If nobody else is willing to say this out loud, I’ll step up to the plate.
Barack Obama is totally ripping off Sammy Davis Jr. I’m willing to overlook
their general similarities (cross-racial appeal, Amazon brides, chain
smoking), but the senator’s appropriation of Sammy’s mantra is what really
gets my goat. What’s worse, this alleged master orator is actually guilty of
motto misquoting.
Quite frankly, Obama’s “Yes, We Can” is a hackish catchphrase that invokes
the empty sloganeering of the old politics he decries, and its bland
meaninglessness makes a glut of unwatchable celebrity YouTube videos
inevitable. But Sammy’s sublime ‘Yes, I Can” is a pledge that genuinely
means something. “I Can” represents Davis’ refusal to recognize barriers, be
they Jim Crow policies, societal norms, or sodomy laws. And “Yes” is
basically what Sammy would say if
anyone offered him
anything.
All that Mr. Entertainment needed to partake in a new vice was an
invitation. From clichéd descents into drug addiction to rebellious embraces
of Republican politicians, he took everything to an obsessive extreme. Sure,
everyone wacks off to porn, but after the nanosecond-long “porno-chic” trend
of the 1970s (when
Deep Throat had celebrities lined up to
appreciate Linda Lovelace’s big-screen talents and it was cool for couples
to go to porn theaters on dates), Sammy spent years in shame-free
indulgence, screening 35 mm porn prints at parties, visiting adult-movie
sets where he treated the actresses like Hollywood royalty, and, according
to her biography, taking fellatio lessons from Ms. Lovelace herself. As
Sammy explained in his 1989 memoir,
Why Me?, “I wanted to have
every human experience.”
There’s no better example of this than Sammy’s dabblings in Satanism.
Christian by birth, Jewish by choice, Sammy started his personal
relationship with Satan during a 1968 visit to the Factory, a nightclub he
partially owned. He was invited to a party by a group of young actors
sporting red fingernails, signifying their allegiance to the Church of
Satan. Founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey, a horror fan with a background in
carnival work, ghostbusting, and nightclub organ, the San Francisco-based
ministry combined LaVey’s interests in ancient paganism, a media-savvy flair
for publicity, and a philosophy of indulgence over abstinence.
When Sammy arrived at the party (whose theme he summarized as “dungeons and
dragons and debauchery”), all attendees were wearing hoods or masks. The
centerpiece of the “coven” was a naked woman chained spread-eagle on a
red-velvet-covered alter. Davis was confident though that human sacrifice
was not on the menu that evening. “That chick was happy,” he wrote, “and
wasn’t really going to get anything sharper than a dildo stuck in her.”
Not all the Satanists at that orgy would be so lucky. As Sammy was getting
stoned and serviced, one of the ritual’s leaders tilted back his hood,
revealing himself as Jay Sebring, the singer’s barber. Hollywood’s all-time
greatest hetero hairdresser, Sebring was responsible for the shaggy style
sported by Jim Morrison, helped get Bruce Lee on TV, and was engaged to
actress Sharon Tate. During the Manson Family’s infamous 1969 massacre,
Sebring would be bound to Tate, shot, then stabbed seven times. His bio on
the website for Sebring International (his still-active haircare company)
fails to mention his Satanism, though until recently the company’s logo was
an ankh, a symbol frequently used by occultists.
Sammy continued to attend Satanic orgies and eventually joined the Church of
Satan, though the chronology of his association presented in
Why Me?
deviates from the one offered by estranged LaVey associate Michael Aquino in
his 1983 history of the church. Aquino’s account is supported by numerous
Satanic interoffice memos, though it should be noted that the one time
fourth-degree Satanic priest was known for creating documents he claimed to
have transcribed from conversations with high-profile supernatural demons
(his 1970
Diabolicon quotes Satan, Asmodeus, and Leviathan).
Temple of Set founder Michael Aquino and the Church of
Satan's founder and high priest, Anton Lavey, in San Carlos,
California, after he had become a Warlock IIº in the church.
Photo courtesy of Dr. Michael A. Aquino. Says Aquino: "I
remember Sammy as a very gentle and good-hearted man who was
habitually curious and adventurous - which explains much of
his career as well as his somewhat daring (for a
professional performer) dalliance with Satanism. He stood up
for his own integrity and stood by his friends throughout
his life." |
|
In 1972, after several years of partying with hooded hedonists, Sammy
decided to put all his eggs in Beelzebub’s basket by reinventing himself as
the star of the first satanic sitcom. Though far worse ideas have made it
onto network schedules, it is fair to say that the feature-length NBC pilot
for
Poor Devil (aired Valentine’s Day 1973) is genuinely fucked.
Inverting the story of Clarence the angel from
It’s A Wonderful Life,
it features Davis as a bumbling coal-shoveling demon who is offered a chance
to move up in hell (and to finally fuck Satan’s fine black secretary) if he
can successfully procure the soul of a San Francisco accountant played by
Jack Klugman. After 73 minutes of Sammy’s bumbling attempts to fulfill
Klugman’s bitter revenge fantasies, the one-eyed devil with a heart of gold
takes pity and lets his client out of his contract, returning to his
sulfuric furnace with a comedic shrug.
Even without the satanic overtones, this is a profoundly disturbing film,
with Sammy employing that creepy “innocent” voice he utilizes in the
talk-sing opening of “Candy Man,” and the soulless sitcom non-funniness
rendered even more sinister by the lack of a laugh track. But what makes
this show stand out is the “realism” of hell. There have been plenty of
comical pop-culture devils (Hot Stuff, the comic-book devil of mudflap and
tattoo fame,
Bedazzled), but never with this detail. Not only is
Lucifer played by the genuinely evil Christopher Lee (who opted not to notch
down the Hammer horror vibe), but his imposing office features a gigantic
inverse pentagram behind his desk, framed by walls of lurid, glittering
flames. Each devil wears a pentagram pendant, and Lee casually gestures to
his minions using a devil horn salute. And just in case there was any
ambiguity that this show was turning a sympathetic horn to Satanism, at one
point Klugman, in search of Sammy, lunges for the phone book declaring,
“I’ll call the Church of Satan downtown, they’ll know how to contact him.”
Upon seeing
Poor Devil, an excited Aquino drafted a letter to
LaVey, calling the show a “magnificent commercial for the church.” It was
decided to offer Davis an honorary second-degree Church of Satan membership.
LaVey’s sorceress wife, Dianne, pondered, “Wonder what Mr. Davis would think
about being a black, Jewish, Satanic Warlock?”
He apparently thought pretty well of it. Davis extended an invitation to a
Bay Area concert, where he gleefully accepted a membership certificate,
card, and a IIÞ Baphomet medallion, which he wore during his performance.
After the show, Davis invited Aquino and LaVey’s daughter Karla to dinner,
where he discussed his interest in the occult, and assured them that the
Poor Devil shout-out was no coincidence. Soon after, LaVey himself
struck up a friendship with Davis, who began appearing in public with a
painted fingernail. When Sammy was in the Bay he would reserve front-row
seats for LaVey’s entourage and flashed them the Sign of the Horns during
the show. In private conversations, Davis revealed a deep, passionate
interest in the Satanic philosophies and LaVey reportedly considered making
him a senior official of the Church.
But it was not to be. The first blow to the ascension of Satanic Sammy was
Poor Devil not being picked up as a series because, in addition to
sucking, the pilot reportedly received a good deal of protest from religious
groups. One can only wonder what the series would have been like. Would
Klugman continuously vacillate between heaven and hell, ultimately accepting
Sammy as his satanic slave every week? Or would it be a series of celebrity
soul-sellers, a
Love Boat on the River Styx?
The world will never know, nor shall this mortal realm know what a Sammy-led
Church of Satan might have wrought. Early on, LaVey decided to keep Davis’s
entourage at arm’s length, branding Samala’s PR chief David Steinberg “a
professional Jew” bent on separating Sammy from the Dark One. And by 1974,
probably without Steinberg’s influence, Davis decided to move on. In
Why
Me? he offers that “one morning after a ‘coven’ that wasn’t all fun and
games… I got some nail polish remover and I took off the red fingernail.”
In a
New York Post advance excerpt from his 1980 memoir
Hollywood in a Suitcase (subsequently edited out of the final edition)
Sammy placed his devilish experiences in the context of his “Yes, I Can”
philosophy. “It was a short lived interest, but I still have many friends in
the Church of Satan… I say this to only show that however bizarre the
subject I don’t pass judgment until I have found out everything I can about
it. People who can put up an interesting case will often find that I’m a
willing convert.”
And he often was. And until a certain politician gets the pronouns in his
buzz phrase right, I’m voting for Sammy.
JAKE AUSTEN
