In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Junior by Wil Haygood Read Free Book Online Page A

signing in Manhattan. A couple came over to Sammy and complimented him on the writing of the book. “I didn’t write it,” he told the fans while pointing out the Boyars. “They did. Go compliment them.” He could, in a charming way, be so brutally honest.
    When the new
Golden Boy
ads were made up, Sammy made sure they mentioned the release of
Yes I Can
. Hilly Elkins, the
Golden Boy
producer, didn’t mind one bit. He’d hawk the book with the same energy he was using to hawk his Broadway show. One merchandising paw scratching the other.
    On October 31, six weeks after its publication,
Yes I Can
jumped onto the
New York Times
best-seller list, at number 7. The appearance on the list made Roger Straus look uncanny. The reading public became enamored of
Yes I Can
, and it stayed in the top 10 throughout the month of November. On December 5, the book reached number 4.
Yes I Can
also hopped onto the
Publishers Weekly
best-seller list. These were stunning feats for a book that, at one time, couldn’t find a publisher. Pocket Books snapped up paperback rights for $300,000, at the time a whopping sum.
    The success of the book couldn’t hide its flaws, of course. A review in
Negro Digest
would wonder what wounds Sammy’s “tiny rejected spirit” must have suffered from the absence of a mother. There is little, as well, about Sam Sr. or Will Mastin in the book. There is little about the Cuban blood that coursed through the family history. Even Jess Rand, the dutiful press agent cum advisor, receives scarcely a mention. There is next to nothing about Sammy’s sister, Ramona. (He didn’t tell Peggy King, the singer, that he had a sister until yearsafter they had known each other!) There is nothing in
Yes I Can
about all the broken engagements—to Chita Rivera, to Peggy King, to Helen Gallagher, to Eartha Kitt. Kitt received a copy of
Yes I Can
in the mail; “I got a bad feeling when I touched it,” she would say. “I put my hands on the pages and didn’t have a good feeling.”
    There is nothing in the book about Sammy’s lust for white women—save his wedding to May Britt, presented as an old-fashioned love story, absent, of course, Sammy’s enormous psychic wounds around identity.
    Cindy Bitterman, nee Bays, also doesn’t appear in the book. “Sammy didn’t put my name in the book because Frank would have killed him,” she later confided.
    Sinatra’s animosity didn’t have anything to do with suspicions of romance between Sammy and Cindy, because there was none. They were truly platonic. It was simply the way Sammy made Frank nervous with regard to Frank’s former girlfriends, and Sammy’s inability to stop himself. Frank hadn’t forgotten the way Sammy once sent his former wife Ava Gardner diamonds. Kim Novak—also one of Frank’s former intimates—was also a very touchy subject. (Sammy went out of his way in the book to deny a romance with Novak, but that didn’t make their affair any less real.) Cindy herself used to be Frank’s girl. Once, inside Danny’s Hideaway, someone snapped a photo, an eye-patch-wearing Sammy—it was in the aftermath of the car crash—seated elbow to elbow with Cindy. When Cindy later showed the photo to Sammy, he took it and tore her from the picture, then gave the picture back to her. He told her he didn’t want anyone to get the wrong impression. So—Sammy and Cindy? Not at all. But who knew how Frank’s mind worked during those late-night hours when the wine was rolling around inside him and old sad songs were circling his brainwaves?
    Yes, Frank was busy. He wasn’t going to sit down and plow through some 630-page book about Sammy. Sinatra did take Sammy and the Boyars out to dinner to celebrate the book’s publication. They went to Jilly’s in Manhattan. Sinatra uttered hardly a word about the book. Fuck the book; he thought life was bigger than books. “Jane was sitting next to him,” Burt Boyar says. “She wasn’t eating. He turned to her and said,