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Sammy Davis Jr: National Treasure · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello everyone in podcast land. If you have ever wanted
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0:28
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
0:31
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:40
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's
0:42
Speaker 1: guest producer Dylan sitting in again like a great guy. Um,
0:47
Speaker 1: like a cool cat baby. I thought you were doing
0:52
Speaker 1: evil German doctor for a second and then I figured
0:54
Speaker 1: it out. No man, Wait, I haven't said it yet.
0:57
Speaker 1: And this is stuff you should know. Okay, that was
0:59
Speaker 1: a good one that no man was wonderful. I love
1:02
Speaker 1: how Sammy Davis Jr. Always said cat and baby. It
1:07
Speaker 1: was just he was such a cool dude. And okay,
1:11
Speaker 1: do Sammy Davis Jr. Saying we have ways of making
1:14
Speaker 1: you talk. What sounds German about any of that? I
1:17
Speaker 1: just do it, please please, we have ways of making
1:21
Speaker 1: you talk. Man. It was pretty great and that's a
1:26
Speaker 1: little soft shoe. It's great stuff. So you know, Billy
1:31
Speaker 1: Crystal Uh used to do Sammy Davis Jr. Uh way
1:36
Speaker 1: back in the eighties when black face was super cool
1:39
Speaker 1: to do and not controversial. Did he do black face
1:43
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Jr. Yes, dude, he did black face Sammy
1:46
Speaker 1: Davis Jr. Eight years ago at the Oscars. What. Yes,
1:52
Speaker 1: you don't remember that? No, he hoped the last it's
1:54
Speaker 1: the last time he hosted the Oscars eight In two
1:56
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, he they did, you know, a remote intro
2:01
Speaker 1: thing where he was doing different things. In the last
2:03
Speaker 1: bit was him and black face again and people were
2:07
Speaker 1: like and then you know, this was in you know,
2:10
Speaker 1: two thousand twelves. So that was Twitter and that was
2:11
Speaker 1: Facebook and this social media and people were like, that
2:15
Speaker 1: wasn't cool in the eighties. And I can't believe he's
2:18
Speaker 1: doing that now for real. Uh. Sammy Davis Jr's daughter
2:22
Speaker 1: came out and said, you know what, if there's one
2:24
Speaker 1: thing I know is that my dad is looking down
2:26
Speaker 1: and laughing and smiling at Billy Crystal doing this. He
2:29
Speaker 1: was he was roasted pretty heavily for it, rightfully so,
2:32
Speaker 1: and he is he hasn't been around a lot, but
2:35
Speaker 1: he wasn't around a lot before then. He you know,
2:39
Speaker 1: do you think like that? Did it? Like that was
2:40
Speaker 1: the demise kid? I guess helped. I was, Yeah, I
2:43
Speaker 1: haven't seen him in a while either. Man, How did
2:46
Speaker 1: somebody not step back and be like, okay, wait, we're
2:49
Speaker 1: about to do black face? I know, Like, how did
2:52
Speaker 1: no one on the production crew of the Oscar say
2:55
Speaker 1: not a good idea? I don't know. Well he did it? So, Um,
3:01
Speaker 1: I came across something that I thought was pretty interesting.
3:04
Speaker 1: I saw interview with David Letterman and Sammy Davis Jr.
3:10
Speaker 1: Says in this interview he did black face. He was
3:14
Speaker 1: a little kid. Apparently his skin was lighter when he
3:18
Speaker 1: was a kid, and they wanted him because he used
3:22
Speaker 1: to tour with his uncle and his dad as as
3:24
Speaker 1: we'll see um, and to get around labor laws, they
3:28
Speaker 1: would pass him off as a midget. And to do
3:32
Speaker 1: that there was right, yes, thank you. They gave him
3:36
Speaker 1: um a candy cigar and put him in black face
3:40
Speaker 1: and and told anyone who would listen that he was
3:42
Speaker 1: a little person. That's although again they didn't say a
3:45
Speaker 1: little person. Boy. This is a really controversial episode right
3:49
Speaker 1: out of the gate. Well, there's a lot of sort
3:51
Speaker 1: of I mean, he was a complicated guy who was uh,
3:56
Speaker 1: you know, his father was black, his mother was Puerto
3:58
Speaker 1: Rican Um. He eventually Lee would endorse to presidents both
4:02
Speaker 1: Kennedy and Nixon. He served in the army. He was
4:06
Speaker 1: a rat packer. He uh was uh shunned by racist
4:12
Speaker 1: and also shunned sometimes within his own black community. Yeah,
4:16
Speaker 1: like a little pinball getting bounced around and little is right.
4:19
Speaker 1: He was also a little guy who always I think
4:23
Speaker 1: had a complex about his height, about his looks. Um.
4:26
Speaker 1: He had this weird sort of underbyte uh jaw that
4:32
Speaker 1: would jut out to one side when he talked. Just
4:35
Speaker 1: a really fascinating guy that was super super talented and
4:40
Speaker 1: had his his little tiny fingers and a lot of
4:44
Speaker 1: pies from you know, singing and dancing and performing live
4:48
Speaker 1: and in movies on on TV, and uh, just really
4:52
Speaker 1: really fascinating guy. Yeah, when you look back at the
4:55
Speaker 1: rat pack he was the one that brought the actual
4:57
Speaker 1: talent to the rat Pack, like Sinatra could say, he
5:00
Speaker 1: Martine and the rat back was talented right right, But
5:04
Speaker 1: he was multi talented, like dancing, doing impressions. He he
5:10
Speaker 1: had like a little gun slinger routie. Did you see
5:12
Speaker 1: any of that? I did? It's amazing. Um. I watched
5:17
Speaker 1: the PBS documentary for their series American Masters on him
5:22
Speaker 1: and it was like an hour almost two hours long,
5:25
Speaker 1: and um, it was really in depth and really good.
5:27
Speaker 1: But they had some amazing footage of him just doing
5:30
Speaker 1: all sorts of different stuff. So I guess let me
5:33
Speaker 1: revise that, Yes, the rat Pack was talented. Sammy Davis Jr.
5:37
Speaker 1: Was was more talented than all of them put together. Right, Okay,
5:44
Speaker 1: so he made Uh did you see any of that
5:47
Speaker 1: documentary of the U s O Tour? Uh there were
5:52
Speaker 1: a few clips in there. Yeh yeah. So if you
5:54
Speaker 1: want to see a difference, So if you think Sammy
5:55
Speaker 1: Davis Jr. Is as just the candy man or Mr
6:00
Speaker 1: bo Jangles babe man, watching him do Mr Bojangles how
6:05
Speaker 1: he felt about that song, it's very heartbreaking, it is, um.
6:09
Speaker 1: But if you see this documentary in two he did
6:12
Speaker 1: a USO tour of Vietnam where he performed at drug
6:15
Speaker 1: rehab camps and some other you know, forward bases. If
6:20
Speaker 1: you look at this man, this is like a swinging
6:22
Speaker 1: seventies kind of rock and roll as it gets really
6:26
Speaker 1: really cool stuff. Uh, he was a a bad a performer.
6:33
Speaker 1: He was at places like some of them were kind
6:35
Speaker 1: of full on productions where they were capable of pulling
6:37
Speaker 1: that off. Other times there's this great footage of him
6:41
Speaker 1: where they could had nothing but a microphone and he's
6:44
Speaker 1: just like, all right, give me the mic and I
6:46
Speaker 1: will like basically kind of do my own beat boxy
6:49
Speaker 1: rhythm section and sing and dance. And the soldiers are
6:53
Speaker 1: just loving it. Man, they're eating it up. Yeah, And
6:56
Speaker 1: this is two I believe in. Like I mean like
7:00
Speaker 1: his like he was a world famous star by then,
7:04
Speaker 1: but also he was an older dude, you know, like
7:07
Speaker 1: he'd he'd really had his heyday in the late fifties
7:10
Speaker 1: and throughout the sixties, and this is seventy two and
7:12
Speaker 1: he's out there in Vietnam belting out motown hits and
7:16
Speaker 1: drumming on the mic stand. So yeah, I didn't see
7:20
Speaker 1: all of it, but yeah, you can tell like it
7:21
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. Yeah, he's he's even more of a
7:24
Speaker 1: talented performer than people realize, because you know, you do
7:28
Speaker 1: think of him was doing like standards and show tunes
7:30
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and he did mostly do those things,
7:32
Speaker 1: but he was talented in all sorts of different ways.
7:35
Speaker 1: So Um the Grabster helped us out with this one.
7:38
Speaker 1: And he said that there were a few defining sort
7:40
Speaker 1: of things about Sammy Davis Jr's life that inform who
7:44
Speaker 1: he was. One was that he um came from poverty.
7:50
Speaker 1: He performed with his like he said, his uncle, which
7:54
Speaker 1: was not really uncle, but his dad, and his uncle
7:56
Speaker 1: Will Masston as the was the mast and true Wilmass
8:01
Speaker 1: in trio, right, And they came from nothing, and he
8:04
Speaker 1: did not have any money. And he talked later in
8:07
Speaker 1: life about the thrill of leaving a waitress a hundred
8:12
Speaker 1: dollar tip and walking around with a thousand dollars in
8:16
Speaker 1: your pocket. He's later on in life, Yeah, he's like,
8:18
Speaker 1: that was a year's salary, and he was like, no
8:21
Speaker 1: one understands that unless you've been at the bottom, right,
8:24
Speaker 1: And he was definitely at the bottom. And they he
8:27
Speaker 1: and his father and his uncle will work their way up, um,
8:31
Speaker 1: you know, all through they started all throughout the Depression
8:34
Speaker 1: on the Chitland circuit doing vaudeville. UM. And he didn't
8:38
Speaker 1: go to school once. Because this is really important to understand.
8:43
Speaker 1: He spent his entire life in show business and the
8:50
Speaker 1: earliest years constantly on the road with his uncle and
8:53
Speaker 1: his dad. Yeah, so that's the second point. Never went
8:56
Speaker 1: to school at all. Uh, did not learn to read
8:59
Speaker 1: and right until he was in the army UM, and
9:02
Speaker 1: always apparently had trouble writing, and he always looked at
9:06
Speaker 1: it as he was always you know, sort of ashamed
9:08
Speaker 1: of it. He was proud of who he became, but
9:12
Speaker 1: always was ashamed of his lack of formal schooling. And
9:15
Speaker 1: he called his um what he had was the facade
9:18
Speaker 1: of intelligence, which Ed rightfully points out as just bunk,
9:22
Speaker 1: because there are many kinds of intelligence. He was a
9:24
Speaker 1: very intelligent guy, he just didn't have formal schooling. UM.
9:28
Speaker 1: But he was very self conscious of this and about
9:31
Speaker 1: representing the black community. Uh. Still like if he ever
9:35
Speaker 1: mispronounced something because he didn't know, it would make him
9:38
Speaker 1: feel really bad because he thought that that represented black
9:41
Speaker 1: people as a whole. So that's number two. Uh, And
9:45
Speaker 1: the third thing is that early on his family, his
9:49
Speaker 1: dad and his uncle really kind of um shielded him
9:52
Speaker 1: from racial prejudice. He certainly encountered it on the Chipland circuit,
9:57
Speaker 1: but he didn't really get the full deal until he
9:59
Speaker 1: went into the army. That was a big shock to him,
10:01
Speaker 1: right he UM. I think this kind of explains that
10:06
Speaker 1: he approached racism differently than some of his contemporaries, especially
10:12
Speaker 1: when he got to the army and was confronted with
10:14
Speaker 1: the full brunt of it. Um, and that that kind
10:18
Speaker 1: of informed how he viewed race and racial discrimination in
10:22
Speaker 1: the the dynamic between the races in the United States
10:27
Speaker 1: in the middle of last century. UM, because he hadn't
10:30
Speaker 1: really seen it firsthand or experienced the firsthand. He hadn't
10:32
Speaker 1: been in school and so other little white kids hadn't
10:35
Speaker 1: bullied him, or he hadn't been around town and just
10:39
Speaker 1: lived in a in a set space where most kids
10:43
Speaker 1: were introduced to racism firsthand. He didn't get that until
10:47
Speaker 1: he was eighteen, and so by the time he was eighteen,
10:49
Speaker 1: he was like, this isn't right. What do you what
10:51
Speaker 1: do you who do you think you are? And so
10:54
Speaker 1: when he got to the Army and was confronted with
10:56
Speaker 1: it full on. He Um, he approached it differently, whereas
11:01
Speaker 1: other some of his contemporaries in the army who were black,
11:04
Speaker 1: UM just kind of kept their head down and you know,
11:06
Speaker 1: tried to go along and get along. Uh. He would
11:10
Speaker 1: he would fight back, he would not he would not
11:12
Speaker 1: back down, he would not step down. And he spent
11:14
Speaker 1: a lot of time in the army physically fighting white
11:18
Speaker 1: racists who were trying to make things hard for him.
11:21
Speaker 1: And apparently at some point he fought one he fought
11:25
Speaker 1: one guy in one he beat beat up some white
11:27
Speaker 1: guy who had um done something racist to him. I'm
11:30
Speaker 1: not sure what it was. And then after the fight,
11:34
Speaker 1: the guy beaten said, you know, you may have beaten me,
11:37
Speaker 1: but you're still black. And apparently this got to Sammy
11:41
Speaker 1: Davis Jr. In such a way that it just transformed
11:44
Speaker 1: his approach that he realized like he could fight white
11:48
Speaker 1: boys his whole life, and probably when some of the fights,
11:51
Speaker 1: probably get beat up a lot of the fights, he
11:53
Speaker 1: had his nose broken at least twice, Um, but that
11:56
Speaker 1: it wasn't going to get him anywhere. And so he
11:58
Speaker 1: decided then and there that he could do is fight
12:01
Speaker 1: prejudice through his performing. He would be such a good performer,
12:06
Speaker 1: he would transcend race at least while he was performing.
12:10
Speaker 1: And he managed to do that or as much as
12:14
Speaker 1: anybody ever has in the history and modern history, at
12:17
Speaker 1: least in the United States. Yeah. So he's discharged in
12:20
Speaker 1: the army in goes right back to the Maston trio
12:25
Speaker 1: and touring with him, and he was sort of even
12:28
Speaker 1: though he was just a little kid growing up in
12:31
Speaker 1: that trio, he was sort of the star still. Yeah,
12:35
Speaker 1: little Sammy, Little Sammy um like little Stevie Wonder. Yeah.
12:40
Speaker 1: He he actually chuck. He won his first UM contest
12:44
Speaker 1: at age three, at like an amateur hour or amateur night,
12:49
Speaker 1: and he's sang, I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal.
12:52
Speaker 1: You that's what He knocked the house down at age three,
12:54
Speaker 1: And that was the the formal start to his UM,
12:58
Speaker 1: his show business. He went to Bucks. Yeah about a
13:01
Speaker 1: hundred fifty bucks today, Yeah, which for him, I mean,
13:04
Speaker 1: that's a lot of dough for a very very poor kid.
13:09
Speaker 1: So he gets out of the army, goes back to
13:11
Speaker 1: the Maston trio, and this sort of corresponded with the
13:16
Speaker 1: same timeline as when Vegas started to become a big
13:18
Speaker 1: deal and a big entertainment center, and they played Vegas
13:23
Speaker 1: a little bit. And you know, we should point out
13:26
Speaker 1: to on the Chiland circuit they were never making much money. No,
13:29
Speaker 1: it's a grueling thing. And they did get paid, but
13:31
Speaker 1: it's not like they were getting rich out there. I mean,
13:33
Speaker 1: you'd have to be a vaudeville superstar to make a
13:36
Speaker 1: lot of money. And this is also during the depression
13:38
Speaker 1: largely too, so people didn't make money in general, right,
13:41
Speaker 1: but doing three, four or five shows a day on
13:44
Speaker 1: that circuit. But goes to Vegas, starts performing in Vegas,
13:48
Speaker 1: uh starts doing impressions, which he did throughout his career.
13:52
Speaker 1: Was very good at them, and and the audiences ate
13:55
Speaker 1: it up. And then Frank Sinatra, the chairman of the board,
13:59
Speaker 1: as they say, gave him a call or gave their
14:02
Speaker 1: people called and said, hey, I want I want this
14:05
Speaker 1: guy open it up for me in Vegas. This trio
14:08
Speaker 1: opening up. Took him under his wing. That was a
14:11
Speaker 1: big deal. It was a very big deal. Said, you know,
14:13
Speaker 1: you do these great impressions, you do me, it's hysterical,
14:16
Speaker 1: You're so talented. Open for me in Vegas, and uh,
14:21
Speaker 1: that was where he said, you know, in Vegas for
14:23
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, twice a night, our skin had no color.
14:26
Speaker 1: But um, the second they got finished, he said, other
14:30
Speaker 1: acts to go out and gamble and socialize, have a drink.
14:32
Speaker 1: He said, we had to go through the kitchen with
14:34
Speaker 1: the garbage. And that's when it would all sort of
14:37
Speaker 1: hit home once again. They had to stay in like
14:39
Speaker 1: an entirely different part of Vegas that, from the looks
14:42
Speaker 1: of it, almost didn't have electricity. Dusty Rhodes, Yeah, that's
14:47
Speaker 1: where they had to stay. They were beloved performers, but
14:51
Speaker 1: that's where they had to go stay after the show.
14:53
Speaker 1: And I saw that even after he was a member
14:56
Speaker 1: of the rat Pack, a superstar, he had use the
15:00
Speaker 1: pool at the Sands, and guests in the fifties complained
15:05
Speaker 1: enough that the Sands agreed to drain the pool and
15:08
Speaker 1: refill it because Sammy Davis Jr. Had been using the
15:10
Speaker 1: pool And this is after he was a star already.
15:13
Speaker 1: That's how vile um the segregation was, even in a
15:17
Speaker 1: place like Vegas. All right, let's take a break and
15:21
Speaker 1: we'll come back and talk more about the candy Man
15:23
Speaker 1: right after this. So Sammy Davis Jr. Wrote a bunch
15:50
Speaker 1: of memoirs and autobiographies over the years. Uh, and one
15:53
Speaker 1: of them is a very great spinal tap choke. So
15:57
Speaker 1: I know you still haven't seen it, right, I saw,
16:00
Speaker 1: but I've only seen it once and it was a
16:02
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. Okay. So one of his his
16:05
Speaker 1: I think his first one um was called yes I Can.
16:08
Speaker 1: And there's a great scene in spinals up when Bruno
16:11
Speaker 1: Kirby as a limo driver is talking about it and
16:15
Speaker 1: he said he said something about yes I can. He said,
16:17
Speaker 1: although the real title should have been yes I can.
16:20
Speaker 1: If Frank says, it's okay because Frank called the shots
16:23
Speaker 1: for all those guys, right, I remember that. It's very
16:26
Speaker 1: funny joke, like he just keeps going off about that,
16:28
Speaker 1: doesn't it. Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. You know. Billy
16:31
Speaker 1: Crystal and Bruno Kirby had a very famous falling out,
16:34
Speaker 1: and legend has it Billy Crystal sort of had him
16:38
Speaker 1: black bald. What is up with Billy Crystal? My impression
16:43
Speaker 1: of him is changing dramatically. He really sells it when
16:47
Speaker 1: the cameras are on. Huh. Yeah, well that's what you're do,
16:49
Speaker 1: you know? That's crazy though to be that Wow, I mean,
16:55
Speaker 1: we know the game. People think you and I like
16:56
Speaker 1: each other? Right, we got every but it's amazing. Like
17:02
Speaker 1: what were their names of the MythBusters? Like the day
17:05
Speaker 1: the camera stopped rolling, they released press statements saying we
17:08
Speaker 1: never liked each other. I know, why would why would
17:10
Speaker 1: anybody do that? Even if you didn't like each other?
17:13
Speaker 1: Why would you just let it go? You know? I
17:16
Speaker 1: don't know. But it's a Jamie and um Adam Adam,
17:20
Speaker 1: that's right. Adams a great guy. I know him a
17:22
Speaker 1: little bit. So are you implying Jamie's not so? I
17:25
Speaker 1: don't know him any Okay, I'm not citing. This took
17:30
Speaker 1: a really weird turned, inn't it. It did? So back
17:33
Speaker 1: to Sammy Davis Jr. He also started his star started rising. Um, well,
17:40
Speaker 1: his star had already risen, but in the seventies when
17:42
Speaker 1: the Variety Show came about, which was a big deal
17:45
Speaker 1: in the seventies and even into the eighties, Sammy Davis Jr.
17:49
Speaker 1: Was perfect for that medium. Well, this was this was
17:52
Speaker 1: I think even earlier than that, when TV really started
17:55
Speaker 1: to dominate. The earliest shows that they had were vaudeville shows.
18:00
Speaker 1: That led to variety show. He had his own variety
18:02
Speaker 1: show later in the seventies because he was so it
18:05
Speaker 1: wasn't a huge hit. But for someone who can dance
18:07
Speaker 1: and sing and do impressions and do comedy and for
18:11
Speaker 1: God's sakes, is a real deal gun slinger a variety
18:15
Speaker 1: shows pretty great. It really was so. Um he's you know,
18:18
Speaker 1: he uh, he's getting onto TV. Um, there's their Vegas
18:23
Speaker 1: gigs have really put the Will Maston trio on the map.
18:26
Speaker 1: And um, they were doing really well. Um, they had
18:30
Speaker 1: reliable work that kind of stuff. People knew who Sammy
18:33
Speaker 1: Davis Jr. Was. He was already, you know, a protege
18:35
Speaker 1: of Frank Sinatra by this time. Um, But it wasn't
18:38
Speaker 1: until ninete that the big break came through. And it
18:43
Speaker 1: really came through and like a really kind of Hollywood
18:46
Speaker 1: story kind of way where like this they that they
18:49
Speaker 1: were given this one shot and this one particular spot
18:53
Speaker 1: at just the right time, in front of just the
18:55
Speaker 1: right people, and they killed it and that was it.
18:58
Speaker 1: They Sammy Davis Jr. Was a star from that moment on.
19:01
Speaker 1: That's right. And that was at um Janice Page and
19:05
Speaker 1: a show at Zeros, which is now the Comedy Store. Um,
19:11
Speaker 1: and oh really, I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah, it
19:13
Speaker 1: became the Comedy Store after Zeros, but was sort of
19:16
Speaker 1: a legendary place, you know, of its own in its
19:19
Speaker 1: own right. But everyone you know that. Apparently it's debatable
19:23
Speaker 1: whether or not it was an Oscar party after party
19:25
Speaker 1: or not, but regardless, there were a lot of Hollywood
19:28
Speaker 1: people there, including Bogey and his rat Pack. Sure, the
19:33
Speaker 1: the original rat Pack, which wasn't called the rat Pack, no,
19:37
Speaker 1: it was actually it was well why did well, never mind,
19:41
Speaker 1: I'm not going down the rabbit hole. What That's all right?
19:45
Speaker 1: So he uh, he kills it there. He's doing impressions
19:48
Speaker 1: of people that are in the audience. Everyone loves him. Uh.
19:51
Speaker 1: They signed with the William Moore Morris Agency, and an
19:54
Speaker 1: overnight sensation, you know, twenty thirty years in the making
19:58
Speaker 1: starts happening. Yeah, and should say so. Sammy Davis Jr.
20:02
Speaker 1: Became known for his impressions. He was groundbreaking in the
20:06
Speaker 1: sense that he would do impressions of white people and
20:09
Speaker 1: up to the time Sammy Davis Jr. Started doing impressions
20:12
Speaker 1: of white people, if you're a black performer, you could
20:14
Speaker 1: do impressions of other black people, and that was it.
20:17
Speaker 1: It was just not okay for you to do white people.
20:19
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Jr. Just started doing white people and the
20:21
Speaker 1: white people loved it. And at that show at Zero's,
20:25
Speaker 1: he was doing impressions of some of the people in
20:27
Speaker 1: the crowd, like he did a killer Carrie Grant and
20:30
Speaker 1: Carry Grant was a member of Humphrey Bogart's rat Pack
20:33
Speaker 1: and he was probably there that night. Um, so there
20:36
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who were getting impressions done
20:38
Speaker 1: of them. They just loved it. Killed and um, I
20:41
Speaker 1: think Janice Page said I was the headliner tonight. I
20:44
Speaker 1: think these guys should be the headliner from now on,
20:47
Speaker 1: which was pretty cool of her to do that. You know,
20:49
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Yep. So he gets a record deal after that,
20:53
Speaker 1: he's putting out like show Chins, Old Standards. Uh. He
20:57
Speaker 1: does a pilot in the mid fifties with his father
20:59
Speaker 1: and cool about a trio of black entertainers that are
21:04
Speaker 1: kind of struggling called We Three. Yeah, I would love
21:06
Speaker 1: to see that. Well, there's another probably we'll talk about
21:09
Speaker 1: later that you definitely need to see. I haven't checked
21:12
Speaker 1: it out yet, but I know I know the one.
21:14
Speaker 1: It's pretty legendary. So uh. A big thing happened that
21:18
Speaker 1: same year in nineteen four is Sammy Davis Jr. Had
21:22
Speaker 1: a wreck in his Cadillac. And the Cadillac and this
21:26
Speaker 1: is just horrific to think about because I've seen these,
21:29
Speaker 1: you know, in the middle of the steering wheel, they
21:31
Speaker 1: had these little decorative cones that stuck out. His left
21:35
Speaker 1: eyeball hit that thing and he lost it and warren
21:38
Speaker 1: eyepatch for a while and then a glass eye. Yeah,
21:41
Speaker 1: apparently he remembers coming out of the car um with
21:45
Speaker 1: holding his eye in his hand, and then that's the
21:48
Speaker 1: last thing he remembers. The next thing he remembers after
21:50
Speaker 1: that was waking up in a hospital bed and when
21:52
Speaker 1: he woke up and realized that he lost his eye
21:54
Speaker 1: for life as I was gone. Um, he was really
21:58
Speaker 1: really scared that his rear was over. This is n
22:02
Speaker 1: He'd just gotten his big break three years before and
22:06
Speaker 1: was on his way up and now all of a
22:08
Speaker 1: sudden he loses his eye. And the thing about losing
22:10
Speaker 1: your eye in addition to say, you know, having to
22:13
Speaker 1: sit for publicity photos and try to be a leading
22:16
Speaker 1: man in movies or on Broadway or that kind of thing. Um,
22:21
Speaker 1: you have to relearn spatial awareness. You're going from binocular
22:27
Speaker 1: vision to monocular vision and that has all sorts of
22:30
Speaker 1: weird tricky effects on you. So if you're a dancer
22:33
Speaker 1: or a gun slinger or doing some old soft shoe
22:37
Speaker 1: or whatever you're doing, you have to relearn how to move.
22:41
Speaker 1: And apparently one of the things that Sinatra did that
22:44
Speaker 1: was really stand up for Sammy Davis Jr. Was he
22:47
Speaker 1: had him basically come convalesc at Sinatra's place and really
22:53
Speaker 1: um guided him in in saying, like, you need to
22:57
Speaker 1: relearn how to move. You're gonna be fine, but you're
23:00
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to You're gonna have to start really
23:02
Speaker 1: attacking this and you can't really sit around and feel
23:05
Speaker 1: bad for yourself. You need to to get you know,
23:08
Speaker 1: relearn movement now rather than you know, spend a year
23:12
Speaker 1: feeling sad. And that was a huge help for him.
23:15
Speaker 1: It was, and he also was kind of UM, I
23:18
Speaker 1: don't think, I mean, maybe his life did kind of
23:21
Speaker 1: pass before him, because he definitely had an awakening of
23:25
Speaker 1: what have I done here with my life so far?
23:27
Speaker 1: What greater purpose have I served? Um? And what can
23:30
Speaker 1: I do from this point forward. Um, he and put
23:35
Speaker 1: a pin in this. But this was the first exposure
23:37
Speaker 1: to judaism in the hospital. You gotta visit from a
23:40
Speaker 1: rabbi and just put a pin in that because that
23:43
Speaker 1: will come back again later. Okay, to a pin in it. Well,
23:47
Speaker 1: look all right, I don't even know where this pin
23:49
Speaker 1: came from. You, I don't. Well, you do have that
23:52
Speaker 1: pincushion right there. But yeah, this this little tomato one
23:55
Speaker 1: with the strawberry dangling off of it. Remember those, oh man,
23:59
Speaker 1: because there a seventies mom that didn't have one of
24:01
Speaker 1: the yeah, with the Macromay owl hanging on the wall behind.
24:06
Speaker 1: So here's where it gets really kind of great as
24:10
Speaker 1: far as knowing what a stand up guy Sammy Davis Jr. Was.
24:14
Speaker 1: His his success is booming, and you would think, Sammy
24:19
Speaker 1: Davis Jr. You can leave that Will Maston trio behind. Yeah,
24:23
Speaker 1: because it's really all about you. He said, no, man,
24:28
Speaker 1: shine us all up, babe. Three way split, And that's
24:31
Speaker 1: what they did. They he ensured contractually that they would
24:34
Speaker 1: get a three way split that endured ten years after
24:39
Speaker 1: he left as a solo performer. He was still giving
24:41
Speaker 1: them thirty three each. Yeah for fifteen years total, they
24:45
Speaker 1: got a third of the profits each of them. Um
24:49
Speaker 1: and yeah, they they were you know, originally they were
24:53
Speaker 1: still doing their Vegas show as the Will Maston Trio
24:55
Speaker 1: featuring Sammy Davis Jr. But then over time, you know,
24:59
Speaker 1: remember his uncle and his dad were a good twenty
25:02
Speaker 1: years older than him. By this time, he's in his thirties,
25:06
Speaker 1: so you know, they're starting to get they're they're losing
25:08
Speaker 1: their step a little bit, so they start to not
25:11
Speaker 1: be in the show quite as much, stepping back. But
25:13
Speaker 1: even still, he made sure they were taken care of
25:15
Speaker 1: for another fifteen years. Third a third and this is
25:19
Speaker 1: a third during Sammy Davis Junior's peak earning years, So
25:24
Speaker 1: he got one third of what he would have gotten
25:27
Speaker 1: had he just basically said, dad, uncle will thank you
25:30
Speaker 1: for teaching me everything. I know. I'm gonna move on now,
25:32
Speaker 1: best of luck, let me know if you need a loan. Instead,
25:36
Speaker 1: he just took a third of what he could have
25:38
Speaker 1: gotten and gave the other two thirds to those two,
25:40
Speaker 1: which is for fifteen years. Chuck, that's really amazing. It's
25:44
Speaker 1: pretty great. Uh So that pen it actually wasn't in
25:47
Speaker 1: there that long. We go ahead and take the pen
25:49
Speaker 1: out because he after that first meeting with a rabbi,
25:52
Speaker 1: he reads more and more about Judaism. He draws a
25:55
Speaker 1: correlation between the plight of the Jewish people and the
25:58
Speaker 1: plight of black people, and it really spoke to him
26:01
Speaker 1: and he converted. And some people said, oh, this big
26:04
Speaker 1: publicity stunt. He's like, no, this is not a publicity stunt.
26:07
Speaker 1: He said, this is my new religion. And uh. He
26:11
Speaker 1: very humorously started referring to himself as a one eyed
26:15
Speaker 1: black Jew, sometimes of one eyed black Puerto Rican, like
26:18
Speaker 1: Puerto Rican Jew, which was very sort of in keeping
26:21
Speaker 1: with his self deprecating style. For sure, He's like, um,
26:25
Speaker 1: Tim Watley, he converted for the jokes man, I remember
26:28
Speaker 1: that one. I've been plowing through Seinfeld again. I love.
26:32
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things that always gets me is
26:35
Speaker 1: when Jerry calls George Biff. Yeah. It never fails to
26:41
Speaker 1: make me laugh. Biff Yeah, so good. Uh, she was, well, no,
26:47
Speaker 1: let's not take another break, let's play on here, right,
26:50
Speaker 1: all right. So, dating wise, he is dating black women
26:54
Speaker 1: and white women. When he dates white women, he gets
26:59
Speaker 1: racist sets from white people, and he gets condemnation from
27:03
Speaker 1: the black community for betraying the black community by dating
27:06
Speaker 1: a white woman. Right, he can't win. No, he really
27:09
Speaker 1: couldn't win. And apparently from what I saw in that
27:12
Speaker 1: um that American Masters uh documentary, Um, he really really
27:20
Speaker 1: really was in love with Kim Novak. From what I saw,
27:23
Speaker 1: she may have been the love of his life. At
27:25
Speaker 1: the very least. He never got to explore whether she
27:28
Speaker 1: was or not. But um, when he said that he
27:31
Speaker 1: intended to marry her, I guess it was in the fifties. Um,
27:36
Speaker 1: he uh he there was a contract put out in
27:39
Speaker 1: his life by the studio head and I think Columbia
27:42
Speaker 1: where Kim Novak was an actress. Yeah, Harry Cohne was
27:46
Speaker 1: the studio head. And this was back when Vegas and
27:49
Speaker 1: Hollywood were you know, there was some mob in mafia
27:53
Speaker 1: dealings going on for sure, and Sammy had some mob
27:57
Speaker 1: friends too, just because he was friends with Frank and
28:00
Speaker 1: you know, that was just sort of the thing. These
28:01
Speaker 1: guys would come to these Vegas clubs and he would
28:03
Speaker 1: meet them. He sought protection from a Chicago gangster that
28:06
Speaker 1: he was in with. The Chicago gangster was like, I
28:10
Speaker 1: can't help you in California. He's like, I'm not I'm
28:13
Speaker 1: no good there. I can protect you in Chicago, I
28:15
Speaker 1: can protect you in Vegas. Can't do anything about California.
28:18
Speaker 1: It's not my territory. Uh. And supposedly, and this is
28:21
Speaker 1: where it gets a little hazy, because some people say
28:23
Speaker 1: it happened, some people say it didn't. Supposedly he was
28:26
Speaker 1: even kidnapped for a few hours to scare him. Um,
28:30
Speaker 1: but who knows if that's really true. Well, apparently one
28:34
Speaker 1: of his friends who was there said no, it wasn't true.
28:37
Speaker 1: He was never kidnapped. But the contract basically said there
28:41
Speaker 1: was a contract that said you have forty eight hours
28:44
Speaker 1: to marry a black woman or you die, and whatever.
28:48
Speaker 1: Whatever it was, whatever, whether there was an actual contract,
28:51
Speaker 1: whether it were just got to him that there was,
28:54
Speaker 1: It didn't matter to Sammy Davis Jr. At that minute,
28:55
Speaker 1: because he broke it off with Kim Novak. Uh, much
28:59
Speaker 1: to his own hearts break and um, yeah, proposed to
29:04
Speaker 1: a woman named laure White who Um, she was a
29:08
Speaker 1: black singer, and I think they had dated years before.
29:11
Speaker 1: And I guess he never copped to the um to
29:16
Speaker 1: the idea that it was an arranged marriage that was
29:19
Speaker 1: basically a business proposal. But That is definitely how it's
29:23
Speaker 1: portrayed by the people who were there at the time,
29:26
Speaker 1: were his close friends, that he even paid her ten
29:29
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to do this. Um. And I'm sure it
29:31
Speaker 1: was very you know, uh kind and congenial to it.
29:35
Speaker 1: But they described that day, his wedding day to laure
29:38
Speaker 1: White is probably the worst day of his life, tied
29:41
Speaker 1: for first with the day that he lost his left eye. Yeah,
29:45
Speaker 1: and he you know, we can't look over some of
29:47
Speaker 1: the ugly parts of that day. He got drunk and
29:50
Speaker 1: physically assaulted her in the car just after the wedding reception. Yeah. Um.
29:56
Speaker 1: Not making any excuses for the guy, but it was
29:59
Speaker 1: certainly not right to you that right. So their marriage
30:03
Speaker 1: didn't last terribly long. I didn't see how long it lasted,
30:07
Speaker 1: did you. Okay, so about a year, and I guess
30:11
Speaker 1: he considered that the heat had gone down or whatever
30:13
Speaker 1: by that time. Um. And but I get the impression
30:17
Speaker 1: that the fact that Kim Novak had been taken from
30:20
Speaker 1: him strictly out of racism. Like Harry Cohne, I'm sure
30:25
Speaker 1: was a racist, but he was also a businessman and
30:27
Speaker 1: the reason that he was doing this was because he
30:29
Speaker 1: knew America was racist. This is at a time when
30:32
Speaker 1: there were laws that prevented black men and white women
30:36
Speaker 1: or vice versa, to marry. It wasn't legal yet. No.
30:40
Speaker 1: Um so the idea of one of his biggest stars,
30:43
Speaker 1: Kim Novak, marrying a black man, uh, he he decided
30:46
Speaker 1: that he just couldn't take that risk business wise, and
30:48
Speaker 1: so he threatened Sammy Davis Jr. Whatever the reason was,
30:52
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Jr. Really bristled under that. And so in
30:56
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty uh, this was a few years after a
31:00
Speaker 1: um he had to break it off with Kim Novak.
31:03
Speaker 1: He got married to a woman, a Swedish actress named
31:06
Speaker 1: my Britt and I he had children with her and
31:11
Speaker 1: was married to her, but he also um ran around
31:14
Speaker 1: on her almost constantly from what I understand, and you
31:16
Speaker 1: get the impression that my was in part a. Uh well,
31:22
Speaker 1: I'll just put his PG as possible, thumbing his nose
31:26
Speaker 1: at all of the racists out there who took Kim
31:28
Speaker 1: Novak from him. He was he was saying, I think, so,
31:31
Speaker 1: as somebody put it, I'm big enough now that you
31:33
Speaker 1: can't tell me who to marry, and I'm going to
31:35
Speaker 1: marry this beautiful six ft white woman who looks like
31:39
Speaker 1: Margot Roby. Sort of she does, yeah, she does a
31:42
Speaker 1: little bit. I had. I didn't put my finger on it.
31:44
Speaker 1: And their children were incredibly beautiful, thanks largely to their
31:49
Speaker 1: mom too, but they were they were Um. They had
31:52
Speaker 1: three kids together and they were married for eight years.
31:55
Speaker 1: And I think it's very sad because my brit immediately
31:58
Speaker 1: lost her career, so she gave up her career to
32:00
Speaker 1: be with Sammy Davis Jr. I don't know. I she
32:04
Speaker 1: must have fallen in love with them, um because she
32:07
Speaker 1: she had three kids with him too. But she gave
32:10
Speaker 1: up a lot and he gave up nothing. And I
32:14
Speaker 1: think that was very unfair um on his part to
32:18
Speaker 1: ask for what he asked for from her and give
32:23
Speaker 1: so little in return. Yeah. And what was also not
32:26
Speaker 1: fair and um sort of a black eye on John F.
32:29
Speaker 1: Kennedy was that Sammy Davis Jr. Had been scheduled to
32:33
Speaker 1: perform at the nineteen sixty inauguration and he disinvited him
32:37
Speaker 1: because of his marriage to a white woman. Kennedy personally
32:41
Speaker 1: had him disinvited. This wasn't Kennedy's like advisors or anything
32:45
Speaker 1: like that. It was him and he said, you know.
32:48
Speaker 1: Apparently people said he you know, it was a political
32:51
Speaker 1: move because he didn't want to alienate Southern Democrats. But
32:56
Speaker 1: either way, that was a big um fracturing of the
33:00
Speaker 1: relationship between JFK and Sammy Davis Jr. He never got
33:03
Speaker 1: over that, No, he never did. And it was also
33:06
Speaker 1: a moment where Sinatra, who had stood up for Sammy
33:09
Speaker 1: Davis Jr. Multiple countless times against racists, against studio heads,
33:14
Speaker 1: against the record company executives, against all sorts of people, didn't.
33:19
Speaker 1: He did not stand up and argue and try to
33:22
Speaker 1: persuade JFK to change his mind. He just quietly went
33:27
Speaker 1: along with it. And I think that broke Sammy Davis
33:30
Speaker 1: Junior start as much as JFK betraying him, and probably
33:33
Speaker 1: even more because he expected more from from Frank Frank
33:37
Speaker 1: than he did from from Kennedy. And the other thing
33:40
Speaker 1: about Kennedy res sending that invitation, Harry Belafani's invitation wasn't rescinded,
33:45
Speaker 1: and Harry Belafani was married to a white woman and
33:48
Speaker 1: was there with his white wife at this inauguration party.
33:52
Speaker 1: Um So Sammy Davis Jr. Couldn't help but take it personally,
33:55
Speaker 1: and he really did. It was a big It was
33:58
Speaker 1: a big deal, a big moment in his life in
34:00
Speaker 1: a very sad moment, and a lot of people think
34:02
Speaker 1: that it led to him later on embracing, um, probably
34:07
Speaker 1: ill advisedly, the Nixon campaign in the early seventies. That's right,
34:12
Speaker 1: you want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a
34:14
Speaker 1: break and we'll talk a little bit about his work
34:15
Speaker 1: in the civil rights movement right after this. This cat
34:42
Speaker 1: is interesting, man, right, I don't know if everybody's picking
34:45
Speaker 1: up on it. Did you know this before? Because this
34:48
Speaker 1: is your pick, right? Yeah. Yeah, I've always been pretty
34:50
Speaker 1: fascinated with him because we haven't even gotten to the
34:53
Speaker 1: super weird and interesting stuff. Yeah right, Um, which happens
34:57
Speaker 1: in the seventies. So in the sixties is when and
35:00
Speaker 1: and possibly because of the JFK treatment, is when he
35:03
Speaker 1: really starts to get more socially aware. Uh, starts donating
35:07
Speaker 1: money to the cause and marches at selma Um for
35:12
Speaker 1: the civil rights efforts. Um. He when he supported Nixon,
35:16
Speaker 1: it was not just the thumbing of the nose at
35:19
Speaker 1: at Kennedy, but he bought into Nixon and thought that
35:23
Speaker 1: it was gonna be a good choice for Black America. Uh.
35:26
Speaker 1: He regretted that later on, of course. But it wasn't
35:30
Speaker 1: just um a poopy pants move, like, hey, while I'm
35:33
Speaker 1: gonna support Nixon now because you disinvited me, exactly and
35:37
Speaker 1: so Um. One of the other reasons that he embraced
35:40
Speaker 1: Nixon was that Nixon embraced him as a human being
35:43
Speaker 1: and really stood in start contrast to the treatment he
35:46
Speaker 1: received from Kennedy. Um. And in that Nixon actually seemed
35:53
Speaker 1: to really like Sammy Davis Jr. That a lot of
35:55
Speaker 1: people are like the Nixon administration was just using Sammy
35:58
Speaker 1: Davis Jr. They were, at the same time, I'm um,
36:01
Speaker 1: using what's called the Southern strategy, which is they were
36:03
Speaker 1: stoking racism among Southern whites to get them to turn
36:06
Speaker 1: on the Democrats. Um. But he also apparently really did
36:11
Speaker 1: like Sammy Davis Jr. And admired him and under Nixon's
36:16
Speaker 1: administration tastes like bitter acid. Saying this, Sammy Davis Jr.
36:20
Speaker 1: Became the first black person to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom,
36:25
Speaker 1: and apparently Sammy Davis Jr. Was an avid Lincoln fan
36:29
Speaker 1: and sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom with some of Abraham
36:33
Speaker 1: Lincoln and Mary Todd. Lincoln's personal effects in this room
36:37
Speaker 1: just blew him away, and that was actually how he
36:41
Speaker 1: ended up in Vietnam doing this USO tour in nineteen two.
36:44
Speaker 1: He said, what can I do to help? And Nixon
36:47
Speaker 1: said that would probably that would probably help a lot.
36:49
Speaker 1: But that just contributed even further to his alienation from
36:56
Speaker 1: not just black people, but young black people too, because
36:59
Speaker 1: it was a really tone deaf move. As I saw
37:01
Speaker 1: it described at the time, that was not the kind
37:03
Speaker 1: of thing you did. Vietnam was so unpopular that even
37:06
Speaker 1: the troops weren't particularly supported at home. You know. It's
37:10
Speaker 1: not like today where it's like, you know, we really
37:13
Speaker 1: really hate this, you know, these endless wars. This is
37:17
Speaker 1: we really disagree with the you know, the hawks and
37:20
Speaker 1: the military industrial complex that supports us. But we're still
37:24
Speaker 1: going to be supportive of the troops who have to
37:27
Speaker 1: go there, who are over there, whether by their own
37:30
Speaker 1: choice or well, I guess it's all volunteer army. Um,
37:34
Speaker 1: they still deserve support these individuals over there overseas. That
37:39
Speaker 1: was not necessarily how it was in during the Vietnam era.
37:42
Speaker 1: So Sammy Davis Jr. Going over there to support the
37:44
Speaker 1: troops after embracing the Nixon administration. Really um further this
37:51
Speaker 1: rift between him and the black community, which and I
37:55
Speaker 1: don't know if we really said this enough was unfair,
38:00
Speaker 1: unjust because he was a fervent supporter of the civil
38:04
Speaker 1: rights movement during the fifties and sixties, I mean furvent
38:08
Speaker 1: Like he marched in Selma with Martin Luther King Jr.
38:12
Speaker 1: Scared to death apparently, but he still went and he
38:15
Speaker 1: still did it. He contributed a ton of money to
38:18
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement. Um, he was, he was legit,
38:22
Speaker 1: for sure, but he also was, um, you know, friends
38:26
Speaker 1: with Richard Nixon. So one kind of one kind of
38:30
Speaker 1: tarnishes the other, you know for sure. So in the sixties, Uh,
38:35
Speaker 1: he is blown up. He's everywhere. He's on stage, he's
38:40
Speaker 1: recording records, he's on TV, he's doing celebrity roast, he's
38:44
Speaker 1: on Broadway, he's writing books, he's doing the gun slinger thing. Uh.
38:49
Speaker 1: He's making a lot of money at this point and
38:52
Speaker 1: starts spending a lot of money because he came from nothing,
38:54
Speaker 1: Like we said, Uh, this is when the rat pack
38:57
Speaker 1: thing really heats up. Uh. And he's hanging out with
39:00
Speaker 1: Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin and of course the
39:04
Speaker 1: chairman uh and started him their first movie together, which
39:09
Speaker 1: was Ocean's Eleven. Not a great movie. Oh disagree, I don't.
39:15
Speaker 1: I think the original is not very good. Oh I
39:16
Speaker 1: liked it. Uh. I thought the remake was great, but
39:20
Speaker 1: um did not care for the original. I'd like the original. Yeah.
39:24
Speaker 1: Hanging Robin in the Seven Hoods, Yeah, and also not great.
39:27
Speaker 1: I don't think the rat Pack ever made a great movie. Okay,
39:30
Speaker 1: that's just my opinion. What about Time Bandits fantastic Okay. Uh.
39:36
Speaker 1: They were hanging out at the Coconut Grove in the
39:39
Speaker 1: Ambassador Hotel, which, um is a place that I have
39:43
Speaker 1: a neat little quick story. Did a commercial shoot there
39:46
Speaker 1: before they tore down, and it was, you know, an
39:49
Speaker 1: empty hotel at this point that they just used for
39:51
Speaker 1: movie shoots. And it was an overnight thing, and like
39:54
Speaker 1: two in the morning, I was working in the art department.
39:56
Speaker 1: They said, here, you need to go assemble all these
39:59
Speaker 1: flags that we're going to hang. And they said just
40:01
Speaker 1: go in the in the Coconut Grove and do it
40:03
Speaker 1: because there's plenty of room in there. And I went
40:05
Speaker 1: in there all by myself, sitting in Cocae in the
40:09
Speaker 1: the dusty old shadows of what was once the Great
40:12
Speaker 1: Coconut Grove, and uh for like an hour and a
40:16
Speaker 1: half by myself, like sitting in a booth at the
40:18
Speaker 1: rat Pack might have sat in. That's amazing, really pretty neat.
40:22
Speaker 1: And later that night got to go see where Bob
40:24
Speaker 1: Kennedy was shot. Oh that's where he was shot. Yeah,
40:28
Speaker 1: in the Ambassador Hotels, in the kitchen and one of
40:30
Speaker 1: the gut the overnight security guy. It was just sort
40:33
Speaker 1: of one of those slow shoots. He was like to
40:35
Speaker 1: me and my friend, He's like, you want to go
40:36
Speaker 1: down the kitchens? Who are happened? And we went, oh, yeah, wow,
40:39
Speaker 1: that's amazing. It was super cool and creepy. So anyway,
40:43
Speaker 1: great story. They're they're hanging out with the rat Pack. Um.
40:48
Speaker 1: And this is where it gets a little like dodgy,
40:51
Speaker 1: because the rat Pack they were all best buds. They
40:54
Speaker 1: genuinely loved each other. But when you look at their
40:56
Speaker 1: old stick there is a lot of sort of racial
41:01
Speaker 1: joking about Sammy. Um. It's all in good fun, but
41:05
Speaker 1: they were they were often jokes made about him being black,
41:08
Speaker 1: being the only black member Dean Martin. One of his
41:12
Speaker 1: famous jokes was he would pick little Sammy up on
41:15
Speaker 1: stage because Dean was a big guy and Sammy was small,
41:18
Speaker 1: and uh, thank the audience for the h in double
41:22
Speaker 1: a CP award. So stuff like that. So in that
41:26
Speaker 1: in that documentary, and I'm not like justifying that at all,
41:29
Speaker 1: but in that documentary, Whoopi Goldberg is like, you know,
41:31
Speaker 1: you can you could take any segment of their show
41:35
Speaker 1: and be like this was really offensive Italians or alcoholics,
41:39
Speaker 1: or women, or black people or Jews. And she said
41:43
Speaker 1: they went hard on everybody. But from what I understand,
41:47
Speaker 1: at least as far as Sammy was concerned, what he
41:49
Speaker 1: wasn't secretly didn't secretly have a chip on his shoulder
41:53
Speaker 1: and he had to just put up with this to
41:54
Speaker 1: be a member of the rat pack. He seemed to
41:56
Speaker 1: really not like he didn't take it as if they
42:00
Speaker 1: or being um hostile or cruel, that it was just
42:05
Speaker 1: part of the act and that's how he took it. Yeah,
42:07
Speaker 1: I mean, it was certainly a different time. I mean
42:10
Speaker 1: there was no doubting about it that back then you
42:12
Speaker 1: could make jokes about all kinds of things that you
42:14
Speaker 1: can't joke about now, yeah, and it's like it's not
42:17
Speaker 1: like I'm I used to hang out with Sammy Davis Jr.
42:19
Speaker 1: And had like quiet talks with him or whatever. So
42:21
Speaker 1: it is possible that he did, you know, harbor resentment
42:24
Speaker 1: from it, but that's not the im person that I
42:26
Speaker 1: have from from the research that I've done. Let me
42:28
Speaker 1: tell you, Josh right, But apparently no one did, because
42:31
Speaker 1: this is a really bizarre thing about him. When when
42:35
Speaker 1: he um was talking about converting to Judaism, I think
42:38
Speaker 1: in like a nineteen sixty six Playboy interview, Um he
42:42
Speaker 1: was talking about losing his eye and then you know,
42:45
Speaker 1: converting to Judaism, and that it happened during a period
42:47
Speaker 1: of soul searching, and that he did all this and
42:50
Speaker 1: went through all this even though he was convalescing at
42:52
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra's house, even though apparently Jerry Lewis spent seven
42:56
Speaker 1: days at his bedside when he was in the hospital,
42:58
Speaker 1: had all these telegrams come in, all this outpouring of support.
43:02
Speaker 1: He considered himself alone and that he was a loner,
43:05
Speaker 1: and that that was that's really bizarre when you step
43:08
Speaker 1: back and look at that, because Sammy Davis Jr. Always
43:12
Speaker 1: had friends. He was always the life of the party.
43:14
Speaker 1: He was always a good guy. Everybody wanted to be
43:16
Speaker 1: around him. Um, he was always having fun. But he
43:19
Speaker 1: considered himself a loner. Apparently he didn't let people in.
43:23
Speaker 1: So even if I had been hanging around with him,
43:25
Speaker 1: he probably wouldn't have had that conversation with me anyway, Like, Sammy,
43:29
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I know they're real. You come on, Sammy,
43:32
Speaker 1: let it. And he said, that's by design, babe. I
43:36
Speaker 1: feel like I'm tripping or something right now. So his
43:41
Speaker 1: career is booming in the in the sixties and into
43:43
Speaker 1: the seventies, and the result of that, of course, uh well,
43:47
Speaker 1: through the sixties, I guess is that he's not around much. Um.
43:50
Speaker 1: He had a lot of regrets about not being around
43:53
Speaker 1: as a father. Um, as a husband. He was flandering,
43:56
Speaker 1: he was drinking a lot, he was using drugs. Uh So,
44:00
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight he got divorced. In nineteen seventy,
44:03
Speaker 1: he married a woman named Altavis Gore, who was eighteen
44:07
Speaker 1: years his junior backup dancer. His children did not like
44:12
Speaker 1: the fact that she was so much younger, but they
44:14
Speaker 1: were stayed married, you know, for the rest of his life. Yeah,
44:18
Speaker 1: he was like, Oh, if you've got a problem with her,
44:20
Speaker 1: you should probably not know about everything else I'm doing. Yeah,
44:24
Speaker 1: so here's where it gets really interesting, very interesting. Sammy
44:28
Speaker 1: Davis Jr. Had a convergence of two interests in the seventies. Uh.
44:34
Speaker 1: He became a member of the Church of Satan. He
44:38
Speaker 1: was an honorary warlock and he got really really into
44:42
Speaker 1: porn and porn. Uh. You know, there's no better way
44:49
Speaker 1: to say it than he he was a swinger. He
44:51
Speaker 1: was an orgies. He participated in Satanic orgies. Yeah. That
44:56
Speaker 1: was actually I don't know if it was his first
44:58
Speaker 1: orgy or not, but that's how he became him part
45:00
Speaker 1: of involved in the Church of Satan, you know, like
45:03
Speaker 1: the original Church of Satan with Anton LaVey there and everything.
45:07
Speaker 1: Um right exactly. Um. He went and participated in a
45:16
Speaker 1: Satanic orgy, um, Sammy Davis Jr. Which I think is
45:21
Speaker 1: like a regular orgy but with just more like red candles, yeah,
45:25
Speaker 1: and pentagrams and black robes and stuff like that. But
45:27
Speaker 1: then the black robes come off, but I think the
45:29
Speaker 1: pentagrams stay on. But um he I read this really
45:32
Speaker 1: interesting Vice article about it and he he was apparently
45:37
Speaker 1: at the first one, and this would have been in
45:40
Speaker 1: the late sixties, and somebody in a hood is trying
45:43
Speaker 1: to get his attention and it turns out he lifts
45:46
Speaker 1: the hood and it's his barber, his BARBERA J. C. Bring.
45:49
Speaker 1: He would later be killed with Um Sharon Tate by
45:53
Speaker 1: the Manson family. But he was basically like, hey, Sam,
45:56
Speaker 1: it's me Jay. How are you doing in this awesome?
45:59
Speaker 1: And then they went back to yeah, but he yeah.
46:04
Speaker 1: He was hugely in the in the pornography, was and
46:07
Speaker 1: the Orgies into swinging. He was. He loved cocaine um
46:11
Speaker 1: and I love drinking. I saw our cineo Um interview
46:15
Speaker 1: with him, must have been very shortly before his death,
46:18
Speaker 1: where he's like, you know, I had to give everything up, uh,
46:20
Speaker 1: and I don't miss all the other stuff, but I
46:21
Speaker 1: miss booze, I miss whiskey, I miss vodka. I love
46:24
Speaker 1: that stuff. But then I also saw another interview where
46:29
Speaker 1: he basically said the same thing to Larry King, like
46:31
Speaker 1: I've given everything up, I don't smoke anymore, anything like that.
46:34
Speaker 1: And then somebody went backstage and there's Sammy Davis Jr.
46:38
Speaker 1: Smoking a cigarette drinking a brand and he goes, Sammy,
46:41
Speaker 1: what are you doing. You just told Larry King that
46:44
Speaker 1: you gave all this up. He's like, I'm I planned to.
46:48
Speaker 1: So who knows what he actually gave up or didn't do,
46:50
Speaker 1: but his whole jam was I want to experience every
46:55
Speaker 1: possible human experience I can, and I approach all this
46:58
Speaker 1: stuff without judgment, which is how we ended up becoming
47:01
Speaker 1: involved in the Church of Satan, which went on, Yeah,
47:03
Speaker 1: no judgment here. If that's his bag, it's not hurting anybody. Um.
47:08
Speaker 1: Did you see the one quote about the the ritual
47:11
Speaker 1: with the lady who was tied to the bed, uh
47:14
Speaker 1: where he decided like it was okay? Yeah, he was
47:17
Speaker 1: talking about it and he was like that chick was
47:20
Speaker 1: loving it. Man, And well, I won't say the rest
47:24
Speaker 1: of the quote, but do you remember, Yeah, I remember,
47:28
Speaker 1: I remember. So all of this led to, Um, what
47:32
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier. This this TV pilot that
47:36
Speaker 1: is legendary in Hollywood as one of the weirdest, worst
47:41
Speaker 1: things that Hollywood has ever produced, And it was a
47:44
Speaker 1: pilot for a TV show in nineteen seventy three called
47:46
Speaker 1: Poor Devil, which was about a man who was a load,
47:51
Speaker 1: um low down on the totem pole or I guess
47:54
Speaker 1: high on the totem pole, Um coal shoveler in hell,
47:59
Speaker 1: who is offer the chance to work his way up
48:01
Speaker 1: the ranks in how if he can get the soul
48:05
Speaker 1: of Jack Klugman, living white man on Earth right Jack
48:09
Speaker 1: Klugman quincy m D. Yeah, and it is on YouTube,
48:13
Speaker 1: and dude, it is amazing. I have not had a
48:16
Speaker 1: chance to see yet. I can't wait to see it,
48:19
Speaker 1: but it sounds amazing. I saw it described as like
48:22
Speaker 1: he's a reverse Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life. Would
48:25
Speaker 1: you wouldn't possibly understand that? But uh, just imagine that
48:30
Speaker 1: somebody's not trying to get you to be good so
48:32
Speaker 1: that they can or understand how great life is. He's
48:35
Speaker 1: trying to to get him to follow his his most
48:38
Speaker 1: bitter revenge impulses and stuff like that. But at one point,
48:42
Speaker 1: apparently um Jack Klugman wants to get in touch with
48:45
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Jr. The Devil, and it's like, oh, I know,
48:48
Speaker 1: I'll call the Church of Satan downtown. They'll know how
48:51
Speaker 1: to get in touch with him. And the Church of
48:52
Speaker 1: Satan went because apparently the pilot was aired, and they
48:56
Speaker 1: were all about Sammy d at this point, and they
48:59
Speaker 1: made him an honorary war law. He used to flash
49:03
Speaker 1: like the devil horns at them from stage when they
49:06
Speaker 1: would love he. Uh. Christopher Lee, by the way, played
49:11
Speaker 1: the devil Um, which is pretty on the notes but perfect,
49:16
Speaker 1: So that doesn't succeed obviously, it's terrible. The seventies and
49:20
Speaker 1: the eighties, his star starts to fade a little bit.
49:22
Speaker 1: He's still around. Of course. He was on All in
49:24
Speaker 1: the Family in a very famous episode where he kissed
49:27
Speaker 1: Archie Bunker on the lips. Uh. He was We have
49:32
Speaker 1: to talk about the great great Cannonball Run. Oh yeah,
49:37
Speaker 1: he was in There wasn't a hey man. He and
49:38
Speaker 1: Dean were for partners. They played I forgot about. They
49:41
Speaker 1: dressed up as priests, that's right, heavily drinking, smoking priests.
49:45
Speaker 1: They played themselves basically as priests who wanted to drive fast.
49:49
Speaker 1: That's pretty great. But you know, even though we revere
49:52
Speaker 1: that film, I don't think it was looked at generally
49:56
Speaker 1: as one of the big highlights of his career. Oh.
49:58
Speaker 1: I'm sure not. By this time, he's kitchi Sammy from
50:02
Speaker 1: what I understand like he was fine with that as
50:04
Speaker 1: long as he was working, he was okay. Because I
50:07
Speaker 1: said earlier that like he had a certain affiliation with
50:11
Speaker 1: that song um Mr bow Jangles, where if you listen
50:15
Speaker 1: to it, it's about an old performer who's washed up
50:17
Speaker 1: and has been washed up for years and he's still
50:20
Speaker 1: drinking and just doing you know, he's he's been reduced
50:23
Speaker 1: to doing basically sidewalk performances, and apparently Sammy was scared
50:28
Speaker 1: to death about that being his future. So even just
50:32
Speaker 1: doing what he was doing with Dean and Cannonball Run,
50:34
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was just fine in his in his
50:37
Speaker 1: mind because he was still working and performing. Of course,
50:41
Speaker 1: he looks around and there's there's Bert Man, there's Adrian Barbow.
50:47
Speaker 1: He was You're digging the Sammy now, aren't you. Yes,
50:50
Speaker 1: you know, I think Sammy needs to be a recurring
50:52
Speaker 1: character from now on. We'll see um the new hippie
50:57
Speaker 1: rob so uh. In the eighties, he gets into some
51:01
Speaker 1: financial trouble, to say the least, because I love how
51:05
Speaker 1: he had put it. He had been struggling with tax
51:07
Speaker 1: payments since the nineteen sixties. I think it was a
51:10
Speaker 1: Willie Nelson sort of deal from what I could gather.
51:13
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I think he wasn't really
51:15
Speaker 1: paying his taxes. Sure, sure, And and apparently he had
51:18
Speaker 1: also I don't know if he got bad tax advice
51:20
Speaker 1: or what, but he had claimed some very extravagant stuff
51:24
Speaker 1: as a write off, and the I R. S came
51:26
Speaker 1: back and said, Nope, you're that doesn't count. You also
51:29
Speaker 1: owe on that. And his estate was worth or his
51:32
Speaker 1: net assets were worth about four million, but he owed
51:36
Speaker 1: about seven millions. And he was a profligate spender of money.
51:41
Speaker 1: I saw one interview once where a guy said that
51:44
Speaker 1: he walked six blocks in New York with them. He
51:47
Speaker 1: even named the streets, so it seems like he really
51:49
Speaker 1: did just walk six blocks and dropped fifty tho dollars
51:52
Speaker 1: along the way, stopping in different stores, dropped that out
51:55
Speaker 1: of his pocket on the street. No, no buying stuff,
51:58
Speaker 1: just bye bye bye. He'd spend it because he had
52:01
Speaker 1: come from nothing, and I knew, you know, that thrill
52:03
Speaker 1: of spending money. He was terrible with his money, and
52:07
Speaker 1: so as he um as he found out he owed
52:10
Speaker 1: seven million dollars, he started to organize some some shows
52:13
Speaker 1: and specials to try to raise some money to help
52:16
Speaker 1: him pay off this debt. And after the first one,
52:19
Speaker 1: I think in nine, he has found that he had
52:22
Speaker 1: a sore throat, so he went to the doctor and
52:25
Speaker 1: ultimately was diagnosed with throat cancer. Yeah, after the that
52:28
Speaker 1: very first show. And that's like such cruel irony to
52:32
Speaker 1: raise all this money because when he passed away in
52:34
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, in May sixte of cancer, he left that
52:41
Speaker 1: tax bill to his wife like that that carried over Yeah, Ali, yeah,
52:47
Speaker 1: so um that really left her kind of destitute for
52:51
Speaker 1: the rest of her life as well. Oh yeah, for sure. Um,
52:54
Speaker 1: I mean like she she then she basically owed three
52:57
Speaker 1: million dollars and his estate was sold off like basically
53:00
Speaker 1: at a yard sale auction. All of his stuff was
53:04
Speaker 1: um and yeah he he that was not that was
53:07
Speaker 1: the the negative part of his legacy was that text
53:11
Speaker 1: that leaving that behind. Yeah, and you know, in one way,
53:14
Speaker 1: it's like kind of a sad ending with the financial
53:18
Speaker 1: stuff and obviously dying way too young of cancer. But yeah,
53:22
Speaker 1: sixty five man, he did accomplish everything he set out
53:24
Speaker 1: to accomplish. He he showed everybody who said this diminutive
53:29
Speaker 1: little mixed race kind of funny looking guy. Uh, is
53:34
Speaker 1: never gonna amount to anything. And he had a lifelong
53:37
Speaker 1: career from the age of three to sixty five in
53:40
Speaker 1: show business. So and one of the things Chuck is
53:42
Speaker 1: he did not really harbor regret. He apparently whenever he
53:46
Speaker 1: talked about his life, he talked about it with great satisfaction,
53:50
Speaker 1: which is pretty reassuring. Yeah. That quote on that Letterman
53:52
Speaker 1: show was great. Yeah. On the episode he's he's talking
53:56
Speaker 1: about the younger generation and he said, I look at
53:59
Speaker 1: the young before Armors today and I'd go like this, Yeah, man,
54:02
Speaker 1: go ahead, cook, I've been there. That's it, man, I
54:06
Speaker 1: have no envy I did at all. Yeah, pretty great,
54:09
Speaker 1: Go ahead, cook. That's great. Sammy Davis Jr. Everybody around
54:14
Speaker 1: of applause. You got anything else? Nothing else. If you
54:18
Speaker 1: want to know more about Sammy Davis Jr. Just start
54:20
Speaker 1: watching some of his old performances are pretty amazing. Uh.
54:23
Speaker 1: And while you're doing that, we're gonna just move on
54:25
Speaker 1: ahead to listener mail. Yeah, this is about the pizza thing.
54:31
Speaker 1: We heard from a lot of nine people. Yeah, I'm
54:34
Speaker 1: glad that you you picked one of these. Man. This
54:36
Speaker 1: is good. Hey, while we are not specifically trained to
54:40
Speaker 1: send e M. S two calls where people pretend to
54:42
Speaker 1: order a pizza. Most nine one one dispatchers will in
54:45
Speaker 1: fact ask you this is one did you dial the
54:49
Speaker 1: wrong number? And if they respond no, we will then
54:52
Speaker 1: say are you in a situation where you can't ask
54:54
Speaker 1: for help? And then they can say yes or no. Obviously,
54:58
Speaker 1: there are many stories of this working out, most in
55:00
Speaker 1: domestic violence or kidnapping situations. So even though it is
55:03
Speaker 1: a protocol necessarily or set in stone as a way
55:06
Speaker 1: to ask for help, it could help many people in
55:08
Speaker 1: bad situations. We will not just hang up on you,
55:12
Speaker 1: even if you keep ordering a pizza and do not
55:15
Speaker 1: acknowledge that you need help. Most will still send out
55:18
Speaker 1: law enforcement for a welfare check due to the suspicious
55:21
Speaker 1: nature of the call. I'm glad to hear this. Yeah,
55:23
Speaker 1: please let this be known because in the last ditch effort,
55:25
Speaker 1: this may save someone's life. And that is from responder
55:28
Speaker 1: Brooke Diane. Thanks Brooke, and thank you also not for
55:33
Speaker 1: being like Josh was wrong wrong, wrong, wrong? Wrong? Oh
55:36
Speaker 1: I don't remember did you say that's not true? Yeah?
55:38
Speaker 1: I said specifically it's an urban legend. Okay, I don't
55:41
Speaker 1: even remember that. Yeah, So I was really glad when
55:43
Speaker 1: people started writing I'm glad you picked one to say like, no,
55:46
Speaker 1: this is this is for real. Okay, great, thanks again, Brooke.
55:50
Speaker 1: That was fantastic. If you want to get in touch
55:53
Speaker 1: with this like Brook did. Even if you do want
55:55
Speaker 1: to say Josh was wrong, wrong wrong, wrong wrong, that's
55:58
Speaker 1: all right, we'd love to hear that kind of thing.
56:00
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at
56:03
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
56:08
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56:12
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