Speaker 1: Pushkin. The following podcast contains explicit language. A new a
Speaker 1: man o jangle, Then he danced for you, wornout choose.
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Junior was one of the world's greatest entertainers.
Speaker 1: He was Sammy the way Shara was share or Elvis
Speaker 1: was Elvis, five ft five, barely, skinny as a pencil,
Speaker 1: oversized sunglasses, jewelry hanging off him like Christmas ornaments. He
Speaker 1: lived off nicotine and vermouth, never wore the same suit twice,
Speaker 1: made a fortune, died, broke that kind of life. Then
Speaker 1: he would likely judge down. A singer, a dancer, a
Speaker 1: master impressionist with a famous exaggerated laugh that unfolded in
Speaker 1: three acts, the eyes closed in delight, the full body convulsion,
Speaker 1: the three steps stagger. In nineteen seventy two, at the
Speaker 1: height of his fame, Sammy went to the Republican National
Speaker 1: Convention in Miami Beach. Flew there on a private jet
Speaker 1: owned by an oil company, took a suite at the
Speaker 1: Playboy Hotel. On the opening night of the convention, he
Speaker 1: sat in the private box of the Republican presidential nominee,
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon. On a second night of the convention, Davis
Speaker 1: played a concert for the Republican Youth in a shirt
Speaker 1: opened to his navel and skin tight pants. He was
Speaker 1: halfway through his set when suddenly people started chanting four
Speaker 1: more years. The cheers were for Nixon, fresh from accepting
Speaker 1: the Republican nomination. He was crashing the party. Davis held
Speaker 1: up his hand acquire at the crowd, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: The President and the future President of the United States
Speaker 1: of America, Hamneumonia. I am opposed to bussing for the
Speaker 1: purpose of achieving racial balance in our schools. I have
Speaker 1: spoken out against bussing scorers of times over many years.
Speaker 1: Richard Dixon was, in nineteen seventy two, the leading practitioner
Speaker 1: of what was known as the Southern Strategy, the attempt
Speaker 1: to use racist appeals to win over Southern white voters
Speaker 1: to the Republican Party. He nominated two Southerners to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, men who were such committed segregationists and so
Speaker 1: deeply unqualified that the Senate wouldn't confirm them. In the
Speaker 1: privacy of the Oval office, Nixon referred to black people
Speaker 1: as niggers and jigaboos. He did his best to delay
Speaker 1: the integration of American public schools. He once complained to
Speaker 1: one of his aids that the anti poverty programs established
Speaker 1: by his predecessors were a waste of money because African
Speaker 1: Americans were genetically inferior. It was just four years since
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Junior was shot in Memphis, and the
Speaker 1: president seemed bent on reversing everything the civil rights movement
Speaker 1: had fought for black people in nineteen seventy two. Did
Speaker 1: not like Richard Nixon, that is, except for one of
Speaker 1: the most famous black men in the country, Sammy Davis Junior,
Speaker 1: who sat in the Nixon family box, performed at the
Speaker 1: Nixon coronation, and who crossed the stage and rapped one
Speaker 1: of the most famously chilly and awkward of all presidents
Speaker 1: in a joyful, excited, loving hug. Let me read to
Speaker 1: you Will Haygood's description of that moment in his biography
Speaker 1: of Sammy Davis Junior. The public had rarely seen Nixon
Speaker 1: in such an embrace, even with his own wife and
Speaker 1: Nixon letting loose with a slow, widening grin, towering over Davis,
Speaker 1: wrapping his arms across his own chest, so awkwardly and
Speaker 1: yet tenderly like some flush teenage kid, and all those
Speaker 1: white delegates and all those Nixon placards, and Davis leaning
Speaker 1: on the president's shoulder as if Nixon were kin Nixon
Speaker 1: and Sammy in full embrace. When people remember Sammy Davis Junior,
Speaker 1: that's what they think of the photograph of that moment.
Speaker 1: Sammy never got over it. My name is Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about Things Forgotten
Speaker 1: and Misunderstood. This episode is about Sammy Davi Junior and
Speaker 1: what happened on that stage in Miami Beach, because that
Speaker 1: moment raises questions about obligation and loyalty that still haven't
Speaker 1: been resolved, or maybe had been resolved in the wrong way.
Speaker 1: To understand this, you have to go back to what
Speaker 1: young brother here referred to as the House Negro and
Speaker 1: the Field Negro. Back during slavery. In nineteen sixty three
Speaker 1: in Detroit, Malcolm X gave one of his most famous speeches.
Speaker 1: There was two kind of slaves. There was the House
Speaker 1: Negro in the field Negro. The house Negro they lived
Speaker 1: in the house with Master. They dressed pretty good. They
Speaker 1: ate good because to eat his food, they would they
Speaker 1: would give their life to save them master's house quicker
Speaker 1: than the master would the house Negro. If the master
Speaker 1: said we got a good house here, the house Negro
Speaker 1: say yeah, we got a good house in Whenever the
Speaker 1: master said we, he sayd we. That's how you can
Speaker 1: tell a house Negro. Malcolm X was trying to win
Speaker 1: his audience over to the cause of black nationalism. He
Speaker 1: was a separatist. He identified himself with his master more
Speaker 1: than his master identified with himself. And if you came
Speaker 1: to the house Negro and said let's run away, let's escape,
Speaker 1: let's separate that house, Negro would look at you and say, man,
Speaker 1: you crazy, what you mean separate? Where is there a
Speaker 1: better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes
Speaker 1: than this? Where can I eat better food than this?
Speaker 1: That was that house Negro. Malcolm X was talking about
Speaker 1: African Americans who he felt had betrayed their community, who
Speaker 1: had achieved success by turning their backs on where they'd
Speaker 1: come from. He was talking about people like Sammy Davis Junior,
Speaker 1: I gotta be me got Davis was an epic talent.
Speaker 1: He was Michael Jackson. Before Michael Jackson. He was the
Speaker 1: first black person in history who could sell out performances
Speaker 1: around the world, A charter member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack,
Speaker 1: a staple in the tabloids for forty years. There's a
Speaker 1: sequence I Love from a gala in Sammy's honor in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, marking his sixtieth anniversary and show business.
Speaker 1: Gregory Hines, a legendary tap dancer, does a number for Sammy,
Speaker 1: who's sitting in the front row. Laugh stop. Then Hines
Speaker 1: invites Sammy up to join him. Sammy's just had his
Speaker 1: hip replaced. He'll be dead from cancer within the year.
Speaker 1: He puts on his tap shoes, hobbles on stage, and
Speaker 1: the two of them do a dance off. I swear
Speaker 1: to God, if you don't believe me, look it up
Speaker 1: for yourself. Sammy blows him away. At the end, Hines
Speaker 1: gets down on his knees and kisses Sammy's shoes anything.
Speaker 1: Davis was born in Harlem. He started playing the vaudeville
Speaker 1: circuit as a three year old with his uncle Will
Speaker 1: Maston and his dad, Sammy Davis Senior. He never had
Speaker 1: any formal schooling or any childhood to speak of. The
Speaker 1: three of them travel Jim Crow America, performing for white audiences.
Speaker 1: In one hotel, then sleeping on the other side of
Speaker 1: the tracks in a colored hotel. During the Second World War,
Speaker 1: when he was drafted into the army, his nose was
Speaker 1: broken so many times in fights that's flat. For the
Speaker 1: rest of his life, Sammy was taunted, harassed. At one point,
Speaker 1: a couple of white soldiers pinned Sammy down right coon
Speaker 1: in white paint across his forehead. There's an almost unbearable
Speaker 1: moment in Sammy's autobiography Why Me. He described standing under
Speaker 1: the shower in the latrine for hours trying to get
Speaker 1: the white paint off his body. I stood under the
Speaker 1: hot water, rubbing until rashes of blood trickled to the surface,
Speaker 1: brushing until I'd scraped the last speck of white out
Speaker 1: of my skin. I got into bed. Nobody, nobody in
Speaker 1: this world is ever going to do this to me again.
Speaker 1: I'll die first. But Sammy's answer to never letting anyone
Speaker 1: do this to him again wasn't to fight, like Malcolm
Speaker 1: X wanted black people to do. Sammy's solution was to join.
Speaker 1: He moved very publicly into the master's house. He dated
Speaker 1: white women blonds. He married the stunning Swedish actress May
Speaker 1: Britt at a time when interracial marriages were almost unheard of.
Speaker 1: When he moved to Los Angeles, he didn't move to
Speaker 1: Baldwin Hills, where middle class blacks lived. He moved into
Speaker 1: a lily white section of the Hollywood Hills. This modern
Speaker 1: house negro loves his master. He wants to live near him.
Speaker 1: He'll pay three times as much as the house is worth.
Speaker 1: Jest to live Nigga's master, and then brag about I'm
Speaker 1: the only Negro out here. I'm the only one on
Speaker 1: my job. I'm the only one in this school. You
Speaker 1: nothing but a house negro. If I play a Dave
Speaker 1: Chappelle routine for you without telling you that it's him
Speaker 1: or a Richard Pryor bit from the nineteen eighties, you'd
Speaker 1: know right away that Chappelle and Prior are black. They
Speaker 1: code black. But listen to this Sammy Davis on The
Speaker 1: Dick Cavett Show, talking about what he learned from the
Speaker 1: old Bush Belt comedians who used to hang out at
Speaker 1: Hansen's drug Store just off Broadway in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: All of the impressionist would hang out on the corner
Speaker 1: and I'd say, Hey, I get one. I think I
Speaker 1: got one. I think I've finally got Jimmy Stewart, and
Speaker 1: you know, and will Or Larry Storch would say, no,
Speaker 1: you haven't got a man that answer A day up, hair,
Speaker 1: I got a too law. I don't want your door
Speaker 1: to have a sort of a draw behind, so that disappears.
Speaker 1: I'm here. Cavit then, as if he also does Laurence Olivier,
Speaker 1: which you think is just Cavit being mischievous, because Olivier
Speaker 1: was the greatest Shakespearean stage actor of his day, the
Speaker 1: son of a high Church Anglican clergyman, about as far
Speaker 1: from Sammy as you can get in theory. Of course,
Speaker 1: I do Olivia, You do Olivier? Yes? Really? What would
Speaker 1: you like to hear me do from him? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: A couple acts from King Lear would be well, he
Speaker 1: only did Lear once? How about Richard the third? I'll
Speaker 1: settle for third. Now is the winter of our discontent
Speaker 1: made glorious summer in this son of Yonk. Since I
Speaker 1: cannot by rightful claim my way to the throne, I
Speaker 1: shall hack and who my way instead? Oh that's great.
Speaker 1: If I didn't tell you that Sammy was black, would
Speaker 1: you know he could as easily be white? He could
Speaker 1: be Jewish. In fact, he is Jewish. He converted the
Speaker 1: lone black person at Temple Israel in Hollywood. Sammy's mind
Speaker 1: worked like this, whatever it takes to survive, I have
Speaker 1: to do it. That's will Hey good, Sammy's biographer. Now,
Speaker 1: many of my friends are Jewish and they love me
Speaker 1: and they support me. Huh, So that's interesting. I think
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to Israel. I think I'm going
Speaker 1: to become Jewish, and then I'm going to make some
Speaker 1: jokes about it, and I know people will laugh. But
Speaker 1: right now, in this moment, this is where my heart is.
Speaker 1: Sammy meets Nixon in nineteen fifty four. Nixon was the
Speaker 1: vice president at that point, and Sammy was playing the
Speaker 1: Copa when the Coopa was the hottest ticket Manhattan. So
Speaker 1: he got Nixon and his wife seats up front and
Speaker 1: they never forgot it. Shortly thereafter, Sammy gets invited to
Speaker 1: the White House to visit Vice President Nixon. Now just
Speaker 1: think of that, a kid born poor, who had been
Speaker 1: scuffling out on the road, who had been playing nasty
Speaker 1: looking nightclubs, who never had a teacher, who never had classmates,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, sliding around the White House. They
Speaker 1: stay in touch. When Nixon becomes president in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: he asks Sammy to join a White House advisory council.
Speaker 1: When the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson died, Nixon asks Sammy
Speaker 1: to represent him at the funeral and sent a government jet.
Speaker 1: Nixon asked Sammy to go to Vietnam and entertain the troops.
Speaker 1: Sammy puts together a massive traveling entourage and plays his
Speaker 1: heart act. If you look at the back cover of
Speaker 1: Sammy's autobiography, y Me, there's a blurb from Alex Haley,
Speaker 1: who wrote Roots, another from Aaron's Spelling, the creator of
Speaker 1: nine O, two and oh among the million other things.
Speaker 1: Another from Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson and Liza Manelli.
Speaker 1: It's maybe the greatest blurb line up in the history
Speaker 1: of publishing. And then there's Richard Nixon, who writes, Sammy
Speaker 1: is one of the great living Americans. It wouldn't matter
Speaker 1: what color he was. With his intelligence, he could make
Speaker 1: it at anything anywhere. It wouldn't matter what color he was.
Speaker 1: That sounds like something you would say about someone who
Speaker 1: comes from privilege to flatter them in to thinking they
Speaker 1: would have succeeded even without their privilege. It wouldn't matter
Speaker 1: if Mark Zuckerberg were an orphan from a remote village
Speaker 1: in the Himalayas. He's so smart, he would still be
Speaker 1: a billionaire. It's totally nuts to say it wouldn't matter
Speaker 1: if he hadn't had those privileges about a black man
Speaker 1: born in Harlem in nineteen twenty five who never had
Speaker 1: any privileges. Sammy comes to Nixon pretending he isn't black,
Speaker 1: and Nixon comes to Sammy forgetting he's black. Their relationship
Speaker 1: is a kind of delusional post racial fantasy. Sir Nixon says,
Speaker 1: come to Miami for the convention. We'll put you up
Speaker 1: at the Playboy Hotel. Why not play for the kids
Speaker 1: at the youth rally? Of course, Sammy says yes, and
Speaker 1: Nixon stands in front of the crowd on National TV
Speaker 1: and starts talking about how Sammy's critics accuse him of
Speaker 1: selling out by being a Nixon supporter. Then Nixon says,
Speaker 1: you're going to bind by enjoying something. Nixon waits for
Speaker 1: the applause to die down. He's looking in the other way.
Speaker 1: Sammy sneaks up from behind, wraps his arms around him.
Speaker 1: The hate mail Sammy gets over the next few months
Speaker 1: is so vicious that he hands over some of the
Speaker 1: letters to the FBI. Eartha Kit comes up to him
Speaker 1: and hisses, did you have to kiss him? Sammy is blindsided.
Speaker 1: He's desperate to salvage his reputation. He calls up Jesse Jackson,
Speaker 1: who every year has a big conference in Chicago for
Speaker 1: his civil rights group Operation Push Oh, Somebody, Ah Somebody.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy two, Jackson had lined up virtually every
Speaker 1: Mottown and gospel star, The Temptations, Marvin Gay, the OJ's
Speaker 1: Curtis Mayfield, ROBERTA. Flack. Sammy says, I want to perform.
Speaker 1: Jackson says yes, brings him out on stage. I am
Speaker 1: here because I have come home as a black man.
Speaker 1: Disagree if you will, with my politics, but I will
Speaker 1: not allow anyone to take away the fact that I
Speaker 1: am black. Now, That's all I can say, except that
Speaker 1: I would like to sing. But who is he kidding?
Speaker 1: It's September twenty eighth, nineteen seventy two, a little over
Speaker 1: a month since he was hugging the enemy in Miami.
Speaker 1: For the rest of his life, Sammy would be haunted
Speaker 1: by his reception. He said, maybe one of the worst
Speaker 1: things that happened to you, I read was being booed
Speaker 1: by people, And she was I think it was in Chicago.
Speaker 1: This is Sammy in an into few years later with
Speaker 1: Tom Coddle on the Boston ABC affiliate. Hey, but the
Speaker 1: first time I had ever been rejected by my own
Speaker 1: by my own people, because it was predominantly a black audience,
Speaker 1: because because if you're embracing, they embracing her. Nixon and
Speaker 1: Jesse was there as he always had been before prior
Speaker 1: to and as he's been since, to be supportive as
Speaker 1: a friend. And I was about ready to run, literally
Speaker 1: run off the stage, and he said no, and he
Speaker 1: made me stay, and he talked to the audience and
Speaker 1: made me perform. And what did Sanny sing? Whether I
Speaker 1: am right or whether you can't make this up, whether
Speaker 1: I find a place in this world or never belong.
Speaker 1: I gotta be me, God, that be me. What else
Speaker 1: can I but the hurt I'm being boot So I
Speaker 1: know I want to experience that kind of hurt again.
Speaker 1: I want to live, not merely survived. Afterwards, Sammy went
Speaker 1: home and got drunk. Well, now you had a twentieth
Speaker 1: century tight as he grow today, a twentieth century Uncle Tom.
Speaker 1: He's just as much as Uncle Town today as Uncle
Speaker 1: Tom was one hundred and two hundred years ago. Oh,
Speaker 1: he's a modern Uncle Tom. Then Uncle Town warship around
Speaker 1: his head. Then Uncle Town. We have a top Hey,
Speaker 1: Sammy sold his own people out in the middle of
Speaker 1: a life and death struggle. He put on a top
Speaker 1: hat and tap danced for the master. And there's nothing
Speaker 1: so unforgivable as that is there, except I'm not so sure.
Speaker 1: I had been given the opportunity, through a company that
Speaker 1: I was consulting to, to interview the first women entering
Speaker 1: their salesforce. That's Rosabeth Canter. She's a professor at the
Speaker 1: Harvard Business School, talking about a research project she did
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen seventies. It was for a big
Speaker 1: industrial firm headquartered at the time in New York City.
Speaker 1: They had a salesforce of three hundred people, all men,
Speaker 1: and they just hired twenty women. And so here was
Speaker 1: a batch of people who all had advanced degrees and
Speaker 1: were very technically talented, and yet they were walking into
Speaker 1: technical sales in a place that had never seen people
Speaker 1: like them before. The women were struggling. That's why the
Speaker 1: company brought in Cantor to diagnose the problem. She showed
Speaker 1: up with her notebook and began talking with the new hires,
Speaker 1: and after many interviews, Cantor tells the company, the reason
Speaker 1: the women you hired aren't doing well is that you
Speaker 1: haven't hired enough of them. This isn't about the women
Speaker 1: and their abilities. This is about numbers. The company had
Speaker 1: its salesforce spread across the country. A typical office was
Speaker 1: eight people, which meant seven men and only one woman.
Speaker 1: And Cantor's point was that it's really, really hard to
Speaker 1: be the lone woman in an office of eight people.
Speaker 1: And I thought, that's really the issue. Are you alone
Speaker 1: or are there many of you like you? Cantor wrote
Speaker 1: up her findings in a classic essay called Some Effects
Speaker 1: of Proportion group life. Being the only one of your kind,
Speaker 1: she said, being a token creates a special set of
Speaker 1: problems for both sides, for the majority and for the token.
Speaker 1: The women told Cantor that the minute they showed up
Speaker 1: in a room, the men on the sales team would
Speaker 1: become almost exaggerated versions of themselves, telling dirty jokes, war stories,
Speaker 1: being aggressive as if the presence of an outsider reinforced
Speaker 1: what they all had in common. At the same time,
Speaker 1: the women felt their behavior changing. They felt scrutinized not
Speaker 1: as individuals, but as members of their category, which left
Speaker 1: them self conscious uneasy. In one brilliant section of her paper,
Speaker 1: Cantor talks about the four rolls. The token women get
Speaker 1: pushed into the mother, the pet, the seductress, and the
Speaker 1: iron maiden. They couldn't be themselves, not until the proportions
Speaker 1: of the group turned more their favor. So you put
Speaker 1: that same lone woman in a group that has more
Speaker 1: women in it, and she can relax. She's not on
Speaker 1: the spot. She can be friends with some. She doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be friends with all of them. She can
Speaker 1: find things in common with the men. To fit in,
Speaker 1: the token has to pass a loyalty test. Kenta writes.
Speaker 1: If token's collude, they make themselves psychological hostages of the
Speaker 1: majority group. For token women, the price of being one
Speaker 1: of the boys is a willingness to turn occasionally against
Speaker 1: the girls. The token woman, in other words, is required
Speaker 1: to sell out her own kind required. That was the
Speaker 1: cost of admission to the master's house. Being one of
Speaker 1: the boys. Was not who they were, it was what
Speaker 1: they were forced to be. So why is Sammy Davis
Speaker 1: Junior's position any different? In his mind, he was pushing
Speaker 1: aside white black for green, green being money. Will Haygood,
Speaker 1: Sammy's biographer, he started his career with really literally having
Speaker 1: to put food on the table to keep his daddy
Speaker 1: surviving and to keep will Maston surviving. He did not
Speaker 1: want to let them go. And so who would Sammy
Speaker 1: talk to every day? Who signed his checks? White businessman?
Speaker 1: And who was in the audience in those Las Vegas nightclubs,
Speaker 1: rich white people. Sammy does Laurence Olivier impressions because that's
Speaker 1: what white audience has wanted to hear. He becomes friends
Speaker 1: with Richard Nixon, and who is Richard Nixon? Richard Nixon
Speaker 1: is the political embodiment of those people in his Las
Speaker 1: Vegas audience. He didn't know the kind of judges who
Speaker 1: Nixon was appointing to the federal courts or to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. He didn't know nixon Southern strategy to divide
Speaker 1: and conquer. All Sammy knew was Nixon welcomed me wherever
Speaker 1: I was at. By the way, Sammy campaigned for John
Speaker 1: Kennedy ten years before he campaigned for Nixon. But did
Speaker 1: Kennedy ever invite him to stay at the White House
Speaker 1: like Nixon did. No, Kennedy disinvited him from his inauguration
Speaker 1: because he worried about what it would look like if
Speaker 1: Sammy brought his white wife to the White House. Sammy
Speaker 1: had to make strategic decisions out of necessity. These are
Speaker 1: the steps the token takes to survive, but they aren't
Speaker 1: who he is. Sammy marched on Washington, he marched at Selma.
Speaker 1: He shut down a Broadway show to make the trip.
Speaker 1: Will Haygood says that when he interviewed Harry Bellefonte, Bellefonte
Speaker 1: made up point of stressing how generous Sammy was to
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement. Whenever Keene was in trouble or
Speaker 1: was jailed, or whenever Keen needed bail money, Martin would
Speaker 1: turn to me and he would say, get Sammy, and
Speaker 1: the next day Sammy Davis Junior would wire them ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars or seven thousand dollars or however much money
Speaker 1: Keene needed, you know, and that was a lot of
Speaker 1: money back in the sixties. When Sammy Davis comes on stage,
Speaker 1: at the Push Expo. What does Jesse Jackson say, in
Speaker 1: an attempt to quiet the crowd, Brothers, if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for people like Sammy Davis, you wouldn't be here. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't have Push today. Now, I expected some foolish people
Speaker 1: were going to react like this because this man hugged
Speaker 1: the President of the United States. So what look at
Speaker 1: what this gigantic little man has committed himself to over
Speaker 1: all these years. Sammy sang, I gotta be me. But
Speaker 1: the minute you listened to any of his interviews from
Speaker 1: that tortured stretch of his career, you realize that he
Speaker 1: couldn't be me. That was the price he paid. Was
Speaker 1: there a period, though, Sammy, where you felt I must
Speaker 1: prove something to a certain group of people. They've got
Speaker 1: to know something about me. I guess the first forty
Speaker 1: five years of my life you were doing just that.
Speaker 1: That's all I was doing, Ladies and gentlemen from the
Speaker 1: celebrity room of the Grand Hotel Dean Martin Honors our
Speaker 1: Man of the Hour and Sammy Davis Junior with JUNI.
Speaker 1: First came the hub, then came the booing at Operation Push,
Speaker 1: then came to roast and to Night's very Fragile Man
Speaker 1: of the Hour. Sammy Davis Junior, the singer and comedian
Speaker 1: Dean Martin, did a regular series of celebrity Roast from
Speaker 1: Las Vegas during the nineteen seventies. They were broadcast on
Speaker 1: NBC on Thursday nights National Television. The featured guests were
Speaker 1: a who's who of that era, Muhammad Ali, Ralph Nader,
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra, Truman, Capode. It was a ritual of comic humiliation.
Speaker 1: The guests took to medicine the country watched in mock horror.
Speaker 1: In April of nineteen seventy five, it was Sammy Davis
Speaker 1: Junior's term at the microphone is the host Dean Martin
Speaker 1: of rat Pack Fame, big tall, handsome guy. His stick
Speaker 1: was that he always pretended he was drunk even when
Speaker 1: he was. And then recognition of one of the great
Speaker 1: black men of our time. Even the NBC peacock is
Speaker 1: wearing an afro. Why does Sammy agree to this for
Speaker 1: the same reason he hugged Richard Nixon? Because the world
Speaker 1: represented by the roast was the world Sammy has been
Speaker 1: trying his whole life to join. It's the club, and
Speaker 1: what is a celebrity roast. It's a ritual of initiation.
Speaker 1: The target of the roast agrees to be roasted because
Speaker 1: being roasted is proof that you belong. Only what does
Speaker 1: this roast proof that Sammy isn't one of them? The
Speaker 1: first booking he got was in Atlanta. As Sammy stepped
Speaker 1: off the plane, he was met by the governor and
Speaker 1: I wrote, even the Clue plus clan took notice of Sammy.
Speaker 1: They voted him most likely to be next. He proves
Speaker 1: that a black man could he in white restaurants, check
Speaker 1: into a white hotels, day white women, and be carried
Speaker 1: away in a white ambulance. Then indeed, Martin pretends to
Speaker 1: read telegrams from well wishers. There's one I think you're
Speaker 1: going to be very proud of. There's Sammy Davis. We'd
Speaker 1: like you to pose for a new centerfold in our magazine,
Speaker 1: signed the National Geographic. It goes like this on National
Speaker 1: TV for an hour. Sammy had done everything he could
Speaker 1: to join the club. And yet what are the jokes
Speaker 1: about that day at the MGM grand That he doesn't belong,
Speaker 1: that he's black, and he'll always be black. Sammy sold out,
Speaker 1: But you can only sell out if someone's buying you
Speaker 1: took your glass. You're getting tired, Sammy, I want to
Speaker 1: take a more watermelon break. That's Milton Burrow, supposedly one
Speaker 1: of Sammy's oldest friends. The reason I say that is
Speaker 1: because Sammy hasn't been feeling well lately. Last month he
Speaker 1: had an operation on his throat and that had a
Speaker 1: problem that had a roll over flower to find his mouth.
Speaker 1: The last time you had cash in your hand. If
Speaker 1: this is when your point your freedom from Scarlett O'Hara,
Speaker 1: Sammy has always been for civil rights. One time in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: he told the bus driver that he wanted to be
Speaker 1: on the front of the bus, so the driver tied
Speaker 1: him to the bumper. Next up Foster Brooks, a man
Speaker 1: with a brief moment of celebrity based entirely on his ability,
Speaker 1: born of experience, to impersonate a drunk Sammy Davis had
Speaker 1: more talent in his pinky finger than Foster Brooks. But
Speaker 1: sam isn't a member of the club, and Brooks is
Speaker 1: mess Dais. You are a great performer. The excitement you
Speaker 1: create that an audience is incredible. There they sit spellbound,
Speaker 1: wondering if someone in your entourage is ransacking their room.
Speaker 1: Cut to Sammy cracking up on the dais then giving
Speaker 1: Brooks a big semi style hug, arms wrapped around him,
Speaker 1: dancing for pennies to that magnificent moment when Frank Sinatra
Speaker 1: fold down to the lobby and said, sam the coward
Speaker 1: kid up to dance while I shave. Remember what Roosabeth
Speaker 1: Cantor wrote for token women. The price of being one
Speaker 1: of the boys is a willingness to turn occasionally against
Speaker 1: the girls. And then she writes a line that I
Speaker 1: couldn't stop thinking about as I watched that roast. Tokens
Speaker 1: thus find themselves colluding with dominance through shared laughter. At
Speaker 1: the end of the evening, Sammy gets up and there's
Speaker 1: a moment when you think he's going to lash out,
Speaker 1: to stand up to the humiliations of the previous hour.
Speaker 1: But we only think that because it's now the doors
Speaker 1: are now open to black entertainers. So that's what would
Speaker 1: happen today. Can you imagine how Chris Rock or Dave
Speaker 1: Chappelle or Wanda Sykes or Tiffany Hattish would respond to
Speaker 1: an evening like that? I mean a bloodbath, but Rock
Speaker 1: has Chappelle and Chappelle has Sykes, and Sykes has Hattish
Speaker 1: and a hundred others. And when you have numbers, you
Speaker 1: have power. But Sammy, Sammy was the first. He didn't
Speaker 1: have numbers. It's the second generation that gets to defend itself,
Speaker 1: not the first. I would first of all like to
Speaker 1: thank the man that I love very very much for
Speaker 1: giving me this honor, mister Dean Martin. He turns to
Speaker 1: Dean Martin, who's sitting next to him. Dean Martin reaches
Speaker 1: up and places his hand on top of Sammy's. One
Speaker 1: of the great joys of being forty five years in
Speaker 1: this business is to have people who love you make
Speaker 1: fun of you. That is one of the great joys.
Speaker 1: Because today they don't make fun of you. That means
Speaker 1: they don't give a damn about you. The token succeeds
Speaker 1: at the cost of his own dignity. I thank you.
Speaker 1: That's it. Revisionist History is a Panoply production. The senior
Speaker 1: producer is Mia Lobelle, with Jacob Smith and Camille Baptista.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Julia Barton. Flawn Williams is our engineer.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music by Luis Guerra,
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Andy Bowers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm
Speaker 1: Backa and on stage we can see a manager who
Speaker 1: seems to be waiting for the president and waiting to
Speaker 1: get signals when mister Nixon will arrive here. He keeps
Speaker 1: looking at Sammy Davis Jr. With a very forlorn look,
Speaker 1: shaking his hand saying no, he's not here yet. So
Speaker 1: we continue to stand by the young people here or
Speaker 1: have not run out of enthusiasm, and certainly once again
Speaker 1: we are seeing that young people of this country may
Speaker 1: differ on politics. They may be Democrats or Republicans, but
Speaker 1: when you put a fast, hard beat to music, that
Speaker 1: is the universal song of politics for the young people
Speaker 1: of this country.