.

Speaker 16 (11:02):
Why don't we forget about impressions and just see?

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Oh Sammy sings as an acting cole.

Speaker 7 (11:08):
I've just found joy.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
I'm as happy.

Speaker 7 (11:13):
All you, blaye the bar.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Rich does liberacim parvised and Sammy does his Jerry Lewis
to Riches Dean Martin, You.

Speaker 19 (11:29):
And the way.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Wait a minute, you know I'm watching it, and rich
Little is technically better, but Sammy is just better. I'd
rather watch Sammy. So what's happening there?

Speaker 9 (11:46):
The genius of Sammy's when he imitated someone, He imitated
them from the inside out, and rich Little imitates someone
from the outside inn and Sammy gets to the essence
of that person.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
This is Larry Maslon. He's the writer and co producer
of the film American Masters. Sammy Davis Junior. I've got
to be me and he's super smart.

Speaker 9 (12:05):
Nobody imitated musicians and singers the way sam That's.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Really interesting because you've got to be able to have
the talent of channeling them and have their talent as well,
right right, right.

Speaker 8 (12:16):
Lo Wie, where You're.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Sammy's talent as a singer is often well undersung. It's
not so much that he had a technically beautiful voice,
but cliche alert. He knew how to make a song
his own. And in this episode, we're going to use
three of the songs he famously sang to tell his story.

Speaker 8 (12:46):
Whether I'm right.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Larry Maslon calls I've Got to Be Me the ultimate
Sammy song.

Speaker 9 (12:56):
I mean, it's everything, and that's who he was.

Speaker 8 (13:01):
I gotta be mean.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
And yet the song wasn't written for Sammy.

Speaker 9 (13:10):
Or Settle falls.

Speaker 14 (13:13):
As long as there's not much charms.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
But Steve Lawrence sang it first in a musical called
Golden Rainbow, about a single dad living in Vegas. The
musical also starred Steve's wife, Evie Gourmet incredible voice. Anyway,
Steve thought this song, written by Walter Marx might be

(13:38):
more powerful coming from his friend.

Speaker 20 (13:41):
The lyric content was like whether I'm right, whether I'm wrong,
whether I find a place in this world or never belong.
It interpreted this black man in this society at that time,
this man who is different than everybody else. I called him.
I said, sam You're going to do this your own
way and better. It meant more coming from him than

(14:03):
it did from me. He recorded it, bang, he went
to the top of the chots.

Speaker 8 (14:08):
We'll go it alone.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
So it must now being me for Sammy Davis Junior
was a complicated matter. For one thing, he was an
African American man who would later convert to Judaism.

Speaker 8 (14:24):
My mother is a Puerto Rican, so that means I'm
colored Jewish and Puerto Rican.

Speaker 10 (14:30):
When I move into a neighborhood, I wipe it out.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
That's a joke he told a lot when he was
performing with the rat Pack in the nineteen sixties. FYI
were not spending a lot of time with the rat
Pack in this episode. It's been done to death. Throughout
his life, Sammy mined his unique identity for humor and
to diffuse tension. Remember Warren Batty announcing the wrong Best

(14:56):
Picture Oscar winner in twenty seventeen. Sammy was ahead of
his time. Here he is in nineteen sixty four announcing
the Oscar for movie scoring.

Speaker 10 (15:07):
And the winner is John Addison for Tom Jones.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Except that it wasn't. Sammy handled his snack for me
without skipping a beat.

Speaker 8 (15:20):
They gave me the wrong envelope. Wait till the NAACP
hears about this.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
But earlier in his life his talent played a much
more vital role. It helped him survive.

Speaker 5 (15:34):
They painted you white, they poured urine in your beer,
things of that name.

Speaker 9 (15:39):
I mean, did these things really happen? Yes, they really happen.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
That's Sammy talking to our senior Hall. In nineteen forty three,
eighteen year old Sammy came off the road when he
was drafted into the army and into one of the
first integrated units. Until then, his father and uncle had
tried as best they could to shell him from racism.
Now there was no one to protect him.

Speaker 10 (16:04):
I was in a kind of an odd situation because
I'm going, hey, I don't know anything about.

Speaker 8 (16:09):
This outside world.

Speaker 10 (16:10):
I belonged to show business. Show business says, hey, I
got a bar, and let's put the show on here.
You know, all of those cliches I lived, you know,
and the other guys are going, you'll be doing that.
You gon'll get us in trouble. You know, I got
my nose broke three times and it hurt, and you
couldn't do anything about it. You had nobody to back

(16:31):
you up.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Trips to the infirmary were regular. That's how many fights
he was getting into. But when he got transferred to
an entertainment unit, things got better for him. He once
told his daughter, talent was my only weapon.

Speaker 10 (16:47):
With a white situation of a black situation, you do
it with humor. I tried to do it with entertaining,
to try to get some doors open, because all of
them were closed in those days, all of them were closed.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
Well, sammy them open. Remember those impressions he did. They
weren't just funny, they were bold. Back in the late forties,
black performers didn't do impressions of white performers in front
of white audiences, that is until Sammy did.

Speaker 10 (17:15):
My dad Will said, big interest, one of these days
you keep doing white.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
People, you know.

Speaker 10 (17:21):
And I went on and did it now in the
Strand Theater. The first time I went, you dirty rat,
a guy in the audience said, my god, he sounds
just like him. What he was really saying, I'm looking
at a black man for the first time, do a
white man. Well, it was so good that we went
from opening act to closing.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Now. Imitating white performers was one thing. Dating a white
woman was another. His relationship with screen siren Kim Novak
was considered scandalous. In nineteen fifty seven, I talked to
Kim recently on her horse farm in Oregon. That was
its explosive back then.

Speaker 12 (18:01):
At that time, it was it certainly was so ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
And what was that like for you?

Speaker 12 (18:07):
At that time, Harry Conbe threatened to take his other
eye out.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
Harry Khane was the much feared head of Columbia Pictures,
and he really did. Oh, of course.

Speaker 12 (18:18):
However, we saw each other, but I was never in love.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Certainly it was Sammy. Do you think that he was
infatuated with you? Oh he was.

Speaker 12 (18:28):
He had a good crush on a nice crush. I
mean we had such fun times together, we really did.
But it certainly not worth losing an eye over.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
I'm just trying to square this sort of drive to
make an audience happy and the public happy, and then
doing these things that are really ballsy.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Well, I'm not sure he viewed them as ballsy.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
That's Sammy's friend, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
I'm sure he viewed them as being just Davis junior.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
And in nineteen seventy two, being Sammy Davis Junior meant
embracing President Richard Nixon during his reelection campaign. Quite literally,
Sammy hugged Nixon, and let's just say much of the
public did not hug back.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
You've had a lot of criticism from some black groups,
right because I bothered you.

Speaker 7 (19:21):
Yes, of course.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Do you think that he was shocked at the reaction
he got when he embraced Nixon.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yes, I think that shocked him.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
But Willie Brown says, Sammy knew exactly what he was doing.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
Many African Americans in this country were Republicans. Sammy was
conscious of that because some of them were his friends.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
And contrary to most tellings of this story, Brown says,
it wasn't primarily African American fans who were outraged.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
They were basically white liberals who could not understand how
such as symbolic black could be embracing somebody like Richard Nixon.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
So most of the disapproval you think came from white liberals.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
I know it came from white liberals. Black people didn't
give a shit about whether or not he embracings.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, Sammy still felt the need later that year to
address a less than warm audience at Jesse Jackson's Push Conference,
a gathering of social justice activists.

Speaker 10 (20:24):
Man, disagree if you will with my politics.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
It was a dramatic appearance.

Speaker 10 (20:31):
But I will not allow anyone to take away the fact.

Speaker 8 (20:38):
That I am black.

Speaker 9 (20:39):
It's moving because he's honest with his audience.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
That's Larry Maslon again.

Speaker 9 (20:44):
Basically, he's saying, whatever you think of me and Richard Dixon.
You know I'm a black man. You know what I've
been through in the last forty years.

Speaker 8 (20:50):
I'm right, ah, rather wrong.

Speaker 9 (20:57):
If you don't want to take me, fine, but I'm
going to put me out there. I gotta be me.
What more of a statement can you have than that?

Speaker 8 (21:05):
I gotta be me, gotta be me?

Speaker 4 (21:14):
What else can I be?

Speaker 21 (21:16):
It seems like showbiz for him was kind of like
a rocket ship that took him on a voyage and
helped him sort of overcome so many obstacles.

Speaker 9 (21:28):
His talent is a rocket ship, but gravity was being
black in America, and that's what brought him back to
Earth time and time again. This is his own words.
I want to be so good that no one will
notice I'm black. That's not really possible, is it?

Speaker 5 (21:43):
What kind no.

Speaker 8 (21:46):
Lives are they?

Speaker 15 (21:48):
Do?

Speaker 1 (21:49):
You have a favorite Sammy song?

Speaker 7 (21:51):
That whispered Empty were Birds?

Speaker 1 (22:01):
What kind of fool am I? That's Dion Warwick's favorite
Sammy song. It's about someone unable to find lasting love.

Speaker 19 (22:12):
That's the story he tells from the very first note.
I mean, you cannot but believe every single word he's
giving you. He floored me with that.

Speaker 14 (22:27):
What time because he was forever on tour and on
the road. He never could sustain the relationship because he
was never there for more than two weeks.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Leslie Brickis wrote what kind of fool Am I? With
Anthony Newley for the musical Stop the World? I Want
to Get Off? But Sammy made it famous when he
sings it. There's a great performance in nineteen sixty two
on Andy Williams Show, and it's just so plaintive, almost anguished.

Speaker 4 (22:56):
What.

Speaker 14 (23:00):
Am well? He wasn't good act to too. But it
also may have been a little bit of autobiography in there.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
You know, why can I cast away.

Speaker 14 (23:14):
This mask of play.

Speaker 10 (23:18):
And live my life? How do you make it thresh?
Whatever I walk on that stage with that night, I
try to translate into that rendition of the song, and
it's a true, honest feeling.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
I Sammy's romantic history was tumultuous. After Kim Novak. There
was a short marriage to the African American actress Lay White,
and then he married the white Swedish model and actress

(24:00):
My brit That wedding was such a scandal he got
disinvited from the JFK inaugural. Yes, that might have had
something to do with his hugging Nixon. Later on, he
and my had two kids before splitting up.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
My wife left me.

Speaker 5 (24:15):
You know, I took the kids.

Speaker 10 (24:17):
Nothing was more important than being a star.

Speaker 8 (24:19):
So I've lost them.

Speaker 10 (24:21):
I lost every ounce of what was valuable.

Speaker 8 (24:25):
I'd made the wrong choices.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Sammy was married three times in all, and dated plenty
in between. Cheeta Rivera met Sammy when they worked together
on the musical Mister Wonderful.

Speaker 16 (24:36):
And I was a snob when they asked me to
do it. I went, he's from nightclubs. I mean, what's
he going to do on a stage?

Speaker 1 (24:44):
You know?

Speaker 16 (24:45):
And boy did I did? I eat my words?

Speaker 1 (24:49):
And you were lovers? You were boyfriends and friend and
what was that like? It was fabulous.

Speaker 16 (24:53):
He's as talented in that area as he was as
he was otherwise.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
But things got he did on one occasion.

Speaker 16 (25:01):
I know this doesn't sound too crude, but we must
have had some words which I don't remember ever having
with him, but I remember he took his.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Eye out, that would be his glass eye.

Speaker 16 (25:16):
The words that are in my head are is this
what you want now? That sounds like an hour interview
in itself. I know how dramatic that sounds, but I
do remember that, and I'm not even sure that we
were alone.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Okay, sidebar. I was obsessed with glass eyes growing up.
A relative of mine actually had one, or maybe his
was rubber, I can't remember. It was a fake eye anyway.
Recently I spoke with the fabulous Sandy Duncan. She performed
with Sammy but never dated him, and she talked about
the rumors that she had a glass eye.

Speaker 22 (25:54):
Contrary to urban myth, I do not have a glass eye,
so that'll put this to rest.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
But she did lose sight in one eye, and Sammy
reached out to her.

Speaker 22 (26:04):
She was very concerned about my having lost my vision
through a brain tumor when I was twenty four, and
he made contact immediately.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Do you think that there is something in the recovery
for him and for you that, actually, I don't know,
made you even better as an entertainer.

Speaker 22 (26:24):
I don't know if any better as an entertainer, but
I certainly developed a discipline that nothing stops you. I've
never missed a show in my life. I just didn't
let it bother me. I had to get up and
get out and do it.

Speaker 6 (26:39):
So he was very helpful.

Speaker 10 (26:44):
What kind of fool am I?

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Well, of course Sammy did fall in love and stay
in love with his audience. I know it's a cliche.
Well here comes another one. He's just so at home
on stage. If you look at videos of him performing
on variety shows, he does this thing where he'll end
a big number and then he just sort of doubles

(27:14):
over with laughter. He's had that much fun, almost like
a kid showing off to his friends. But make no mistake,
it might all look and sound off the couff. He
knows exactly what he's doing with your.

Speaker 8 (27:34):
Kind of mission.

Speaker 10 (27:35):
May I simply stated how very wonderful and thrilled and.

Speaker 9 (27:39):
Scared I am.

Speaker 19 (27:40):
You had to see this man's own a stage and
an audience. He actually owned you. He put you into him.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Dion Warwick wasn't just his friend. She studied him. Well,
that is a really interesting word when you say he
owned the audience. What does that mean?

Speaker 19 (28:02):
When he worked on that stage, he knew that we
were in the palm of his hand.

Speaker 8 (28:10):
People have to trust you.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
For Sammy, this relationship with the audience was deeply personal.

Speaker 8 (28:16):
People don't trust you. You ain't got to shut it
and They've invested years in me, so I'm part of
the family as long as I don't let them down.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Do you think that he was pretty much always happy
on stage?

Speaker 19 (28:31):
Yeah, that was just domain.

Speaker 14 (28:34):
We heard the bereze through the Trees.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Here's Leslie Brickis again.

Speaker 14 (28:44):
Nineteen seventy seven New Year's Eve and he and Eliza
Manelli did it at midnight New Year's Eve act, which
went on for three hours. We went up to Sammy's
Sweet afterwards and he said, let's do it all again,
and they did the whole show again for just four
people and it was another three hours.

Speaker 4 (29:06):
What is that?

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Was that a need to perform or was that just pure.

Speaker 14 (29:10):
Joy or was it joy more than anything?

Speaker 7 (29:13):
Joy joy?

Speaker 14 (29:15):
He was so high on the audience reaction that the
only way he could come down was to perform more.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
I want to hear it one moon Dion Warwick told
me that he described applause as nourishment.

Speaker 14 (29:31):
Yes, that was that. That was breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Wo You know, people romanticize the entertainer who just gives one,
but then the cliche is, you know, they give, they give,

(29:55):
they give, but there was nothing left for themselves, and
you know.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
But no, no, no, no no no, he gay, but
he used. He enjoyed every penny that he ever earned.
Sammy Davis Junior enjoyed it period.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
That's Willie Brown again. Now it turns out that what
kind of fool am I might also describe Sammy Davis
Junior's relationship with money.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
My most expensive pocket watch with the chain came from
Sammy Davis change.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
And that's you think it just made him feel good
to be that generous.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
I think it was that way. I think he wanted
to share his wealth.

Speaker 15 (30:37):
Sammy Davis was one of the worst people I ever
saw him any kind of money. He had no idea
what money was and what it was worth.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
That's Sammy's former agent Larry Auerback. He told me a
lot of things, including an amazing story about Elvis that
I'm not allowed to repeat.

Speaker 15 (30:54):
It my whole life story for his cut on anything
You're doing. It's a podcast that's even worth Okay.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
One thing he made incredibly clear Sammy was bad with money.

Speaker 15 (31:06):
I was going to London on vacation. Next thing I know,
he put a lovely leather case and then it was
a night time chamer, which was the highlight of the day,
and I said, well, am I going to do it this?
I literally felt that he had no idea what he
was spending or it was what it meant.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Almost everyone I talked to had a story about Sammy
giving them a ridiculously expensive present, and.

Speaker 14 (31:34):
I already had a go Watch. I didn't need a
go watch. He had this impulse to spend money.

Speaker 9 (31:39):
Are you bad with money?

Speaker 1 (31:41):
No?

Speaker 8 (31:42):
I think I'm pretty good with it.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Sammy himself talked about his spending habits with Dick Cabot.

Speaker 10 (31:48):
And I'm entitled to blow maybe five ten thousand dollars
out of the year.

Speaker 7 (31:53):
Just blow it.

Speaker 8 (31:54):
Yeah, where are you going to do that?

Speaker 9 (31:56):
Next day? When he died, he owed more money to
the Irs than any single individual in history up to
that point.

Speaker 14 (32:06):
He had to impress people on stage, on off. You know,
he'd wear the most outrageous clothing. He had six rings
on his hand. You saw the pictures.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Sure, some people are going to hear that and think
was he compensating for something?

Speaker 14 (32:22):
Yes? I think he was compensating for what he wasn't
given at the beginning, that he had no start in life,
and it was largely show he was showing off.

Speaker 15 (32:33):
I think he was sheltered by his uncle and his father.
He was now had some freedom, and he saw an
opportunity to give gifts. Why not?

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Okay, that's interesting though, giving extravagant gifts. I mean, what
do you think he wanted from that? Nothing? I grew
up with the Sammy of the nineteen seventies. Artistically, this
wasn't a high point for him, But what.

Speaker 15 (33:08):
Did I know?

Speaker 14 (33:10):
Oh, fast, fast fast.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
I loved hearing him sing commercial jingles.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
They can laugh, but put an extra wing on the house.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
This was the Sammie of Talk to the Animals, my
favorite single on my Sammy Greatest Hits album. I still
dance around my apartment to.

Speaker 5 (33:28):
It with a cheetah.

Speaker 10 (33:30):
What an it would be.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
And of course candy Man. Now, at first Sammy didn't
like Handy Man. It was originally from the movie Willy
Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but he liked that it
went to number one. He's only number one. Let's just
say Sammy knew how to turn lemons into groovy lemon pie, make.

Speaker 10 (33:56):
A groovy lemon pie.

Speaker 4 (33:58):
The candy Man.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
He does something I think is very brave, which he
never makes fun of the material. It's total commitment. I
see that he did a cover of Chico and the
Man of the cheeko on the Man These song, And
that's one of the things where you go, oh God,
and then you start listening. It's really good.

Speaker 9 (34:18):
Yeah, it's really good.

Speaker 8 (34:19):
Chico, it's good.

Speaker 15 (34:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (34:25):
He did Maud too.

Speaker 9 (34:26):
He covered the themes on to mad I.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Have to listen to that. Lady Could Diver was a
freedom ride up.

Speaker 14 (34:30):
Yeah, Lady godive Or was a freedom right up.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
She didn't care of the whole world.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Look, I check any cynicism at the door.

Speaker 9 (34:40):
When he starts performing, well, you check your cynicism because
you know immediately he's bearing his soul to you. It's
not an act. He's not too cool for school, right.
Sinatra had that right, a little bit of a distance,
there's no distance there.

Speaker 7 (34:55):
I don't think.

Speaker 9 (34:56):
Sammy had an ounce of irony in him, that kind
of detached look at me irony. He was like all
in as a performer. And maybe the problem is not
Sammy's enthusiasm, but certain generations skittishness about enthusiasm.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
Right, fear that will make them look uncool. Right. And
Dion Warwick says he was as enthusiastic and playful off
stage as on, and.

Speaker 19 (35:22):
I started having in my rider a misspact Man.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
Machine, Miss pac Man, which is much better than pac
Man by the way.

Speaker 19 (35:30):
Yeah, it was the cocktail table type, the.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
One the flat one, so that right, you can sit
across from each other.

Speaker 7 (35:37):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Turns out Dion Warwick and Sammy Davis Junior both loved
playing Miss pac Man and I beat him up. That
is fantastic.

Speaker 19 (35:52):
He would get up and stop around how to be.

Speaker 7 (35:57):
Very easily.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
But the Sammy of the seventies also had edge. When
he kissed Archie Bunker on the cheek on all in
the family, it made headlines. What I hadn't seen until
recently was his appearance from nineteen seventy five on the
Carol Burnett Show. And this is a sketch where you
play a woman eleanor Simpson.

Speaker 4 (36:18):
You let's not talk.

Speaker 7 (36:20):
About poor little o me. That's right, that's the.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
One Carol told me all about it on the phone.

Speaker 7 (36:26):
Well, she's was a passive, aggressive racist.

Speaker 10 (36:30):
Johnny, your diction.

Speaker 4 (36:32):
It was just perfect.

Speaker 7 (36:34):
Sammy plays this entertainer, so she was in the audience.
Now he's this big star and she's all excited but
still has that underlying prejudice.

Speaker 18 (36:47):
And I tell you you just tossed off those polysyllables
like you were born to them.

Speaker 7 (36:53):
They grew up together because his mother was their maid.

Speaker 9 (36:58):
I know she just couldn't wait to come back in
and work for you again.

Speaker 7 (37:03):
She was talking about when they were kids, and she said, Oh,
and we used to play hide and go seek. Oh
that was such fun. But it wasn't good in the dark.

Speaker 8 (37:11):
Honey.

Speaker 7 (37:12):
You could just be standing right in front of me
and I never would have known it.

Speaker 10 (37:17):
Lash you smile.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Sammy doesn't actually talk much during the scene. He doesn't
really need to. His look says it all. Mostly he's
just biting his tongue, struggling to be gracious until he's
finally hot enough. O Gee.

Speaker 7 (37:33):
But Sammy loved that sketch.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
And do you think he loved it because he could
relate to it somehow?

Speaker 7 (37:39):
Perhaps you remember all.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
The fun we used to have when we was kids.

Speaker 7 (37:45):
Do you remember that?

Speaker 8 (37:47):
I am beginning to remember a lot of things.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Hey, let me ask you. There's gotta be a reason
you remember that sketch in such detail.

Speaker 7 (37:56):
It was because there were no jokes in there. It
was all character.

Speaker 8 (38:01):
You know, something Melani. I think you're right.

Speaker 7 (38:05):
I am a little tight, oh that there was an
underlying truth.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
Some people would say that the one great hit he
had was keny Man, But mister bo Jingles is this
definition of Sammy Davis.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
That's Willie Brown. I have to confess I always thought
mister Bojangles, our third SAMI song was about Bill Bojangles Robinson,
the great African American tap dancer who died penniless in
nineteen forty nine. In fact, mister Bojangles, and you may
have known, this was originally a country music song. The

(38:54):
writer Jerry Jeff Walker says it's about a guy he
met in a New Orleans prison, and Walker never really
thought the song would go anywhere.

Speaker 8 (39:03):
When I got to Atlantic Records, they said, who held
would want a four and a half minute song about
a old drunk and a dead dog and six eight
times right right?

Speaker 7 (39:12):
Apparently everyone dan.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
The song spoke to Sammy. He'd been struggling for years
with drugs and alcohol and dance, dance, dance, please dance.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
I got the fear at that time I was going
to die. I was going to wind up like mister Buchang,
a drunk without recognition without anything, and the song helped
motivate the three hundred and sixty mister.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Jang Goose.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
When he was on stage, totally dark on stage, Why
can't you wear in a bullet And all you'd get
it is a spotlight and then the light would go
out and you'd see him take two or three steps
and he'd be in another circle of light, still continuing

(40:11):
and tell them the story.

Speaker 11 (40:13):
And mister James until he danced, dance, dance. Nothing for
me to that you would be, I mean, just overwhelmed.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
After Sammy was diagnosed with cancer, the doctors told him
he needed surgery, but surgery would involve removing his voice box.
As far as Sammy was concerned, that wasn't an option.

Speaker 13 (40:49):
So I'm just okay watching cartoons. I come down to
get a soda from the living room.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
That's Manny Davis, Sammy's son with his third wife, Alchevi's.
He remembers the procession of dignitaries coming through their home
during Sammy's final months.

Speaker 13 (41:04):
They got Jesse Jackson in the living room, they got
Franks and I just come over to say hello. You
just have all these celebrities coming around all the time
because they knew what was happening to Sammy, and I didn't.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Here's Kim Novak again. When is the last time that
you saw him?

Speaker 12 (41:20):
Well, when it was sick, you know, And I went
to the hospital to see him.

Speaker 4 (41:27):
And what was that like?

Speaker 15 (41:31):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (41:31):
It was hot. I didn't know what. I don't know
what to say.

Speaker 12 (41:34):
Really, he sat there and looked at each other, and.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
What did he say? In November nineteen eighty nine, his
best friends, no surprise, they included some of the greatest
living performers, rushed to organize a tribute show. A very
gaunt Sammy sat in the front row. He was sixty
three years old, making this his sixtieth anniversary in showbiz.

Speaker 15 (42:05):
Sixty years.

Speaker 10 (42:07):
And I knew that you would amount to something, but
I didn't feel that you were gonna amount to everything.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
That's Frank Sinatra and I say, here's to you.

Speaker 8 (42:17):
Sam You know I love you. I can't say it
any more than that. You're my brother.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Michael Jackson is there too. As a young boy, Michael
had stood in the wings studying Sammy. On this night,
he sang a song specially written for the occasion.

Speaker 11 (42:38):
Before he came.

Speaker 9 (42:42):
You took the hurt, you took the shame.

Speaker 14 (42:48):
I am here because you were there.

Speaker 16 (42:51):
It was too lucky.

Speaker 14 (42:53):
I'm free as a performer to do what I want
because you made it happen before me.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
There's now a dude.

Speaker 9 (43:02):
We all dude.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
And halfway through the show, the great tap dancer Gregory
Hines comes on.

Speaker 15 (43:12):
It's hard to put into words.

Speaker 8 (43:14):
I feel so much love for you that I'm going
to try to dance to that for you.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
Heinz dances and the crowd goes wild. Then he approaches Sammy,
who isn't scheduled to perform. He looks so weak, but
out of these pulls out Sammy's tap shoes. Sammy can't resist.

(43:44):
He puts them on and gets up on stage.

Speaker 9 (43:50):
Greg Hines whispers to Sammy, says, what do you want
to do? And Sammy says, greg just make it easy
on yourself, and.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
They bring him the tap shoes.

Speaker 8 (44:10):
There.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
It's clearly planned it. You don't think it's fine.

Speaker 14 (44:14):
No, this beautiful little guet together and it tore the
place apart.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Well, it's impossible to tell that this was all pre arranged.
But frankly, who cares same comes alive in that sequence.
I swear when you watches, you forget that he's dying.

Speaker 14 (44:46):
That's the last step seventy of the Dons.

Speaker 19 (45:00):
He made a statement that my mouth year open. One
night he felt that he wants to die on stage.
He wanted to end his life right there on stage.
How could you think that he's just that's my life and.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
You think he really meant it.

Speaker 19 (45:18):
I know he did.

Speaker 5 (45:30):
If there's a little less spring in the American step today,
it is because Sammy Davis.

Speaker 8 (45:34):
Junior is gone, as you no doubt.

Speaker 10 (45:35):
I've heard.

Speaker 12 (45:36):
Sammy Davis Junior passed away yesterday after.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
A w I was born in a Harlem into a
family of vaudeville performers, working from age three in a
world where whites expected blacks to dance.

Speaker 5 (45:45):
Funeral services will be held tomorrow.

Speaker 15 (45:47):
Smile.

Speaker 5 (45:48):
Sammy Davis Union was sixty four to know their place
in Hollywood. Flowers stand guard over Davis's star on the
Walk of Fame in New York.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
His name, Sammy Davis Junior died at home in Billy
Hills on May sixteenth, nineteen ninety.

Speaker 8 (46:06):
I would like to think of myself as the entertainer
whatever it takes to make the people happy.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
If Hollywood ever does produce a biopic about Sammy Davis Junior.
It's hard to imagine who could play him. I mean,
who's around today who can do it all? Maybe it's
because the world that created Sammy is gone.

Speaker 8 (46:30):
Vaudeville was. It was a fraternity of performers, and you
saw the greatest performance in the world out there applying
their trade. And you could learn just by standing in
the wings and watching very special and I was lucky enough.

Speaker 15 (46:47):
To catch it.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Sammy's was a time when the most exciting performers were
proud to be known as more than just singers or
comics or television personalities. They aspired to be remembered as entertainers.

Speaker 8 (47:05):
Every once in a while I run into Donald locottor
Micky Rooney.

Speaker 15 (47:11):
We all have the same.

Speaker 8 (47:13):
Upbringing, and we talk about it. You remember the old days,
You remember the sudden such an act, you remember the dact.
And sometimes I look at young people today and I go,
I wonder what they'll talk about. Who will they remember?

(47:38):
Gone a build a mountain from a little the hill.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
We hope you'll join us as we raise the curtain
on the next episode of Mobituaries. Our topic Neanderthals with
special guest my friend Michael ian Black.

Speaker 9 (47:56):
If they had told me only how much Neanderthal I am,
I would have paid one the amount for the test.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
I certainly hope you enjoyed this episode. For more great content,
please visit mobituaries dot com or follow us on Facebook, Instagram,
or follow me on Twitter at Moroka. If you like Mobituaries,
please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I promise it's free.
This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Alison Byrne and

(48:23):
Gideon Evans. Our team of producers also includes Megan Marcus,
Kate mccauliffe, Megandetrie, Justin Hayter, and me Moroka. It was
edited by Alison Burn and engineered by Bart Warshaw. Indispensable
support from Hillary Dan Genius, Tenesski, Kira Wardlow, Zach Gilcrest,
the team at CBS News Radio, and Richard Rarer. Special

(48:47):
thanks to Matt Anderson, Manny Davis, Michael Cantor, Neil Porter,
and Alberto Robina. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart.
Exclusive interview outtakes of Steve Lawrence plus Cheetah. There is
amazing glass eye story. We're from American Masters. Sammy Davis
Junior I've Got to Be Me, premiering Tuesday, February nineteenth

(49:08):
at nine pm on PBS. Check local listings and as always,
undying thanks to Rand Morrison and John carp without whom
Mobituaries couldn't land.

Speaker 15 (49:19):
But you got to promise.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
We're CBS News.

Speaker 15 (49:22):
I don't care where you are. You I am not
given the rights. Today I vis Presley Story.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Hi, It's mo. If you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast, may
I invite you to check out Mobituaries the book. It's
chalk full of stories not in the podcast. Celebrities who
put their butts on the line, sports teams that threw
in the towel for good, forgotten fashions, defunct diagnoses, presidential

(49:49):
candidacies that cratered whole countries that went to put and dragons, Yes, dragons,
you see. People used to believe the dragons were real
until just get the book. You can order Mobituaries the
Book from any online bookseller, or stop by your local
bookstore and look for me when I come to your city.
Tour information and lots more at mobituaries dot com
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Host

Mo Rocca

Mo Rocca

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