There were bomb threats in Reno, Chicago, and San Franciscowherever Davis played. Silber caught it and flew into Los Angeles, then picked up an American Airlines flight to Chicago. Theyre buried that way, out in Forest Lawn, notes Boyar. Josh Logan kept saying, Where the hell is she? He finally got on the megaphone and yelled, Kim, get your ass over here! He charged across the bridge with all the other actors holding their breath. Harry Cohn was tied in very closely with the Mob at that time, the western part of the Mob, says Silber. Silber recalls, He sat her downhe was sitting in a chair and I was sitting on the bedand he made her a proposition, to marry him for a certain sum of money. That hurt, Boyar recalls. 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. He was too valuable. Davis was buried between his father and Will Mastin. And thats where Sammy is buried today. Frank knew this was big trouble. Henri Soul, the owner of Le Pavillon and La Cte Basque in New York, detested Cohn and considered him a dclass Hollywood hood. His final production would be a deluxe funeral mounted on two of Columbia Pictures cavernous soundstages, complete with a phony chapel, fake stained-glass windows, and plastic shrubbery. Only when he was assigned to Special Services, for which he performed in camp shows around the country, did the acts of violence diminish. 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.. Novak was installed at the Studio Club, a curfewed dormitory for young starlets where Cohn could have his expensive new possession watched around the clockeven tailed by studio detectives to make sure she didnt follow the wayward path of Rita Hayworth. 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. It was a very Jim Crow time. He recognized it worked for him., It didnt take long for the gossip industry to go into high gear about the attraction between Davis and Novak. His personal charisma was so great, his stage presence so sexually charged, that women were outrageously drawn to him. 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. . . That fourth horse, I think can do it., The next girl to walk through Cohns door was Marilyn Novak, a shy, plump, large-boned 20-year-old from Chicago with no acting experience but a breathtaking face. He told Shirley Rhodes, You know, the world owes me nothing. Hed keep tabs on all the writers. That was just Lets go over and get laid. This was different. Daviss first break in a Las Vegas hotel came in 1946 at the El Rancho. After Hayworth returned to Hollywood in 1951. 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. It was damned scary. Never again, he told Sy Marsh. 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. dancing down the barriers between us., Arthur Silber Jr. met Davis in 1946, when Silbers father became the agent for the Will Mastin Trio. Then they changed her hair, dyeing it three shades of blond at once. He just understood everything about show business. Sammy had no choice but to tell me everything, Silber recalls, because nobody could touch that telephone, except Sammy or me. Cohn decided he was going to take the next girl who walked into his office and manufacture a new star for Columbia Pictures, one who would do exactly what he wanted, who wouldnt walk away until he and the public were finished with her. She contracted with a New York publisher to write her memoirs and managed to get through her childhoodwhich were not easy yearsbut she found that she had virtually blacked out entire events of her life in Hollywood. Jack Entratter hosted the reception. He was booed when he flew to Chicago to appear at a benefit for Jesse Jackson and his Operation PUSH. It would open up more doors to his being accepted.. He and his stylish wife, Jane, were fixtures of New Yorks nightlife, and they befriended Sammy Davis in 1956 when he was appearing on Broadway in the musical comedy Mr. Eventually, through a third party, Davis rented a beach house in Malibu for private rendezvous. In truth, Harry Cohn had much less value to the Mob. But women knew better. Novak still wasnt ready. 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. Entratter put her up in the Presidential Suite of the Sands Hotelalone. It was said that Harry Cohn put more people in the cemetery than all the other moguls combined. Marsh took him to a specialist, who found that his constant smoking and singing had caused inflamed nodes on his vocal cords. with Southerners and Southwesterners who got their kicks out of needling me. is seriously dating which big-name entertainer (S.D. The last time he would see her was at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. His clumsy attempt to clear his name, in a no-holds-barred interview with BBC, Jerry Lewiss Costars Speak Out: He Grabbed Me. The two of them went out in the backyard and Altovise and I went in the other room, and we let them talk. Soon after the frightening events of 195758, he met the Swedish actress May Britt at the Mocambo Club on Sunset Boulevard. The man known as the greatest entertainer in the world was onstage, the smoke from his cigarette trellising the air. Davis would enlist Silber to drive him to Novaks house, hiding in the back of the car, huddled under a rug, to avoid the press and any studio detectives. He had sent to his house for his beautiful silk robe, his silk pajamas. She would make her film debut in 1961 with Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy in The Devil at 4 OClock. Her marriage to Khan, a notorious playboy and womanizer, kept her out of pictures for more than two years, infuriating Cohn and further alienating her fans. The affair was an open enough secret that Davis had to endure tasteless remarks about it, even from his friends. Even then he would search the audience every night for troublemakers. We can handle it any way you think best, he told her. But Sammy Davis Jr. threw him completely. Novak virtually left Hollywood in 1962 and, in some sense, returned to being Marilyn Novak. He agreed to postpone his marriage to Britt until after the presidential election, even though the wedding invitations had already been sent out, to avoid harming Kennedys chances. We were shooting the swan-boat scene, Robertson remembers, where Kim is the Queen of Neewollah. It was getting late. One day in early January 1958, at Hollywood Park, Cohen buttonholed Davis Sr. and said, Listen. Novaks career went into decline after Cohns death. Davis asked for the doctor, a reference to Dr. Cohn had a last heart attack in 1958 and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, two months after hed first received word of the relationship. When he arrived in Washington, D.C., in September 1960 to play the Lotus Club, he was picketed by neo-Nazis bearing signs with scurrilous slogans such as GO BACK TO THE CONGO, YOU KOSHER COON. 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. Television supposedly turned to him and said, Sammy, if Kim Novak ever sees this, youll be back sleeping with Hattie McDaniel.. The newly elected president feared that his presence would alienate southern congressmen. I dont think thats the way I want to go out. Davis made the decision not to have the operation. New Years/ Sinter Klaas (Dutch Christmas), The ripple effect of kindness and small deeds/ Endings and new beginnings. Sammy Davis Jr. was born in Harlem in 1925. The studio contoured her figure by encouraging her to purge 15 pounds. She was in makeup. She visited him the day after Davis announced the engagement from the stage at the Sands. The Boyars would eventually collaborate with Davis on his two best-selling autobiographical books, Yes I Can in 1965 and, 24 years later, Why Me? Cohn wanted to be known as the toughest, meanest mogul in Hollywood. 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. Altovise Davis, naturally, feels different about the relationship. . He Began to Fondle Me. 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. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. For Novak, Davis was perhaps more than just an exciting, sympathetic man. Sammy Davis Jr. was Kim Novaks revenge on Harry Cohn. 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. Sammy said to me very tentatively, When are you going to take me to El Morocco? I used to go there every night as part of my rounds, and I said, Lets go now. But when the Boyars strode into El Morocco with Davis they were surprised to find themselves led past the dance floor and the banquettes and seated on the wrong side of the room. . Donjo Medlavine. Medlavine was stocky, built like a pit bull, and he had a heart as big as the world, Silber says. Novak, however, found ways to dig in her heels and refuse to be completely made over by Cohn. Nat King Cole had warned him, Dont do that. You really have to understand that Mr. Mayer, Harry Cohn, Jack Warnerthese men with their blood and their money and their reputations, they smelled out who had star material.. He kept himself in fantastic shape and he was so immaculate. Mastin was very determined to keep the name Will Mastin out in front. Mastin and Sam Davis Sr. had grown up in show business as part of a colored revue known as Holiday in Dixieland; they had learned what they were allowed to do and what could get them run out of town: no speaking directly to the audience, no impressions of white people. Shirley Rhodes remembers that Novak came to the hospital when Sammy was dying. But ongoing tax problems brought in the I.R.S. She would have all the rights that Mrs. Sammy Davis Jr. would have, but at the end of the year they would dissolve the marriage. At that time there was a TWA flight that stopped in Las Vegas at three in the morning. at the end. Its a terrible comparison, but its like betting on the Kentucky Derby. Sitting in his penthouse apartment in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, one of Philippe Halsmans striking photographs of Sammy Davis dominating the room, Boyar reminisces about their long friendship. Men seemed to consider Davis ugly, because he was short and slight, his features flattened. Novak eventually retreated to an even more remote spot in the Pacific Northwest. She was nervous and intimidated because she was working with experienced Broadway stage actors, but she had something going for her besides her beauty. She was being horribly exploited, paid $750 per week on loan to Otto Preminger for The Man with the Golden Arm, while Preminger was paying Cohn $100,000 for her services; for Jeanne Eagels she was paid only $13,000, while her co-star, Jeff Chandler, got $200,000. James Bacon, one of the first West Coast reporters to get wind of Novaks affair, called Novaks family in Chicago and was told by her father, Joe, that the star was returning to Los Angeles on the Union Pacific train. In 1956 she had had a small part in Cecil B. DeMilles overwrought epic The Ten Commandments, and she had danced on Broadway. James Bacon caught the opening night: Everybody was at Ciros. In 1957, Sammy Davis Jr. was at the height of his powers and his popularity. They controlled the linens. Will you love me? When she married Davis in 1960, Twentieth Century Fox declined to renew her option, and her studio career ended. He owed Donjo Medlavine, [one of the three owners] of Chez Paree. The director George Sidney, who made The Eddy Duchin Story, Jeanne Eagels, and Pal Joey, all with Novak at Columbia Pictures, became one of Cohns most trusted intimates. That quality hits you right between the eyes in William Inges Picnic (1955), in which Novak plays Madge, the small-town beauty who wants to be loved for herself.