“I’ve always wanted to bring somebody out by saying, ‘This man needs no introduction,’” Arsenio Hall said on the June 26, 1989, broadcast of his syndicated late night show. “You can do it today, can’t you? Sammy Davis Jr.”
Davis was making the rounds promoting his autobiography, Why Me? Less than a year later, he would be dead at the age of 64 from throat cancer.
On that day in June, Arsenio Hall went to Davis’ dressing room before the taping. As Hall told Howard Stern decades later, he preferred to keep things fresh for the show. “But I had to go say thank you,” Hall remembered. Hall walked in to find the legendary entertainer sitting alone in his dressing room wearing a stocking cap and putting on his own make-up.
“He sees me in the mirror, and he turns around, and we had this great conversation,” Hall remembered. “He says all the things that I needed to hear from him: how he’s watched the show, and he supports me.” Hall said Davis shared memories from racist incidents he endured early in his career, including people urinating his drink and a guest at a Las Vegas hotel requesting the pool be drained after he swam in it. “No matter how hard things are on you, things have changed,” Hall remembered Davis saying.
By that time, Hall was a little more than sixth months into The Arsenio Hall Show, co-produced by his own company and Paramount, which distributed the show in syndication. The show made Hall, who grew up idolizing Johnny Carson, the first Black performer to host his own late night talk show. Just two years after Joan Rivers’ tumultuous tenure at Fox, Hall emerged as the main rival to the NBC powerhouse fueled by Carson and David Letterman.
But as Hall explained to Stern, his show was seen mostly not as a competitor to Carson’s Tonight Show, but as a program reaching an entirely new audience. Hall recalled getting phone calls from Ed McMahon, who would recommend acts that were not a good “fit” for The Tonight Show. These acts were often Black performers, but as Hall reminded Stern, his program became a home for a range of guests who did not fit the more traditional Tonight Show brand, such as David Bowie.
This context is key because it helps explain what came next in the conversation between Davis and Hall in the dressing room: Sammy apologized. For months, Hall remembered, Davis had declined appearing on The Arsenio Hall Show, insisting that he was “a Carson guest.”
“I should have been here sooner,” Hall remembered Davis saying. And then came a second apology. Davis informed Hall that he had been having some issues with his throat and thus could not sing on the broadcast. But he said he was willing to do whatever else the show might need.
The conversation between Hall and Davis stretched across three segments, with topics ranging from Davis’s line of barbecue sauce and love of cooking, to his fondness for drinking (“I love booze!”) and his decision to stop: “The doctor said you gonna die.” He then discusses his support for what became the Sammy Davis, Jr. Liver Institute at New Jersey Medical School.
Hall returns from the commercial break with a clip of a young Sammy dancing and singing, eliciting cheers from the crowd. He then asks Davis about an incredible recent performance of his, during which he performed Michael Jackson’s “Bad,” singing and dancing as if he were twenty years younger. “I love the moves he makes,” Davis says. “I guess I was the Michael Jackson of the 50s.”
They then pivot to talking about Davis’s earlier life, including his memories of encountering racism. “I always thought that having the kind of talent you have,” Hall says, “makes living in America a little easier.” Hall goes on to share that people had been telling him not to host a late-night show of his own, that “a Black man could not pull this off in America.” Davis responds by sharing his own memories of people calling him an Uncle Tom and claiming he “wanted to be white.” “I don’t want to be white,” he says to Hall. “If I was white, I think a white Sammy Davis Jr—bad!”
“I think it’s because of what I am. Because of my innate Blackness. My innate Blackness,” he continues. “It’s not yours. It ain’t Richard Pryor’s. It ain’t Sidney [Poitier]’s. It isn’t Eddie Murphy’s. But it’s mine.”
Hall remembered this moment with Stern. “It was amazing,” he said.
And then came the third segment, where Sammy Davis Jr. had a trick up his sleeve. “I know it wasn’t planned,” he says, leaning towards Hall, as they return from commercial, “but can I do a number with the guys?” All Arsenio can do is grin. “Yes,” he says, as the crowd starts to chant, “Sammy! Sammy! Sammy!”
Davis gets up off the couch and walks over to the band, all of whom are smiling from ear to ear. “This is truly ad-libbed,” Davis says, before going into the standard, “Time After Time.” While it was not shown on the broadcast, Hall told Stern that when Davis asked the band if they knew the tune, they first thought he meant the Cyndi Lauper song.
From the moment he opens his lips, Davis sounds fantastic. Hall can be seen watching, totally absorbed by the moment. The studio becomes the coolest jazz club in the country as Davis and the band improvise. And the crowd could not have responded with a more enthusiastic response. “I must thank the lady and the gentleman for being so kind enough to go along with me on that,” Davis says after returning to the couch.
After the show, Hall remembered, Davis explained his decision to sing. “I should have done a rehearsal and agreed to do a song,” Davis said. “I can’t give you less than I give Johnny. I can’t give your audience less than I give Johnny.”
“And I’m not at my best right now, but I gave it to you,” he said. “I dig you, man.”
He expressed a similar sentiment at the end of the interview.
“You ever need me, you got me,” Davis says. “For the rest of my life.”
Watch video of Davis’s appearance with Hall at the top of this post.
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