Selects: Sammy Davis Jr: National Treasure

12:22Chuck Bryant:He didn't get that until he was 18. And so by the time he was 18, he was like, this isn't right. Who do you think you are? And so when he got to the Army and was confronted with it full on, And he approached it differently, whereas some of his contemporaries in the army who were black just kind of kept their head down and tried to go along and get along. He would fight back. 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 guy and won. He beat up some white guy who had done something racist to him.

13:07Chuck Bryant: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.

13:26Josh Clark:Yeah.

13:26Chuck Bryant:And probably win some of the fights, probably get beat up a lot of the fights. He had his nose broken at least twice. but that it wasn't going to get him anywhere. And so he decided then and there that what 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 as much as anybody ever has in the history, in modern history, at least in the United States.

13:55Josh Clark:Yeah, so he's discharged in the Army in 1945, goes right back to the Mastin Trio and touring with them. 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. Like little Stevie Wonder.

14:16Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he actually, Chuck, he won his first contest at age three. Yeah. Like at amateur hour or amateur night. and he 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 formal start to his show business. Yeah, he won 10 bucks. Yeah, about 150 bucks today.

14:39Josh Clark:Yeah, which for him, I mean, that's a lot of dough for a very, very poor kid. Right. So he gets out of the army, goes back to the Mastin 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 too on the Chitlin circuit, they were never making much money. It's a grueling thing and they did get paid, but it's not like they were getting rich out there.

15:09Chuck Bryant:I mean, you'd have to be a vaudeville superstar to make a lot of money. And this was also during the depression largely too, so people didn't make money in general.

15:18Josh Clark:Right, but doing three, four, five shows a day on that circuit. Yeah. But goes to Vegas, starts performing in Vegas, starts doing impressions, which he did throughout his career, was very good at them, and audiences ate it up. And then Frank Sinatra, the chairman of the board, as they say, gave him a call, or gave their people calls, and said, hey, I want this guy opening 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 uh open for me in vegas and uh that was where he said you know in vegas for 20 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.

16:15Chuck Bryant:They had to stay in like an entirely different part of Vegas that from the looks of it almost didn't have electricity. It was still segregated. It was all dusty roads. 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 used the pool at the Sands and guests in the 50s 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 the segregation was, even in a place like Vegas.

16:55Chuck Bryant:All right, let's take a break,

16:57Josh Clark:and we'll come back and talk more about The Candyman right after this. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles Stuff you should know

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17:45Chuck Bryant:Yeah, plus you can shop with Wayfair Verified, a.k.a. your shortcut to the good stuff. Their team of product specialists vets everything by hand using a 10-point quality inspection so you know you're getting a quality piece no matter your budget. Way Day is the sale to shop the best deals in home. We're talking up to 80 % off with fast and free shipping on everything. Head to Wayfair.com April 25th through 27th and shop Way Day. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair. Every style, every home.

18:23Chuck Bryant:Have you ever invested in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Well, marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach, and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not-so-great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that, bull spend.

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19:20Chuck Bryant:You know, it's hard to believe that the first phone call ever happened over 150 years ago. Just think about that, Chuck.

19:27Josh Clark:Yeah, it was a long time ago. And, you know, I'm Gen X, so I grew up talking on the phone with my friends in high school and stuff. And it was a really fond memory.

19:34Chuck Bryant:And, you know, over all these years and all these phone calls, AT &T has been there, connecting people in meaningful ways. And this is more than a story of technological innovation. it's a story of human connection.

19:46Josh Clark:That's right. Over that 150 years, there's been a lot of connection with people, whether it was me in high school or family connecting with one another long distance or those long distance relationships. And AT &T has been there for it all. Connecting changes everything. AT &T.

20:16Josh Clark:So, Sammy Davis Jr. wrote a bunch of memoirs and autobiographies over the years, and one of them is a very great Spinal Tap joke.

20:24Chuck Bryant:What?

20:24Josh Clark:So, I know you still haven't seen it, right?

20:27Chuck Bryant:I saw it, but I've only seen it once, and it was a couple years ago.

20:31Josh Clark:Oh, okay. So, one of his, I think his first one was called Yes, I Can. Sure. And there's a great scene in Spinal Tap when Bruno Kirby, as a limo driver, is talking about it, and he said, and 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. That's right.

20:52Chuck Bryant:I remember that too.

20:53Josh Clark:That's a very funny joke.

20:54Chuck Bryant:Like he just keeps going off about that, doesn't he?

20:56Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah. It's good stuff. You know, Billy Crystal and Bruno Kirby had a very famous falling out.

21:02Chuck Bryant:No, why?

21:03Josh Clark:Legend has it, Billy Crystal sort of had him blackballed.

21:08Chuck Bryant: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 do, you know? That's crazy, though, to be that. Wow. Wow.

21:22Josh Clark:I mean, we know the game. People think you and I like each other. Right. We got everybody fooled. It's amazing.

21:29Chuck Bryant:Like, what were their names? The Mythbusters?

21:31Josh Clark:Yeah. Like, the day the camera stopped rolling, they released press statements saying, we never liked each other. I know. Why would anybody do that? I don't know.

21:39Chuck Bryant:Even if you didn't like each other, why would you just let it go? you know? I don't know. But it's Jamie and... Adam. Adam, that's right. Adam Savage. Adam's

21:49Josh Clark:a great guy.

21:50Chuck Bryant:I know him a little bit. Are you implying Jamie's not?

21:53Josh Clark:I don't know him any.

21:54Chuck Bryant:Oh, okay.

21:56Josh Clark:I'm not siding. This took a really weird turn, didn't it? It did. So, back to Sammy Davis Jr. He also started, his star started rising. Well, his star had already risen, but in the 70s when the Variety show came about, which was a big deal in the 70s and even into the 80s. Sammy Davis Jr. was perfect for that medium.

22:18Chuck Bryant:Well, 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 shows.

22:29Josh Clark:He had his own variety show later in the 70s because he was so, and 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 gunslinger, Right. A variety show is pretty great.

22:43Chuck Bryant:It really was. So he's, you know, he he he's getting on the TV. Their Vegas gigs have really put the Will Maston trio on the map and they were doing really well. 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. But it wasn't until 1951 that the big break came through. And it really came through in like a really kind of Hollywood story kind of way where like this, they were given this one shot in this one particular spot at just the right time in front of just the right people and they killed it. And that was it.

23:26Chuck Bryant:Sammy Davis Jr. was a star from that moment on.

23:29Josh Clark:That's right. And that was at Janice Page at a show at Ciro's, which is now the comedy store.

23:38Chuck Bryant:Right.

23:39Josh Clark:Oh, really?

23:39Chuck Bryant:I didn't know that.

23:40Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah. It became the comedy store after Ciro's, but was sort of a legendary place, you know, in its own right. Oh, yeah. But everyone, you know, 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 original Rat Pack, which wasn't called the Rat Pack.

24:04Chuck Bryant:No, it was actually.

24:05Josh Clark:It was?

24:06Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

24:07Josh Clark:Well, why did... Oh, never mind. I'm not going down that rabbit hole. What? That's all right. Okay. So he kills it there. He's doing impressions of people that are in the audience. Everyone loves him. They sign with the William Morris Agency. And an overnight sensation, you know, 20, 30 years in the making starts happening.

24:26Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and we 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 Cary Grant. And Cary Grant was a member of Humphrey Bogart's Rat Pack, and he was probably there that night.

25:03Chuck Bryant:So there were a lot of people who were getting impressions done of them, and they just loved it, killed. And 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.

25:17Josh Clark:Yeah. So he gets a record deal after that. He's putting out like show tunes, old standards.

25:24Chuck Bryant:Sure.

25:24Josh Clark:He does a pilot in the mid-50s with his father and uncle about a trio of black entertainers that are kind of struggling called We Three.

25:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I would love to see that.

25:35Josh Clark:Well, there's another pilot we'll talk about later that you definitely need to see.

25:38Chuck Bryant:I haven't checked it out yet, but I know the one.

25:41Josh Clark:It's pretty legendary.

25:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

25:43Josh Clark:So a big thing happened that same year in 1954 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. Yeah. His left eyeball hit that thing and he lost it and wore an eye patch for a while and then a glass eye.

26:08Chuck Bryant:Yeah, apparently he remembers coming out of the car 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'd lost his eye for life, his eye was gone. He was really, really scared that his career was over. This is 1954. 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, having to sit for publicity photos and try to be a leading man in movies or on Broadway or that kind of thing, you have to relearn spatial awareness.

26:53Chuck Bryant:You're going from binocular vision to monocular vision, and that has all sorts of weird, tricky effects on you. Sure. So if you're a dancer or a gunslinger 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 convalesce at Sinatra's place.

27:18Josh Clark:Yeah.

27:19Chuck Bryant:And really guided him in saying like you need to relearn how to move. You're going to be fine, but you're going to have to start really attacking this. And you can't really sit around and feel bad for yourself. You need to get, you know, relearn movement now rather than, you know, spend a year feeling sad. And that was a huge help for him.

27:42Josh Clark:It was. And he also was kind of, 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? And what can I do from this point forward? He put a pin in this, but this was the first exposure to Judaism in the hospital. He got a visit from a rabbi and just put a pin in that because that will come back again later.

28:12Chuck Bryant:Okay.

28:13Josh Clark:Is there a pin in it?

28:14Chuck Bryant:Well, look. All right. I don't even know where this pin came from.

28:18Josh Clark:Do you? I don't. Well, you do have that pin cushion right there.

28:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah, this little tomato one with the strawberries dangling off of it. Do you remember those? Oh, man, do I. Was there a 70s mom that didn't have one of those?

28:29Josh Clark:Yeah, with a macrame owl hanging on the wall behind her. Yeah, yeah. So here's where it gets really kind of great as far as knowing what a stand-up guy Sammy Davis Jr. was. His success is booming, and you would think, Sammy Davis Jr., you can leave that Will Mastin trio behind.

28:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

28:51Josh Clark: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. He ensured contractually that they would get a three-way split that endured 10 years after he left as a solo performer. He was still giving them 33 % each.

29:11Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for 15 years total, they got a third of the profits, each of them. And, yeah, 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 20 years older than him. By this time, he's in his 30s. So, you know, they're starting to get, they're losing their step a little bit. So they start to not be in the show quite as much. Sure. Just stepping back. But even still, he made sure they were taken care of for another 15 years. A third. A third. And this is a third during Sammy Davis Jr.'s peak earning years.

29:51Chuck Bryant: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 going to 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 15 years, Chuck.

30:10Josh Clark:That's really amazing. It's pretty great. So that pen, it actually wasn't in there that long. We can 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 is a big publicity stunt. He's like, no, this is not a publicity stunt. He said, this is my new religion. And he very humorously started referring to himself as a one-eyed black Jew. Sometimes a one-eyed black Puerto Rican Jew.

30:46Josh Clark:Puerto Rican Jew, which was very sort of in keeping with his self-deprecating style.

30:50Chuck Bryant:For sure. He's like Tim Watley. He converted for the jokes.

30:55Josh Clark:Man, I remember that one. I've been plowing through Seinfeld again. Yeah. I love, one of my favorite things that always gets me is when Jerry calls George Biff.

31:06Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

31:07Josh Clark:It never fails to make me laugh.

31:09Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

31:10Josh Clark:Biff. Yeah. So good. Should we, oh no, let's not take another break. Let's plow on here, right? Yeah, sure. All right. So dating-wise, he is dating black women and white women. When he dates white women, he gets racist threats 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.

31:36Chuck Bryant:No, he really couldn't win. And apparently from what I saw in that American Masters documentary, he really, really, really was in love with Kim Novak.

31:49Josh Clark:Yeah.

31:50Chuck Bryant: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 when he said that he intended to marry her, I guess it was in the 50s,

32:05Chuck Bryant:there was a contract put out on his life by the studio head at I think Columbia where Kim Novak was an actress

32:11Josh Clark:yeah Harry Cohn was the studio head and this was back when Vegas and Hollywood there was some mob and mafia dealings going on for sure and Sammy had some mob friends too just because he was friends with Frank and 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 no good there. I can protect you in Chicago. I can protect you in Vegas. Can't do anything about California. That's not my territory. And supposedly, and this is where it gets a little hazy because some people say it happened.

32:51Josh Clark:Some people say it didn't. Supposedly, he was even kidnapped for a few hours to scare him. But who knows if that's really true?

33:00Chuck Bryant: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 48 hours to marry a black woman or you die. And whatever it was, whether there was an actual contract, whether word 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, much to his own heart's break.

33:28Josh Clark:and proposed to a woman named Loray White.

33:33Chuck Bryant:She was a black singer, and I think they had dated years before. And I guess he never copped to the idea that it was an arranged marriage, that it was basically a business proposal. But that is definitely how it's portrayed by the people who were there at the time, who were his close friends, that he even paid her$10 ,000 to do this. And I'm sure it was very, you know, kind and congenial to it. But they described that day, his wedding day, Delore White, as probably the worst day of his life, tied for first with the day that he lost his left eye.

34:12Josh Clark: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.

34:22Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

34:23Josh Clark:Not making any excuses for the guy, but it was certainly not right to do that.

34:28Chuck Bryant:Right. So their marriage didn't last terribly long. I didn't see how long it lasted, did you? Yeah, a little over a year. Okay, so about a year. And I guess he considered that the heat had gone down or whatever by that time. But I get the impression that the fact that Kim Novak had been taken from him, she's strictly out of racism. Like Harry Cohn, 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 was at a time when there were laws that prevented black men and white women or vice versa to marry.

35:05Josh Clark:Yeah, it wasn't legal yet.

35:06Chuck Bryant:No. So the idea of one of his biggest stars, Kim Novak, marrying a black man, 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 1960, this was a few years after he had to break it off with Kim Novak, he got married to a woman, a Swedish actress named Mai Britt. and he had children with her and was married to her, but he also ran around on her almost constantly from what I understand. And you get the impression that Mai was in part a, I'll just put it as PG as possible, thumbing his nose at all of the racists out there who took Kim Novak from him.

35:57Chuck Bryant:He was saying, I think 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-foot white woman.

36:06Josh Clark:Yeah, who looks like Margot Robey, sort of.

36:08Chuck Bryant:She does. Yeah, she does a little bit. I hadn't put my finger on it. And their children were incredibly beautiful, thanks largely to their mom, too. But 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.

36:26Josh Clark:Yeah.

36:27Chuck Bryant:So she gave up her career to be with Sammy Davis Jr. I don't know. she must have fallen in love with him because she had three kids with him too, but she gave up a lot and he gave up nothing. And I think that it was very unfair on his part to ask for what he asked for from her and give so little in return. Yeah.

36:52Josh Clark:And what was also not fair and sort of a black eye on John F. Kennedy was that Sammy Davis Jr. had been scheduled to perform at the 1960 inauguration. And he disinvited him because of his marriage to a white woman. Kennedy personally had him disinvited.

37:10Chuck Bryant:This wasn't like Kennedy's like advisors or anything like that.

37:13Josh Clark:No, 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 fracturing of the relationship between JFK and Sammy Davis Jr. He never got over that.

37:31Chuck Bryant: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 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 Jr.'s heart as much as JFK betraying him, and probably even more, because he expected more from Frank than he did from Kennedy. And the other thing about Kennedy rescinding that invitation, Harry Belafonte's invitation wasn't rescinded, and Harry Belafonte was married to a white woman and was there with his white wife at this inauguration party.

38:20Chuck Bryant:so Sammy Davis Jr. couldn't help but take it personally and he really did it was a big deal a big moment in his life and a very sad moment and a lot of people think that it led to him later on embracing probably ill-advisedly the Nixon campaign in the early 70s

38:40Josh Clark: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 learning stuff with Joshua you uncharted stuff you should know.

38:59Chuck Bryant:Have you ever invested in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Well, marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach, and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not-so-great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that, bull spend.

39:18Josh Clark:That's right, because you need to invest in what looks good to your CFO. LinkedIn Ads generates the highest ROAS, 121 % of all major ad networks. You can reach the right buyers with LinkedIn Ads, and you can target by company, industry, job title, and more.

39:33Chuck Bryant:So cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a$250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash S-Y-S-K. That's LinkedIn.com slash S-Y-S-K. Terms and conditions apply.

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41:19Chuck Bryant: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?

41:26Josh Clark: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. Which happens in the 70s. So in the 60s is when, and possibly because of the JFK treatment, is when he really starts to get more socially aware, starts donating money to the cause and marches at Selma for the civil rights efforts. he when he supported Nixon it was not just a thumbing of the nose at Kennedy but he bought into Nixon and thought that it was going to be a good choice for black America he regretted that later on of course sure but it wasn't just a poopy pants move like hey well I'm going to support

42:12Chuck Bryant:Nixon now because you disinvited me exactly and so one of the other reasons that he embraced Nixon was that Nixon embraced him as a human being and really stood in stark contrast to the treatment he received from Kennedy. And in that Nixon actually seemed to really like Sammy Davis Jr. A lot of people are like, the Nixon administration was just using Sammy Davis Jr. They were at the same time using what's called the Southern strategy, which is they were stoking racism among Southern whites to get them to turn on the Democrats. but he also apparently really did like Sammy Davis Jr. and admired him and under Nixon's administration it tastes like bitter acid saying this Sammy Davis Jr.

42:58Chuck Bryant: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. Oh, I'm sure. And that was actually how he ended up in Vietnam doing this USO tour in 1972. He said, what can I do to help? And Nixon said, 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.

43:40Chuck Bryant: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. 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. They still deserve support. these individuals over there overseas. That was not necessarily how it was during the Vietnam era.

44:19Chuck Bryant:So Sammy Davis Jr. going over there to support the troops after embracing the Nixon administration really furthered this rift between him and the black community, which, and I don't know if we really said this enough, was unfair and unjust because he was a fervent supporter of the civil rights movement during the, uh, the fifties and sixties.

44:44Josh Clark:Yeah.

44:45Chuck Bryant:I mean, fervent, 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?

45:09Josh Clark:For sure. So in the 60s, 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 gunslinger thing. 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. This is when the Rat Pack thing really heats up, and he's hanging out with Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, and, of course, the chairman.

45:43Chuck Bryant:Right.

45:44Josh Clark:And started their first movie together, which was Ocean's Eleven. Not a great movie.

45:50Chuck Bryant:Oh, disagree.

45:52Josh Clark:I think the original's not very good.

45:54Chuck Bryant:Oh, I liked it.

45:55Josh Clark:I thought the remake was great, but I did not care for the original.

45:59Chuck Bryant:I liked the original. Have you seen Robin and the Seven Hoods?

46:03Josh Clark:Yeah, also not great. I don't think the Rat Pack ever made a great movie.

46:07Chuck Bryant:Okay.

46:08Josh Clark:That's just my opinion.

46:09Chuck Bryant:What about Time Bandits?

46:11Josh Clark:Fantastic. Okay. They were hanging out at the Coconut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel, which is a place that I have a neat little quick story. I did a commercial shoot there before they tore it down, and it was an empty hotel at this point that they just use for movie shoots. And it was an overnight thing, and at like 2 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 Coconut Grove and do it because there's plenty of room in there. And I went in there all by myself sitting in the dusty old shadows of what was once the Great Coconut Grove for like an hour and a half by myself.

46:55Josh Clark:Like sitting in a booth that the Rat Pack might have sat in.

46:58Chuck Bryant:Wow, that's amazing.

46:59Josh Clark:Really pretty neat. And later that night got to go see where Bob Kennedy was shot.

47:03Chuck Bryant:Oh, that's where he was shot? Yeah. In the Ambassador Hotel? Yeah, in the kitchen.

47:08Josh Clark:And one of the guys, 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 in the kitchen? See what happened? And we went, oh, yeah.

47:16Chuck Bryant:Wow, that's amazing.

47:17Josh Clark:And it was super cool and creepy.

47:19Chuck Bryant:Wow.

47:20Josh Clark:So anyway.

47:21Chuck Bryant:That's a great story, Charles.

47:22Josh Clark:They're hanging out with the Rat Pack. 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 shtick, there is a lot of sort of racial joking about Sammy. It's all in good fun, but there 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 thank the audience for the NAACP award. So stuff like that.

48:03Chuck Bryant:So in that documentary, and I'm not justifying that at all, but in that documentary, Whoopi Goldberg is like, you could take any segment of their show and be like, this is really offensive to 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, 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 were being hostile or cruel, that it was just part of the act.

48:43Chuck Bryant:And that's how he took it.

48:45Josh Clark: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.

48:53Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and it's not like 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 impression that I have 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 he was talking about converting to Judaism, I think in like a 1966 Playboy interview, he was talking about losing his eye and then 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 coming in, all this outpouring of support he considered himself alone and that he was a loner and that's really bizarre when you step back and look at that because Sammy Davis Jr.

49:49Chuck Bryant:always had friends. He was always the life of the party. He was always a good guy. Everybody wanted to be around him. He was always having fun, but he considered himself a loner. And 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.

50:06Josh Clark:You're like, Sammy, I don't feel like I know the real you. Come on, Sammy, let it out. 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 60s and into the 70s. And the result of that, of course, well, through the 60s, I guess, is that he's not around much. He had a lot of regrets about not being around as a father. As a husband, he was flandering. He was drinking a lot. He was using drugs. So in 1968, he got divorced. in 1970. He married a woman named Altaviz Gore, who was 18 years his junior.

50:46Chuck Bryant:Great name.

50:47Josh Clark:Backup dancer. His children did not like the fact that she was so much younger, but they stayed married for the rest of his life.

50:55Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he was like, oh, if you got a problem with her, you should probably not know about everything else I'm doing.

51:00Josh Clark:Yeah. So here's where it gets really interesting. Very interesting. Sammy Davis Jr. had a convergence of two interests in the 70s. He became a member of the Church of Satan. He was an honorary warlock. And he got really, really into porn. And porn, you know, there's no better way to say it than he was a swinger. He was in orgies. He participated in satanic orgies. Right.

51:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that was actually, I don't know if it was his first orgy or not, but that's how he became part of, involved in the Church of Satan.

51:40Josh Clark:Yeah.

51:41Chuck Bryant:You know, like the original Church of Satan with Anton LaVey there and everything.

51:45Josh Clark:Like the real good, like classic golden years of Church of Satan.

51:50Chuck Bryant:Exactly. He went and participated in a satanic orgy. Sammy Davis Jr.

51:58Josh Clark:Which I think is like a regular orgy, but with just more like red candles.

52:02Chuck Bryant: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 I read this really interesting Vice article about it. I read that too, yeah. He was apparently at the first one, and this would have been in the late 60s, 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 barber Jay Sebring, who would later be killed with Sharon Tate by the Manson family. But he was basically like, hey, Sammy, it's me, Jay. How are you doing? Isn't this awesome? And then they went back to the— All right, they're coming.

52:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah, exactly. He pulls the mask back down. Yeah. But he—yeah, he was hugely into pornography. He was into orgies, into swinging. He was—he loved cocaine and loved drinking. I saw Arsenio interview with him. It must have been very shortly before his death, where he's like, you know, I had to give everything up. 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 or anything like that. And then somebody went backstage and there's Sammy Davis Jr.

53:16Chuck Bryant:smoking a cigarette, drinking a brandy. And he goes, Sammy, what are you doing? You just told Larry King that you gave all this up. He's like, I plan 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 he ended up becoming involved in the Church of Satan, which went on for years.

53:41Josh Clark:Yeah, no judgment here. If that's his bag, it's not hurting anybody. Right. Did you see the one quote about the ritual with the lady who was tied to the bed?

53:52Chuck Bryant:Where he decided like it was okay?

53:54Josh Clark:Yeah, he was talking about it, and he was like, that chick was loving it, man. Right. Well, I won't say the rest of the quote, but do you remember? Yeah, I remember.

54:05Chuck Bryant:I remember.

54:06Josh Clark:So all of this led to what we were talking about earlier, 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 1973 called Poor Devil, which was about a man who was a low down on the totem pole, or I guess high on the totem pole, coal shoveler in hell, who is offered the chance to work his way up the ranks in hell if he can get the soul of Jack Klugman, a living white man on earth.

54:46Chuck Bryant:Right, Jack Klugman, Quincy M.D.

54:49Josh Clark:Yeah, and it is on YouTube, and dude, it is amazing.

54:53Chuck Bryant:I have not had a chance to see it 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, which you wouldn't possibly understand that.

55:05Josh Clark:Yeah, sure.

55:05Chuck Bryant:But just imagine that somebody's not trying to get you to be good so that they can understand how great life is. he's trying to get him to follow his most bitter revenge impulses and stuff like that. But at one point, apparently, Jack Klugman wants to get in touch with Sammy Davis Jr., the devil, and is 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, oh. Because apparently the pilot was aired, and they were all about Sammy D. at this point. Oh, sure. That's when they made him an honorary warlock. Yeah. He used to flash, like, the devil horns at them from stage when he would come do a show in San Francisco.

55:46Chuck Bryant:It's so funny.

55:47Josh Clark:Yeah. Christopher Lee, by the way, played the devil, which is pretty on the notes, but perfect. Sure, yeah. So that doesn't succeed, obviously. It's terrible. The 70s and the 80s, 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. he was we have to talk about the great great Cannonball Run oh yeah he was in that wasn't he yeah man he and Dean were partners they played

56:18Chuck Bryant:I forgot about that

56:19Josh Clark:they dressed up as priests that's right heavily drinking smoking priests they played themselves basically as priests who wanted to drive fast

56:26Chuck Bryant:that's pretty great

56:27Josh Clark: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

56:36Chuck Bryant:oh I'm sure not By this time, he's kitschy Sammy.

56:38Josh Clark:Yeah.

56:39Chuck Bryant: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, Mr. Bojangles. Yes. Where if you listen to it, it's about an old performer who's washed up and has been washed up for years. Yeah. And he's still drinking and just doing, you know, he's been reduced to doing basically sidewalk performances. and apparently Sammy was scared to death about that being his future. Yeah. So even just doing what he was doing with Dean and Cannonball Run, I'm sure was just fine in his mind because he was still working and performing.

57:17Josh Clark:Yeah. Of course, he looks around and there's Bert, man. There's Adrian Barbeau.

57:26Josh Clark:You're digging the Sammy now, aren't you? Yes, dude.

57:28Chuck Bryant:I think Sammy needs to be a recurring character from now on in Stuff You Should Know episode. We'll see. We'll see. Okay.

57:34Josh Clark:He's the new hippie, Rob. So in the 80s, he gets into some financial trouble, to say the least, because I love how I put it. He'd been struggling with tax payments since the 1960s. I think it was a Willie Nelson sort of deal from what I could gather.

57:51Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah? Yeah.

57:52Josh Clark:I mean, I think he wasn't really paying his taxes.

57:54Chuck Bryant:Sure, sure. 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 IRS came back and said, nope, that doesn't count. You also owe on that. And his estate was worth, or his net assets were worth about$4 million, but he owed about$7 million. Jeez. 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$50 ,000 along the way stopping in different stores.

58:32Chuck Bryant:I thought you meant drop that out of his pocket on the street. No, no. Buying stuff. Just buy, buy, buy. He just spent it because he had come from nothing. And he knew that thrill of spending money. He was terrible with his money. And so as he found out he owed$7 million, he started to organize 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 1989, he found that he had a sore throat. So he went to the doctor and ultimately was diagnosed with throat cancer.

59:05Josh Clark:Yeah, after that very first show. It's like such cruel irony to raise all this money because when he passed away in 1990, in May 16th, of cancer, he left that tax bill to his wife. uh like that that carried over yeah altavis yeah so um that really left her kind of destitute for

59:29Chuck Bryant: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 that was not that wasn't the the negative part of his legacy was that tax debt, leaving that behind.

59:51Josh Clark:Yeah. And you know, in one way, it's like kind of a sad ending, uh, with the financial stuff and obviously dying way too young of cancer, but yeah, 65, man, he did accomplish everything he set out to accomplish. He, uh, he showed everybody who said this diminutive little, uh, mixed race, kind of funny looking guy, uh, is never going to amount to anything. And he had a lifelong career from the age of three to 65 in show business. So.

1:00:18Chuck Bryant: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.

1:00:29Josh Clark:Yeah, that quote on that Letterman show was great. Yeah. On the 85 episode, he's talking about the younger generation. And he said, I look at the young performers today, and I go like this. Yeah, man, go ahead, cook. I've been there. That's it, man. I have no envy. I did it all. Yeah, pretty great. Go ahead, cook. That's great.

1:00:49Chuck Bryant:Sammy Davis Jr., everybody. Round of applause. You got anything else?

1:00:54Josh Clark:Got nothing else.

1:00:55Chuck Bryant:If you want to know more about Sammy Davis Jr., just start watching some of his old performances. They're pretty amazing. And while you're doing that, we're going to just move on ahead to listener mail.

1:01:07Josh Clark:Yeah, this is about the 911 pizza thing. We heard from a lot of 911 people.

1:01:12Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I'm glad that you picked one of these, man.

1:01:14Josh Clark:This is good. Hey, while we are not specifically trained to send EMS to calls where people pretend to order a pizza. Most 911 dispatchers will, in fact, ask you, this is 911, 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 isn't 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.

1:01:50Josh Clark: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.

1:02:00Chuck Bryant:I'm glad to hear this.

1:02:01Josh Clark:Yeah, please let this be known because in a last-ditch effort, this may save someone's life. And that is from responder Brooke Diane.

1:02:08Chuck Bryant:Thanks, Brooke. And thank you also not for being like, Josh was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

1:02:14Josh Clark:Oh, I don't remember. Did you say that's not true?

1:02:15Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I said specifically it's an urban legend.

1:02:18Josh Clark:Oh, okay. I don't even remember that.

1:02:20Chuck Bryant:Yeah, so I was really glad when people started writing. I'm glad you picked one to say, like, no, this is for real.

1:02:25Josh Clark:Oh, okay.

1:02:27Chuck Bryant:Great. Thanks again, Brooke. That was fantastic. If you want to get in touch with us like Brooke did, even if you do want to say Josh was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, that's all right. We love to hear that kind of thing. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.

1:02:45Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

1:02:48Chuck Bryant:For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.

1:03:01Josh Clark:Geico presents a 30-second podcast between your podcast. Today's story is shared by one of our listeners. It's called Betrayed by Bill. It was in that moment I caught who was staring back at me in betrayal. Or more like what? my insurance bill with trembling hands i grabbed my phone and switched to geico saving about 900 in the process and never to be betrayed again now that was bloody riveting it feels good when the story ends with savings it feels good to geico

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