February 27, 2020 • 56 mins
Today Josh and Chuck sit down and detail the complicated life of the late, great Sammy Davis Jr.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone in podcast land. If you have ever wanted
to see us on stage telling jokes and slinging facts,
and you live out west, you can come see us
in Portland, Oregon or Vancouver, Canada. Yep, We'll be at
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(00:22):
then the best thing you can do right now is
to go do s y s K live dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's
(00:42):
guest producer Dylan sitting in again like a great guy. Um,
like a cool cat baby. I thought you were doing
evil German doctor for a second and then I figured
it out. No man, Wait, I haven't said it yet.
And this is stuff you should know. Okay, that was
a good one that no man was wonderful. I love
how Sammy Davis Jr. Always said cat and baby. It
(01:07):
was just he was such a cool dude. And okay,
do Sammy Davis Jr. Saying we have ways of making
you talk. What sounds German about any of that? I
just do it, please please, we have ways of making
you talk. Man. It was pretty great and that's a
little soft shoe. It's great stuff. So you know, Billy
(01:31):
Crystal Uh used to do Sammy Davis Jr. Uh way
back in the eighties when black face was super cool
to do and not controversial. Did he do black face
Sammy Davis Jr. Yes, dude, he did black face Sammy
Davis Jr. Eight years ago at the Oscars. What. Yes,
(01:52):
you don't remember that? No, he hoped the last it's
the last time he hosted the Oscars eight In two
thousand twelve, he they did, you know, a remote intro
thing where he was doing different things. In the last
bit was him and black face again and people were
like and then you know, this was in you know,
two thousand twelves. So that was Twitter and that was
Facebook and this social media and people were like, that
(02:15):
wasn't cool in the eighties. And I can't believe he's
doing that now for real. Uh. Sammy Davis Jr's daughter
came out and said, you know what, if there's one
thing I know is that my dad is looking down
and laughing and smiling at Billy Crystal doing this. He
was he was roasted pretty heavily for it, rightfully so,
and he is he hasn't been around a lot, but
(02:35):
he wasn't around a lot before then. He you know,
do you think like that? Did it? Like that was
the demise kid? I guess helped. I was, Yeah, I
haven't seen him in a while either. Man, How did
somebody not step back and be like, okay, wait, we're
about to do black face? I know, Like, how did
no one on the production crew of the Oscar say
not a good idea? I don't know. Well he did it? So, Um,
(03:01):
I came across something that I thought was pretty interesting.
I saw interview with David Letterman and Sammy Davis Jr.
Says in this interview he did black face. He was
a little kid. Apparently his skin was lighter when he
was a kid, and they wanted him because he used
(03:22):
to tour with his uncle and his dad as as
we'll see um, and to get around labor laws, they
would pass him off as a midget. And to do
that there was right, yes, thank you. They gave him
um a candy cigar and put him in black face
and and told anyone who would listen that he was
(03:42):
a little person. That's although again they didn't say a
little person. Boy. This is a really controversial episode right
out of the gate. Well, there's a lot of sort
of I mean, he was a complicated guy who was uh,
you know, his father was black, his mother was Puerto
Rican Um. He eventually Lee would endorse to presidents both
Kennedy and Nixon. He served in the army. He was
(04:06):
a rat packer. He uh was uh shunned by racist
and also shunned sometimes within his own black community. Yeah,
like a little pinball getting bounced around and little is right.
He was also a little guy who always I think
had a complex about his height, about his looks. Um.
(04:26):
He had this weird sort of underbyte uh jaw that
would jut out to one side when he talked. Just
a really fascinating guy that was super super talented and
had his his little tiny fingers and a lot of
pies from you know, singing and dancing and performing live
(04:48):
and in movies on on TV, and uh, just really
really fascinating guy. Yeah, when you look back at the
rat pack he was the one that brought the actual
talent to the rat Pack, like Sinatra could say, he
Martine and the rat back was talented right right, But
he was multi talented, like dancing, doing impressions. He he
(05:10):
had like a little gun slinger routie. Did you see
any of that? I did? It's amazing. Um. I watched
the PBS documentary for their series American Masters on him
and it was like an hour almost two hours long,
and um, it was really in depth and really good.
But they had some amazing footage of him just doing
(05:30):
all sorts of different stuff. So I guess let me
revise that, Yes, the rat Pack was talented. Sammy Davis Jr.
Was was more talented than all of them put together. Right, Okay,
so he made Uh did you see any of that
documentary of the U s O Tour? Uh there were
(05:52):
a few clips in there. Yeh yeah. So if you
want to see a difference, So if you think Sammy
Davis Jr. Is as just the candy man or Mr
bo Jangles babe man, watching him do Mr Bojangles how
he felt about that song, it's very heartbreaking, it is, um.
But if you see this documentary in two he did
(06:12):
a USO tour of Vietnam where he performed at drug
rehab camps and some other you know, forward bases. If
you look at this man, this is like a swinging
seventies kind of rock and roll as it gets really
really cool stuff. Uh, he was a a bad a performer.
(06:33):
He was at places like some of them were kind
of full on productions where they were capable of pulling
that off. Other times there's this great footage of him
where they could had nothing but a microphone and he's
just like, all right, give me the mic and I
will like basically kind of do my own beat boxy
rhythm section and sing and dance. And the soldiers are
(06:53):
just loving it. Man, they're eating it up. Yeah, And
this is two I believe in. Like I mean like
his like he was a world famous star by then,
but also he was an older dude, you know, like
he'd he'd really had his heyday in the late fifties
and throughout the sixties, and this is seventy two and
he's out there in Vietnam belting out motown hits and
(07:16):
drumming on the mic stand. So yeah, I didn't see
all of it, but yeah, you can tell like it
was pretty cool. Yeah, he's he's even more of a
talented performer than people realize, because you know, you do
think of him was doing like standards and show tunes
and stuff like that, and he did mostly do those things,
but he was talented in all sorts of different ways.
So Um the Grabster helped us out with this one.
(07:38):
And he said that there were a few defining sort
of things about Sammy Davis Jr's life that inform who
he was. One was that he um came from poverty.
He performed with his like he said, his uncle, which
was not really uncle, but his dad, and his uncle
Will Masston as the was the mast and true Wilmass
(08:01):
in trio, right, And they came from nothing, and he
did not have any money. And he talked later in
life about the thrill of leaving a waitress a hundred
dollar tip and walking around with a thousand dollars in
your pocket. He's later on in life, Yeah, he's like,
that was a year's salary, and he was like, no
(08:21):
one understands that unless you've been at the bottom, right,
And he was definitely at the bottom. And they he
and his father and his uncle will work their way up, um,
you know, all through they started all throughout the Depression
on the Chitland circuit doing vaudeville. UM. And he didn't
go to school once. Because this is really important to understand.
(08:43):
He spent his entire life in show business and the
earliest years constantly on the road with his uncle and
his dad. Yeah, so that's the second point. Never went
to school at all. Uh, did not learn to read
and right until he was in the army UM, and
always apparently had trouble writing, and he always looked at
(09:06):
it as he was always you know, sort of ashamed
of it. He was proud of who he became, but
always was ashamed of his lack of formal schooling. And
he called his um what he had was the facade
of intelligence, which Ed rightfully points out as just bunk,
because there are many kinds of intelligence. He was a
very intelligent guy, he just didn't have formal schooling. UM.
(09:28):
But he was very self conscious of this and about
representing the black community. Uh. Still like if he ever
mispronounced something because he didn't know, it would make him
feel really bad because he thought that that represented black
people as a whole. So that's number two. Uh, And
the third thing is that early on his family, his
(09:49):
dad and his uncle really kind of um shielded him
from racial prejudice. He certainly encountered it on the Chipland circuit,
but he didn't really get the full deal until he
went into the army. That was a big shock to him,
right he UM. I think this kind of explains that
he approached racism differently than some of his contemporaries, especially
(10:12):
when he got to the army and was confronted with
the full brunt of it. Um, and that that kind
of informed how he viewed race and racial discrimination in
the the dynamic between the races in the United States
in the middle of last century. UM, because he hadn't
really seen it firsthand or experienced the firsthand. He hadn't
(10:32):
been in school and so other little white kids hadn't
bullied him, or he hadn't been around town and just
lived in a in a set space where most kids
were introduced to racism firsthand. He didn't get that until
he was eighteen, and so by the time he was eighteen,
he was like, this isn't right. What do you what
do you who do you think you are? And so
(10:54):
when he got to the Army and was confronted with
it full on. He Um, he approached it differently, whereas
other some of his contemporaries in the army who were black,
UM just kind of kept their head down and you know,
tried to go along and get along. Uh. He would
he would fight back, he would not he would not
back down, he would not step down. And he spent
(11:14):
a lot of time in the army physically fighting white
racists who were trying to make things hard for him.
And apparently at some point he fought one he fought
one guy in one he beat beat up some white
guy who had um done something racist to him. I'm
not sure what it was. And then after the fight,
the guy beaten said, you know, you may have beaten me,
(11:37):
but you're still black. And apparently this got to Sammy
Davis Jr. In such a way that it just transformed
his approach that he realized like he could fight white
boys his whole life, and probably when some of the fights,
probably get beat up a lot of the fights, he
had his nose broken at least twice, Um, but that
it wasn't going to get him anywhere. And so he
(11:58):
decided then and there that he could do is fight
prejudice through his performing. He would be such a good performer,
he would transcend race at least while he was performing.
And he managed to do that or as much as
anybody ever has in the history and modern history, at
least in the United States. Yeah. So he's discharged in
(12:20):
the army in goes right back to the Maston trio
and touring with him, and he was sort of even
though he was just a little kid growing up in
that trio, he was sort of the star still. Yeah,
little Sammy, Little Sammy um like little Stevie Wonder. Yeah.
He he actually chuck. He won his first UM contest
(12:44):
at age three, at like an amateur hour or amateur night,
and he's sang, I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal.
You that's what He knocked the house down at age three,
And that was the the formal start to his UM,
his show business. He went to Bucks. Yeah about a
hundred fifty bucks today, Yeah, which for him, I mean,
that's a lot of dough for a very very poor kid.
(13:09):
So he gets out of the army, goes back to
the Maston trio, and this sort of corresponded with the
same timeline as when Vegas started to become a big
deal and a big entertainment center, and they played Vegas
a little bit. And you know, we should point out
to on the Chiland circuit they were never making much money. No,
(13:29):
it's a grueling thing. And they did get paid, but
it's not like they were getting rich out there. I mean,
you'd have to be a vaudeville superstar to make a
lot of money. And this is also during the depression
largely too, so people didn't make money in general, right,
but doing three, four or five shows a day on
that circuit. But goes to Vegas, starts performing in Vegas,
uh starts doing impressions, which he did throughout his career.
(13:52):
Was very good at them, and and the audiences ate
it up. And then Frank Sinatra, the chairman of the board,
as they say, gave him a call or gave their
people called and said, hey, I want I want this
guy open it up for me in Vegas. This trio
opening up. Took him under his wing. That was a
big deal. It was a very big deal. Said, you know,
(14:13):
you do these great impressions, you do me, it's hysterical,
You're so talented. Open for me in Vegas, and uh,
that was where he said, you know, in Vegas for
twenty minutes, twice a night, our skin had no color.
But um, the second they got finished, he said, other
acts to go out and gamble and socialize, have a drink.
He said, we had to go through the kitchen with
(14:34):
the garbage. And that's when it would all sort of
hit home once again. They had to stay in like
an entirely different part of Vegas that, from the looks
of it, almost didn't have electricity. Dusty Rhodes, Yeah, that's
where they had to stay. They were beloved performers, but
that's where they had to go stay after the show.
And I saw that even after he was a member
(14:56):
of the rat Pack, a superstar, he had use the
pool at the Sands, and guests in the fifties complained
enough that the Sands agreed to drain the pool and
refill it because Sammy Davis Jr. Had been using the
pool And this is after he was a star already.
That's how vile um the segregation was, even in a
(15:17):
place like Vegas. All right, let's take a break and
we'll come back and talk more about the candy Man
right after this. So Sammy Davis Jr. Wrote a bunch
(15:50):
of memoirs and autobiographies over the years. Uh, and one
of them is a very great spinal tap choke. So
I know you still haven't seen it, right, I saw,
but I've only seen it once and it was a
couple of years ago. Okay. So one of his his
I think his first one um was called yes I Can.
And there's a great scene in spinals up when Bruno
(16:11):
Kirby as a limo driver is talking about it and
he said he said something about yes I can. He said,
although the real title should have been yes I can.
If Frank says, it's okay because Frank called the shots
for all those guys, right, I remember that. It's very
funny joke, like he just keeps going off about that,
doesn't it. Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. You know. Billy
(16:31):
Crystal and Bruno Kirby had a very famous falling out,
and legend has it Billy Crystal sort of had him
black bald. What is up with Billy Crystal? My impression
of him is changing dramatically. He really sells it when
the cameras are on. Huh. Yeah, well that's what you're do,
you know? That's crazy though to be that Wow, I mean,
(16:55):
we know the game. People think you and I like
each other? Right, we got every but it's amazing. Like
what were their names of the MythBusters? Like the day
the camera stopped rolling, they released press statements saying we
never liked each other. I know, why would why would
anybody do that? Even if you didn't like each other?
Why would you just let it go? You know? I
(17:16):
don't know. But it's a Jamie and um Adam Adam,
that's right. Adams a great guy. I know him a
little bit. So are you implying Jamie's not so? I
don't know him any Okay, I'm not citing. This took
a really weird turned, inn't it. It did? So back
to Sammy Davis Jr. He also started his star started rising. Um, well,
(17:40):
his star had already risen, but in the seventies when
the Variety Show came about, which was a big deal
in the seventies and even into the eighties, Sammy Davis Jr.
Was perfect for that medium. Well, this was this was
I think even earlier than that, when TV really started
to dominate. The earliest shows that they had were vaudeville shows.
That led to variety show. He had his own variety
(18:02):
show later in the seventies because he was so it
wasn't a huge hit. But for someone who can dance
and sing and do impressions and do comedy and for
God's sakes, is a real deal gun slinger a variety
shows pretty great. It really was so. Um he's you know,
he uh, he's getting onto TV. Um, there's their Vegas
(18:23):
gigs have really put the Will Maston trio on the map.
And um, they were doing really well. Um, they had
reliable work that kind of stuff. People knew who Sammy
Davis Jr. Was. He was already, you know, a protege
of Frank Sinatra by this time. Um, But it wasn't
until ninete that the big break came through. And it
really came through and like a really kind of Hollywood
(18:46):
story kind of way where like this they that they
were given this one shot and this one particular spot
at just the right time, in front of just the
right people, and they killed it and that was it.
They Sammy Davis Jr. Was a star from that moment on.
That's right. And that was at um Janice Page and
a show at Zeros, which is now the Comedy Store. Um,
(19:11):
and oh really, I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah, it
became the Comedy Store after Zeros, but was sort of
a legendary place, you know, of its own in its
own right. But everyone you know that. Apparently it's debatable
whether or not it was an Oscar party after party
or not, but regardless, there were a lot of Hollywood
people there, including Bogey and his rat Pack. Sure, the
(19:33):
the original rat Pack, which wasn't called the rat Pack, no,
it was actually it was well why did well, never mind,
I'm not going down the rabbit hole. What That's all right?
So he uh, he kills it there. He's doing impressions
of people that are in the audience. Everyone loves him. Uh.
They signed with the William Moore Morris Agency, and an
(19:54):
overnight sensation, you know, twenty thirty years in the making
starts happening. Yeah, and should say so. Sammy Davis Jr.
Became known for his impressions. He was groundbreaking in the
sense that he would do impressions of white people and
up to the time Sammy Davis Jr. Started doing impressions
of white people, if you're a black performer, you could
do impressions of other black people, and that was it.
(20:17):
It was just not okay for you to do white people.
Sammy Davis Jr. Just started doing white people and the
white people loved it. And at that show at Zero's,
he was doing impressions of some of the people in
the crowd, like he did a killer Carrie Grant and
Carry Grant was a member of Humphrey Bogart's rat Pack
and he was probably there that night. Um, so there
were a lot of people who were getting impressions done
(20:38):
of them. They just loved it. Killed and um, I
think Janice Page said I was the headliner tonight. I
think these guys should be the headliner from now on,
which was pretty cool of her to do that. You know,
it's amazing. Yep. So he gets a record deal after that,
he's putting out like show Chins, Old Standards. Uh. He
does a pilot in the mid fifties with his father
(20:59):
and cool about a trio of black entertainers that are
kind of struggling called We Three. Yeah, I would love
to see that. Well, there's another probably we'll talk about
later that you definitely need to see. I haven't checked
it out yet, but I know I know the one.
It's pretty legendary. So uh. A big thing happened that
same year in nineteen four is Sammy Davis Jr. Had
(21:22):
a wreck in his Cadillac. And the Cadillac and this
is just horrific to think about because I've seen these,
you know, in the middle of the steering wheel, they
had these little decorative cones that stuck out. His left
eyeball hit that thing and he lost it and warren
eyepatch for a while and then a glass eye. Yeah,
apparently he remembers coming out of the car um with
(21:45):
holding his eye in his hand, and then that's the
last thing he remembers. The next thing he remembers after
that was waking up in a hospital bed and when
he woke up and realized that he lost his eye
for life as I was gone. Um, he was really
really scared that his rear was over. This is n
He'd just gotten his big break three years before and
(22:06):
was on his way up and now all of a
sudden he loses his eye. And the thing about losing
your eye in addition to say, you know, having to
sit for publicity photos and try to be a leading
man in movies or on Broadway or that kind of thing. Um,
you have to relearn spatial awareness. You're going from binocular
(22:27):
vision to monocular vision and that has all sorts of
weird tricky effects on you. So if you're a dancer
or a gun slinger or doing some old soft shoe
or whatever you're doing, you have to relearn how to move.
And apparently one of the things that Sinatra did that
was really stand up for Sammy Davis Jr. Was he
(22:47):
had him basically come convalesc at Sinatra's place and really
um guided him in in saying, like, you need to
relearn how to move. You're gonna be fine, but you're
you're gonna have to You're gonna have to start really
attacking this and you can't really sit around and feel
bad for yourself. You need to to get you know,
(23:08):
relearn movement now rather than you know, spend a year
feeling sad. And that was a huge help for him.
It was, and he also was kind of UM, I
don't think, I mean, maybe his life did kind of
pass before him, because he definitely had an awakening of
what have I done here with my life so far?
What greater purpose have I served? Um? And what can
(23:30):
I do from this point forward. Um, he and put
a pin in this. But this was the first exposure
to judaism in the hospital. You gotta visit from a
rabbi and just put a pin in that because that
will come back again later. Okay, to a pin in it. Well,
look all right, I don't even know where this pin
came from. You, I don't. Well, you do have that
(23:52):
pincushion right there. But yeah, this this little tomato one
with the strawberry dangling off of it. Remember those, oh man,
because there a seventies mom that didn't have one of
the yeah, with the Macromay owl hanging on the wall behind.
So here's where it gets really kind of great as
far as knowing what a stand up guy Sammy Davis Jr. Was.
(24:14):
His his success is booming, and you would think, Sammy
Davis Jr. You can leave that Will Maston trio behind. Yeah,
because it's really all about you. He said, no, man,
shine us all up, babe. Three way split, And that's
what they did. They he ensured contractually that they would
(24:34):
get a three way split that endured ten years after
he left as a solo performer. He was still giving
them thirty three each. Yeah for fifteen years total, they
got a third of the profits each of them. Um
and yeah, they they were you know, originally they were
still doing their Vegas show as the Will Maston Trio
(24:55):
featuring Sammy Davis Jr. But then over time, you know,
remember his uncle and his dad were a good twenty
years older than him. By this time, he's in his thirties,
so you know, they're starting to get they're they're losing
their step a little bit, so they start to not
be in the show quite as much, stepping back. But
even still, he made sure they were taken care of
(25:15):
for another fifteen years. Third a third and this is
a third during Sammy Davis Junior's peak earning years, So
he got one third of what he would have gotten
had he just basically said, dad, uncle will thank you
for teaching me everything. I know. I'm gonna move on now,
best of luck, let me know if you need a loan. Instead,
(25:36):
he just took a third of what he could have
gotten and gave the other two thirds to those two,
which is for fifteen years. Chuck, that's really amazing. It's
pretty great. Uh So that pen it actually wasn't in
there that long. We go ahead and take the pen
out because he after that first meeting with a rabbi,
he reads more and more about Judaism. He draws a
correlation between the plight of the Jewish people and the
(25:58):
plight of black people, and it really spoke to him
and he converted. And some people said, oh, this big
publicity stunt. He's like, no, this is not a publicity stunt.
He said, this is my new religion. And uh. He
very humorously started referring to himself as a one eyed
black Jew, sometimes of one eyed black Puerto Rican, like
(26:18):
Puerto Rican Jew, which was very sort of in keeping
with his self deprecating style. For sure, He's like, um,
Tim Watley, he converted for the jokes man, I remember
that one. I've been plowing through Seinfeld again. I love.
One of my favorite things that always gets me is
when Jerry calls George Biff. Yeah. It never fails to
(26:41):
make me laugh. Biff Yeah, so good. Uh, she was, well, no,
let's not take another break, let's play on here, right,
all right. So, dating wise, he is dating black women
and white women. When he dates white women, he gets
racist sets from white people, and he gets condemnation from
(27:03):
the black community for betraying the black community by dating
a white woman. Right, he can't win. No, he really
couldn't win. And apparently from what I saw in that
um that American Masters uh documentary, Um, he really really
really was in love with Kim Novak. From what I saw,
(27:23):
she may have been the love of his life. At
the very least. He never got to explore whether she
was or not. But um, when he said that he
intended to marry her, I guess it was in the fifties. Um,
he uh he there was a contract put out in
his life by the studio head and I think Columbia
where Kim Novak was an actress. Yeah, Harry Cohne was
(27:46):
the studio head. And this was back when Vegas and
Hollywood were you know, there was some mob in mafia
dealings going on for sure, and Sammy had some mob
friends too, just because he was friends with Frank and
you know, that was just sort of the thing. These
guys would come to these Vegas clubs and he would
meet them. He sought protection from a Chicago gangster that
(28:06):
he was in with. The Chicago gangster was like, I
can't help you in California. He's like, I'm not I'm
no good there. I can protect you in Chicago, I
can protect you in Vegas. Can't do anything about California.
It's not my territory. Uh. And supposedly, and this is
where it gets a little hazy, because some people say
it happened, some people say it didn't. Supposedly he was
even kidnapped for a few hours to scare him. Um,
(28:30):
but who knows if that's really true. Well, apparently one
of his friends who was there said no, it wasn't true.
He was never kidnapped. But the contract basically said there
was a contract that said you have forty eight hours
to marry a black woman or you die, and whatever.
Whatever it was, whatever, whether there was an actual contract,
(28:51):
whether it were just got to him that there was,
It didn't matter to Sammy Davis Jr. At that minute,
because he broke it off with Kim Novak. Uh, much
to his own hearts break and um, yeah, proposed to
a woman named laure White who Um, she was a
black singer, and I think they had dated years before.
(29:11):
And I guess he never copped to the um to
the idea that it was an arranged marriage that was
basically a business proposal. But That is definitely how it's
portrayed by the people who were there at the time,
were his close friends, that he even paid her ten
thousand dollars to do this. Um. And I'm sure it
(29:31):
was very you know, uh kind and congenial to it.
But they described that day, his wedding day to laure
White is probably the worst day of his life, tied
for first with the day that he lost his left eye. Yeah,
and he you know, we can't look over some of
the ugly parts of that day. He got drunk and
physically assaulted her in the car just after the wedding reception. Yeah. Um.
(29:56):
Not making any excuses for the guy, but it was
certainly not right to you that right. So their marriage
didn't last terribly long. I didn't see how long it lasted,
did you. Okay, so about a year, and I guess
he considered that the heat had gone down or whatever
by that time. Um. And but I get the impression
(30:17):
that the fact that Kim Novak had been taken from
him strictly out of racism. Like Harry Cohne, I'm sure
was a racist, but he was also a businessman and
the reason that he was doing this was because he
knew America was racist. This is at a time when
there were laws that prevented black men and white women
or vice versa, to marry. It wasn't legal yet. No.
(30:40):
Um so the idea of one of his biggest stars,
Kim Novak, marrying a black man, uh, he he decided
that he just couldn't take that risk business wise, and
so he threatened Sammy Davis Jr. Whatever the reason was,
Sammy Davis Jr. Really bristled under that. And so in
nineteen sixty uh, this was a few years after a
um he had to break it off with Kim Novak.
(31:03):
He got married to a woman, a Swedish actress named
my Britt and I he had children with her and
was married to her, but he also um ran around
on her almost constantly from what I understand, and you
get the impression that my was in part a. Uh well,
I'll just put his PG as possible, thumbing his nose
(31:26):
at all of the racists out there who took Kim
Novak from him. He was he was saying, I think, so,
as somebody put it, I'm big enough now that you
can't tell me who to marry, and I'm going to
marry this beautiful six ft white woman who looks like
Margot Roby. Sort of she does, yeah, she does a
little bit. I had. I didn't put my finger on it.
And their children were incredibly beautiful, thanks largely to their
(31:49):
mom too, but they were they were Um. They had
three kids together and they were married for eight years.
And I think it's very sad because my brit immediately
lost her career, so she gave up her career to
be with Sammy Davis Jr. I don't know. I she
must have fallen in love with them, um because she
she had three kids with him too. But she gave
(32:10):
up a lot and he gave up nothing. And I
think that was very unfair um on his part to
ask for what he asked for from her and give
so little in return. Yeah. And what was also not
fair and um sort of a black eye on John F.
Kennedy was that Sammy Davis Jr. Had been scheduled to
(32:33):
perform at the nineteen sixty inauguration and he disinvited him
because of his marriage to a white woman. Kennedy personally
had him disinvited. This wasn't Kennedy's like advisors or anything
like that. It was him and he said, you know.
Apparently people said he you know, it was a political
move because he didn't want to alienate Southern Democrats. But
(32:56):
either way, that was a big um fracturing of the
relationship between JFK and Sammy Davis Jr. He never got
over that, No, he never did. And it was also
a moment where Sinatra, who had stood up for Sammy
Davis Jr. Multiple countless times against racists, against studio heads,
against the record company executives, against all sorts of people, didn't.
(33:19):
He did not stand up and argue and try to
persuade JFK to change his mind. He just quietly went
along with it. And I think that broke Sammy Davis
Junior start as much as JFK betraying him, and probably
even more because he expected more from from Frank Frank
than he did from from Kennedy. And the other thing
(33:40):
about Kennedy res sending that invitation, Harry Belafani's invitation wasn't rescinded,
and Harry Belafani was married to a white woman and
was there with his white wife at this inauguration party.
Um So Sammy Davis Jr. Couldn't help but take it personally,
and he really did. It was a big It was
a big deal, a big moment in his life in
a very sad moment, and a lot of people think
(34:02):
that it led to him later on embracing, um, probably
ill advisedly, the Nixon campaign in the early seventies. That's right,
you want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a
break and we'll talk a little bit about his work
in the civil rights movement right after this. This cat
(34:42):
is interesting, man, right, I don't know if everybody's picking
up on it. Did you know this before? Because this
is your pick, right? Yeah. Yeah, I've always been pretty
fascinated with him because we haven't even gotten to the
super weird and interesting stuff. Yeah right, Um, which happens
in the seventies. So in the sixties is when and
and possibly because of the JFK treatment, is when he
(35:03):
really starts to get more socially aware. Uh, starts donating
money to the cause and marches at selma Um for
the civil rights efforts. Um. He when he supported Nixon,
it was not just the thumbing of the nose at
at Kennedy, but he bought into Nixon and thought that
it was gonna be a good choice for Black America. Uh.
(35:26):
He regretted that later on, of course. But it wasn't
just um a poopy pants move, like, hey, while I'm
gonna support Nixon now because you disinvited me, exactly and
so Um. One of the other reasons that he embraced
Nixon was that Nixon embraced him as a human being
and really stood in start contrast to the treatment he
received from Kennedy. Um. And in that Nixon actually seemed
(35:53):
to really like Sammy Davis Jr. That a lot of
people are like the Nixon administration was just using Sammy
Davis Jr. They were, at the same time, I'm um,
using what's called the Southern strategy, which is they were
stoking racism among Southern whites to get them to turn
on the Democrats. Um. But he also apparently really did
like Sammy Davis Jr. And admired him and under Nixon's
(36:16):
administration tastes like bitter acid. Saying this, Sammy Davis Jr.
Became the first black person to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom,
and apparently Sammy Davis Jr. Was an avid Lincoln fan
and sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom with some of Abraham
Lincoln and Mary Todd. Lincoln's personal effects in this room
(36:37):
just blew him away, and that was actually how he
ended up in Vietnam doing this USO tour in nineteen two.
He said, what can I do to help? And Nixon
said that would probably that would probably help a lot.
But that just contributed even further to his alienation from
not just black people, but young black people too, because
(36:59):
it was a really tone deaf move. As I saw
it described at the time, that was not the kind
of thing you did. Vietnam was so unpopular that even
the troops weren't particularly supported at home. You know. It's
not like today where it's like, you know, we really
really hate this, you know, these endless wars. This is
we really disagree with the you know, the hawks and
(37:20):
the military industrial complex that supports us. But we're still
going to be supportive of the troops who have to
go there, who are over there, whether by their own
choice or well, I guess it's all volunteer army. Um,
they still deserve support these individuals over there overseas. That
was not necessarily how it was in during the Vietnam era.
(37:42):
So Sammy Davis Jr. Going over there to support the
troops after embracing the Nixon administration. Really um further this
rift between him and the black community, which and I
don't know if we really said this enough was unfair,
unjust because he was a fervent supporter of the civil
(38:04):
rights movement during the fifties and sixties, I mean furvent
Like he marched in Selma with Martin Luther King Jr.
Scared to death apparently, but he still went and he
still did it. He contributed a ton of money to
the civil rights movement. Um, he was, he was legit,
for sure, but he also was, um, you know, friends
(38:26):
with Richard Nixon. So one kind of one kind of
tarnishes the other, you know for sure. So in the sixties, Uh,
he is blown up. He's everywhere. He's on stage, he's
recording records, he's on TV, he's doing celebrity roast, he's
on Broadway, he's writing books, he's doing the gun slinger thing. Uh.
(38:49):
He's making a lot of money at this point and
starts spending a lot of money because he came from nothing,
Like we said, Uh, this is when the rat pack
thing really heats up. Uh. And he's hanging out with
Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin and of course the
chairman uh and started him their first movie together, which
was Ocean's Eleven. Not a great movie. Oh disagree, I don't.
(39:15):
I think the original is not very good. Oh I
liked it. Uh. I thought the remake was great, but
um did not care for the original. I'd like the original. Yeah.
Hanging Robin in the Seven Hoods, Yeah, and also not great.
I don't think the rat Pack ever made a great movie. Okay,
that's just my opinion. What about Time Bandits fantastic Okay. Uh.
(39:36):
They were hanging out at the Coconut Grove in the
Ambassador Hotel, which, um is a place that I have
a neat little quick story. Did a commercial shoot there
before they tore down, and it was, you know, an
empty hotel at this point that they just used for
movie shoots. And it was an overnight thing, and like
two in the morning, I was working in the art department.
They said, here, you need to go assemble all these
(39:59):
flags that we're going to hang. And they said just
go in the in the Coconut Grove and do it
because there's plenty of room in there. And I went
in there all by myself, sitting in Cocae in the
the dusty old shadows of what was once the Great
Coconut Grove, and uh for like an hour and a
half by myself, like sitting in a booth at the
rat Pack might have sat in. That's amazing, really pretty neat.
(40:22):
And later that night got to go see where Bob
Kennedy was shot. Oh that's where he was shot. Yeah,
in the Ambassador Hotels, in the kitchen and one of
the gut the overnight security guy. It was just sort
of one of those slow shoots. He was like to
me and my friend, He's like, you want to go
down the kitchens? Who are happened? And we went, oh, yeah, wow,
that's amazing. It was super cool and creepy. So anyway,
(40:43):
great story. They're they're hanging out with the rat Pack. Um.
And this is where it gets a little like dodgy,
because the rat Pack they were all best buds. They
genuinely loved each other. But when you look at their
old stick there is a lot of sort of racial
joking about Sammy. Um. It's all in good fun, but
(41:05):
they were they were often jokes made about him being black,
being the only black member Dean Martin. One of his
famous jokes was he would pick little Sammy up on
stage because Dean was a big guy and Sammy was small,
and uh, thank the audience for the h in double
a CP award. So stuff like that. So in that
(41:26):
in that documentary, and I'm not like justifying that at all,
but in that documentary, Whoopi Goldberg is like, you know,
you can you could take any segment of their show
and be like this was really offensive Italians or alcoholics,
or women, or black people or Jews. And she said
they went hard on everybody. But from what I understand,
(41:47):
at least as far as Sammy was concerned, what he
wasn't secretly didn't secretly have a chip on his shoulder
and he had to just put up with this to
be a member of the rat pack. He seemed to
really not like he didn't take it as if they
or being um hostile or cruel, that it was just
part of the act and that's how he took it. Yeah,
(42:07):
I mean, it was certainly a different time. I mean
there was no doubting about it that back then you
could make jokes about all kinds of things that you
can't joke about now, yeah, and it's like it's not
like I'm I used to hang out with Sammy Davis Jr.
And had like quiet talks with him or whatever. So
it is possible that he did, you know, harbor resentment
from it, but that's not the im person that I
have from from the research that I've done. Let me
(42:28):
tell you, Josh right, But apparently no one did, because
this is a really bizarre thing about him. When when
he um was talking about converting to Judaism, I think
in like a nineteen sixty six Playboy interview, Um he
was talking about losing his eye and then you know,
converting to Judaism, and that it happened during a period
of soul searching, and that he did all this and
(42:50):
went through all this even though he was convalescing at
Frank Sinatra's house, even though apparently Jerry Lewis spent seven
days at his bedside when he was in the hospital,
had all these telegrams come in, all this outpouring of support.
He considered himself alone and that he was a loner,
and that that was that's really bizarre when you step
back and look at that, because Sammy Davis Jr. Always
(43:12):
had friends. He was always the life of the party.
He was always a good guy. Everybody wanted to be
around him. Um, he was always having fun. But he
considered himself a loner. Apparently he didn't let people in.
So even if I had been hanging around with him,
he probably wouldn't have had that conversation with me anyway, Like, Sammy,
I don't feel like I know they're real. You come on, Sammy,
let it. And he said, that's by design, babe. I
(43:36):
feel like I'm tripping or something right now. So his
career is booming in the in the sixties and into
the seventies, and the result of that, of course, uh well,
through the sixties, I guess is that he's not around much. Um.
He had a lot of regrets about not being around
as a father. Um, as a husband. He was flandering,
(43:56):
he was drinking a lot, he was using drugs. Uh So,
in nineteen sixty eight he got divorced. In nineteen seventy,
he married a woman named Altavis Gore, who was eighteen
years his junior backup dancer. His children did not like
the fact that she was so much younger, but they
were stayed married, you know, for the rest of his life. Yeah,
(44:18):
he was like, Oh, if you've got a problem with her,
you should probably not know about everything else I'm doing. Yeah,
so here's where it gets really interesting, very interesting. Sammy
Davis Jr. Had a convergence of two interests in the seventies. Uh.
He became a member of the Church of Satan. He
(44:38):
was an honorary warlock and he got really really into
porn and porn. Uh. You know, there's no better way
to say it than he he was a swinger. He
was an orgies. He participated in Satanic orgies. Yeah. That
was actually I don't know if it was his first
(44:58):
orgy or not, but that's how he became him part
of involved in the Church of Satan, you know, like
the original Church of Satan with Anton LaVey there and everything.
Um right exactly. Um. He went and participated in a
Satanic orgy, um, Sammy Davis Jr. Which I think is
(45:21):
like a regular orgy but with just more like red candles, yeah,
and pentagrams and black robes and stuff like that. But
then the black robes come off, but I think the
pentagrams stay on. But um he I read this really
interesting Vice article about it and he he was apparently
at the first one, and this would have been in
the late sixties, and somebody in a hood is trying
(45:43):
to get his attention and it turns out he lifts
the hood and it's his barber, his BARBERA J. C. Bring.
He would later be killed with Um Sharon Tate by
the Manson family. But he was basically like, hey, Sam,
it's me Jay. How are you doing in this awesome?
And then they went back to yeah, but he yeah.
(46:04):
He was hugely in the in the pornography, was and
the Orgies into swinging. He was. He loved cocaine um
and I love drinking. I saw our cineo Um interview
with him, must have been very shortly before his death,
where he's like, you know, I had to give everything up, uh,
and I don't miss all the other stuff, but I
miss booze, I miss whiskey, I miss vodka. I love
that stuff. But then I also saw another interview where
(46:29):
he basically said the same thing to Larry King, like
I've given everything up, I don't smoke anymore, anything like that.
And then somebody went backstage and there's Sammy Davis Jr.
Smoking a cigarette drinking a brand and he goes, Sammy,
what are you doing. You just told Larry King that
you gave all this up. He's like, I'm I planned to.
So who knows what he actually gave up or didn't do,
(46:50):
but his whole jam was I want to experience every
possible human experience I can, and I approach all this
stuff without judgment, which is how we ended up becoming
involved in the Church of Satan, which went on, Yeah,
no judgment here. If that's his bag, it's not hurting anybody. Um.
Did you see the one quote about the the ritual
(47:11):
with the lady who was tied to the bed, uh
where he decided like it was okay? Yeah, he was
talking about it and he was like that chick was
loving it. Man, And well, I won't say the rest
of the quote, but do you remember, Yeah, I remember,
I remember. So all of this led to, Um, what
(47:32):
we were talking about earlier. This this TV pilot that
is legendary in Hollywood as one of the weirdest, worst
things that Hollywood has ever produced, And it was a
pilot for a TV show in nineteen seventy three called
Poor Devil, which was about a man who was a load,
um low down on the totem pole or I guess
(47:54):
high on the totem pole, Um coal shoveler in hell,
who is offer the chance to work his way up
the ranks in how if he can get the soul
of Jack Klugman, living white man on Earth right Jack
Klugman quincy m D. Yeah, and it is on YouTube,
and dude, it is amazing. I have not had a
(48:16):
chance to see yet. I can't wait to see it,
but it sounds amazing. I saw it described as like
he's a reverse Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life. Would
you wouldn't possibly understand that? But uh, just imagine that
somebody's not trying to get you to be good so
that they can or understand how great life is. He's
trying to to get him to follow his his most
(48:38):
bitter revenge impulses and stuff like that. But at one point,
apparently um Jack Klugman wants to get in touch with
Sammy Davis Jr. The Devil, and it's like, oh, I know,
I'll call the Church of Satan downtown. They'll know how
to get in touch with him. And the Church of
Satan went because apparently the pilot was aired, and they
were all about Sammy d at this point, and they
(48:59):
made him an honorary war law. He used to flash
like the devil horns at them from stage when they
would love he. Uh. Christopher Lee, by the way, played
the devil Um, which is pretty on the notes but perfect,
So that doesn't succeed obviously, it's terrible. The seventies and
(49:20):
the eighties, his star starts to fade a little bit.
He's still around. Of course. He was on All in
the Family in a very famous episode where he kissed
Archie Bunker on the lips. Uh. He was We have
to talk about the great great Cannonball Run. Oh yeah,
he was in There wasn't a hey man. He and
Dean were for partners. They played I forgot about. They
(49:41):
dressed up as priests, that's right, heavily drinking, smoking priests.
They played themselves basically as priests who wanted to drive fast.
That's pretty great. But you know, even though we revere
that film, I don't think it was looked at generally
as one of the big highlights of his career. Oh.
I'm sure not. By this time, he's kitchi Sammy from
(50:02):
what I understand like he was fine with that as
long as he was working, he was okay. Because I
said earlier that like he had a certain affiliation with
that song um Mr bow Jangles, where if you listen
to it, it's about an old performer who's washed up
and has been washed up for years and he's still
drinking and just doing you know, he's he's been reduced
(50:23):
to doing basically sidewalk performances, and apparently Sammy was scared
to death about that being his future. So even just
doing what he was doing with Dean and Cannonball Run,
I'm sure it was just fine in his in his
mind because he was still working and performing. Of course,
he looks around and there's there's Bert Man, there's Adrian Barbow.
(50:47):
He was You're digging the Sammy now, aren't you. Yes,
you know, I think Sammy needs to be a recurring
character from now on. We'll see um the new hippie
rob so uh. In the eighties, he gets into some
financial trouble, to say the least, because I love how
he had put it. He had been struggling with tax
(51:07):
payments since the nineteen sixties. I think it was a
Willie Nelson sort of deal from what I could gather.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I think he wasn't really
paying his taxes. Sure, sure, And and apparently he had
also I don't know if he got bad tax advice
or what, but he had claimed some very extravagant stuff
as a write off, and the I R. S came
back and said, Nope, you're that doesn't count. You also
(51:29):
owe on that. And his estate was worth or his
net assets were worth about four million, but he owed
about seven millions. And he was a profligate spender of money.
I saw one interview once where a guy said that
he walked six blocks in New York with them. He
even named the streets, so it seems like he really
did just walk six blocks and dropped fifty tho dollars
(51:52):
along the way, stopping in different stores, dropped that out
of his pocket on the street. No, no buying stuff,
just bye bye bye. He'd spend it because he had
come from nothing, and I knew, you know, that thrill
of spending money. He was terrible with his money, and
so as he um as he found out he owed
seven million dollars, he started to organize some some shows
(52:13):
and specials to try to raise some money to help
him pay off this debt. And after the first one,
I think in nine, he has found that he had
a sore throat, so he went to the doctor and
ultimately was diagnosed with throat cancer. Yeah, after the that
very first show. And that's like such cruel irony to
raise all this money because when he passed away in
(52:34):
nineteen nine, in May sixte of cancer, he left that
tax bill to his wife like that that carried over Yeah, Ali, yeah,
so um that really left her kind of destitute for
the rest of her life as well. Oh yeah, for sure. Um,
I mean like she she then she basically owed three
(52:57):
million dollars and his estate was sold off like basically
at a yard sale auction. All of his stuff was
um and yeah he he that was not that was
the the negative part of his legacy was that text
that leaving that behind. Yeah, and you know, in one way,
it's like kind of a sad ending with the financial
(53:18):
stuff and obviously dying way too young of cancer. But yeah,
sixty five man, he did accomplish everything he set out
to accomplish. He he showed everybody who said this diminutive
little mixed race kind of funny looking guy. Uh, is
never gonna amount to anything. And he had a lifelong
career from the age of three to sixty five in
(53:40):
show business. So and one of the things Chuck is
he did not really harbor regret. He apparently whenever he
talked about his life, he talked about it with great satisfaction,
which is pretty reassuring. Yeah. That quote on that Letterman
show was great. Yeah. On the episode he's he's talking
about the younger generation and he said, I look at
the young before Armors today and I'd go like this, Yeah, man,
(54:02):
go ahead, cook, I've been there. That's it, man, I
have no envy I did at all. Yeah, pretty great,
Go ahead, cook. That's great. Sammy Davis Jr. Everybody around
of applause. You got anything else? Nothing else. If you
want to know more about Sammy Davis Jr. Just start
watching some of his old performances are pretty amazing. Uh.
(54:23):
And while you're doing that, we're gonna just move on
ahead to listener mail. Yeah, this is about the pizza thing.
We heard from a lot of nine people. Yeah, I'm
glad that you you picked one of these. Man. This
is good. Hey, while we are not specifically trained to
send e M. S two calls where people pretend to
order a pizza. Most nine one one dispatchers will in
(54:45):
fact ask you this is one did you dial the
wrong number? And if they respond no, we will then
say are you in a situation where you can't ask
for help? And then they can say yes or no. Obviously,
there are many stories of this working out, most in
domestic violence or kidnapping situations. So even though it is
a protocol necessarily or set in stone as a way
(55:06):
to ask for help, it could help many people in
bad situations. We will not just hang up on you,
even if you keep ordering a pizza and do not
acknowledge that you need help. Most will still send out
law enforcement for a welfare check due to the suspicious
nature of the call. I'm glad to hear this. Yeah,
please let this be known because in the last ditch effort,
this may save someone's life. And that is from responder
(55:28):
Brooke Diane. Thanks Brooke, and thank you also not for
being like Josh was wrong wrong, wrong, wrong? Wrong? Oh
I don't remember did you say that's not true? Yeah?
I said specifically it's an urban legend. Okay, I don't
even remember that. Yeah, So I was really glad when
people started writing I'm glad you picked one to say like, no,
this is this is for real. Okay, great, thanks again, Brooke.
(55:50):
That was fantastic. If you want to get in touch
with this like Brook did. Even if you do want
to say Josh was wrong, wrong wrong, wrong wrong, that's
all right, we'd love to hear that kind of thing.
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
(56:12):
for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Hello everyone in podcast land. If you have ever wanted
to see us on stage telling jokes and slinging facts,
and you live out west, you can come see us
in Portland, Oregon or Vancouver, Canada. Yep, We'll be at
the Chance Center in Vancouver on Sunday, March twenty nine,
and then we'll be at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
in Portland on March And if you want tickets and info,
(00:22):
then the best thing you can do right now is
to go do s y s K live dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's
(00:42):
guest producer Dylan sitting in again like a great guy. Um,
like a cool cat baby. I thought you were doing
evil German doctor for a second and then I figured
it out. No man, Wait, I haven't said it yet.
And this is stuff you should know. Okay, that was
a good one that no man was wonderful. I love
how Sammy Davis Jr. Always said cat and baby. It
(01:07):
was just he was such a cool dude. And okay,
do Sammy Davis Jr. Saying we have ways of making
you talk. What sounds German about any of that? I
just do it, please please, we have ways of making
you talk. Man. It was pretty great and that's a
little soft shoe. It's great stuff. So you know, Billy
(01:31):
Crystal Uh used to do Sammy Davis Jr. Uh way
back in the eighties when black face was super cool
to do and not controversial. Did he do black face
Sammy Davis Jr. Yes, dude, he did black face Sammy
Davis Jr. Eight years ago at the Oscars. What. Yes,
(01:52):
you don't remember that? No, he hoped the last it's
the last time he hosted the Oscars eight In two
thousand twelve, he they did, you know, a remote intro
thing where he was doing different things. In the last
bit was him and black face again and people were
like and then you know, this was in you know,
two thousand twelves. So that was Twitter and that was
Facebook and this social media and people were like, that
(02:15):
wasn't cool in the eighties. And I can't believe he's
doing that now for real. Uh. Sammy Davis Jr's daughter
came out and said, you know what, if there's one
thing I know is that my dad is looking down
and laughing and smiling at Billy Crystal doing this. He
was he was roasted pretty heavily for it, rightfully so,
and he is he hasn't been around a lot, but
(02:35):
he wasn't around a lot before then. He you know,
do you think like that? Did it? Like that was
the demise kid? I guess helped. I was, Yeah, I
haven't seen him in a while either. Man, How did
somebody not step back and be like, okay, wait, we're
about to do black face? I know, Like, how did
no one on the production crew of the Oscar say
not a good idea? I don't know. Well he did it? So, Um,
(03:01):
I came across something that I thought was pretty interesting.
I saw interview with David Letterman and Sammy Davis Jr.
Says in this interview he did black face. He was
a little kid. Apparently his skin was lighter when he
was a kid, and they wanted him because he used
(03:22):
to tour with his uncle and his dad as as
we'll see um, and to get around labor laws, they
would pass him off as a midget. And to do
that there was right, yes, thank you. They gave him
um a candy cigar and put him in black face
and and told anyone who would listen that he was
(03:42):
a little person. That's although again they didn't say a
little person. Boy. This is a really controversial episode right
out of the gate. Well, there's a lot of sort
of I mean, he was a complicated guy who was uh,
you know, his father was black, his mother was Puerto
Rican Um. He eventually Lee would endorse to presidents both
Kennedy and Nixon. He served in the army. He was
(04:06):
a rat packer. He uh was uh shunned by racist
and also shunned sometimes within his own black community. Yeah,
like a little pinball getting bounced around and little is right.
He was also a little guy who always I think
had a complex about his height, about his looks. Um.
(04:26):
He had this weird sort of underbyte uh jaw that
would jut out to one side when he talked. Just
a really fascinating guy that was super super talented and
had his his little tiny fingers and a lot of
pies from you know, singing and dancing and performing live
(04:48):
and in movies on on TV, and uh, just really
really fascinating guy. Yeah, when you look back at the
rat pack he was the one that brought the actual
talent to the rat Pack, like Sinatra could say, he
Martine and the rat back was talented right right, But
he was multi talented, like dancing, doing impressions. He he
(05:10):
had like a little gun slinger routie. Did you see
any of that? I did? It's amazing. Um. I watched
the PBS documentary for their series American Masters on him
and it was like an hour almost two hours long,
and um, it was really in depth and really good.
But they had some amazing footage of him just doing
(05:30):
all sorts of different stuff. So I guess let me
revise that, Yes, the rat Pack was talented. Sammy Davis Jr.
Was was more talented than all of them put together. Right, Okay,
so he made Uh did you see any of that
documentary of the U s O Tour? Uh there were
(05:52):
a few clips in there. Yeh yeah. So if you
want to see a difference, So if you think Sammy
Davis Jr. Is as just the candy man or Mr
bo Jangles babe man, watching him do Mr Bojangles how
he felt about that song, it's very heartbreaking, it is, um.
But if you see this documentary in two he did
(06:12):
a USO tour of Vietnam where he performed at drug
rehab camps and some other you know, forward bases. If
you look at this man, this is like a swinging
seventies kind of rock and roll as it gets really
really cool stuff. Uh, he was a a bad a performer.
(06:33):
He was at places like some of them were kind
of full on productions where they were capable of pulling
that off. Other times there's this great footage of him
where they could had nothing but a microphone and he's
just like, all right, give me the mic and I
will like basically kind of do my own beat boxy
rhythm section and sing and dance. And the soldiers are
(06:53):
just loving it. Man, they're eating it up. Yeah, And
this is two I believe in. Like I mean like
his like he was a world famous star by then,
but also he was an older dude, you know, like
he'd he'd really had his heyday in the late fifties
and throughout the sixties, and this is seventy two and
he's out there in Vietnam belting out motown hits and
(07:16):
drumming on the mic stand. So yeah, I didn't see
all of it, but yeah, you can tell like it
was pretty cool. Yeah, he's he's even more of a
talented performer than people realize, because you know, you do
think of him was doing like standards and show tunes
and stuff like that, and he did mostly do those things,
but he was talented in all sorts of different ways.
So Um the Grabster helped us out with this one.
(07:38):
And he said that there were a few defining sort
of things about Sammy Davis Jr's life that inform who
he was. One was that he um came from poverty.
He performed with his like he said, his uncle, which
was not really uncle, but his dad, and his uncle
Will Masston as the was the mast and true Wilmass
(08:01):
in trio, right, And they came from nothing, and he
did not have any money. And he talked later in
life about the thrill of leaving a waitress a hundred
dollar tip and walking around with a thousand dollars in
your pocket. He's later on in life, Yeah, he's like,
that was a year's salary, and he was like, no
(08:21):
one understands that unless you've been at the bottom, right,
And he was definitely at the bottom. And they he
and his father and his uncle will work their way up, um,
you know, all through they started all throughout the Depression
on the Chitland circuit doing vaudeville. UM. And he didn't
go to school once. Because this is really important to understand.
(08:43):
He spent his entire life in show business and the
earliest years constantly on the road with his uncle and
his dad. Yeah, so that's the second point. Never went
to school at all. Uh, did not learn to read
and right until he was in the army UM, and
always apparently had trouble writing, and he always looked at
(09:06):
it as he was always you know, sort of ashamed
of it. He was proud of who he became, but
always was ashamed of his lack of formal schooling. And
he called his um what he had was the facade
of intelligence, which Ed rightfully points out as just bunk,
because there are many kinds of intelligence. He was a
very intelligent guy, he just didn't have formal schooling. UM.
(09:28):
But he was very self conscious of this and about
representing the black community. Uh. Still like if he ever
mispronounced something because he didn't know, it would make him
feel really bad because he thought that that represented black
people as a whole. So that's number two. Uh, And
the third thing is that early on his family, his
(09:49):
dad and his uncle really kind of um shielded him
from racial prejudice. He certainly encountered it on the Chipland circuit,
but he didn't really get the full deal until he
went into the army. That was a big shock to him,
right he UM. I think this kind of explains that
he approached racism differently than some of his contemporaries, especially
(10:12):
when he got to the army and was confronted with
the full brunt of it. Um, and that that kind
of informed how he viewed race and racial discrimination in
the the dynamic between the races in the United States
in the middle of last century. UM, because he hadn't
really seen it firsthand or experienced the firsthand. He hadn't
(10:32):
been in school and so other little white kids hadn't
bullied him, or he hadn't been around town and just
lived in a in a set space where most kids
were introduced to racism firsthand. He didn't get that until
he was eighteen, and so by the time he was eighteen,
he was like, this isn't right. What do you what
do you who do you think you are? And so
(10:54):
when he got to the Army and was confronted with
it full on. He Um, he approached it differently, whereas
other some of his contemporaries in the army who were black,
UM just kind of kept their head down and you know,
tried to go along and get along. Uh. He would
he would fight back, he would not he would not
back down, he would not step down. And he spent
(11:14):
a lot of time in the army physically fighting white
racists who were trying to make things hard for him.
And apparently at some point he fought one he fought
one guy in one he beat beat up some white
guy who had um done something racist to him. I'm
not sure what it was. And then after the fight,
the guy beaten said, you know, you may have beaten me,
(11:37):
but you're still black. And apparently this got to Sammy
Davis Jr. In such a way that it just transformed
his approach that he realized like he could fight white
boys his whole life, and probably when some of the fights,
probably get beat up a lot of the fights, he
had his nose broken at least twice, Um, but that
it wasn't going to get him anywhere. And so he
(11:58):
decided then and there that he could do is fight
prejudice through his performing. He would be such a good performer,
he would transcend race at least while he was performing.
And he managed to do that or as much as
anybody ever has in the history and modern history, at
least in the United States. Yeah. So he's discharged in
(12:20):
the army in goes right back to the Maston trio
and touring with him, and he was sort of even
though he was just a little kid growing up in
that trio, he was sort of the star still. Yeah,
little Sammy, Little Sammy um like little Stevie Wonder. Yeah.
He he actually chuck. He won his first UM contest
(12:44):
at age three, at like an amateur hour or amateur night,
and he's sang, I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal.
You that's what He knocked the house down at age three,
And that was the the formal start to his UM,
his show business. He went to Bucks. Yeah about a
hundred fifty bucks today, Yeah, which for him, I mean,
that's a lot of dough for a very very poor kid.
(13:09):
So he gets out of the army, goes back to
the Maston trio, and this sort of corresponded with the
same timeline as when Vegas started to become a big
deal and a big entertainment center, and they played Vegas
a little bit. And you know, we should point out
to on the Chiland circuit they were never making much money. No,
(13:29):
it's a grueling thing. And they did get paid, but
it's not like they were getting rich out there. I mean,
you'd have to be a vaudeville superstar to make a
lot of money. And this is also during the depression
largely too, so people didn't make money in general, right,
but doing three, four or five shows a day on
that circuit. But goes to Vegas, starts performing in Vegas,
uh starts doing impressions, which he did throughout his career.
(13:52):
Was very good at them, and and the audiences ate
it up. And then Frank Sinatra, the chairman of the board,
as they say, gave him a call or gave their
people called and said, hey, I want I want this
guy open it up for me in Vegas. This trio
opening up. Took him under his wing. That was a
big deal. It was a very big deal. Said, you know,
(14:13):
you do these great impressions, you do me, it's hysterical,
You're so talented. Open for me in Vegas, and uh,
that was where he said, you know, in Vegas for
twenty minutes, twice a night, our skin had no color.
But um, the second they got finished, he said, other
acts to go out and gamble and socialize, have a drink.
He said, we had to go through the kitchen with
(14:34):
the garbage. And that's when it would all sort of
hit home once again. They had to stay in like
an entirely different part of Vegas that, from the looks
of it, almost didn't have electricity. Dusty Rhodes, Yeah, that's
where they had to stay. They were beloved performers, but
that's where they had to go stay after the show.
And I saw that even after he was a member
(14:56):
of the rat Pack, a superstar, he had use the
pool at the Sands, and guests in the fifties complained
enough that the Sands agreed to drain the pool and
refill it because Sammy Davis Jr. Had been using the
pool And this is after he was a star already.
That's how vile um the segregation was, even in a
(15:17):
place like Vegas. All right, let's take a break and
we'll come back and talk more about the candy Man
right after this. So Sammy Davis Jr. Wrote a bunch
(15:50):
of memoirs and autobiographies over the years. Uh, and one
of them is a very great spinal tap choke. So
I know you still haven't seen it, right, I saw,
but I've only seen it once and it was a
couple of years ago. Okay. So one of his his
I think his first one um was called yes I Can.
And there's a great scene in spinals up when Bruno
(16:11):
Kirby as a limo driver is talking about it and
he said he said something about yes I can. He said,
although the real title should have been yes I can.
If Frank says, it's okay because Frank called the shots
for all those guys, right, I remember that. It's very
funny joke, like he just keeps going off about that,
doesn't it. Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. You know. Billy
(16:31):
Crystal and Bruno Kirby had a very famous falling out,
and legend has it Billy Crystal sort of had him
black bald. What is up with Billy Crystal? My impression
of him is changing dramatically. He really sells it when
the cameras are on. Huh. Yeah, well that's what you're do,
you know? That's crazy though to be that Wow, I mean,
(16:55):
we know the game. People think you and I like
each other? Right, we got every but it's amazing. Like
what were their names of the MythBusters? Like the day
the camera stopped rolling, they released press statements saying we
never liked each other. I know, why would why would
anybody do that? Even if you didn't like each other?
Why would you just let it go? You know? I
(17:16):
don't know. But it's a Jamie and um Adam Adam,
that's right. Adams a great guy. I know him a
little bit. So are you implying Jamie's not so? I
don't know him any Okay, I'm not citing. This took
a really weird turned, inn't it. It did? So back
to Sammy Davis Jr. He also started his star started rising. Um, well,
(17:40):
his star had already risen, but in the seventies when
the Variety Show came about, which was a big deal
in the seventies and even into the eighties, Sammy Davis Jr.
Was perfect for that medium. Well, this was this was
I think even earlier than that, when TV really started
to dominate. The earliest shows that they had were vaudeville shows.
That led to variety show. He had his own variety
(18:02):
show later in the seventies because he was so it
wasn't a huge hit. But for someone who can dance
and sing and do impressions and do comedy and for
God's sakes, is a real deal gun slinger a variety
shows pretty great. It really was so. Um he's you know,
he uh, he's getting onto TV. Um, there's their Vegas
(18:23):
gigs have really put the Will Maston trio on the map.
And um, they were doing really well. Um, they had
reliable work that kind of stuff. People knew who Sammy
Davis Jr. Was. He was already, you know, a protege
of Frank Sinatra by this time. Um, But it wasn't
until ninete that the big break came through. And it
really came through and like a really kind of Hollywood
(18:46):
story kind of way where like this they that they
were given this one shot and this one particular spot
at just the right time, in front of just the
right people, and they killed it and that was it.
They Sammy Davis Jr. Was a star from that moment on.
That's right. And that was at um Janice Page and
a show at Zeros, which is now the Comedy Store. Um,
(19:11):
and oh really, I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah, it
became the Comedy Store after Zeros, but was sort of
a legendary place, you know, of its own in its
own right. But everyone you know that. Apparently it's debatable
whether or not it was an Oscar party after party
or not, but regardless, there were a lot of Hollywood
people there, including Bogey and his rat Pack. Sure, the
(19:33):
the original rat Pack, which wasn't called the rat Pack, no,
it was actually it was well why did well, never mind,
I'm not going down the rabbit hole. What That's all right?
So he uh, he kills it there. He's doing impressions
of people that are in the audience. Everyone loves him. Uh.
They signed with the William Moore Morris Agency, and an
(19:54):
overnight sensation, you know, twenty thirty years in the making
starts happening. Yeah, and should say so. Sammy Davis Jr.
Became known for his impressions. He was groundbreaking in the
sense that he would do impressions of white people and
up to the time Sammy Davis Jr. Started doing impressions
of white people, if you're a black performer, you could
do impressions of other black people, and that was it.
(20:17):
It was just not okay for you to do white people.
Sammy Davis Jr. Just started doing white people and the
white people loved it. And at that show at Zero's,
he was doing impressions of some of the people in
the crowd, like he did a killer Carrie Grant and
Carry Grant was a member of Humphrey Bogart's rat Pack
and he was probably there that night. Um, so there
were a lot of people who were getting impressions done
(20:38):
of them. They just loved it. Killed and um, I
think Janice Page said I was the headliner tonight. I
think these guys should be the headliner from now on,
which was pretty cool of her to do that. You know,
it's amazing. Yep. So he gets a record deal after that,
he's putting out like show Chins, Old Standards. Uh. He
does a pilot in the mid fifties with his father
(20:59):
and cool about a trio of black entertainers that are
kind of struggling called We Three. Yeah, I would love
to see that. Well, there's another probably we'll talk about
later that you definitely need to see. I haven't checked
it out yet, but I know I know the one.
It's pretty legendary. So uh. A big thing happened that
same year in nineteen four is Sammy Davis Jr. Had
(21:22):
a wreck in his Cadillac. And the Cadillac and this
is just horrific to think about because I've seen these,
you know, in the middle of the steering wheel, they
had these little decorative cones that stuck out. His left
eyeball hit that thing and he lost it and warren
eyepatch for a while and then a glass eye. Yeah,
apparently he remembers coming out of the car um with
(21:45):
holding his eye in his hand, and then that's the
last thing he remembers. The next thing he remembers after
that was waking up in a hospital bed and when
he woke up and realized that he lost his eye
for life as I was gone. Um, he was really
really scared that his rear was over. This is n
He'd just gotten his big break three years before and
(22:06):
was on his way up and now all of a
sudden he loses his eye. And the thing about losing
your eye in addition to say, you know, having to
sit for publicity photos and try to be a leading
man in movies or on Broadway or that kind of thing. Um,
you have to relearn spatial awareness. You're going from binocular
(22:27):
vision to monocular vision and that has all sorts of
weird tricky effects on you. So if you're a dancer
or a gun slinger or doing some old soft shoe
or whatever you're doing, you have to relearn how to move.
And apparently one of the things that Sinatra did that
was really stand up for Sammy Davis Jr. Was he
(22:47):
had him basically come convalesc at Sinatra's place and really
um guided him in in saying, like, you need to
relearn how to move. You're gonna be fine, but you're
you're gonna have to You're gonna have to start really
attacking this and you can't really sit around and feel
bad for yourself. You need to to get you know,
(23:08):
relearn movement now rather than you know, spend a year
feeling sad. And that was a huge help for him.
It was, and he also was kind of UM, I
don't think, I mean, maybe his life did kind of
pass before him, because he definitely had an awakening of
what have I done here with my life so far?
What greater purpose have I served? Um? And what can
(23:30):
I do from this point forward. Um, he and put
a pin in this. But this was the first exposure
to judaism in the hospital. You gotta visit from a
rabbi and just put a pin in that because that
will come back again later. Okay, to a pin in it. Well,
look all right, I don't even know where this pin
came from. You, I don't. Well, you do have that
(23:52):
pincushion right there. But yeah, this this little tomato one
with the strawberry dangling off of it. Remember those, oh man,
because there a seventies mom that didn't have one of
the yeah, with the Macromay owl hanging on the wall behind.
So here's where it gets really kind of great as
far as knowing what a stand up guy Sammy Davis Jr. Was.
(24:14):
His his success is booming, and you would think, Sammy
Davis Jr. You can leave that Will Maston trio behind. Yeah,
because it's really all about you. He said, no, man,
shine us all up, babe. Three way split, And that's
what they did. They he ensured contractually that they would
(24:34):
get a three way split that endured ten years after
he left as a solo performer. He was still giving
them thirty three each. Yeah for fifteen years total, they
got a third of the profits each of them. Um
and yeah, they they were you know, originally they were
still doing their Vegas show as the Will Maston Trio
(24:55):
featuring Sammy Davis Jr. But then over time, you know,
remember his uncle and his dad were a good twenty
years older than him. By this time, he's in his thirties,
so you know, they're starting to get they're they're losing
their step a little bit, so they start to not
be in the show quite as much, stepping back. But
even still, he made sure they were taken care of
(25:15):
for another fifteen years. Third a third and this is
a third during Sammy Davis Junior's peak earning years, So
he got one third of what he would have gotten
had he just basically said, dad, uncle will thank you
for teaching me everything. I know. I'm gonna move on now,
best of luck, let me know if you need a loan. Instead,
(25:36):
he just took a third of what he could have
gotten and gave the other two thirds to those two,
which is for fifteen years. Chuck, that's really amazing. It's
pretty great. Uh So that pen it actually wasn't in
there that long. We go ahead and take the pen
out because he after that first meeting with a rabbi,
he reads more and more about Judaism. He draws a
correlation between the plight of the Jewish people and the
(25:58):
plight of black people, and it really spoke to him
and he converted. And some people said, oh, this big
publicity stunt. He's like, no, this is not a publicity stunt.
He said, this is my new religion. And uh. He
very humorously started referring to himself as a one eyed
black Jew, sometimes of one eyed black Puerto Rican, like
(26:18):
Puerto Rican Jew, which was very sort of in keeping
with his self deprecating style. For sure, He's like, um,
Tim Watley, he converted for the jokes man, I remember
that one. I've been plowing through Seinfeld again. I love.
One of my favorite things that always gets me is
when Jerry calls George Biff. Yeah. It never fails to
(26:41):
make me laugh. Biff Yeah, so good. Uh, she was, well, no,
let's not take another break, let's play on here, right,
all right. So, dating wise, he is dating black women
and white women. When he dates white women, he gets
racist sets from white people, and he gets condemnation from
(27:03):
the black community for betraying the black community by dating
a white woman. Right, he can't win. No, he really
couldn't win. And apparently from what I saw in that
um that American Masters uh documentary, Um, he really really
really was in love with Kim Novak. From what I saw,
(27:23):
she may have been the love of his life. At
the very least. He never got to explore whether she
was or not. But um, when he said that he
intended to marry her, I guess it was in the fifties. Um,
he uh he there was a contract put out in
his life by the studio head and I think Columbia
where Kim Novak was an actress. Yeah, Harry Cohne was
(27:46):
the studio head. And this was back when Vegas and
Hollywood were you know, there was some mob in mafia
dealings going on for sure, and Sammy had some mob
friends too, just because he was friends with Frank and
you know, that was just sort of the thing. These
guys would come to these Vegas clubs and he would
meet them. He sought protection from a Chicago gangster that
(28:06):
he was in with. The Chicago gangster was like, I
can't help you in California. He's like, I'm not I'm
no good there. I can protect you in Chicago, I
can protect you in Vegas. Can't do anything about California.
It's not my territory. Uh. And supposedly, and this is
where it gets a little hazy, because some people say
it happened, some people say it didn't. Supposedly he was
even kidnapped for a few hours to scare him. Um,
(28:30):
but who knows if that's really true. Well, apparently one
of his friends who was there said no, it wasn't true.
He was never kidnapped. But the contract basically said there
was a contract that said you have forty eight hours
to marry a black woman or you die, and whatever.
Whatever it was, whatever, whether there was an actual contract,
(28:51):
whether it were just got to him that there was,
It didn't matter to Sammy Davis Jr. At that minute,
because he broke it off with Kim Novak. Uh, much
to his own hearts break and um, yeah, proposed to
a woman named laure White who Um, she was a
black singer, and I think they had dated years before.
(29:11):
And I guess he never copped to the um to
the idea that it was an arranged marriage that was
basically a business proposal. But That is definitely how it's
portrayed by the people who were there at the time,
were his close friends, that he even paid her ten
thousand dollars to do this. Um. And I'm sure it
(29:31):
was very you know, uh kind and congenial to it.
But they described that day, his wedding day to laure
White is probably the worst day of his life, tied
for first with the day that he lost his left eye. Yeah,
and he you know, we can't look over some of
the ugly parts of that day. He got drunk and
physically assaulted her in the car just after the wedding reception. Yeah. Um.
(29:56):
Not making any excuses for the guy, but it was
certainly not right to you that right. So their marriage
didn't last terribly long. I didn't see how long it lasted,
did you. Okay, so about a year, and I guess
he considered that the heat had gone down or whatever
by that time. Um. And but I get the impression
(30:17):
that the fact that Kim Novak had been taken from
him strictly out of racism. Like Harry Cohne, I'm sure
was a racist, but he was also a businessman and
the reason that he was doing this was because he
knew America was racist. This is at a time when
there were laws that prevented black men and white women
or vice versa, to marry. It wasn't legal yet. No.
(30:40):
Um so the idea of one of his biggest stars,
Kim Novak, marrying a black man, uh, he he decided
that he just couldn't take that risk business wise, and
so he threatened Sammy Davis Jr. Whatever the reason was,
Sammy Davis Jr. Really bristled under that. And so in
nineteen sixty uh, this was a few years after a
um he had to break it off with Kim Novak.
(31:03):
He got married to a woman, a Swedish actress named
my Britt and I he had children with her and
was married to her, but he also um ran around
on her almost constantly from what I understand, and you
get the impression that my was in part a. Uh well,
I'll just put his PG as possible, thumbing his nose
(31:26):
at all of the racists out there who took Kim
Novak from him. He was he was saying, I think, so,
as somebody put it, I'm big enough now that you
can't tell me who to marry, and I'm going to
marry this beautiful six ft white woman who looks like
Margot Roby. Sort of she does, yeah, she does a
little bit. I had. I didn't put my finger on it.
And their children were incredibly beautiful, thanks largely to their
(31:49):
mom too, but they were they were Um. They had
three kids together and they were married for eight years.
And I think it's very sad because my brit immediately
lost her career, so she gave up her career to
be with Sammy Davis Jr. I don't know. I she
must have fallen in love with them, um because she
she had three kids with him too. But she gave
(32:10):
up a lot and he gave up nothing. And I
think that was very unfair um on his part to
ask for what he asked for from her and give
so little in return. Yeah. And what was also not
fair and um sort of a black eye on John F.
Kennedy was that Sammy Davis Jr. Had been scheduled to
(32:33):
perform at the nineteen sixty inauguration and he disinvited him
because of his marriage to a white woman. Kennedy personally
had him disinvited. This wasn't Kennedy's like advisors or anything
like that. It was him and he said, you know.
Apparently people said he you know, it was a political
move because he didn't want to alienate Southern Democrats. But
(32:56):
either way, that was a big um fracturing of the
relationship between JFK and Sammy Davis Jr. He never got
over that, No, he never did. And it was also
a moment where Sinatra, who had stood up for Sammy
Davis Jr. Multiple countless times against racists, against studio heads,
against the record company executives, against all sorts of people, didn't.
(33:19):
He did not stand up and argue and try to
persuade JFK to change his mind. He just quietly went
along with it. And I think that broke Sammy Davis
Junior start as much as JFK betraying him, and probably
even more because he expected more from from Frank Frank
than he did from from Kennedy. And the other thing
(33:40):
about Kennedy res sending that invitation, Harry Belafani's invitation wasn't rescinded,
and Harry Belafani was married to a white woman and
was there with his white wife at this inauguration party.
Um So Sammy Davis Jr. Couldn't help but take it personally,
and he really did. It was a big It was
a big deal, a big moment in his life in
a very sad moment, and a lot of people think
(34:02):
that it led to him later on embracing, um, probably
ill advisedly, the Nixon campaign in the early seventies. That's right,
you want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a
break and we'll talk a little bit about his work
in the civil rights movement right after this. This cat
(34:42):
is interesting, man, right, I don't know if everybody's picking
up on it. Did you know this before? Because this
is your pick, right? Yeah. Yeah, I've always been pretty
fascinated with him because we haven't even gotten to the
super weird and interesting stuff. Yeah right, Um, which happens
in the seventies. So in the sixties is when and
and possibly because of the JFK treatment, is when he
(35:03):
really starts to get more socially aware. Uh, starts donating
money to the cause and marches at selma Um for
the civil rights efforts. Um. He when he supported Nixon,
it was not just the thumbing of the nose at
at Kennedy, but he bought into Nixon and thought that
it was gonna be a good choice for Black America. Uh.
(35:26):
He regretted that later on, of course. But it wasn't
just um a poopy pants move, like, hey, while I'm
gonna support Nixon now because you disinvited me, exactly and
so Um. One of the other reasons that he embraced
Nixon was that Nixon embraced him as a human being
and really stood in start contrast to the treatment he
received from Kennedy. Um. And in that Nixon actually seemed
(35:53):
to really like Sammy Davis Jr. That a lot of
people are like the Nixon administration was just using Sammy
Davis Jr. They were, at the same time, I'm um,
using what's called the Southern strategy, which is they were
stoking racism among Southern whites to get them to turn
on the Democrats. Um. But he also apparently really did
like Sammy Davis Jr. And admired him and under Nixon's
(36:16):
administration tastes like bitter acid. Saying this, Sammy Davis Jr.
Became the first black person to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom,
and apparently Sammy Davis Jr. Was an avid Lincoln fan
and sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom with some of Abraham
Lincoln and Mary Todd. Lincoln's personal effects in this room
(36:37):
just blew him away, and that was actually how he
ended up in Vietnam doing this USO tour in nineteen two.
He said, what can I do to help? And Nixon
said that would probably that would probably help a lot.
But that just contributed even further to his alienation from
not just black people, but young black people too, because
(36:59):
it was a really tone deaf move. As I saw
it described at the time, that was not the kind
of thing you did. Vietnam was so unpopular that even
the troops weren't particularly supported at home. You know. It's
not like today where it's like, you know, we really
really hate this, you know, these endless wars. This is
we really disagree with the you know, the hawks and
(37:20):
the military industrial complex that supports us. But we're still
going to be supportive of the troops who have to
go there, who are over there, whether by their own
choice or well, I guess it's all volunteer army. Um,
they still deserve support these individuals over there overseas. That
was not necessarily how it was in during the Vietnam era.
(37:42):
So Sammy Davis Jr. Going over there to support the
troops after embracing the Nixon administration. Really um further this
rift between him and the black community, which and I
don't know if we really said this enough was unfair,
unjust because he was a fervent supporter of the civil
(38:04):
rights movement during the fifties and sixties, I mean furvent
Like he marched in Selma with Martin Luther King Jr.
Scared to death apparently, but he still went and he
still did it. He contributed a ton of money to
the civil rights movement. Um, he was, he was legit,
for sure, but he also was, um, you know, friends
(38:26):
with Richard Nixon. So one kind of one kind of
tarnishes the other, you know for sure. So in the sixties, Uh,
he is blown up. He's everywhere. He's on stage, he's
recording records, he's on TV, he's doing celebrity roast, he's
on Broadway, he's writing books, he's doing the gun slinger thing. Uh.
(38:49):
He's making a lot of money at this point and
starts spending a lot of money because he came from nothing,
Like we said, Uh, this is when the rat pack
thing really heats up. Uh. And he's hanging out with
Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin and of course the
chairman uh and started him their first movie together, which
was Ocean's Eleven. Not a great movie. Oh disagree, I don't.
(39:15):
I think the original is not very good. Oh I
liked it. Uh. I thought the remake was great, but
um did not care for the original. I'd like the original. Yeah.
Hanging Robin in the Seven Hoods, Yeah, and also not great.
I don't think the rat Pack ever made a great movie. Okay,
that's just my opinion. What about Time Bandits fantastic Okay. Uh.
(39:36):
They were hanging out at the Coconut Grove in the
Ambassador Hotel, which, um is a place that I have
a neat little quick story. Did a commercial shoot there
before they tore down, and it was, you know, an
empty hotel at this point that they just used for
movie shoots. And it was an overnight thing, and like
two in the morning, I was working in the art department.
They said, here, you need to go assemble all these
(39:59):
flags that we're going to hang. And they said just
go in the in the Coconut Grove and do it
because there's plenty of room in there. And I went
in there all by myself, sitting in Cocae in the
the dusty old shadows of what was once the Great
Coconut Grove, and uh for like an hour and a
half by myself, like sitting in a booth at the
rat Pack might have sat in. That's amazing, really pretty neat.
(40:22):
And later that night got to go see where Bob
Kennedy was shot. Oh that's where he was shot. Yeah,
in the Ambassador Hotels, in the kitchen and one of
the gut the overnight security guy. It was just sort
of one of those slow shoots. He was like to
me and my friend, He's like, you want to go
down the kitchens? Who are happened? And we went, oh, yeah, wow,
that's amazing. It was super cool and creepy. So anyway,
(40:43):
great story. They're they're hanging out with the rat Pack. Um.
And this is where it gets a little like dodgy,
because the rat Pack they were all best buds. They
genuinely loved each other. But when you look at their
old stick there is a lot of sort of racial
joking about Sammy. Um. It's all in good fun, but
(41:05):
they were they were often jokes made about him being black,
being the only black member Dean Martin. One of his
famous jokes was he would pick little Sammy up on
stage because Dean was a big guy and Sammy was small,
and uh, thank the audience for the h in double
a CP award. So stuff like that. So in that
(41:26):
in that documentary, and I'm not like justifying that at all,
but in that documentary, Whoopi Goldberg is like, you know,
you can you could take any segment of their show
and be like this was really offensive Italians or alcoholics,
or women, or black people or Jews. And she said
they went hard on everybody. But from what I understand,
(41:47):
at least as far as Sammy was concerned, what he
wasn't secretly didn't secretly have a chip on his shoulder
and he had to just put up with this to
be a member of the rat pack. He seemed to
really not like he didn't take it as if they
or being um hostile or cruel, that it was just
part of the act and that's how he took it. Yeah,
(42:07):
I mean, it was certainly a different time. I mean
there was no doubting about it that back then you
could make jokes about all kinds of things that you
can't joke about now, yeah, and it's like it's not
like I'm I used to hang out with Sammy Davis Jr.
And had like quiet talks with him or whatever. So
it is possible that he did, you know, harbor resentment
from it, but that's not the im person that I
have from from the research that I've done. Let me
(42:28):
tell you, Josh right, But apparently no one did, because
this is a really bizarre thing about him. When when
he um was talking about converting to Judaism, I think
in like a nineteen sixty six Playboy interview, Um he
was talking about losing his eye and then you know,
converting to Judaism, and that it happened during a period
of soul searching, and that he did all this and
(42:50):
went through all this even though he was convalescing at
Frank Sinatra's house, even though apparently Jerry Lewis spent seven
days at his bedside when he was in the hospital,
had all these telegrams come in, all this outpouring of support.
He considered himself alone and that he was a loner,
and that that was that's really bizarre when you step
back and look at that, because Sammy Davis Jr. Always
(43:12):
had friends. He was always the life of the party.
He was always a good guy. Everybody wanted to be
around him. Um, he was always having fun. But he
considered himself a loner. Apparently he didn't let people in.
So even if I had been hanging around with him,
he probably wouldn't have had that conversation with me anyway, Like, Sammy,
I don't feel like I know they're real. You come on, Sammy,
let it. And he said, that's by design, babe. I
(43:36):
feel like I'm tripping or something right now. So his
career is booming in the in the sixties and into
the seventies, and the result of that, of course, uh well,
through the sixties, I guess is that he's not around much. Um.
He had a lot of regrets about not being around
as a father. Um, as a husband. He was flandering,
(43:56):
he was drinking a lot, he was using drugs. Uh So,
in nineteen sixty eight he got divorced. In nineteen seventy,
he married a woman named Altavis Gore, who was eighteen
years his junior backup dancer. His children did not like
the fact that she was so much younger, but they
were stayed married, you know, for the rest of his life. Yeah,
(44:18):
he was like, Oh, if you've got a problem with her,
you should probably not know about everything else I'm doing. Yeah,
so here's where it gets really interesting, very interesting. Sammy
Davis Jr. Had a convergence of two interests in the seventies. Uh.
He became a member of the Church of Satan. He
(44:38):
was an honorary warlock and he got really really into
porn and porn. Uh. You know, there's no better way
to say it than he he was a swinger. He
was an orgies. He participated in Satanic orgies. Yeah. That
was actually I don't know if it was his first
(44:58):
orgy or not, but that's how he became him part
of involved in the Church of Satan, you know, like
the original Church of Satan with Anton LaVey there and everything.
Um right exactly. Um. He went and participated in a
Satanic orgy, um, Sammy Davis Jr. Which I think is
(45:21):
like a regular orgy but with just more like red candles, yeah,
and pentagrams and black robes and stuff like that. But
then the black robes come off, but I think the
pentagrams stay on. But um he I read this really
interesting Vice article about it and he he was apparently
at the first one, and this would have been in
the late sixties, and somebody in a hood is trying
(45:43):
to get his attention and it turns out he lifts
the hood and it's his barber, his BARBERA J. C. Bring.
He would later be killed with Um Sharon Tate by
the Manson family. But he was basically like, hey, Sam,
it's me Jay. How are you doing in this awesome?
And then they went back to yeah, but he yeah.
(46:04):
He was hugely in the in the pornography, was and
the Orgies into swinging. He was. He loved cocaine um
and I love drinking. I saw our cineo Um interview
with him, must have been very shortly before his death,
where he's like, you know, I had to give everything up, uh,
and I don't miss all the other stuff, but I
miss booze, I miss whiskey, I miss vodka. I love
that stuff. But then I also saw another interview where
(46:29):
he basically said the same thing to Larry King, like
I've given everything up, I don't smoke anymore, anything like that.
And then somebody went backstage and there's Sammy Davis Jr.
Smoking a cigarette drinking a brand and he goes, Sammy,
what are you doing. You just told Larry King that
you gave all this up. He's like, I'm I planned to.
So who knows what he actually gave up or didn't do,
(46:50):
but his whole jam was I want to experience every
possible human experience I can, and I approach all this
stuff without judgment, which is how we ended up becoming
involved in the Church of Satan, which went on, Yeah,
no judgment here. If that's his bag, it's not hurting anybody. Um.
Did you see the one quote about the the ritual
(47:11):
with the lady who was tied to the bed, uh
where he decided like it was okay? Yeah, he was
talking about it and he was like that chick was
loving it. Man, And well, I won't say the rest
of the quote, but do you remember, Yeah, I remember,
I remember. So all of this led to, Um, what
(47:32):
we were talking about earlier. This this TV pilot that
is legendary in Hollywood as one of the weirdest, worst
things that Hollywood has ever produced, And it was a
pilot for a TV show in nineteen seventy three called
Poor Devil, which was about a man who was a load,
um low down on the totem pole or I guess
(47:54):
high on the totem pole, Um coal shoveler in hell,
who is offer the chance to work his way up
the ranks in how if he can get the soul
of Jack Klugman, living white man on Earth right Jack
Klugman quincy m D. Yeah, and it is on YouTube,
and dude, it is amazing. I have not had a
(48:16):
chance to see yet. I can't wait to see it,
but it sounds amazing. I saw it described as like
he's a reverse Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life. Would
you wouldn't possibly understand that? But uh, just imagine that
somebody's not trying to get you to be good so
that they can or understand how great life is. He's
trying to to get him to follow his his most
(48:38):
bitter revenge impulses and stuff like that. But at one point,
apparently um Jack Klugman wants to get in touch with
Sammy Davis Jr. The Devil, and it's like, oh, I know,
I'll call the Church of Satan downtown. They'll know how
to get in touch with him. And the Church of
Satan went because apparently the pilot was aired, and they
were all about Sammy d at this point, and they
(48:59):
made him an honorary war law. He used to flash
like the devil horns at them from stage when they
would love he. Uh. Christopher Lee, by the way, played
the devil Um, which is pretty on the notes but perfect,
So that doesn't succeed obviously, it's terrible. The seventies and
(49:20):
the eighties, his star starts to fade a little bit.
He's still around. Of course. He was on All in
the Family in a very famous episode where he kissed
Archie Bunker on the lips. Uh. He was We have
to talk about the great great Cannonball Run. Oh yeah,
he was in There wasn't a hey man. He and
Dean were for partners. They played I forgot about. They
(49:41):
dressed up as priests, that's right, heavily drinking, smoking priests.
They played themselves basically as priests who wanted to drive fast.
That's pretty great. But you know, even though we revere
that film, I don't think it was looked at generally
as one of the big highlights of his career. Oh.
I'm sure not. By this time, he's kitchi Sammy from
(50:02):
what I understand like he was fine with that as
long as he was working, he was okay. Because I
said earlier that like he had a certain affiliation with
that song um Mr bow Jangles, where if you listen
to it, it's about an old performer who's washed up
and has been washed up for years and he's still
drinking and just doing you know, he's he's been reduced
(50:23):
to doing basically sidewalk performances, and apparently Sammy was scared
to death about that being his future. So even just
doing what he was doing with Dean and Cannonball Run,
I'm sure it was just fine in his in his
mind because he was still working and performing. Of course,
he looks around and there's there's Bert Man, there's Adrian Barbow.
(50:47):
He was You're digging the Sammy now, aren't you. Yes,
you know, I think Sammy needs to be a recurring
character from now on. We'll see um the new hippie
rob so uh. In the eighties, he gets into some
financial trouble, to say the least, because I love how
he had put it. He had been struggling with tax
(51:07):
payments since the nineteen sixties. I think it was a
Willie Nelson sort of deal from what I could gather.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I think he wasn't really
paying his taxes. Sure, sure, And and apparently he had
also I don't know if he got bad tax advice
or what, but he had claimed some very extravagant stuff
as a write off, and the I R. S came
back and said, Nope, you're that doesn't count. You also
(51:29):
owe on that. And his estate was worth or his
net assets were worth about four million, but he owed
about seven millions. And he was a profligate spender of money.
I saw one interview once where a guy said that
he walked six blocks in New York with them. He
even named the streets, so it seems like he really
did just walk six blocks and dropped fifty tho dollars
(51:52):
along the way, stopping in different stores, dropped that out
of his pocket on the street. No, no buying stuff,
just bye bye bye. He'd spend it because he had
come from nothing, and I knew, you know, that thrill
of spending money. He was terrible with his money, and
so as he um as he found out he owed
seven million dollars, he started to organize some some shows
(52:13):
and specials to try to raise some money to help
him pay off this debt. And after the first one,
I think in nine, he has found that he had
a sore throat, so he went to the doctor and
ultimately was diagnosed with throat cancer. Yeah, after the that
very first show. And that's like such cruel irony to
raise all this money because when he passed away in
(52:34):
nineteen nine, in May sixte of cancer, he left that
tax bill to his wife like that that carried over Yeah, Ali, yeah,
so um that really left her kind of destitute for
the rest of her life as well. Oh yeah, for sure. Um,
I mean like she she then she basically owed three
(52:57):
million dollars and his estate was sold off like basically
at a yard sale auction. All of his stuff was
um and yeah he he that was not that was
the the negative part of his legacy was that text
that leaving that behind. Yeah, and you know, in one way,
it's like kind of a sad ending with the financial
(53:18):
stuff and obviously dying way too young of cancer. But yeah,
sixty five man, he did accomplish everything he set out
to accomplish. He he showed everybody who said this diminutive
little mixed race kind of funny looking guy. Uh, is
never gonna amount to anything. And he had a lifelong
career from the age of three to sixty five in
(53:40):
show business. So and one of the things Chuck is
he did not really harbor regret. He apparently whenever he
talked about his life, he talked about it with great satisfaction,
which is pretty reassuring. Yeah. That quote on that Letterman
show was great. Yeah. On the episode he's he's talking
about the younger generation and he said, I look at
the young before Armors today and I'd go like this, Yeah, man,
(54:02):
go ahead, cook, I've been there. That's it, man, I
have no envy I did at all. Yeah, pretty great,
Go ahead, cook. That's great. Sammy Davis Jr. Everybody around
of applause. You got anything else? Nothing else. If you
want to know more about Sammy Davis Jr. Just start
watching some of his old performances are pretty amazing. Uh.
(54:23):
And while you're doing that, we're gonna just move on
ahead to listener mail. Yeah, this is about the pizza thing.
We heard from a lot of nine people. Yeah, I'm
glad that you you picked one of these. Man. This
is good. Hey, while we are not specifically trained to
send e M. S two calls where people pretend to
order a pizza. Most nine one one dispatchers will in
(54:45):
fact ask you this is one did you dial the
wrong number? And if they respond no, we will then
say are you in a situation where you can't ask
for help? And then they can say yes or no. Obviously,
there are many stories of this working out, most in
domestic violence or kidnapping situations. So even though it is
a protocol necessarily or set in stone as a way
(55:06):
to ask for help, it could help many people in
bad situations. We will not just hang up on you,
even if you keep ordering a pizza and do not
acknowledge that you need help. Most will still send out
law enforcement for a welfare check due to the suspicious
nature of the call. I'm glad to hear this. Yeah,
please let this be known because in the last ditch effort,
this may save someone's life. And that is from responder
(55:28):
Brooke Diane. Thanks Brooke, and thank you also not for
being like Josh was wrong wrong, wrong, wrong? Wrong? Oh
I don't remember did you say that's not true? Yeah?
I said specifically it's an urban legend. Okay, I don't
even remember that. Yeah, So I was really glad when
people started writing I'm glad you picked one to say like, no,
this is this is for real. Okay, great, thanks again, Brooke.
(55:50):
That was fantastic. If you want to get in touch
with this like Brook did. Even if you do want
to say Josh was wrong, wrong wrong, wrong wrong, that's
all right, we'd love to hear that kind of thing.
You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
(56:12):
for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Should Know News
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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