What Freud Can Teach Us About Sammy Davis Jr.




The multitalented Rat Packer Sammy Davis Jr. was born in Harlem in 1925. Dubbed "the world's greatest performer," Davis made his film launching at age seven in the Ethel Waters movie Rufus Jones for President. A singer, dancer, impressionist, drummer and star, Davis was irrepressible, and did not enable bigotry and even the loss of an eye to stop him. Behind his frenetic movement was a dazzling, academic guy who absorbed knowledge from his selected teachers-- consisting of Frank Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart, and Jack Benny. In his 1965 autobiography, Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr., Davis openly recounted whatever from the racist violence he faced in the army to his conversion to Judaism, which began with the present of a mezuzah from the comedian Eddie Cantor. However the entertainer also had a harmful side, further recounted in his 2nd autobiography, Why Me?-- which led Davis to suffer a heart attack onstage, drunkenly propose to his very first wife, and invest countless dollars on bespoke matches and fine fashion jewelry. Driving all of it was a lifelong battle for approval and love. "I have actually got to be a star!" he wrote. "I have to be a star like another guy has to breathe."
The boy of a showgirl and a dancer, Davis traveled the country with his daddy, Sam Davis Sr. and "Uncle" Will Mastin. His schooling was the numerous hours he invested backstage studying his mentors' every relocation. Davis was simply a toddler when Mastin first put the expressive kid onstage, sitting him in the lap of a female entertainer and training the young boy from the wings. As Davis later remembered:
The prima donna struck a high note and Will held his nose. I held my nose, too. However Will's faces weren't half as funny as the prima donna's so I began copying hers rather: when her lips shivered, my lips trembled, and I followed her all the way from a heaving bosom to a quivering jaw. The people out front were seeing me, chuckling. When we got off, Will knelt to my height. "Listen to that applause, Sammy" ... My father was bent next to me, too, smiling ..." You're a born assailant, child, a born mugger."
Davis was formally made part of the act, ultimately renamed the Will Mastin Trio. He performed in 50 cities by the time he was 4, coddled by his fellow vaudevillians as the trio took a trip from one rooming house to another. "I never felt I lacked a house," he writes. "We carried our roots with us: our very same boxes of cosmetics in front of the mirrors, our very same clothes hanging on iron pipeline racks with our exact same shoes under them." wo of a Kind
In the late 1940s, the Will Mastin Trio got a big break: They were booked as part of a Mickey Rooney taking a trip evaluation. Davis absorbed Rooney's every move onstage, marveling at his ability to "touch" the audience. "When Mickey was on stage, Additional hints he might have pulled levers labeled 'cry' and 'laugh.' He might work the audience like clay," Davis remembered. Rooney was similarly impressed with Davis's talent, and soon added Davis's impressions to the act, providing him billing on posters revealing the program. When Davis thanked him, Rooney brushed it off: "Let's not get sickening about this," he stated. The two-- a set of a little built, precocious pros who never had youths-- likewise ended up being terrific pals. "Between programs we played gin and there was constantly a record player going," Davis wrote. "He had a wire recorder and we ad-libbed all kinds of bits into it, and composed tunes, including a whole rating for a musical." One night at a celebration, a protective Rooney slugged a man who had actually introduced a racist tirade against Davis; it took 4 guys to drag the actor away. At the end of the tour, the good friends said their farewells: a wistful Rooney on the descent, Davis on the climb. "So long, friend," Rooney said. "What the hell, possibly one day we'll get our innings."
In November 1954, Davis and the Will Mastin Trio's decades-long dreams were finally coming true. They were headlining for $7,500 a week at the New Frontier Gambling Establishment, and had actually even been offered suites in the hotel-- instead of dealing with the typical indignity of staying in the "colored" part of town. To commemorate, Sam Sr. and Will presented Davis with a brand-new Cadillac, total with his initials painted on the traveler side door. After a night performing and betting, Davis drove to L.A for a recording session. He later remembered: It was among those spectacular early mornings when you can just remember the good ideas ... My fingers fit perfectly into the ridges around the steering wheel, and the clear desert air streaming in through the window was covering itself around my face like some beautiful, swinging chick offering me a facial. I switched on the radio, it filled the vehicle with music, and I heard my own voice singing "Hey, There." This magic flight was shattered when the Cadillac rammed into a lady making an ill-advised U-turn. Davis's face knocked into a protruding horn button in the center of the motorist's wheel. (That design would soon be upgraded because of his accident.) He staggered out of the car, concentrated on his assistant, Charley, whose jaw was horrifically hanging slack, blood pouring out of it. "He pointed to my face, closed his eyes and groaned," Davis writes. "I rose. As I ran my turn over my cheek, I felt my eye hanging there by a string. Frantically I attempted to stuff it back in, like if I might do that it would remain there and nobody would understand, it would be as though absolutely nothing had occurred. The ground went out from under me and I was on my knees. 'Don't let me go blind. Please, God, do not take it all away.'".

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