I loved Sammy and I had the chance to marry the man I loved, she says. I was ready to stay onstage for hours . Every club wanted him, so they would say, Here, Sammy, take $5,000. So he wouldand then he owed them [an engagement]. Loray Davis ended up in a big, rented house in the Hollywood Hills.
George Sidney knew that Cohn was losing his grip. The studio contoured her figure by encouraging her to purge 15 pounds. In 1957, Sammy Davis Jr. was at the height of his powers and his popularity. With the Boyars, Davis ventured into New York establishments that had previously been closed to him. You took no notice. In that moment, hidden in Madeleine, there is Judys masked yearning to live, to be noticed, to become real. She was Columbias resident sex goddess in the 1940s, but she had a bad habit of getting married. He sang one song and left the stage. But I have to print what I think is news., Fuck you, he said, and hung up., Sam Davis Sr. loved going to the Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood, as did Mickey Cohen, the West Coast gangster who had tried to take over Ben Bugsy Siegels gambling interests after the dapper Siegel had his eye shot out. )? And if those initials werent enough of a tip-off, she followed the item up two days later with Studio bosses now know about K.N.s affair with S.D. To show everybody, yeah, guess what Im doing with her!
She contracted with a New York publisher to write her memoirs and managed to get through her childhoodwhich were not easy yearsbut she found that she had virtually blacked out entire events of her life in Hollywood. And thats where Sammy is buried today. What went wrong, only one of them could say. Dont go back home unless you straighten things out with Harry Cohn., It was really touch and go, Silber recalls. He got so mad at me and at the story and at her. It caused a hell of a ruckus at the studio when Harry Cohn picked up my column and learned that his star was about to be destroyed, recalls Kupcinet.
Her version of the affair is It was a very dangerous relationship thena white woman and a black man, no matter his statusit simply didnt mix publicly. He owed Donjo Medlavine, [one of the three owners] of Chez Paree. Josh Logan kept saying, Where the hell is she? He finally got on the megaphone and yelled, Kim, get your ass over here! He charged across the bridge with all the other actors holding their breath. New Years/ Sinter Klaas (Dutch Christmas), The ripple effect of kindness and small deeds/ Endings and new beginnings. The Amsterdam News and the Courier had both published admonishing editorials over the Davis-Novak affair, reminding him of his obligation to the Negro community.. On a tour of Australia, Davis collapsed from sheer exhaustion. Hed never been out of debt in his life, Marsh realized. Sammy liked his lookshe knew his face was ugly, but he worked on his body. It just went on and on., Part of the problem was that, as Arthur Silber observes, you could not perform in these United States without being with gangsters, because the gangsters owned the nightclubs. Since there was already a Marilyn, the first thing that had to go was her name. He might be her co-conspirator in saying no to Harry Cohn, no to Jean Louis, no to Muriel Robertsno to anyone who tried to put his or her stamp on her. It was still the Will Mastin Trio with Sammy Davis Jr. at the time, even though Davis had started to push ahead of his father and uncle. Silber described them as just a glorified dance act at the time. The affair was an open enough secret that Davis had to endure tasteless remarks about it, even from his friends. It was only a moment for you. James Bacon, one of the first West Coast reporters to get wind of Novaks affair, called Novaks family in Chicago and was told by her father, Joe, that the star was returning to Los Angeles on the Union Pacific train. When the New York Daily News columnist Bob Sylvester wrote cruelly, God . He was out of sync with the new music. Heres a man dying of throat cancer, and his voice was glorious, like a nightingale. I had to make [the audience] acknowledge me, he told the Boyars. After a few months of clandestine meetings, she simply retreated. He had a few choice words: What the fuck has he gotten himself into now! Silber and Medlavine were sitting at the airport when Silber was suddenly paged over the loudspeaker. Every hooker was there, as was Bob Harrison, who published Confidential and was really just a pornographer. . Her marriage to Khan, a notorious playboy and womanizer, kept her out of pictures for more than two years, infuriating Cohn and further alienating her fans. Alfred Hitchcock originally wanted to cast Vera Miles in the dual role of Madeleine/Judy. By the mid-1930s, Cohn had nurtured Columbia from a low-rent, B-movie studio on Hollywoods Poverty Row, a block off Sunset, into a major Hollywood film studio. Certainly a geniusan entertainment genius.
Nevertheless, three days before the inauguration, Kennedys personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, called Davis and disinvited him to the gala event. Some girls go for gold, but its bronze that sends sultry Ava Gardner . Donjo Medlavine was waiting for him on the tarmac when the plane arrived.
Cohn blew his top.
Novak eventually retreated to an even more remote spot in the Pacific Northwest. She wasnt ready. When he first invited Altovise up to his suite, she was wary of his reputation. Donjo Medlavine. Medlavine was stocky, built like a pit bull, and he had a heart as big as the world, Silber says.
After a year and a half of college, Silber went on the road with Davis and the two became close friends.
So when Sammy wanted to do impressions and sing, they told him, You cant do it. They insisted, You dont even know how to sing. Davis had grown up hearing what he couldnt do. I tell you what, theres one chance, Cohen told him. Entratter put her up in the Presidential Suite of the Sands Hotelalone. I must have had a knockdown, drag-out fight every two days, he told the Boyars during the writing of Yes I Can. Davis would travel with a steamer trunk full of porno films, and one particularly tough member of his security team would steal some of the tapes out of Daviss room and charge the bellboys to watch them.. Novak was installed at the Studio Club, a curfewed dormitory for young starlets where Cohn could have his expensive new possession watched around the clockeven tailed by studio detectives to make sure she didnt follow the wayward path of Rita Hayworth. In 1996, Novak reluctantly came out of retirement to help promote the re-release of a beautifully restored Vertigo. Like Prousts madeleine, she exists only to arouse emotions in others. I mean, all this for five minutes. Or she would be so overcome by emotion that she just couldnt write. Sy Marsh remembers her as a beautiful woman, bright, articulate, very well spoken. At 23, she had already been married twice and had a six-year-old daughter. The newly elected president feared that his presence would alienate southern congressmen. Television supposedly turned to him and said, Sammy, if Kim Novak ever sees this, youll be back sleeping with Hattie McDaniel.. She visited him the day after Davis announced the engagement from the stage at the Sands. When his doctor told him he needed surgery to live, he knew it would mean hed never sing again.
Judys reluctant transformation into the ghost of Madeleine is an eerie echo of her metamorphosis into a movie goddess. My attraction to Sammy was his talent, Burt Boyar recalls. They call you the Carpenter, she told him, cause you nail every girl you meet. But she always believed that Davis loved her unconditionally. Jack Haley Jr., who was producing the Academy Awards broadcast that year, had arranged to take Novak to the gala event. .
At the heart of their star-crossed affair was one of Hollywoods sacred monsters: the notorious Harry Cohn. Sy Marsh says, The government had an auction, and they took it all. He was pulling her across the bridge in her beautiful dress, and she was fighting him, protesting, Im not ready, Im not ready! My agent told me my career would be over if I continued to see Sammy. I have to marry a black chick, and Im looking for someone to marry.. Jack Entratter hosted the reception. America was still deeply segregated. The man known as the greatest entertainer in the world was onstage, the smoke from his cigarette trellising the air. I was sitting at a table with Clark Gable and William Holden and the Humphrey Bogarts, and the Will Mastin Trio came out with Sammy Davis. Davis had just come out of the army, and Arthur was still in high school.
. See bottom of page for downloads available now: Casebook Activity,Character Costume Guide, two. He told Shirley Rhodes, You know, the world owes me nothing. He agreed to postpone his marriage to Britt until after the presidential election, even though the wedding invitations had already been sent out, to avoid harming Kennedys chances. Not one picture, he said. Jet reported that White went on a shopping spree, and ran a photograph of her with 20 new pairs of shoes. I Was Dumbstruck, Women first interviewed by the directors behind, Epstein Had a Precise Plan: How the Only Known Photo of Prince Andrew and the Pedophile Happened. and have turned lavender over their platinum blonde., Daviss sexual charisma had already been noticed by Confidential, the most scandalous scandal magazine in the history of the world, in Tom Wolfes phrase. Cohn decided he was going to take the next girl who walked into his office and manufacture a new star for Columbia Pictures, one who would do exactly what he wanted, who wouldnt walk away until he and the public were finished with her. She was left alone with 20 pairs of shoes, a mink stole, and a dazzling ring.
The writer James Baldwin, who would become a friend during the 60s at the height of the civil-rights movement, once observed that Davis had to decide between greatness and madness. Cohn wanted her in one of his pet projects, a biblical epic called Joseph and His Brethren, until her then husband, Haymes, came into Cohns office with a marcelled beard and demanded to be cast as Joseph. It was just the nature of the profession., Davis couldnt get even a private message (actually a secret message, according to Arthur Silber, who refuses to elaborate) to Novak, because her family had only one phone, and it was a party line. But there was always an undercurrent of indebtedness in their relationship. . The late 1960s and the 1970s were unkind to Davis in other ways.
I got his uncle and his father down to a minimum. When Marsh signed on as his business partner, he discovered that Davis was deep in debt. Davis liked to inhale cigarette smoke in the middle of a song and exhale with the note and the smoke pouring out. Sammy had arranged that Will Mastin would be buried here, on the left, his father was buried on the right, and the plot in the center was left open. So now I come in and I see Im paying Donjo Medlavine in Chicago.
Cohn had a last heart attack in 1958 and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, two months after hed first received word of the relationship. I dont think thats the way I want to go out. Davis made the decision not to have the operation. With a black-gloved hand, Madeleine touches a ring on the ancient tree and whispers, Somewhere in here I was born, and there I died. He didnt want to create problems, Curtis remembers, so I said, Im going to have a party at my house. He was in the dark and suddenly the spotlight picked him uphe was electric, he was hot, it was almost a sexual thing. Ill give him 24 hours. That night would be the first and virtually the last time that Kim Novak and Sammy Davis Jr. would be seen in public together. . The reporter James Bacon, fresh out of Chicago, was assigned to cover Hollywood for the Associated Press back in 1948. I went from covering Al Capone to covering Harry Cohn, Bacon recalls. This documentary is a good overview of the series, from conception to final book, and includes footage of "Santa Martina" and the tiny house where the first six Sammy Keyes books were written.
You really have to understand that Mr. Mayer, Harry Cohn, Jack Warnerthese men with their blood and their money and their reputations, they smelled out who had star material.. When Doug and Ashley Benefield Started a Ballet Company, It Wasnt Supposed to End in Death. Frank knew this was big trouble. Davis began having problems with his throat around 1988. This led to her going to California to demonstrate refrigerators as Miss Deepfreeze.. That quality hits you right between the eyes in William Inges Picnic (1955), in which Novak plays Madge, the small-town beauty who wants to be loved for herself. . He knew that Sinatra wouldnt have let him out of his engagement at the Sands, even for one night. Sam asked me, begged me, to go for him, Silber recalls, but I didnt want to go. Another big-time gossip columnist who got into the act was Irv Kupcinet, who wrote Kups Column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Sammy had no choice but to tell me everything, Silber recalls, because nobody could touch that telephone, except Sammy or me. I was suddenly in the eye of a hurricane. Wonderful, Mastin and Sam Davis Sr. were still part of the act, but everybody knew that they had stayed on too long. We were shooting the swan-boat scene, Robertson remembers, where Kim is the Queen of Neewollah. It was getting late. He used to fire people all the timeusually on Christmas Eve.. . I dont want to be here., Evelyn Cunningham, doyenne of the black press, who wrote a column for the black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier, was the first to call and congratulate Davis. But no one could beat Harryhe was too smart, he was too sharp. The two appeared with a man they called the boys uncle, Will Mastin, in a flash dance act (an entracte performed between movie showings) that became the Will Mastin Trio. Thats the reason he married Altovise Gore, in Marshs opinion. Davis and Novak went to great lengths to evade both the press and Cohns spies, usually having quiet, intimate dinners together. So I came into the office and saw that he owed the Sands Hotel, says Marsh. Marsh took him to a specialist, who found that his constant smoking and singing had caused inflamed nodes on his vocal cords. dancing down the barriers between us., Arthur Silber Jr. met Davis in 1946, when Silbers father became the agent for the Will Mastin Trio. His Boyars Broadway was required reading for New Yorks caf society.
Loray White was 40 minutes late for the 2-minute ceremony, which was performed by a justice of the peace.
So I say, We just cant do that anymore. After a sleepless night he boarded a flight to Los Angeles, but the plane was almost diverted to Denver when the aging mogul suffered a mild heart attack, the first of several that would finally finish him off. But he was a guy you wouldnt want to meet in the street if he was after you. Sammy said to me very tentatively, When are you going to take me to El Morocco? I used to go there every night as part of my rounds, and I said, Lets go now. But when the Boyars strode into El Morocco with Davis they were surprised to find themselves led past the dance floor and the banquettes and seated on the wrong side of the room. She was a black woman.
Sammy, what are you doing? Silber asked. Sammy went into his imitation of white stars, like Jimmy Stewart and Jerry Lewis, and these people were in the audience. If I let you change me, will that do it? she asks Scottie. Even then he would search the audience every night for troublemakers. The two of them went out in the backyard and Altovise and I went in the other room, and we let them talk. Every place Sammy played, the Copacabana, the Chez Paree, the Latin Quarter, the Latin Casino in Philadelphia, all these places were owned by the guys, and they couldnt afford to let Sammy get hurt. But Sy Marsh insists to this day that Sammy was inches away from getting killed.. After Hayworth returned to Hollywood in 1951. Davis asked for the doctor, a reference to Dr. Though the director never publicly acknowledged her valuable contribution, Novak gave the richest performance of her career in Vertigoshe is almost unbearably affecting as the lonely Judy, who, like Madge in Picnic, wants to be cherished not for how she looks but for herself. I got some terrible news for you.
Cohen, barely five feet five, was a hotheaded thug with a taste for beautifully tailored suits. Her first husband was a 40-year-old car salesman named Edward C. Judson; she then married director Orson Welles, Aly Khan, heir apparent to the Ismaili Muslim throne, and singer Dick Haymes. The studio had wanted a gimmick to distinguish its blonde from the many other new platinum blondes on the block: Jayne Mansfield, Mamie Van Doren, Diana Dors, Joi Lansingall outsize girls signed to compete with Marilyn Monroe and built like the decades big Chevys and Buicks. That hurt, Boyar recalls.
She was nervous and intimidated because she was working with experienced Broadway stage actors, but she had something going for her besides her beauty. Men seemed to consider Davis ugly, because he was short and slight, his features flattened. One day in early January 1958, at Hollywood Park, Cohen buttonholed Davis Sr. and said, Listen.
She moved to Big Sur, in Northern California, and spent her time horseback riding, taking walks, lassoing driftwood, painting, and making flutes out of kelp, eventually raising llamas with her second husband, a veterinarian.
Sammy had been with hundreds of white girls, some quite big names, like Ava Gardneralthough that was no romance.
Davis would enlist Silber to drive him to Novaks house, hiding in the back of the car, huddled under a rug, to avoid the press and any studio detectives. He was booed when he flew to Chicago to appear at a benefit for Jesse Jackson and his Operation PUSH. In that era, Cohn thought, Whos going to go see a movie star whos married to a black man?
Sammy has to get marriedto a colored girl., Silber was with Davis at the Sands Hotel when the phone call came. Cohn wanted to be known as the toughest, meanest mogul in Hollywood. They controlled the silverware. Davis was buried between his father and Will Mastin. I got the call this morning. He had a wonderful V-shaped body, and he loved his little behind. We broke up a restaurant once in Hawaii with our fake fights.. Novak had been well trained for that roleafter all, Cohn had time and again driven home the point that she was nothing but a face.
George Sidney knew that Cohn was losing his grip. The studio contoured her figure by encouraging her to purge 15 pounds. In 1957, Sammy Davis Jr. was at the height of his powers and his popularity. With the Boyars, Davis ventured into New York establishments that had previously been closed to him. You took no notice. In that moment, hidden in Madeleine, there is Judys masked yearning to live, to be noticed, to become real. She was Columbias resident sex goddess in the 1940s, but she had a bad habit of getting married. He sang one song and left the stage. But I have to print what I think is news., Fuck you, he said, and hung up., Sam Davis Sr. loved going to the Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood, as did Mickey Cohen, the West Coast gangster who had tried to take over Ben Bugsy Siegels gambling interests after the dapper Siegel had his eye shot out. )? And if those initials werent enough of a tip-off, she followed the item up two days later with Studio bosses now know about K.N.s affair with S.D. To show everybody, yeah, guess what Im doing with her!
She contracted with a New York publisher to write her memoirs and managed to get through her childhoodwhich were not easy yearsbut she found that she had virtually blacked out entire events of her life in Hollywood. And thats where Sammy is buried today. What went wrong, only one of them could say. Dont go back home unless you straighten things out with Harry Cohn., It was really touch and go, Silber recalls. He got so mad at me and at the story and at her. It caused a hell of a ruckus at the studio when Harry Cohn picked up my column and learned that his star was about to be destroyed, recalls Kupcinet.
Her version of the affair is It was a very dangerous relationship thena white woman and a black man, no matter his statusit simply didnt mix publicly. He owed Donjo Medlavine, [one of the three owners] of Chez Paree. Josh Logan kept saying, Where the hell is she? He finally got on the megaphone and yelled, Kim, get your ass over here! He charged across the bridge with all the other actors holding their breath. New Years/ Sinter Klaas (Dutch Christmas), The ripple effect of kindness and small deeds/ Endings and new beginnings. The Amsterdam News and the Courier had both published admonishing editorials over the Davis-Novak affair, reminding him of his obligation to the Negro community.. On a tour of Australia, Davis collapsed from sheer exhaustion. Hed never been out of debt in his life, Marsh realized. Sammy liked his lookshe knew his face was ugly, but he worked on his body. It just went on and on., Part of the problem was that, as Arthur Silber observes, you could not perform in these United States without being with gangsters, because the gangsters owned the nightclubs. Since there was already a Marilyn, the first thing that had to go was her name. He might be her co-conspirator in saying no to Harry Cohn, no to Jean Louis, no to Muriel Robertsno to anyone who tried to put his or her stamp on her. It was still the Will Mastin Trio with Sammy Davis Jr. at the time, even though Davis had started to push ahead of his father and uncle. Silber described them as just a glorified dance act at the time. The affair was an open enough secret that Davis had to endure tasteless remarks about it, even from his friends. It was only a moment for you. James Bacon, one of the first West Coast reporters to get wind of Novaks affair, called Novaks family in Chicago and was told by her father, Joe, that the star was returning to Los Angeles on the Union Pacific train. When the New York Daily News columnist Bob Sylvester wrote cruelly, God . He was out of sync with the new music. Heres a man dying of throat cancer, and his voice was glorious, like a nightingale. I had to make [the audience] acknowledge me, he told the Boyars. After a few months of clandestine meetings, she simply retreated. He had a few choice words: What the fuck has he gotten himself into now! Silber and Medlavine were sitting at the airport when Silber was suddenly paged over the loudspeaker. Every hooker was there, as was Bob Harrison, who published Confidential and was really just a pornographer. . Her marriage to Khan, a notorious playboy and womanizer, kept her out of pictures for more than two years, infuriating Cohn and further alienating her fans. Alfred Hitchcock originally wanted to cast Vera Miles in the dual role of Madeleine/Judy. By the mid-1930s, Cohn had nurtured Columbia from a low-rent, B-movie studio on Hollywoods Poverty Row, a block off Sunset, into a major Hollywood film studio. Certainly a geniusan entertainment genius.
Nevertheless, three days before the inauguration, Kennedys personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, called Davis and disinvited him to the gala event. Some girls go for gold, but its bronze that sends sultry Ava Gardner . Donjo Medlavine was waiting for him on the tarmac when the plane arrived.
Cohn blew his top.
Novak eventually retreated to an even more remote spot in the Pacific Northwest. She wasnt ready. When he first invited Altovise up to his suite, she was wary of his reputation. Donjo Medlavine. Medlavine was stocky, built like a pit bull, and he had a heart as big as the world, Silber says.
After a year and a half of college, Silber went on the road with Davis and the two became close friends.
So when Sammy wanted to do impressions and sing, they told him, You cant do it. They insisted, You dont even know how to sing. Davis had grown up hearing what he couldnt do. I tell you what, theres one chance, Cohen told him. Entratter put her up in the Presidential Suite of the Sands Hotelalone. I must have had a knockdown, drag-out fight every two days, he told the Boyars during the writing of Yes I Can. Davis would travel with a steamer trunk full of porno films, and one particularly tough member of his security team would steal some of the tapes out of Daviss room and charge the bellboys to watch them.. Novak was installed at the Studio Club, a curfewed dormitory for young starlets where Cohn could have his expensive new possession watched around the clockeven tailed by studio detectives to make sure she didnt follow the wayward path of Rita Hayworth. In 1996, Novak reluctantly came out of retirement to help promote the re-release of a beautifully restored Vertigo. Like Prousts madeleine, she exists only to arouse emotions in others. I mean, all this for five minutes. Or she would be so overcome by emotion that she just couldnt write. Sy Marsh remembers her as a beautiful woman, bright, articulate, very well spoken. At 23, she had already been married twice and had a six-year-old daughter. The newly elected president feared that his presence would alienate southern congressmen. Television supposedly turned to him and said, Sammy, if Kim Novak ever sees this, youll be back sleeping with Hattie McDaniel.. She visited him the day after Davis announced the engagement from the stage at the Sands. When his doctor told him he needed surgery to live, he knew it would mean hed never sing again.
Judys reluctant transformation into the ghost of Madeleine is an eerie echo of her metamorphosis into a movie goddess. My attraction to Sammy was his talent, Burt Boyar recalls. They call you the Carpenter, she told him, cause you nail every girl you meet. But she always believed that Davis loved her unconditionally. Jack Haley Jr., who was producing the Academy Awards broadcast that year, had arranged to take Novak to the gala event. .
At the heart of their star-crossed affair was one of Hollywoods sacred monsters: the notorious Harry Cohn. Sy Marsh says, The government had an auction, and they took it all. He was pulling her across the bridge in her beautiful dress, and she was fighting him, protesting, Im not ready, Im not ready! My agent told me my career would be over if I continued to see Sammy. I have to marry a black chick, and Im looking for someone to marry.. Jack Entratter hosted the reception. America was still deeply segregated. The man known as the greatest entertainer in the world was onstage, the smoke from his cigarette trellising the air. I was sitting at a table with Clark Gable and William Holden and the Humphrey Bogarts, and the Will Mastin Trio came out with Sammy Davis. Davis had just come out of the army, and Arthur was still in high school.
. See bottom of page for downloads available now: Casebook Activity,Character Costume Guide, two. He told Shirley Rhodes, You know, the world owes me nothing. He agreed to postpone his marriage to Britt until after the presidential election, even though the wedding invitations had already been sent out, to avoid harming Kennedys chances. Not one picture, he said. Jet reported that White went on a shopping spree, and ran a photograph of her with 20 new pairs of shoes. I Was Dumbstruck, Women first interviewed by the directors behind, Epstein Had a Precise Plan: How the Only Known Photo of Prince Andrew and the Pedophile Happened. and have turned lavender over their platinum blonde., Daviss sexual charisma had already been noticed by Confidential, the most scandalous scandal magazine in the history of the world, in Tom Wolfes phrase. Cohn decided he was going to take the next girl who walked into his office and manufacture a new star for Columbia Pictures, one who would do exactly what he wanted, who wouldnt walk away until he and the public were finished with her. She was left alone with 20 pairs of shoes, a mink stole, and a dazzling ring.
The writer James Baldwin, who would become a friend during the 60s at the height of the civil-rights movement, once observed that Davis had to decide between greatness and madness. Cohn wanted her in one of his pet projects, a biblical epic called Joseph and His Brethren, until her then husband, Haymes, came into Cohns office with a marcelled beard and demanded to be cast as Joseph. It was just the nature of the profession., Davis couldnt get even a private message (actually a secret message, according to Arthur Silber, who refuses to elaborate) to Novak, because her family had only one phone, and it was a party line. But there was always an undercurrent of indebtedness in their relationship. . The late 1960s and the 1970s were unkind to Davis in other ways.
I got his uncle and his father down to a minimum. When Marsh signed on as his business partner, he discovered that Davis was deep in debt. Davis liked to inhale cigarette smoke in the middle of a song and exhale with the note and the smoke pouring out. Sammy had arranged that Will Mastin would be buried here, on the left, his father was buried on the right, and the plot in the center was left open. So now I come in and I see Im paying Donjo Medlavine in Chicago.
Cohn had a last heart attack in 1958 and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, two months after hed first received word of the relationship. I dont think thats the way I want to go out. Davis made the decision not to have the operation. With a black-gloved hand, Madeleine touches a ring on the ancient tree and whispers, Somewhere in here I was born, and there I died. He didnt want to create problems, Curtis remembers, so I said, Im going to have a party at my house. He was in the dark and suddenly the spotlight picked him uphe was electric, he was hot, it was almost a sexual thing. Ill give him 24 hours. That night would be the first and virtually the last time that Kim Novak and Sammy Davis Jr. would be seen in public together. . The reporter James Bacon, fresh out of Chicago, was assigned to cover Hollywood for the Associated Press back in 1948. I went from covering Al Capone to covering Harry Cohn, Bacon recalls. This documentary is a good overview of the series, from conception to final book, and includes footage of "Santa Martina" and the tiny house where the first six Sammy Keyes books were written.
You really have to understand that Mr. Mayer, Harry Cohn, Jack Warnerthese men with their blood and their money and their reputations, they smelled out who had star material.. When Doug and Ashley Benefield Started a Ballet Company, It Wasnt Supposed to End in Death. Frank knew this was big trouble. Davis began having problems with his throat around 1988. This led to her going to California to demonstrate refrigerators as Miss Deepfreeze.. That quality hits you right between the eyes in William Inges Picnic (1955), in which Novak plays Madge, the small-town beauty who wants to be loved for herself. . He knew that Sinatra wouldnt have let him out of his engagement at the Sands, even for one night. Sam asked me, begged me, to go for him, Silber recalls, but I didnt want to go. Another big-time gossip columnist who got into the act was Irv Kupcinet, who wrote Kups Column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Sammy had no choice but to tell me everything, Silber recalls, because nobody could touch that telephone, except Sammy or me. I was suddenly in the eye of a hurricane. Wonderful, Mastin and Sam Davis Sr. were still part of the act, but everybody knew that they had stayed on too long. We were shooting the swan-boat scene, Robertson remembers, where Kim is the Queen of Neewollah. It was getting late. He used to fire people all the timeusually on Christmas Eve.. . I dont want to be here., Evelyn Cunningham, doyenne of the black press, who wrote a column for the black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier, was the first to call and congratulate Davis. But no one could beat Harryhe was too smart, he was too sharp. The two appeared with a man they called the boys uncle, Will Mastin, in a flash dance act (an entracte performed between movie showings) that became the Will Mastin Trio. Thats the reason he married Altovise Gore, in Marshs opinion. Davis and Novak went to great lengths to evade both the press and Cohns spies, usually having quiet, intimate dinners together. So I came into the office and saw that he owed the Sands Hotel, says Marsh. Marsh took him to a specialist, who found that his constant smoking and singing had caused inflamed nodes on his vocal cords. dancing down the barriers between us., Arthur Silber Jr. met Davis in 1946, when Silbers father became the agent for the Will Mastin Trio. His Boyars Broadway was required reading for New Yorks caf society.
Loray White was 40 minutes late for the 2-minute ceremony, which was performed by a justice of the peace.
So I say, We just cant do that anymore. After a sleepless night he boarded a flight to Los Angeles, but the plane was almost diverted to Denver when the aging mogul suffered a mild heart attack, the first of several that would finally finish him off. But he was a guy you wouldnt want to meet in the street if he was after you. Sammy said to me very tentatively, When are you going to take me to El Morocco? I used to go there every night as part of my rounds, and I said, Lets go now. But when the Boyars strode into El Morocco with Davis they were surprised to find themselves led past the dance floor and the banquettes and seated on the wrong side of the room. She was a black woman.
Sammy, what are you doing? Silber asked. Sammy went into his imitation of white stars, like Jimmy Stewart and Jerry Lewis, and these people were in the audience. If I let you change me, will that do it? she asks Scottie. Even then he would search the audience every night for troublemakers. The two of them went out in the backyard and Altovise and I went in the other room, and we let them talk. Every place Sammy played, the Copacabana, the Chez Paree, the Latin Quarter, the Latin Casino in Philadelphia, all these places were owned by the guys, and they couldnt afford to let Sammy get hurt. But Sy Marsh insists to this day that Sammy was inches away from getting killed.. After Hayworth returned to Hollywood in 1951. Davis asked for the doctor, a reference to Dr. Though the director never publicly acknowledged her valuable contribution, Novak gave the richest performance of her career in Vertigoshe is almost unbearably affecting as the lonely Judy, who, like Madge in Picnic, wants to be cherished not for how she looks but for herself. I got some terrible news for you.
Cohen, barely five feet five, was a hotheaded thug with a taste for beautifully tailored suits. Her first husband was a 40-year-old car salesman named Edward C. Judson; she then married director Orson Welles, Aly Khan, heir apparent to the Ismaili Muslim throne, and singer Dick Haymes. The studio had wanted a gimmick to distinguish its blonde from the many other new platinum blondes on the block: Jayne Mansfield, Mamie Van Doren, Diana Dors, Joi Lansingall outsize girls signed to compete with Marilyn Monroe and built like the decades big Chevys and Buicks. That hurt, Boyar recalls.
She was nervous and intimidated because she was working with experienced Broadway stage actors, but she had something going for her besides her beauty. Men seemed to consider Davis ugly, because he was short and slight, his features flattened. One day in early January 1958, at Hollywood Park, Cohen buttonholed Davis Sr. and said, Listen.
She moved to Big Sur, in Northern California, and spent her time horseback riding, taking walks, lassoing driftwood, painting, and making flutes out of kelp, eventually raising llamas with her second husband, a veterinarian.
Sammy had been with hundreds of white girls, some quite big names, like Ava Gardneralthough that was no romance.
Davis would enlist Silber to drive him to Novaks house, hiding in the back of the car, huddled under a rug, to avoid the press and any studio detectives. He was booed when he flew to Chicago to appear at a benefit for Jesse Jackson and his Operation PUSH. In that era, Cohn thought, Whos going to go see a movie star whos married to a black man?
Sammy has to get marriedto a colored girl., Silber was with Davis at the Sands Hotel when the phone call came. Cohn wanted to be known as the toughest, meanest mogul in Hollywood. They controlled the silverware. Davis was buried between his father and Will Mastin. I got the call this morning. He had a wonderful V-shaped body, and he loved his little behind. We broke up a restaurant once in Hawaii with our fake fights.. Novak had been well trained for that roleafter all, Cohn had time and again driven home the point that she was nothing but a face.