Sinatra loved Davis and worshiped his talent; he had helped put his career back on track after the car crash. . Loray White was 40 minutes late for the 2-minute ceremony, which was performed by a justice of the peace. When his doctor told him he needed surgery to live, he knew it would mean hed never sing again. Sammy and Kim met and embraced. Run time is about 13 minutes. 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. . with Southerners and Southwesterners who got their kicks out of needling me. He would reach for the Jack Daniels when he was in deep trouble with himself. Silber didnt like Daviss new entourage. Columbia Pictures house designer Jean Louis was brought in to remake her wardrobe. She was being horribly exploited, paid $750 per week on loan to Otto Preminger for The Man with the Golden Arm, while Preminger was paying Cohn $100,000 for her services; for Jeanne Eagels she was paid only $13,000, while her co-star, Jeff Chandler, got $200,000. Cohn had found his blonde. Ironically, Vertigo, the film with which Novak is most identified, wasnt even made for Columbia Pictures, but at Paramount. Heres a man dying of throat cancer, and his voice was glorious, like a nightingale. But there was always an undercurrent of indebtedness in their relationship. We used to stage fightswe were really good at it, especially fast draw and gunplay. Novak, however, found ways to dig in her heels and refuse to be completely made over by Cohn. When Kilgallens item appeared, Davis called Novak and apologized, reassuring her that hed had nothing to do with it. 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. 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. Sammy Davis Jr. was Kim Novaks revenge on Harry Cohn. Entratter put her up in the Presidential Suite of the Sands Hotelalone. She had publicists around her a lot, photographers, makeup peopleshe was kind of insular., Picnic also featured Rosalind Russell as the eccentric and desperate spinster schoolteacher, and William Holden as the heartbreaking drifter with the glistening torso who steals Madge away from Robertson. Silber caught it and flew into Los Angeles, then picked up an American Airlines flight to Chicago. You had to see him: the gorgeous shirt, the cuff links, the way everything billowed. He would come out of the stage door having had six standing ovations and somebody would yell Nigger. There would always be something that would just cut through it all, that would just knock him down. Davis told Boyar, You know, I reached a point with the indignities, the injustices, the nastiness, the racial abuses . She was a black woman. He was a railroad man, Bacon says. That was just Lets go over and get laid. This was different. He literally got down on his kneestears were coming out of his eyes. Finally Silber acquiesced. Altovise Davis, naturally, feels different about the relationship. The squat, flat-roofed building on the Sunset Strip, which now houses the Comedy Store, was the hottest and most glamorous nightclub in Los Angeles. Will you love me? His clumsy attempt to clear his name, in a no-holds-barred interview with BBC, Jerry Lewiss Costars Speak Out: He Grabbed Me. It would open up more doors to his being accepted.. Sy Marsh says, The government had an auction, and they took it all. 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. The man known as the greatest entertainer in the world was onstage, the smoke from his cigarette trellising the air. That was the problem. . All of them. Come on by, and Ill invite Kim. They both came over and they spent the evening togetherdeep in thought, deep in talk. Sammy was just a kid at heart, Silber told me at his home in North Hollywood, where hes writing a memoir about the years he spent touring with Davis. He had sent to his house for his beautiful silk robe, his silk pajamas. You can relax., Burt Boyar never felt that Daviss life had really been in danger. 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. Soon after the frightening events of 195758, he met the Swedish actress May Britt at the Mocambo Club on Sunset Boulevard. See bottom of page for downloads available now: Casebook Activity,Character Costume Guide, two. Ironically, the black press didnt always celebrate Daviss breaking of the color line. After a year and a half of college, Silber went on the road with Davis and the two became close friends. He was singing to Kim Novak, sitting at a stageside table; she had just finished work on Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo, the most challenging film of her career. 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. I had to make [the audience] acknowledge me, he told the Boyars. In 1956 she had had a small part in Cecil B. DeMilles overwrought epic The Ten Commandments, and she had danced on Broadway. Cohn took all the credit for creating Rita Hayworthhe was also obsessed with her.
He brandished a riding crop and slashed it across his desk to terrify employees. Donjo Medlavine was waiting for him on the tarmac when the plane arrived. In truth, Harry Cohn had much less value to the Mob. The late 1960s and the 1970s were unkind to Davis in other ways. And the way you handled that relationship was very important: either you hung out with the Mob and became very buddy-buddy, or you tried to keep a respectful distance. Every hooker was there, as was Bob Harrison, who published Confidential and was really just a pornographer. Within two years Davis developed throat cancer. Arthur Silber remembers that White used to call him up in tears, complaining that Davis was supposed to be married to her but was still running around with Kim. Whatever career advantage she thought she might have gained from marrying Davis never materialized. Sammy, too, because we didnt know who was in the next suite.. Cliff Robertson, who made his film debut in Picnic, recalls, Kim was in a quiet hurry to leave Chicago before her beauty clock ran out. The marriage ended in 1968. I go to Medlavine, whos getting not a lot, say $500 a week, but he likes that money coming in. His appearance in 1958 on General Electric Theater was almost canceled because the sponsors threatened to pull out for fear of alienating audiences south of the Mason-Dixon line. Ill have that son of a bitch back in Argentina, Cohn exploded. 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. . I was ready to stay onstage for hours . Davis Sr. gracefully stepped aside, but Mastin just couldnt give it up. 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. . They were together for about 45 minutes and they came back in. The four then went to the awards, Novak in a stunning backless dress, and to the Academy ball, where she and Davis danced. Hed keep tabs on all the writers. He had a liver that just defied the doctorsnobody knows how he stayed alive, Silber says. Cohn was by far the meanest. Cohn also found out about Novaks arrival and sent a delegation from Columbia headed by Muriel Roberts, who often traveled with Kim, and Norma Kasell.
When Davis came back from the dance floor, he was incredulous. Novak would never have won the part of Madge if Cohn had not forced the esteemed Broadway director Joshua Logan to cast her in the role. The bad news was that he wasnt there. They were only supposed to do 20 minutes, but every time theyd go off, the audience would start to yell. Jack Haley Jr., who was producing the Academy Awards broadcast that year, had arranged to take Novak to the gala event. Britt knew that Davis had risked his career to marry her. When they saw Bacon talking to Novak, they practically chased him out of the station. More than 2,000 people attended, which prompted the comic Red Skelton to observe, Well, it only proves what they always saygive the public something they want to see and theyll come out for it. Cohns widow confided to friends that she believed Novaks scandalous behavior had brought on Cohns final heart attack and caused his death. He didnt want to create problems, Curtis remembers, so I said, Im going to have a party at my house. They sold all the stuff he hadGary Coopers hat, Gene Kellys shoes. They did close to an hour. Donjo Medlavine. Medlavine was stocky, built like a pit bull, and he had a heart as big as the world, Silber says. Loray Davis ended up in a big, rented house in the Hollywood Hills. Could it be that Sinatra was sore over Daviss dalliances with his former wife Ava Gardner? When Milton Berle found himself standing alongside Davis in the mens room at Chasens, Mr. Davis liked to inhale cigarette smoke in the middle of a song and exhale with the note and the smoke pouring out. At the time, Le Pavillon was one of the most famous restaurants in the world: Through its doors, at 5 East 55th Street, came the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, the Cabots, and the Windsors. Sammy was like a man without a country, the actress Barbara Luna recalls. James Bacon caught the opening night: Everybody was at Ciros. His personal charisma was so great, his stage presence so sexually charged, that women were outrageously drawn to him. His Boyars Broadway was required reading for New Yorks caf society. He also left substantial insurance settlements for Britt and their children. No men allowed. America was still deeply segregated. Davis wasnt as lucky, though he would finally be lucky in love. Vertigo has been called Hitchcocks most personal film, but in a fundamental way it is Novaks as well. Another big-time gossip columnist who got into the act was Irv Kupcinet, who wrote Kups Column for the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1957, Sammy Davis Jr. was at the height of his powers and his popularity. Like Prousts madeleine, she exists only to arouse emotions in others. 1 box-office draw in the countrybut also Daviss potential career as a dramatic actor, one of his cherished but still unfulfilled ambitions. 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. Im looking for someone to marry. 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. They controlled the silverware. Amazingly, his voice actually improved in the last years of his life. Daviss first break in a Las Vegas hotel came in 1946 at the El Rancho. She visited him the day after Davis announced the engagement from the stage at the Sands. Murphy would always stop on the way and buy a white rose and leave it for Sammy from her, Rhodes recalls, because thats what Sammy always gave Kim. That night would be the first and virtually the last time that Kim Novak and Sammy Davis Jr. would be seen in public together. An aide leaned over and whispered in his ear what hed heard about Novak and Davis, and Cohn started to fume. I have to marry a black chick, and Im looking for someone to marry.. Davis told Curtis that he wanted to meet Kim Novak. Davis left Altovise a $2.1 million life-insurance settlement and the beautiful house on Summit Drive, which he had worked his whole life to own. Even when he was out of the act, it was still called the Will Mastin Trio Starring Sammy Davis Jr. Mastin would travel with Davis and would insist on having his own dressing room, bringing out his costumes and makeup but never going onstage. Someone at Tony Curtiss party must have put in a call to Dorothy Kilgallen, the columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain, who slyly asked in her gossip column, Which top female movie star (K.N.) Davis began having problems with his throat around 1988. I could see right from the beginning that they were getting along in an intense way, and that was the beginning of the relationship., Novak had also asked to meet Davisand she wasnt alone in being attracted by his intense magnetism. But ongoing tax problems brought in the I.R.S. If I let you change me, will that do it? she asks Scottie. But somehow her lack of readiness made her a more poignant Madge. At stake was not only Novaks career as a screen starby this time she was the No. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. She showed up and they sat together in his room. He was dressed to the nines for the meeting. is seriously dating which big-name entertainer (S.D. It was damned scary. . She would have all the rights that Mrs. Sammy Davis Jr. would have, but at the end of the year they would dissolve the marriage. I said, Harry, weve been friends for a long time.
(Haymes, an Argentinean native, was always facing deportation.). How do you like that?, Arthur Silbers father booked Davis into Ciros. She was Columbias resident sex goddess in the 1940s, but she had a bad habit of getting married. Cohen, barely five feet five, was a hotheaded thug with a taste for beautifully tailored suits. He was out of sync with the new music. The edge of the world is actually a slippery slope, Explores the concept and impact of eminent domain. I was suddenly in the eye of a hurricane. He would make a point of it, he would say, Isnt that adorable? Boyar feels that he would have preferred to look like Cary Grant, but he was pretty satisfied with what he had. After Daviss death, Rhodes would visit his grave at Forest Lawn with Murphy Bennett, Daviss valet and probably his closest friend for more than 40 years. 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. 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. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. He was making $25,000 a week at the Sands in Las Vegas, and he was about to break into television as one of the mediums first black actors to appear in a dramatic role, in Auf Wiedersehen, on General Electric Theater. Ill give him 24 hours. Giancana says, We can protect you here in Chicago, or when youre in Vegas, but we cant do anything about Hollywood, Silber remembers. What began as a boldface item in Dorothy Kilgallens gossip column in the New York Journal-American threatened to become a national scandal on the eve of Americas long struggle for civil rights. . The affair was an open enough secret that Davis had to endure tasteless remarks about it, even from his friends. Thats when Silber noticed a private telephone being installed in Daviss suite. I must have had a knockdown, drag-out fight every two days, he told the Boyars during the writing of Yes I Can. He had a wonderful V-shaped body, and he loved his little behind. What you never wanted to do was to owe them., One night in the fall of 1957 Tony Curtis went backstage at Ciros with the rugged actor Jeff Chandler. He was being paid $500 a week, but in racially segregated Las Vegas he couldnt stay at the hotelhe couldnt even walk through the lobby. I got the call this morning. The eulogy was scripted by Clifford Odets and performed by Danny Kaye. 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. The two of them went out in the backyard and Altovise and I went in the other room, and we let them talk. At some point in the transformation of Marilyn Novak, her studio-assigned publicist, Muriel Roberts, dreamed up an all-lavender scheme and insisted that they rinse her hair with a pale lavender tint. He was still smarting from having let Marilyn Monroe slip away: unimpressed by her beauty, he had neglected in 1948 to renew her initial six-month contract. Shirley Rhodes remembers that Novak came to the hospital when Sammy was dying. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Never again, he told Sy Marsh. Then Ill do it. Harry Cohn got the news of the relationship in New York, where he was attending a memorial dinner for his brother Jack. He had created the notorious second skin glittering with sequins that Marlene Dietrich wore for her nightclub premiere in Las Vegas in 1953; he would also sew Marilyn Monroe into the sequined formfitting gown she wore when she sang Happy Birthday to John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in 1962. We started with Mae West, Jean Harlow, Marilyn, then Kim. He couldnt win. After that, we switched over to Grace Kelly. She would make her film debut in 1961 with Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy in The Devil at 4 OClock. As early as March 1955, it ran an article whose headline read: What Makes AVA GARDNER Run for SAMMY DAVIS JR.? When Marsh signed on as his business partner, he discovered that Davis was deep in debt. He just never stopped studying it., But being on tour from the age of three had taken its toll: for one thing, Davis never really learned how to write, although he was a voracious reader. . Davis was buried between his father and Will Mastin. hit him in the face with a shovel, Davis was devastated. Novak was so overwhelmed, outclassed, and terrified that at one point, Logan had to drag her from her trailer for a crucial scene as a hundred extras waited for her in the diminishing Kansas daylight and cinematographer James Wong Howe gnashed his teeth. just doesnt understand show business. Altovise Davis was left with Daviss $7.5 million tax debt. But he was a guy you wouldnt want to meet in the street if he was after you. Hed never been out of debt in his life, Marsh realized. It was stunning, Boyar remembers. Ad Choices, The feared and hated head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, created Kim Novak to be his perfect blonde star, and with her performence in Alfred Hitchcocks, Matt Gaetz, Under Investigation for Sex With a Minor, Says Women Who Support Abortion Rights Are Too Fat and Ugly to Get Pregnant, Marvel's Phase Five: A Guide To All The New Movies and TV Shows, It Was Catastrophic: Inside Prince Andrews Misguided Bid to Explain Away Epstein, In the wake of Jeffrey Epsteins arrest and apparent suicide, Prince Andrew moved from the fringe of a swirling underage-sex scandal toward its white-hot center. I think Vegas was the same way. With Sinatras help, Davis was finally given a suite at the Sands Hotel. 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. He read constantly during his conversion to Judaism, after the November 1954 car accident that cost him his left eye. I got to the point where I wanted to get the whitest, the most famous chick in the world and just show em. Silber recalls, He sat her downhe was sitting in a chair and I was sitting on the bedand he made her a proposition, to marry him for a certain sum of money. Sitting in his penthouse apartment in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, one of Philippe Halsmans striking photographs of Sammy Davis dominating the room, Boyar reminisces about their long friendship. . Frank knew this was big trouble. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. The most sublime moment in the film is when Madeleine, in an immaculate white coat, stares at the cross section of a giant sequoia tree on the California coast. His nose was broken countless times and permanently flattened; he was given beer to drink by his buddies that was laced with urine. My agent told me my career would be over if I continued to see Sammy. Thats the reason he married Altovise Gore, in Marshs opinion. Novak herself has admitted, In the early films I had no experience, I was just doing it. But what she did have was a special relationship with the camera: it registered an honesty of emotion that she possessedan unteachable quality that distinguishes a goddess from a mere actress.
Novaks career went into decline after Cohns death. But women knew better. People used to say, Im going to beat Harry, Sidney recalls. He even showed up in hot pants at a formal dinner party given by Mary and Jack Benny, two pillars of Hollywoods old society. Instead, Cohn decided to get back at Hayworth. And in the following year, S-H-H! When he first invited Altovise up to his suite, she was wary of his reputation. I dont think thats the way I want to go out. Davis made the decision not to have the operation. Just two years earlier, all but three southern U.S. senators had signed a document known as the Southern Manifesto, which equated school integration with subversion of the Constitution. (The maverick senators were Lyndon B. Johnson and the two senators from Tennessee, Albert Gore Sr. and Estes Kefauver.) I knew we were in trouble thenthat was the beginning. For Novak, Davis was perhaps more than just an exciting, sympathetic man. And thats where Sammy is buried today. He was pulling her across the bridge in her beautiful dress, and she was fighting him, protesting, Im not ready, Im not ready! I dont know how he did it, but Sammy came, and it was the most ludicrous thing. Davis and Novak went to great lengths to evade both the press and Cohns spies, usually having quiet, intimate dinners together. 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. But after a while he got used to it, and hed say, Its getting me where Im going., Boyar also feels that Davis knew how attractive he was to women. Confidential held a mirror up to Americas mid-50s paranoia and obsessions, its collective fears and fantasies: race, Communism, sex, miscegenation, homosexuality. Novak still wasnt ready. Jack Entratter hosted the reception. Her longtime friend Norma Herbert says, She is very happy in her forest. Cliff Robertson always believed that Novak played her cards carefully, kept her winnings, and finally left HollywoodI think she beat it!. He just pulled her across the bridge and said, Get in that goddamned boat..
When Cohn came in, however, the imperious Soul seated him at the back, near the kitchen. Her only problem was, in the beginning, she wasnt a very good actress, and I think she knew that.. She was nervous and intimidated because she was working with experienced Broadway stage actors, but she had something going for her besides her beauty. He had become obsessed with Miles, an icy, imperious beauty along the lines of Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren, but when Miles became pregnant and turned down the role, Hitchcock settled for Novak. 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. I have never met a grateful performer in the picture business. Novak even managed to evade Cohns casting couchconsidered the most notorious in Hollywood. Never again am I going to extend myself., If you were there that night, one member of Daviss entourage explains, youd think, No wonder he hugged Nixon. Sy Marsh believes that Davis had spent the first half of his career making himself loved by the white world, and the second half trying to make himself loved by the black world. They call you the Carpenter, she told him, cause you nail every girl you meet. But she always believed that Davis loved her unconditionally. Part of the problem, as Sy Marsh observes, was that Sammy Davis lived in a white world. Men seemed to consider Davis ugly, because he was short and slight, his features flattened. . 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. I was sent to Chicago to go to Kim and say, Sammy loves you.. Rolexes, Cartiers, what have you. As one of Daviss oldest friends observed, The I.R.S. 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. The Charleston-based evangelicals had much in common: guns, God, Trump. This led to her going to California to demonstrate refrigerators as Miss Deepfreeze.. Sammy went into his imitation of white stars, like Jimmy Stewart and Jerry Lewis, and these people were in the audience. He ran Columbia Pictures as if it were a family business, and in a way it was, because he had wrangled control from his brother Jack, who was back on the East Coast in New York. Cohn blew his top. 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. You know, he told her, Im making 25 grand a week, and Im sitting here with a bowl of soup I dont want. 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. The studio contoured her figure by encouraging her to purge 15 pounds. In Florida, black people werent allowed to live in the hotels where they performed. On a tour of Australia, Davis collapsed from sheer exhaustion. In the 1970s, Arthur Silber went back to work for Davis and noticed profound changes in his personality and behavior. When Doug and Ashley Benefield Started a Ballet Company, It Wasnt Supposed to End in Death. It was just how deep this affair went. Boyar was a newspaper columnist for the Annenberg newspaper chain in the 50s and 60s. They compromised on Kim Novakthe name of the son of her Chicago friend and business manager, Norma Herbert, then Norma Kasell. 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.. 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. So I came into the office and saw that he owed the Sands Hotel, says Marsh. He chose greatness. 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.. Nobody even took one picture! Twenty years earlier he and Novak would have been mobbed. 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. After Hayworth returned to Hollywood in 1951. There were rumors that the couple was taking out a marriage license, and supposedly a clerk in Aurora found that an application had been filled out but never filed. She seemed to go into a trance when asked about her Hollywood yearsnot one of Madeleines beautiful phony trances but a real inability, or unwillingness, to remember the past. Marsh took him to a specialist, who found that his constant smoking and singing had caused inflamed nodes on his vocal cords.
He brandished a riding crop and slashed it across his desk to terrify employees. Donjo Medlavine was waiting for him on the tarmac when the plane arrived. In truth, Harry Cohn had much less value to the Mob. The late 1960s and the 1970s were unkind to Davis in other ways. And the way you handled that relationship was very important: either you hung out with the Mob and became very buddy-buddy, or you tried to keep a respectful distance. Every hooker was there, as was Bob Harrison, who published Confidential and was really just a pornographer. Within two years Davis developed throat cancer. Arthur Silber remembers that White used to call him up in tears, complaining that Davis was supposed to be married to her but was still running around with Kim. Whatever career advantage she thought she might have gained from marrying Davis never materialized. Sammy, too, because we didnt know who was in the next suite.. Cliff Robertson, who made his film debut in Picnic, recalls, Kim was in a quiet hurry to leave Chicago before her beauty clock ran out. The marriage ended in 1968. I go to Medlavine, whos getting not a lot, say $500 a week, but he likes that money coming in. His appearance in 1958 on General Electric Theater was almost canceled because the sponsors threatened to pull out for fear of alienating audiences south of the Mason-Dixon line. Ill have that son of a bitch back in Argentina, Cohn exploded. 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. . I was ready to stay onstage for hours . Davis Sr. gracefully stepped aside, but Mastin just couldnt give it up. 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. . They were together for about 45 minutes and they came back in. The four then went to the awards, Novak in a stunning backless dress, and to the Academy ball, where she and Davis danced. Hed keep tabs on all the writers. He had a liver that just defied the doctorsnobody knows how he stayed alive, Silber says. Cohn was by far the meanest. Cohn also found out about Novaks arrival and sent a delegation from Columbia headed by Muriel Roberts, who often traveled with Kim, and Norma Kasell.
When Davis came back from the dance floor, he was incredulous. Novak would never have won the part of Madge if Cohn had not forced the esteemed Broadway director Joshua Logan to cast her in the role. The bad news was that he wasnt there. They were only supposed to do 20 minutes, but every time theyd go off, the audience would start to yell. Jack Haley Jr., who was producing the Academy Awards broadcast that year, had arranged to take Novak to the gala event. Britt knew that Davis had risked his career to marry her. When they saw Bacon talking to Novak, they practically chased him out of the station. More than 2,000 people attended, which prompted the comic Red Skelton to observe, Well, it only proves what they always saygive the public something they want to see and theyll come out for it. Cohns widow confided to friends that she believed Novaks scandalous behavior had brought on Cohns final heart attack and caused his death. He didnt want to create problems, Curtis remembers, so I said, Im going to have a party at my house. They sold all the stuff he hadGary Coopers hat, Gene Kellys shoes. They did close to an hour. Donjo Medlavine. Medlavine was stocky, built like a pit bull, and he had a heart as big as the world, Silber says. Loray Davis ended up in a big, rented house in the Hollywood Hills. Could it be that Sinatra was sore over Daviss dalliances with his former wife Ava Gardner? When Milton Berle found himself standing alongside Davis in the mens room at Chasens, Mr. Davis liked to inhale cigarette smoke in the middle of a song and exhale with the note and the smoke pouring out. At the time, Le Pavillon was one of the most famous restaurants in the world: Through its doors, at 5 East 55th Street, came the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, the Cabots, and the Windsors. Sammy was like a man without a country, the actress Barbara Luna recalls. James Bacon caught the opening night: Everybody was at Ciros. His personal charisma was so great, his stage presence so sexually charged, that women were outrageously drawn to him. His Boyars Broadway was required reading for New Yorks caf society. He also left substantial insurance settlements for Britt and their children. No men allowed. America was still deeply segregated. Davis wasnt as lucky, though he would finally be lucky in love. Vertigo has been called Hitchcocks most personal film, but in a fundamental way it is Novaks as well. Another big-time gossip columnist who got into the act was Irv Kupcinet, who wrote Kups Column for the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1957, Sammy Davis Jr. was at the height of his powers and his popularity. Like Prousts madeleine, she exists only to arouse emotions in others. 1 box-office draw in the countrybut also Daviss potential career as a dramatic actor, one of his cherished but still unfulfilled ambitions. 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. Im looking for someone to marry. 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. They controlled the silverware. Amazingly, his voice actually improved in the last years of his life. Daviss first break in a Las Vegas hotel came in 1946 at the El Rancho. She visited him the day after Davis announced the engagement from the stage at the Sands. Murphy would always stop on the way and buy a white rose and leave it for Sammy from her, Rhodes recalls, because thats what Sammy always gave Kim. That night would be the first and virtually the last time that Kim Novak and Sammy Davis Jr. would be seen in public together. An aide leaned over and whispered in his ear what hed heard about Novak and Davis, and Cohn started to fume. I have to marry a black chick, and Im looking for someone to marry.. Davis told Curtis that he wanted to meet Kim Novak. Davis left Altovise a $2.1 million life-insurance settlement and the beautiful house on Summit Drive, which he had worked his whole life to own. Even when he was out of the act, it was still called the Will Mastin Trio Starring Sammy Davis Jr. Mastin would travel with Davis and would insist on having his own dressing room, bringing out his costumes and makeup but never going onstage. Someone at Tony Curtiss party must have put in a call to Dorothy Kilgallen, the columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain, who slyly asked in her gossip column, Which top female movie star (K.N.) Davis began having problems with his throat around 1988. I could see right from the beginning that they were getting along in an intense way, and that was the beginning of the relationship., Novak had also asked to meet Davisand she wasnt alone in being attracted by his intense magnetism. But ongoing tax problems brought in the I.R.S. If I let you change me, will that do it? she asks Scottie. But somehow her lack of readiness made her a more poignant Madge. At stake was not only Novaks career as a screen starby this time she was the No. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. She showed up and they sat together in his room. He was dressed to the nines for the meeting. is seriously dating which big-name entertainer (S.D. It was damned scary. . She would have all the rights that Mrs. Sammy Davis Jr. would have, but at the end of the year they would dissolve the marriage. I said, Harry, weve been friends for a long time.
(Haymes, an Argentinean native, was always facing deportation.). How do you like that?, Arthur Silbers father booked Davis into Ciros. She was Columbias resident sex goddess in the 1940s, but she had a bad habit of getting married. Cohen, barely five feet five, was a hotheaded thug with a taste for beautifully tailored suits. He was out of sync with the new music. The edge of the world is actually a slippery slope, Explores the concept and impact of eminent domain. I was suddenly in the eye of a hurricane. He would make a point of it, he would say, Isnt that adorable? Boyar feels that he would have preferred to look like Cary Grant, but he was pretty satisfied with what he had. After Daviss death, Rhodes would visit his grave at Forest Lawn with Murphy Bennett, Daviss valet and probably his closest friend for more than 40 years. 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. 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. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. He was making $25,000 a week at the Sands in Las Vegas, and he was about to break into television as one of the mediums first black actors to appear in a dramatic role, in Auf Wiedersehen, on General Electric Theater. Ill give him 24 hours. Giancana says, We can protect you here in Chicago, or when youre in Vegas, but we cant do anything about Hollywood, Silber remembers. What began as a boldface item in Dorothy Kilgallens gossip column in the New York Journal-American threatened to become a national scandal on the eve of Americas long struggle for civil rights. . The affair was an open enough secret that Davis had to endure tasteless remarks about it, even from his friends. Thats when Silber noticed a private telephone being installed in Daviss suite. I must have had a knockdown, drag-out fight every two days, he told the Boyars during the writing of Yes I Can. He had a wonderful V-shaped body, and he loved his little behind. What you never wanted to do was to owe them., One night in the fall of 1957 Tony Curtis went backstage at Ciros with the rugged actor Jeff Chandler. He was being paid $500 a week, but in racially segregated Las Vegas he couldnt stay at the hotelhe couldnt even walk through the lobby. I got the call this morning. The eulogy was scripted by Clifford Odets and performed by Danny Kaye. 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. The two of them went out in the backyard and Altovise and I went in the other room, and we let them talk. At some point in the transformation of Marilyn Novak, her studio-assigned publicist, Muriel Roberts, dreamed up an all-lavender scheme and insisted that they rinse her hair with a pale lavender tint. He was still smarting from having let Marilyn Monroe slip away: unimpressed by her beauty, he had neglected in 1948 to renew her initial six-month contract. Shirley Rhodes remembers that Novak came to the hospital when Sammy was dying. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Never again, he told Sy Marsh. Then Ill do it. Harry Cohn got the news of the relationship in New York, where he was attending a memorial dinner for his brother Jack. He had created the notorious second skin glittering with sequins that Marlene Dietrich wore for her nightclub premiere in Las Vegas in 1953; he would also sew Marilyn Monroe into the sequined formfitting gown she wore when she sang Happy Birthday to John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in 1962. We started with Mae West, Jean Harlow, Marilyn, then Kim. He couldnt win. After that, we switched over to Grace Kelly. She would make her film debut in 1961 with Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy in The Devil at 4 OClock. As early as March 1955, it ran an article whose headline read: What Makes AVA GARDNER Run for SAMMY DAVIS JR.? When Marsh signed on as his business partner, he discovered that Davis was deep in debt. He just never stopped studying it., But being on tour from the age of three had taken its toll: for one thing, Davis never really learned how to write, although he was a voracious reader. . Davis was buried between his father and Will Mastin. hit him in the face with a shovel, Davis was devastated. Novak was so overwhelmed, outclassed, and terrified that at one point, Logan had to drag her from her trailer for a crucial scene as a hundred extras waited for her in the diminishing Kansas daylight and cinematographer James Wong Howe gnashed his teeth. just doesnt understand show business. Altovise Davis was left with Daviss $7.5 million tax debt. But he was a guy you wouldnt want to meet in the street if he was after you. Hed never been out of debt in his life, Marsh realized. It was stunning, Boyar remembers. Ad Choices, The feared and hated head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, created Kim Novak to be his perfect blonde star, and with her performence in Alfred Hitchcocks, Matt Gaetz, Under Investigation for Sex With a Minor, Says Women Who Support Abortion Rights Are Too Fat and Ugly to Get Pregnant, Marvel's Phase Five: A Guide To All The New Movies and TV Shows, It Was Catastrophic: Inside Prince Andrews Misguided Bid to Explain Away Epstein, In the wake of Jeffrey Epsteins arrest and apparent suicide, Prince Andrew moved from the fringe of a swirling underage-sex scandal toward its white-hot center. I think Vegas was the same way. With Sinatras help, Davis was finally given a suite at the Sands Hotel. 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. He read constantly during his conversion to Judaism, after the November 1954 car accident that cost him his left eye. I got to the point where I wanted to get the whitest, the most famous chick in the world and just show em. Silber recalls, He sat her downhe was sitting in a chair and I was sitting on the bedand he made her a proposition, to marry him for a certain sum of money. Sitting in his penthouse apartment in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, one of Philippe Halsmans striking photographs of Sammy Davis dominating the room, Boyar reminisces about their long friendship. . Frank knew this was big trouble. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. The most sublime moment in the film is when Madeleine, in an immaculate white coat, stares at the cross section of a giant sequoia tree on the California coast. His nose was broken countless times and permanently flattened; he was given beer to drink by his buddies that was laced with urine. My agent told me my career would be over if I continued to see Sammy. Thats the reason he married Altovise Gore, in Marshs opinion. Novak herself has admitted, In the early films I had no experience, I was just doing it. But what she did have was a special relationship with the camera: it registered an honesty of emotion that she possessedan unteachable quality that distinguishes a goddess from a mere actress.
Novaks career went into decline after Cohns death. But women knew better. People used to say, Im going to beat Harry, Sidney recalls. He even showed up in hot pants at a formal dinner party given by Mary and Jack Benny, two pillars of Hollywoods old society. Instead, Cohn decided to get back at Hayworth. And in the following year, S-H-H! When he first invited Altovise up to his suite, she was wary of his reputation. I dont think thats the way I want to go out. Davis made the decision not to have the operation. Just two years earlier, all but three southern U.S. senators had signed a document known as the Southern Manifesto, which equated school integration with subversion of the Constitution. (The maverick senators were Lyndon B. Johnson and the two senators from Tennessee, Albert Gore Sr. and Estes Kefauver.) I knew we were in trouble thenthat was the beginning. For Novak, Davis was perhaps more than just an exciting, sympathetic man. And thats where Sammy is buried today. He was pulling her across the bridge in her beautiful dress, and she was fighting him, protesting, Im not ready, Im not ready! I dont know how he did it, but Sammy came, and it was the most ludicrous thing. Davis and Novak went to great lengths to evade both the press and Cohns spies, usually having quiet, intimate dinners together. 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. But after a while he got used to it, and hed say, Its getting me where Im going., Boyar also feels that Davis knew how attractive he was to women. Confidential held a mirror up to Americas mid-50s paranoia and obsessions, its collective fears and fantasies: race, Communism, sex, miscegenation, homosexuality. Novak still wasnt ready. Jack Entratter hosted the reception. Her longtime friend Norma Herbert says, She is very happy in her forest. Cliff Robertson always believed that Novak played her cards carefully, kept her winnings, and finally left HollywoodI think she beat it!. He just pulled her across the bridge and said, Get in that goddamned boat..
When Cohn came in, however, the imperious Soul seated him at the back, near the kitchen. Her only problem was, in the beginning, she wasnt a very good actress, and I think she knew that.. She was nervous and intimidated because she was working with experienced Broadway stage actors, but she had something going for her besides her beauty. He had become obsessed with Miles, an icy, imperious beauty along the lines of Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren, but when Miles became pregnant and turned down the role, Hitchcock settled for Novak. 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. I have never met a grateful performer in the picture business. Novak even managed to evade Cohns casting couchconsidered the most notorious in Hollywood. Never again am I going to extend myself., If you were there that night, one member of Daviss entourage explains, youd think, No wonder he hugged Nixon. Sy Marsh believes that Davis had spent the first half of his career making himself loved by the white world, and the second half trying to make himself loved by the black world. They call you the Carpenter, she told him, cause you nail every girl you meet. But she always believed that Davis loved her unconditionally. Part of the problem, as Sy Marsh observes, was that Sammy Davis lived in a white world. Men seemed to consider Davis ugly, because he was short and slight, his features flattened. . 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. I was sent to Chicago to go to Kim and say, Sammy loves you.. Rolexes, Cartiers, what have you. As one of Daviss oldest friends observed, The I.R.S. 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. The Charleston-based evangelicals had much in common: guns, God, Trump. This led to her going to California to demonstrate refrigerators as Miss Deepfreeze.. Sammy went into his imitation of white stars, like Jimmy Stewart and Jerry Lewis, and these people were in the audience. He ran Columbia Pictures as if it were a family business, and in a way it was, because he had wrangled control from his brother Jack, who was back on the East Coast in New York. Cohn blew his top. 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. You know, he told her, Im making 25 grand a week, and Im sitting here with a bowl of soup I dont want. 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. The studio contoured her figure by encouraging her to purge 15 pounds. In Florida, black people werent allowed to live in the hotels where they performed. On a tour of Australia, Davis collapsed from sheer exhaustion. In the 1970s, Arthur Silber went back to work for Davis and noticed profound changes in his personality and behavior. When Doug and Ashley Benefield Started a Ballet Company, It Wasnt Supposed to End in Death. It was just how deep this affair went. Boyar was a newspaper columnist for the Annenberg newspaper chain in the 50s and 60s. They compromised on Kim Novakthe name of the son of her Chicago friend and business manager, Norma Herbert, then Norma Kasell. 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.. 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. So I came into the office and saw that he owed the Sands Hotel, says Marsh. He chose greatness. 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.. Nobody even took one picture! Twenty years earlier he and Novak would have been mobbed. 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. After Hayworth returned to Hollywood in 1951. There were rumors that the couple was taking out a marriage license, and supposedly a clerk in Aurora found that an application had been filled out but never filed. She seemed to go into a trance when asked about her Hollywood yearsnot one of Madeleines beautiful phony trances but a real inability, or unwillingness, to remember the past. Marsh took him to a specialist, who found that his constant smoking and singing had caused inflamed nodes on his vocal cords.