“Sober up, and you see and hear everything that you’d been able to avoid hearing before.”
Born to a vaudeville family, Sammy Davis, Jr., spent his childhood as part of the Will Mastin Trio, named after his uncle and also featuring his father. He struck out on his own in the 1950s, with solo records and a starring role on Broadway in Mr. Wonderful (1956). Later he would become a top attraction in Las Vegas as part of the Rat Pack, along with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Davis had a successful (if not terribly distinguished) film career, most notably appearing in the Rat Pack vehicle Oceans 11 (1960) and the Cannonball Run series. He scored a surprise number-one radio hit with “The Candy Man” in 1972 and became a regular fixture on television through the 1970s and 80s, guest-starring on sitcoms (All in the Family, The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show), game shows (Family Feud), even soap operas (General Hospital, One Life to Live). Davis shared one of the first interracial onscreen kisses, with Nancy Sinatra during a 1967 television special, but his romantic relationships with white women—including a marriage to Swedish actress May Britt—were a constant source of controversy. So, too, was his conversion to Judaism and his public support of Richard Nixon. Despite it all, Sammy remained to the end one of the country’s most beloved performers.
IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE the happiest day of his life. Almost midnight at the Copa, January 10, 1958, and Sammy Davis, Jr., had just gotten married. The lucky woman was Loray White, a singer at a Vegas nightclub called the Silver Slipper. They’d met three years earlier in L.A., dated for eight months, then gone their separate ways—until a week ago when Davis came looking for her and proposed.
She showed up for the wedding an hour late. Both were so nervous, they accidentally called her “Leroy” on the marriage-license application. The ceremony lasted two minutes. And now, at the Copa, he’d just finished his regular evening performances and everyone around him was celebrating his marriage, his shows, his success. But all Davis could do was cry. Cry and drink himself stupid.
What made the occasion particularly strange is that just ten days prior, on New Year’s Day, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist named Irv Kupcinet had leaked the news that Davis was intending to marry actress Kim Novak, whose family hailed from Chicago. Novak had denied the story, but Kupcinet claimed he’d found an application for marriage with both their names. The story made headlines the world over. But now Davis was marrying another woman?
Rumors of a Novak-Davis affair had been floating in gossip columns long before Kupcinet reported it. The two met sometime in 1957 at a party thrown by Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, and spent the evening chatting away. The next morning, word was in the papers. Davis realized the harm this could do to both their careers, so he called Novak to assure her he hadn’t planted the information. She invited him over for spaghetti. And thus a clandestine relationship blossomed. Being driven to see her, Davis would lie on the floorboard of the car, a blanket draped over him.
But no level of discretion was going to keep the Novak-Davis pairing a secret for long. When word got back to Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn—who’d been grooming Novak as the studio’s new “it” girl (a replacement for the uncontrollable Rita Hayworth)—he had not one, but two heart attacks. Literal put-you-in-the-hospital heart attacks. Fearing the harm the story might do to Novak’s career (read: his investment), Cohn hired some tough guys to drive Davis out to the desert and explain things. But Davis was tipped off to the plan and fled to the Sands in Las Vegas, under the protection of mob boss Sam Giancana.
Eventually, all parties decided the best way to put this whole business behind everyone was for Davis to pay another woman to marry him as quickly as possible, a black woman. (This would also have the added advantage of quieting the black press, which was livid over Novak.) Davis sat down and started flipping through his address book, looking for a wife. And then he came upon White.
The happy couple would divorce a few months later. For her trouble, White received $25,000. Cohn, despite securing his investment, would die of a heart attack the next month. As for Sammy—his heart would only be broken.
PRIVATE CLUBS IN LOS ANGELES have found varying levels of success over the years (the Clover Club worked where the Embassy Club didn’t), but the mysterious and legendary Magic Castle, located in the Hollywood Hills, has been going strong for over fifty years.
The name’s no joke: Originally built in 1909 as the private estate of banker/developer Rollin B. Lane, the chateau—a replica of the landmark Kimberly Crest house in Redlands, California—was leased by television writer Milt Larsen (of Truth and Consequences fame) in 1961, with the express of purpose of converting it into an exclusive hangout for magicians. (Larsen’s father had been one).
Today, the Academy of Magical Arts—as the Castle’s fraternity is known—boasts five thousand members, including at one time or another such famous types as Orson Welles, Johnny Carson, Muhammad Ali, Cary Grant, Steve Martin, and Tony Curtis.
With multiple dining rooms, bars, and nightly performances in several theaters (the Palace of Mystery, the Parlor of Prestidigitation), it’s one of Hollywood’s most unique nightlife experiences, but only open to Academy members and their guests—and only if their guests follow the dress code. (It’s called a tie, people.) This means anyone hoping to marvel at Irma, the phantom pianist, or participate in one of the Castle’s regular Houdini Séances ought to get working on their sleight of hand, or start hanging out at toddlers’ birthday parties.
