Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 31 March 1972 — Page 40
40
THE JEWISH POST AND OPINION
Friday, March 31, 1972
Sammy Davis Describes
(Continued from Preceding Pg.) ture, because in the old days, I hung around with two people, one of which is very much with us, by the name of Tony Curtis. The other buddy that I hung around with was named Jeff Chandler, who passed away, who was a marvelous man, a great actor, a very big star
at the time.
And our ambition was that the two of them, being movie stars, would put me in movies, then, and every once in a while something would happen and
there would be a part up, and that would be it, and I’d always miss it. I never made a movie
with them.
So finally, I’m in Las Vegas and we’re making $7,500 a week for the three of us, and it’s really cooking — big time, you know. And Jeff gets on the phone and he says, “Sam, I just wrote a song for Tony’s new picture, which is ‘Six Bridges to Cross.’ He says, “Sam, if you will come in and record the song, then we won’t be doing a picture together, but
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at least we’ll all be — have something to do with the pic* ture, because Tony’s starring in it with George Nader, and I wrote the music and the lyrics with Hank Mancini,” he said. “And you’ll sing it. You’ll sing the title song.” Groovy! Got in the car, went right after the second show, and it’s early in the morning, beautiful California morning, right, and we’re going down the highway and there’s a road with a dividing thing here, that goes outskirts of San Bernardino, to the town. I was hungry; I wanted to go in the town and get some coffee. I’m driving, it’s like five miles an hour, and it’s beautiful •— convertible — and you know how you look down the road and you see something and it’s like watching a movie that’s going; when they do a movie now, you see it in slow motion. I saw this car pull out, pull from this lane — this is two lanes going this way and two lanes coming this way; no divider in the middle. I saw this lady go from this lane over to this lane, where I was travelling in, and go into a cut-across that goes to the outside. In other words, there’s a piece of pie there. At the edge of the piece of pie, she was making a cut. She decided, once she got there — I didn’t know it was ladies at the time; it was a car — when she got halfway into the piece of pie, we’ll say, for sake of argument, she decided she didn’t want to go there, so she backed up on the highway. And she backed her car this way on the highway, like so, and I’m doing 65 miles an hour, and I started putting on the brakes, and I started to skid, ’cause I didn’t want to hit her broadside, ‘cause I knew if I hit her broadside, hit the car broadside, that would be it. And I finally swerved, and I’m trying to get into this lane, but oncoming traffic’s coming this way. So I just rode the line and hit her — hit the tail-end of her car, and her car’s in like this. My head went bang, like this, and I took the car and put it in, by a motel. I went into there, on this side of the
road.
Traffic stopped. I pulled the car over, got out of the car, and I can’t remember anything except people going “Aaah,” like this. I walked across the road. Everything was now —? traffic had stopped; I walked over and opened up the door of the car, found that it was two ladies, helped them out — thank God, they were marvelously safe, except for one lady, I found out later, had cracked ribs; everything else was good. And the woman, as I got her out, looked up, like this, and looked at me and she turned her head. I went back across the street to get my man, Charles Head, who was in the back of the car, sleeping, to get him out, and he — all of his teeth had been knocked out, and he got out of the car like this and he looked up at me, and he went, (groans) — right? And he was pointing at my
face.
Now, the only thing I thought was that I had gotten cut, hit in the top of the head, and you know how it is as a kid — you get hit in the top of the head and blood runs in the eyes, and I went like this and
I had to do this and put it and hold it, and I remember saying, “Oh, God, I don’t want to go blind. Please, I don’t want to go blind.” And that — the next thing I remember was I woke up in the hospital; the eye had been removed, and the doctor’s sayin gto me, “Wake up; you’ve been sleeping too long,” he says, “I’ve got a couple of things to tell you. First of all, we had to remove your eye.” The first thing he said to me, which I will thank the doctor forever for saying to me, because it got my head immediately together, ’cause that — he put it right on the line; no play-acting. And he said, “I’d like to get that, whatever you have in your hand, out of it,” right? And I had my hand like this,
and it seems that, while they were wheeling me to the operating room, Jeff Chandler and Tony Curtis put in my hand a mezzuzah — a Star of David and a mezzuzah, and closed my hand on it. I held onto it during the whole operation. It cut in my hand; there’s a scar, a print of the Star of David in my palm now. That’s the scar I was talking about. So, when I got out of the hospital I went back to Rabbi I think I carry the scar. I think I deserve to be a Jew,” (Laughter) And that — to me, that carried me through. I had all the fates working for me. ’Cause I never made a movie until ! . . . (Applause) Do you like that?
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