A Man of Many Selves

"Everybody kept saying it," Sammy Davis Jr. chortled. "Don't do so many shows, get off the TV. Don't do so much, sit down, go home, don't over expose yourself. But I kept saying, 'No, man,' and I kept going, and now look what happened."

What happened was that Davis over exposed himself into one of show business' biggest deals. Last week he signed a 13-to-18-week contract with NBC making him the first Negro to enjoy what the trade covetously calls "the Gleason treatment." Like Jackie Gleason on CBS, Davis will have control of the show's entire budget; as executive producer he will be free to hire and fire whomever he pleases, pay the sal aries, name everyone from the guest stars to the script girl.*

Million in Tahoe. The Sammy Davis Show, set for Friday nights at 8:30 E.S.T., will finally provide a showcase wide enough to demonstrate all of the star's many selves: singer, dancer, co median, actor, mimic, impresario. No one, including Davis, has ever defined his appeal. As a high-swinging singer he has sold well over 6,000,000 records; yet many singers have sold more. As a nonstop hoofer he can switch from waltz clog to Watusi without missing a step; yet so can Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. As a multivoiced mimic he can do nearly every movie star who ever lived--yet there are other impressionists who can keep up with him.

There is, however, no one person who can do all that Davis does, and nothing, outside of a cyclotron, that can perform with his limitless vigor. While he has been appearing on Broadway in Golden Boy, he has also found time to campaign for John Lindsay for mayor of New York, propel his autobiography, Yes I Can, to the bestseller list, do guest shots on the Johnny Carson program, tape three TV specials, and make plans to shoot a full-length film, Adam, this winter. In his spare time, he netted a million-dollar deal for four two-week nightclub engagements at the Harrah Club at Lake Tahoe.

Observes Arthur Penn, director of Golden Boy: "The only way to beat Sammy at anything is to stay up later than he does. And nobody stays up later than Sammy." Where will he find time for television? "Well," Sammy points out, "there's always Sunday. I've worked hard all my life. So I'll just work a little harder. Work is all I know."

"Stick with Satchmo." As Davis recounts it in Yes I Can, he acquired his hard-driving habits almost from the cradle. His vaudevillian father took him into his act when he was three, saw him a headliner before his ninth birthday. The hours young Sammy kept were not those recommended by Dr. Spock, but in a way he was luckier than many of his Negro contemporaries. He never dropped out of school because he never dropped in, avoided the ghetto life by staying on the road. He was eight years old before he heard the word "nigger," did not really come face to face with race prejudice until he joined the Army.

His nose was broken in one barracks fight; in another, five soldiers painted him white. "You ain't never gonna be this white, no matter how hard you try," one of them told him. But he emerged from the service with a spirit that was unbroken, determined to scrub out his color as a bar to reaching the top in show business. He began breaking down the taboos that have long circumscribed Negroes, including the rule that colored entertainers must never imitate white celebrities. "You just stick with Satchmo and Step'n Fetchit," begged his manager. But Davis listened only to Davis, joined forces with his father and "Uncle" to form the Will Mastin Trio, soon had his audiences pounding the tables and begging for more as he imitated Sir Laurence Olivier, tough-talked his way through impersonations of Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart and John Garfield.

"Colored No More." On his way up, Sammy brovight a built-in penchant for bad luck and controversy along with him. First there was the 1954 automobile accident in Las Vegas that cost him his left eye. Then, after a frantic new beginning, there were the years when he became one of the most notorious members of the Sinatra Rat Pack, his eyepatch fixed rakishly, like a pirate's, eager to outdrink, outgamble and outperform any other Clansman. Finally there were the unkindest cuts of all--from the Negro press, resentful of Davis' growing reputation for all-night all-white parties. "Howcum we never see Sammy Davis hangin' on the corner up here?" ran the cartoon in a Harlem paper. "You crazy, man? Sammy ain't colored no more."

"No white man could have been the enemy to me that I was to myself," Sammy says today. Constantly in debt from splurges of high living and saddled with a marriage to a Negro that he confesses was loveless, he turned to religion, became one of the world's most celebrated converts to Judaism. His interest in things Jewish had begun when Eddie Cantor had pressed a mezuzah, a holy Hebrew charm, into his hand, increased when a rabbi comforted him in the hospital after his accident, and ended with formal conversion after four years of study.

Without a Song. In 1960 he married Swedish Film Star May Britt. It was a classic union of opposites. Davis is short (5 ft. 5 in.), nervous, the color of bittersweet chocolate; leggy, lissome May Britt could be no blonder, remains serene no matter how large the crisis. Somehow the marriage worked. The Davises had one child, adopted a second, then a third. He pulled away from the Clan, hasn't appeared with them since the filming of Robin and the 7 Hoods in 1964. The drinking went down, the smoking went from three packs of cigarettes a day to one, and to complete the change, he tried something new--acting.

Submitting himself to the discipline of a musical, he stuck with Golden Boy through two directors and ceaseless out-of-town strife, finally saw it become a Broadway phenomenon--a popular hit without a single popular song.

Five James Cagneys. In the packed house, there are still occasional out-of-towners who come to Golden Boy only to walk out the moment Davis embraces white Singer Paula Wayne, the show's love interest. "Let them go," says Davis. "With all the talk and all the taunts, I've done 30 TV specials and never been knocked off a single network affiliate in the South, and I'm No. 2 on the Klan's list--right after Martin Luther King. I'm not worried."

Neither, apparently, is NBC. It has given him the green light for every one of his ambitious plans. In the meantime Davis stays up late and dreams aloud: "I'm not going to do a variety show. I'm going to do a show with variety. No sketches and no bad jokes. When Richard and Liz come on the show, he's going to do Camelot, and she's going to watch. When Sean Connery comes on, he's going to sing There Is Nothing Like a Dame the way he used to do when he was a chorus boy in London.

"One evening I'll have Louis Armstrong on one side and Ella Fitzgerald on the other. I want five of the greatest impressionists and get five James Cagneys going at once. It's not going to be all fun. The pressures are there. The responsibility of being the first Negro with a big TV show is there. All I really want to do now is handle all of it with a swinging dignity."

* Because of a prior commitment to ABC, Davis will appear as master of ceremonies on his Jan. 7 premiere, then is barred from his own show until Feb. 11.

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