Blessed

BLESSED

By

Burt Boyar

.

Copyright 2012 by Burt Boyar

All rights reserved.

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Cover silhouette of Sammy Davis, Jr. by Milton H. Greene

© 2012 Joshua Greene www.archiveimages.com

ISBN: 0-9710392-7-5

ISBN-13: 978-0-9710392-7-8

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9710392-6-1

.

For Jane

Forever

And

para mi madrina

con respeto y cariño

siempre

ALSO BY BURT BOYAR

Yes I Can The Story of Sammy Davis Jr.

With Sammy Davis, Jr. and Jane Boyar

Farrar Straus & Giroux (1965)

Why Me? The Sammy Davis, Jr. Story

With Sammy Davis, Jr. and Jane Boyar

Farrar Straus & Giroux (1989)

SAMMY: The Autobiography of Sammy Davis, Jr.

A compilation of the above. Edited by Burt Boyar

Farrar Straus & Giroux (2000)

H.L. & Lyda - Growing up in the H.L. Hunt and Lyda Bunker Hunt Family.

With Margaret Hunt Hill and Jane Boyar

August House (1994)

World Class - a novel set in the world of international tennis

Random House (1975)

With Jane Boyar

Hitler Stopped by Franco

Marbella House (2001)

With Jane Boyar

Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr.

Judith Regan/HarperCollins (2007)

Jane Boyar passed away in 1997. Invisible Scars is the last book on which she collaborated with Burt.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

THE MYSTERY BEGINS

PARADISE

THE SPANISH EXPERIENCE

BIG FISH

GET TO WORK, THEN

THE HOUSE WAS PERFECT, BUT….

THE BEGINNING OF FOREVER

CRISTÓBAL

AUGUST IN MARBELLA

LA MARQUESA

BUYING SOCKS

THE LANUAGE BARRIER

REVERENCIAS

NEARER MY GOD TO THEE

LA CASA DEL MEDICO

EL ‘OTEL DREETZ

JUST DON’T FAINT

WHITE GLOVES

SECURITY

HUNGRY WRITERS

BE IT EVER SO HUMBLE….

BACK TO WORK

KEY TO THE PERSONALITIES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

If there were a list of what I’ve done, the people I have known, where I have been, the fun I have had, the idyllic marriage and great love I enjoyed for nearly half a century - and if I read it with someone else’s name on it, I would think he is exaggerating.

Jane, of course, is the most precious, most eternal blessing I have ever received.

But, there are three other people the Lord put into my life who gave me more than I can describe. The following will attempt to explain how these three people could only have come to me directed by the highest power. They are my best, dearest friend, Al G. Hill, Jr., the late Sammy Davis, Jr. and our publisher, the late Roger W. Straus, Jr. The only thing they have in common is - me. Their only similarity is that their names all bear Jr. They are a diverse group of extraordinary men: a Texas oilman - entrepreneur, the world’s greatest entertainer, and America’s most prestigious book publisher. If God would forgive me I would kill for any one of them.

When I go to church every week, and to sleep every night, I thank the Lord for the wonderful life He has given me and for the people He has put in my path. I start by thanking Him for arranging for me to be born in The United States of America, this blessed country where we can be anything we are good enough to be if we try hard enough. Then I thank Him for the parents to whom I was born, middle class socially and economically but upper class in loving my brothers and me, and giving us every help in advancing ourselves.

Then I begin naming the other people. I try to do it chronologically but there have been so many that have given me a leg up, intentionally or not, that my mind goes first to Jane, Al, Sammy, Roger, Carmen Franco and her husband, Cristóbal…there have been so many. I have never, but should have, named Ed Bates, a New York Chevrolet dealer I worked for in the 50s, who fired me because I was foolishly insubordinate. Too full of myself at 27 years of age. I don’t think it was his intention to educate me, but he sure did.

CHAPTER ONE

The first time Cary Grant called me I was rushing to finish my column.

May I speak with Mr. Boyar?

Yes. I’m Burt Boyar.

Hel—lo, Burt. Cary Grant…..

Oh, come on, Dick, I’m on a deadline. Call me later. I was certain it was a friend, Dick Bienen, who loved doing a Cary Grant impression, although usually it was Judy…Judy…Judy…..

Don’t hang up, Burt, the voice said. "I really am Cary Grant. Call me at The Plaza Hotel whenever you have time."

I immediately called The Plaza, asked for Cary Grant, was asked who was calling and in a moment I heard that same voice.

He graciously dismissed my humiliation, Not at all. It’s happened before.

Mr. Grant made a point of calling me to say hello whenever he had occasion to be in New York. It was extremely flattering. I was a young columnist, not at all a big deal, published daily in the Newhouse and Annenberg newspapers and with a weekly column in TV Guide, and though I had a combined daily circulation of around ten million readers I was too new to have name value, or clout. I was still a relative unknown. For example, when I was not invited to a particular movie premiere I complained to the studio’s press agent who tactfully explained that they just didn’t have enough seats to invite me. Offended, I retorted, "If I were Walter Winchell you’d find some tickets. He said, Yes. But not because of what Walter could do for me but what he would do to me if I didn’t."

Winchell had a well-earned name for being vindictive and ruthless. Perhaps I was the only exception but he treated me like a favorite nephew.

Earlier, I had been a press agent, getting my clients (the Carlyle Hotel, some restaurants like The Chateaubriand and Mario’s Villa d’Este, and a hotel in Las Vegas, El Rancho Vegas) into the papers by writing jokes, verse and other column items for Winchell, Dorothy Kilgallen, Ed Sullivan, Cholly Knickerbocker and Charles Ventura, society columnist for the World-Telegram—all of the New York columnists. I was so successful at it that I yearned to write my own column and I started by writing one a week, having it set in type, and mats made of it. I felt that would help sell it because with a mat a small newspaper had only to pour lead over it and print from that, saving production costs. The process cost me about $3 apiece and I had around a hundred weekly newspapers buying it for $1 a week. I did not make up the loss on volume but it did get me started as a columnist.

One of the publishers suggested that my column would be more popular if the readers felt I really knew the people I wrote about.

But I don’t.

Doesn’t matter, he said. Can you get pictures of yourself with a star and run a different one in each column? It would give you a kinship to fame.

I called the various publicists around town, told them truthfully that I had a hundred weekly papers carrying my column and they were all happy to provide their clients for a ten minute photo op. I got everyone who came to town, even the hottest of the moment in the late 50s, like Johnny Ray and Kim Novak at their peaks. But the most memorable was Joan Crawford, because she was so smart. She agreed to the picture but only with her own photographer. I was delighted to save the money and she was happy to pay for the right to choose the photo she liked. Miss Crawford was not a major star by mistake. Further, she must have used a clipping service because whenever I mentioned her name I would receive a handwritten, affectionate thank-you note from Joan Crawford. She was Mommy Dearest to her kids but in my book she was a great pro.

As Cary Grant was certainly one of the best dressed men anywhere, not only in the movies, during one conversation with him I suggested that my readers might enjoy a column about Shopping With Cary Grant. He agreed, we set a date and I arrived punctually at The Plaza Hotel, called upstairs and was given the number of his suite. Come in, called out that now familiar and genuine voice. The door was not locked. I entered and from down the hall he called out, I’m down here. I walked into the bedroom and there he was, indeed, ending a brief nap, stretched out on his bed, nude except for a pair of see-through boxer-shorts. I stopped abruptly, apologized for intruding and said I would wait for him in the living room.

As I sat on a couch, I wondered, What is it with these famous men and their transparent underwear? A close pal of ours, Jule Styne, the composer of great Broadway musicals like Gypsy and Bells Are Ringing", also wore them. Whenever we went to his apartment to pick him up on the way to dinner he received us in those same see-through boxer-shorts as he finished shaving or was just putting on his shirt.

Soon Mr. Grant appeared, impeccably dressed in grey flannels and a grey tweed sport coat. He did not have a car and driver. I suggested we walk the short nine blocks. He said, I can’t walk down Fifth Avenue. So we taxied to Saks Fifth Avenue. Then it took us twenty minutes to walk from the front door to the elevators. Every saleswoman and salesman and their customers stopped what they were doing to gasp at Cary Grant, to rush over to him, touch his coat, say lovely things and impede our forward motion. Now I understood that it was not a blister on his foot or a sprained ankle that prevented him from walking down Fifth Avenue. He explained, I went into Macy’s once and later the manager told me that my twenty minutes on their main floor had cost them twelve thousand dollars in lost sales. He asked me very politely not to come back unless I called ahead and they’d keep the store open for me after hours, or send me anything I needed.

We were on the sixth floor, at The Wetzel Shop, Saks’ custom clothing department, where he had a few suits in the works. We were not kept waiting. I got a good column out of it, but mainly I had my first inside look at super stardom.

Another was when Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor were in town at the Regency Hotel. Our apartment was at 530 Park Avenue, the building across the street from them. In order to get their attention I sent them a one pound tin of fresh Beluga caviar. I knew a lot about caviar, as I had been a caviar taster a few years earlier and I sent them the best available. This was in the fifties and the price, we thought then, was monstrously expensive: $20 a pound. The same caviar today, if you can get it, costs over a thousand dollars a pound. And that’s a Russian pound: 12 ounces.

The phone rang. It was Eddie Fisher, thanking me, telling me he had never had this happen from a journalist and would Jane and I meet them for a drink that evening at El Morocco? Would we ever! It was a columnist’s delight!

Jane had a new Traina-Norell dress that was inaugurated that evening, we rushed to Bergdorf-Goodman to have her hair done, we cleaned her engagement ring and wedding band to lift the sparkle, she wore her diamond drop earrings and we walked into Morocco feeling and looking spectacular. Elizabeth and Eddie were at a banquette - excuse me, at the banquette, the center one in front of the dance floor where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Cee Zee Guest were always seated.

Elizabeth and Eddie were utterly charming and sweet and welcoming, thanking us again and again for the caviar, complimenting the quality of it. But it was a nightmare. Impossible. If you are a beautiful girl, as Jane was, wearing the best you have, which was not at all shabby, it does not matter when you are sitting next to Elizabeth Taylor. You are invisible! First, Elizabeth’s great beauty and that famous, famous face would wash out anyone. Then, her gown was surely couture, Dior or Balenciaga. And as if that weren’t enough, the diamonds she wore up and down her arms and around her neck and in her hair would light up a landing strip for a 747 to come in safely. We wilted and froze. I couldn’t think of anything funny or interesting to say. Imagine! A young columnist is sitting with the country’s two most famous people who are being charming to us and all we can think of is: how quickly can we make a run for it.

In the cab going home, Jane said, Never again. I agreed. Right. The next time Elizabeth Taylor wants to go somewhere with us - ‘Thanks, but we’re busy.’ We broke up. How could you not laugh? It was ludicrous.

* * *

Being a Broadway columnist opened the door to a lot of people - all kinds. One night I had no news, no jokes, no gossip—no column. But when you are a daily columnist you must fill that space in the newspaper every day. It was two in the morning, my deadline was five A.M. I began writing about The Copacabana, the number one entertainment nightclub in America. Not only did they feature the biggest name performers but I admired it as the best run operation in New York. Jules Podell, its boss had very strict rules that were enforced with his iron hand. He had definite priorities as to who was important in the eyes of the Copa. For example: at an un-advertised Frank Sinatra opening that was sold out just on the rumor that he would be playing there, every celebrity in New York was on hand. The people at the ringside were unknown, anonymous looking, but the Copa knew them as frequent customers, business men who entertained their customers at the Copa all year round, whereas Marlene Dietrich was seated at a table in the rear of the balcony. Joe DiMaggio who got cheers when he walked in was, nevertheless, also at a small table for two in the rear of the balcony. To Mr. Podell, the real Very Important People were his constant customers and they always got preference over the glitter. But, and he was equally firm on this, no ringside table could ever be occupied by a group of men. There had to be a lady or two in the party. There were other details that I can no longer remember but I was clear on them at the time and wrote a smash-hit endorsement of the Copacabana as the finest nightclub in America. From then on I was personna MOST grata at the Copa. The next time we went there I saw that my column had been reprinted on tent cards and was on every table. We had always been invited to openings, and seated on the front row of the balcony, with the other columnists, Earl Wilson and Leonard Lyons (N.Y. Post), Louis Sobel (Journal-American), Walter Winchell (Daily Mirror) Ed Sullivan (Daily News). And we had always been delighted, flattered to be there among those big-timers. But this time the captain swept us past them, past our usual table to one at the center ringside. When the show was over we left, planning, as always, to walk the two and a half blocks to our apartment building. Instead, there was a Cadillac limousine waiting for us, and a burly, smiling man whom other people might refer to as a hood, inviting us to be driven home. (forgive the trivia, but for no reason I can understand, mob owned limos were always a few years old, last year’s model.) It was a lovely evening and we really felt like walking. No way. We were told, The boss wants to be sure you get home safely. It did not occur to us at the time, or even for a week or two, that the boss was Frank Costello, the secret owner of the Copacabana and probably the head hood in America. I don’t believe he had anything to do with Murder Inc., his businesses were what his world considered legitimate, gambling and liquor, but he was influential. So much so that from then on whenever we went to a restaurant we got treatment far better than mere syndicated columnists who were only treated like kings. The word of his friendship spread across town and we were the anointed. One steak house owner stopped by our table and smiling benignly at us, said, "Some very important people like you. They like you a lot."

Well, that was not disagreeable. And it was useful. Whenever there was a Copa opening and our friends Jule Styne and Betty Comden and Adolph Green wanted to go, even though they were far more important than I, by a million miles, having written great Broadway shows like On The Town, Gypsy Funny Girl, A Wonderful Town, Will Rogers Follies, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Bells Are Ringing, etc. etc. yet they couldn’t get reservations, so they called me and I had a center ringside table for us all.

It was fun having these colorful, muscular friends, but one had to be careful, like when handling a loaded gun. For example, if I were to look sad and was asked by one of them, Hey, what’s eatin’ ya? and if I were to have said that someone had done me dirt, that person could disappear. Never to be seen again. Or he could get a lesson in manners, which is not a class you want to take from two or three gorillas.

On several occasions after a night at the Copa or a three AM breakfast at Reuben’s they would say goodnight with the phrase, Anyone ever hits you, lemme know. In later years Frank Sinatra said this to Sammy Davis, Jr. when Sammy was still an unknown kid and Sinatra was King and reaching out to help him. He said, You’ve got a friend for life. Which proved to be true. And then he added, If anyone hits you lemme know. I don’t think Frank originated that dialogue.

Then, one day we read a front page article in the New York Times mentioning the name of one of our new best friends, reporting that he was indicted on two counts of First Degree Murder. And we had been riding home in his car. My God, what if one of his associates had decided to take a shot at him and hit us instead? We resumed walking home. But the Copa was always a good experience.

Sammy had a ringside table for the midnight show for every night of Sinatra’s run, the one I mentioned earlier. As Sammy was onstage at Golden Boy until 11:00 PM Jane and I were his hosts. We got there early and greeted the ten people he had invited to see Frank. One night it was Sam Sr. and PeeWee (Rita Wade, Senior’s girl friend, later his wife), Sugar Ray Robinson, Sammy’s sister, Ramona and her husband, his mother Elvira and a few others.

Opening night was amazing. With every celebrity in town present and every table overcrowded, with the dance floor the size of a postage stamp because of extra tables required at ringside, there was a happy hysteria over Frank’s arrival. Finally, the band hit a loud downbeat and the announcer blared the name of the opening act and an unassuming looking young man walked onstage to the extreme disinterest of everyone. They were there to see SINATRA not some unknown comic.

The poor guy looked around the room at the disappointed faces and waited for them to quiet down. Then, gesturing at the overflow crowd, he said, "You think this is something? Wait’ll Frank’s people get here." Brilliantly, Joey Bishop threw away the new act he had prepared, ad-libbed the next fifteen minutes and became a star that night.

Then Frank walked on and mesmerized the audience. His power onstage was such that no one dared speak while he sang. If they did he would just look in their direction and there was silence.

When the show was over and we were upstairs at the coat check room a comic who did not rate anything even close to a ringside table hissed in my ear, How’d ya like sitting in Africa? Obviously he had been at a rear table, had seen Sammy at ringside, was jealous and felt compelled to strike at him this way.

I glared at him, Don’t ever speak to me again, and walked away with Jane.

A few weeks later Sammy invited him somewhere with us and he and Sammy were acting best-of-friends style. And the comic and I weren’t talking. It was the last time I dealt myself into someone else’s fight without being asked.

* * *

I can’t say I came from nowhere and ended up going everywhere. I knew only my paternal grandfather, Alexander Boyar, who emigrated here from Russia before the revolution. My mother’s parents, Russian fur traders, also came here then. I’ve never made more than a cursory attempt at reconstructing my family tree, being less interested in where I came from than where I was going, but what little I learned is that in pre-Lenin Russia, the Boyars were the great landowners. Though it would be pleasant to claim an aristocratic background and perhaps sue Vladimir Putin for a few thousand acres of Russian farmland, I rather doubt that grandpa would leave all that behind to become a die-maker here. I have been more involved with the family I knew and could touch. My father, Ben Boyar, born in Waterbury, Connecticut was a local newspaper reporter, then went to New York and took a job as a stenographer for Broadway producer, Max Gordon, and quickly rose to be Mr. Gordon’s General Manager. Max Gordon, a Broadway legend, was the producer of plays like The Solid Gold Cadillac, Born Yesterday, Junior Miss, My Sister Eileen, The Doughgirls, and earlier, Three’s A Crowd, Ethan Frome, Dodsworth, The Great Waltz, The Cat and The Fiddle, and The Band Wagon among many other hit shows. Their switch from big musicals to comedies was due to the cost of a musical, in those days (the 20’s and 30’s) an astronomical $300,000 for a musical, (today it’s 15 to 30 MILLION). Possibly an even more important cause for the shift in emphasis was a close alliance Mr. Gordon had with the best comedy writer-directors in the theater: Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman.

An interesting economic note: my father told me that during the Great Depression when some unfortunate people were standing on street corners hoping to sell pencils to make a few cents, Dad’s show The Band Wagon had dozens of people standing in line to buy tickets. Dad was the manager of all of these shows. If they had more than one hit on Broadway at the same time (their record was three) he hired managers for two and took an over-ride on each show for supervising as General Manager. He was variously known as Big Ben and/or The Mayor of Broadway. Dad lunched at Sardi’s every day, a bonanza for me and my friends for whom he always got passes to Saturday matinees, and, as we were in the neighborhood we would join him for lunch, without invitation but with his gracious consent when we arrived to enjoy the luscious Sardi’s menu. And for me to point with pride at his caricature over the entrance with the other people who had made Sardi’s the landmark it became.

In not too many years later Max Gordon stopped producing shows and my father’s caricature suddenly disappeared from the most prominent place at Sardi’s to upstairs, where the rest rooms were and the only diners were overflow, the people who didn’t count. My father was not a man to cry. He took action. Or, specifically, he took his caricature off the wall near the Men’s room, put it under his coat and leaving the restaurant said goodbye to Sardi’s forever. My brother, Bob, has it today.

Despite all the glamour Dad was not a money man. We always lived well, in good apartments in good neighborhoods, Mother dressed us at Saks Fifth Avenue and Best & Company, yet I vividly recall her sitting at the dining room table, painfully paying the bills every month. She kept them in a brown leather envelope and would send them each a small check on account just to let them know she was not ignoring the debt. Despite my father’s substantial earning power he and Max Gordon were addicted to playing the horses. As we always lived in neighborhoods slightly better than we could afford, my friends whose parents were more affluent used to go to Europe with their families in the summers, something I could not imagine. In fact, money was so scarce in the 30’s, when I was around twelve, that I remember asking my father for a dime to go to a movie. He gave it to me, but said, Don’t ever do this to me again.

Because Dad could arrange passes or preferred seats to hit shows he made a lot of friends. We always had great telephone numbers. In New York it was Endicott 2 -7777, then