Sammy Davis Jr(27)
Frank stood up with my father. Mama, my Grandfather, Uncle Will, my grandparents from Sweden, were there, among others. The guests watched on in the living room with a canopy of flowers by the windows—under which stood my parents as bride and groom. Shirley was the maid of honor.
Pop was so deeply in love with my mother. His whole life, he said he felt alone, in the army and all. Once he met my mother, he didn’t feel alone anymore. She was the love of his life—his joy, his better half. When Mom appeared from the next room with her father, looking like a Swedish goddess in her dress, tears welled up in my father’s eyes. He was a superstar, but she was an icon, at least to him.
The words of Rabbi William Kramer are words that should never be forgotten—ever. They should live on forever.
This is what he said to my parents:
“Almighty God, supremely blessed, supreme in might and glory, guide and bless this groom and his bride. Sammy and May, you are standing in front of me to join your lives even as your hands are joined together, and custom dictates that I, as your rabbi, give you some advice.
“Your marriage is something more than just the marriage of two people in love, and it is most certainly that or I have never seen two people in love in twenty years of the ministry. But as you come together as man and wife something more is involved. You are people without prejudice. You represent the value of the society that many of us dream about but, I suspect, hesitate to enter. As such, because you are normal in an abnormal society—society will treat you as sick. To be healthy among the sick is to be treated as sick as if the others were healthy.
“Through no fault of your own except your love, because both of you are greater than the pettiness that divide men, you become not simply a symbol of marriage, but because you both have accepted Judaism equally as your own you become representatives of Judaism because you are in the public eye; you are part of that from which the public gets its response and its value systems—either by acting along with or reacting to.
“Also, because of the circumstances of your love, there is a symbolic representation to the fact that you are of different racial stocks originally and that now you merge your love as in a sense all mankind is merging its genes and chromosomes to the oneness which is inevitable. It’s not really fair that your love should have so much imposed upon it, but it must be a mark of greatness of your love to know that you must not only continue to love each other, but because circumstances beyond control—and all circumstances involved in real love are beyond control—make you representatives of Judaism and marriage to a world that watches with curiosity, with eagerness, almost with a will to see failure rather than success.
“An additional pressure is on you in knowing that because of the different racial backgrounds you are a symbol, too, of the success that must come from such union s. If you are true to the story of your love, then your social role in our times will be an important one. Important for the future of the amity of races.
“What I pray for you, May, and for you, Sammy, is the strength that you may fulfill either the public role or private role, because if you can do either, you will be doing both. If you are true to that which you have called upon yourselves or which has been thrust upon you by society, then your love will be a love story to join immortal love stories of the ages.
“May the blessings of the patriarchs and the prophets, may the blessings of God Almighty be upon you and may you be worthy, my dear friends, of a historic trust and a great love.”
Mom and Dad’s marriage was so controversial they required bodyguards.
After that Rabbi Kramer led them into their “I do’s.” I turned to my father, who was smiling.
“Thank you Trace Face. That lifted my spirits. It energizes me to think of the good ole days. Your mom was glowing in every wedding photo.”
“She was glowing all right! Glowing with a one hundred three degree fever,” I said.
“It’s true. Your mother was so sick. She was in bed before the ceremony and after!” Pop exclaimed.
“Mom said the doctor told her she had an intestinal flu and had to stay in bed.”
“And your mother told the doctor: ‘You’re crazy! It’s my wedding!’”
“Mom always told me, ‘your poor father had to go to the reception by himself, without his bride!’”
“What she said to me after the reception, in her Swedish decoding process was, ‘Poor Sharlie Brown had to go alone to his own wedding party!’”
“Sharlie Brown, that’s funny. You were Charlie Brown, too. A solo groom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel with no bride and swarms of guests to entertain!” Among the guests were Peter Lawford and his wife, Diana Dors, Tony Curtis, Barbara Rush, Jack Kelly, Mr. and Mrs. Dean Martin, Peter Brown, Janet Leigh, Shirley MacLaine, Edward Robinson Jr., Milton Berle, the list goes on and on.