Sammy Davis Jr: National Treasure

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 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 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 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, 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 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

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, 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 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

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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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.

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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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.

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, 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. 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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. 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 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. 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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

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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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, 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 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 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, 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,

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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H