Sammy Davis Jr(3)

Dad learned quickly that a white man in uniform rat-tat-tapping on their ghetto door, somewhat louder than before, only meant trouble. Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, his soulful, willful, don’t-mess-with-me Mama would whisper her own words of wisdom to Pop, “We can wait long as he can knock, child!”




My father was born on December 8, 1925, in Harlem, as an only child to vaudevillians, Sammy Davis Sr., an African American and Elvera Sanchez, a Puerto Rican. My father always joked that Elvera’s father was so prejudiced he didn’t even like black shoes. The two separated in 1928. Elvera continued her career as a chorus girl. My grandfather raised Pop with his own mother, my great-grandmother, “Mama.” Pop always felt abandoned by his mother, never cared for her much, but he fronted in public and paid her rent for life. As the story goes, Elvera visited Pop on the vaudeville circuit once when he was just a kid. His father introduced them, “This here is your mother, Elvera.” My father’s response was, “What? I have a new mother every night.”

Dad’s father promptly took his son on the road as part of the Mastin Troupe lead by Will Mastin. Will was not a blood uncle, but Pop always called him affectionately, “Uncle Will.” My father began his rise to stardom playing vaudeville at the ripe age of three years old. In 1928, he was already a little firecracker, sitting on a singer’s lap onstage, imitating her facial movements with hearty laughs from the audience.

The Will Mastin Troupe had become the Will Mastin Trio: “Uncle Will” Mastin, Sammy Davis Sr., and a rising spark plug, Sammy Davis, Jr. Pop adored his father, the limelight, and wanted to be onstage more than anything in the world. My father saw a world where people would applaud you, give you credence, plausibility, a safe haven. The stage was a place where if you had talent, you could grab on to it and earn instant respect. In the early years Dad told me he often said, “What have I got? No looks, no money, no education, just talent.”




I motioned Pop to sit down on his Gucci half-moon couch with me. Lessie Lee had placed our smothered pork chops and some beverages on the coffee table. Our soul food feast sat on the glass coffee table in the good company of Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, sealed in a special case from Liza Minnelli. Liza was a longtime close friend of my father’s, and they entertained together for many years. On the table was also my father’s Kennedy Center Honor, letters from Jack Benny, and a bunch of belt buckles from old western films.

“Silent Sam the Dancing Midget is how they billed me, Trace Face,” said Pop, “I was the freak of the show back in the day!”

The Geary Society in the 1930s had a law that no child under sixteen could sing or dance onstage. Pop explained, “I would sit in the wings and watch the stage. I wanted to be in that gang but I was only four or five years old. I was in my element because I knew no other element. They had to bill me as a forty-four-year-old midget to work because I wanted to work. My father put me in black face, a little redundant, but they thought that was enough of a disguise.”

Pop’s eyes lit up, “Oh Lord, then it all came to a screeching halt at the Liberty Theatre down on Forty-Second Street! Here we are doing our act, making an impression, audience is loving it, then boom! Two beastly women and three white cops climb onstage. Guess they figured out I wasn’t a midget! I hear my father yell, ‘Run boy!’ as the cops throw your grandfather to the ground and handcuff him. So I slipped through the officers, the midget that I was, and man, did I run!”



Black performers often appeared in blackface in the early twentieth century. This is one of dad’s very first professional photos.



My father on stage in the early 1930s


“Where did you run to, Pop?” I asked.

“Home to Mama! Where else? Hey, that was the way it was in show biz at the time. If you had to run, you had to run. Heck, there were adult performers running. Colored folk running was nothing to be embarrassed about. Just had to run sometimes, sign of the times.” Dad smirked.

“What happened to Grandpa?”

“He was thrown in jail. Released with a date for a court appearance. Uncle Will got away somehow. Funny, even thirty years later, when I bought your grandpa that fine house in Beverly Hills next to his doctor’s house, he still slept with a shotgun under his bed!” Pop laughed.

“I used to say to my father: ‘Dad, who’s coming over here to getcha? Your doctor? You gonna shoot him?’”

“And what did Grandpa say?” I asked.

“He would say: ‘Son, you know nothin’ about no safety, no how. You? You’re gonna talk smack to me! You? Who sits with his back to the door still! Who’s coming to get you, son?’” Pop laughed as he reminisced.