It was just how deep this affair went. I was suddenly in the eye of a hurricane. Sammy liked his lookshe knew his face was ugly, but he worked on his body. 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. Daviss first break in a Las Vegas hotel came in 1946 at the El Rancho. Shirley Rhodes attended the wedding, which was held on January 10, 1958, in the Emerald Room, one of the convention rooms at the Sands Hotel. . 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.

She visited him the day after Davis announced the engagement from the stage at the Sands. In 1956 she had had a small part in Cecil B. DeMilles overwrought epic The Ten Commandments, and she had danced on Broadway. Then they changed her hair, dyeing it three shades of blond at once. Television supposedly turned to him and said, Sammy, if Kim Novak ever sees this, youll be back sleeping with Hattie McDaniel.. Cohn wanted her in one of his pet projects, a biblical epic called Joseph and His Brethren, until her then husband, Haymes, came into Cohns office with a marcelled beard and demanded to be cast as Joseph. Not one picture, he said. Certainly a geniusan entertainment genius. If I let you change me, will that do it? she asks Scottie. . He had a liver that just defied the doctorsnobody knows how he stayed alive, Silber says.

It was tragic, Boyar remembers. Novak virtually left Hollywood in 1962 and, in some sense, returned to being Marilyn Novak. He was a railroad man, Bacon says. Her first husband was a 40-year-old car salesman named Edward C. Judson; she then married director Orson Welles, Aly Khan, heir apparent to the Ismaili Muslim throne, and singer Dick Haymes. It was said that Harry Cohn put more people in the cemetery than all the other moguls combined. She had Harry Cohnwe all knew that, we werent blind. When Doug and Ashley Benefield Started a Ballet Company, It Wasnt Supposed to End in Death. We started with Mae West, Jean Harlow, Marilyn, then Kim. Confidential held a mirror up to Americas mid-50s paranoia and obsessions, its collective fears and fantasies: race, Communism, sex, miscegenation, homosexuality. Harry Cohn got the news of the relationship in New York, where he was attending a memorial dinner for his brother Jack. Sammy was like a man without a country, the actress Barbara Luna recalls. It was Sammys stepmother, Peewee Davis, saying, Hes coming on the next flight., How the hell did they let him go? Silber wondered. Judys reluctant transformation into the ghost of Madeleine is an eerie echo of her metamorphosis into a movie goddess. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. That was just Lets go over and get laid. This was different. But I have to print what I think is news., Fuck you, he said, and hung up., Sam Davis Sr. loved going to the Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood, as did Mickey Cohen, the West Coast gangster who had tried to take over Ben Bugsy Siegels gambling interests after the dapper Siegel had his eye shot out. Thats where Giancana was known to order killings along with his linguinehe was allegedly responsible for the deaths of more than 200 men. She went public with her salary disputes with the studio. He watched as Davis, looking seignorial in his white terry-cloth robe, riffled through his address book. He was pulling her across the bridge in her beautiful dress, and she was fighting him, protesting, Im not ready, Im not ready! Silber sat on his bed polishing his shoes in the suite they shared at the Sands Hotel. And in the following year, S-H-H!

That night would be the first and virtually the last time that Kim Novak and Sammy Davis Jr. would be seen in public together. Every club wanted him, so they would say, Here, Sammy, take $5,000. So he wouldand then he owed them [an engagement]. No men allowed. 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 had to make [the audience] acknowledge me, he told the Boyars. The first thing they did was to call Donjo Medlavine, but they couldnt reach him, so they called Mob boss Sam Giancana at the Armory Lounge in Forest Park, Illinois. Cohn was enraged when her salary disputes made it into a July 1957 *Time-*magazine cover story on her, and his remarks made history: They all believe their publicity after a while. Nevertheless, three days before the inauguration, Kennedys personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, called Davis and disinvited him to the gala event. It didnt matter to Cohn that lavender was a color that Novak loathed. Some of my friends wouldnt even return my telephone calls. Novaks biographer, Peter Harry Brown, always felt that it was Cohn who was the villain of the piece. I said, Harry, weve been friends for a long time. I knew we were in trouble thenthat was the beginning. . Frank knew this was big trouble. She had always acknowledged his instinct for finding the right properties and felt that once he was gone nobody knew what to do with her at the studio. She was Columbias resident sex goddess in the 1940s, but she had a bad habit of getting married. It always hurt him. Will you love me? Davis gave her a call, and she went over to his suite. Endangered animals and their value to our world. Wonderful and dining out afterward at places such as Dannys Hideaway. Cohn blew his top. But women knew better. Davis would travel with a steamer trunk full of porno films, and one particularly tough member of his security team would steal some of the tapes out of Daviss room and charge the bellboys to watch them.. 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.) just doesnt understand show business. Altovise Davis was left with Daviss $7.5 million tax debt. Sammy had been with hundreds of white girls, some quite big names, like Ava Gardneralthough that was no romance. And Sammy was a watch freakhe had maybe a couple of hundred watches. In 1965, Novak would marry the English actor Richard Johnson, who appeared with her in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, but they separated within a year. We were shooting the swan-boat scene, Robertson remembers, where Kim is the Queen of Neewollah. It was getting late. He kept a framed photograph of his hero, Benito Mussolini, on his massive desk and had his office decorated to look like Il Duces.

He got so mad at me and at the story and at her. But ongoing tax problems brought in the I.R.S. You took no notice. In that moment, hidden in Madeleine, there is Judys masked yearning to live, to be noticed, to become real. After that, we switched over to Grace Kelly. 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. 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. 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. An aide leaned over and whispered in his ear what hed heard about Novak and Davis, and Cohn started to fume. I go to Medlavine, whos getting not a lot, say $500 a week, but he likes that money coming in. To show everybody, yeah, guess what Im doing with her! In 1996, Novak reluctantly came out of retirement to help promote the re-release of a beautifully restored Vertigo. The late 1960s and the 1970s were unkind to Davis in other ways. She agreed to that, and thats what took the heat off., Shirley Rhodes, the wife of George Rhodes, Daviss trusted and beloved music director, was one of Daviss closest friends. Youre burning your vocal cords with all that heatyoure making it worse. But nothing could stop himhe did it for the theatrical effect. 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. When Cohn came in, however, the imperious Soul seated him at the back, near the kitchen. The Rat Pack camaraderie was overrated anyhow. It was just the nature of the profession., Davis couldnt get even a private message (actually a secret message, according to Arthur Silber, who refuses to elaborate) to Novak, because her family had only one phone, and it was a party line. John Perona, the owner, was in the kitchen, staring out through the window of the swinging door, just staring at Sammy and the idea of this black man in his place. For the first time, he started chasing trends instead of making them, recording pop tunes far inferior to the velvet standards he had established earlier: The Candy Man and Talk to the Animals instead of Hey There and What Kind of Fool Am I? Sadly, thats the Davis we remember: Nehru jackets, love beads, hugging Richard M. Nixon, fawning over Liz and Dick on his short-lived television show. 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. Come on by, and Ill invite Kim. They both came over and they spent the evening togetherdeep in thought, deep in talk. When Cohn found out about Kim and Sammy, he put a contract outnot to kill him, really, but to break both his legs and to put out his other eye., We had to help ourselves, we had to do some straightening out, Silber says. I loved Sammy and I had the chance to marry the man I loved, she says. Could it be that Sinatra was sore over Daviss dalliances with his former wife Ava Gardner? He Began to Fondle Me. They controlled the silverware.

His nose was broken countless times and permanently flattened; he was given beer to drink by his buddies that was laced with urine. On a tour of Australia, Davis collapsed from sheer exhaustion. 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. Giancana says, We can protect you here in Chicago, or when youre in Vegas, but we cant do anything about Hollywood, Silber remembers. Harry Cohn was tied in very closely with the Mob at that time, the western part of the Mob, says Silber. He just understood everything about show business. 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 was sent to Chicago to go to Kim and say, Sammy loves you..

So now I come in and I see Im paying Donjo Medlavine in Chicago. 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. Dont go back home unless you straighten things out with Harry Cohn., It was really touch and go, Silber recalls. 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. Sammy had no choice but to tell me everything, Silber recalls, because nobody could touch that telephone, except Sammy or me. She was a black woman. That hurt, Boyar recalls. 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. 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. Twenty-two years after their doomed affair, they would meet again in 1979 and dance together one last time. Davis Sr. gracefully stepped aside, but Mastin just couldnt give it up. 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. )? And if those initials werent enough of a tip-off, she followed the item up two days later with Studio bosses now know about K.N.s affair with S.D. In December 1957, Davis returned to Las Vegas, where he was appearing at the Copa Room in the Sands Hotel, the nightclub Frank Sinatra helped run behind Jack Entratter. The edge of the world is actually a slippery slope, Explores the concept and impact of eminent domain. 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. He was out of sync with the new music. Sammy Davis Jr. was born in Harlem in 1925. Sammy, too, because we didnt know who was in the next suite.. Her re-emergence, however, was not entirely pleasant. 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. 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. 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. It was still the Will Mastin Trio with Sammy Davis Jr. at the time, even though Davis had started to push ahead of his father and uncle. Silber described them as just a glorified dance act at the time. But Sammy Davis Jr. threw him completely. Kim Novak was Harry Cohns revenge on Rita Hayworth. The two appeared with a man they called the boys uncle, Will Mastin, in a flash dance act (an entracte performed between movie showings) that became the Will Mastin Trio. It was a very Jim Crow time. He couldnt win. Theyre buried that way, out in Forest Lawn, notes Boyar. Since there was already a Marilyn, the first thing that had to go was her name. 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.



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