Sweet Thunder Read online

  Kitt’s background had been the most challenging. Born poor in South Carolina, she was given up and reared by foster parents. She detested working in the fields. Eventually, she made her way to Manhattan and found work with the famed Katherine Dunham dance troupe. It led to European travels and her discovery by Orson Welles, who cast her in stage productions. Nightclubs in Paris and London signed her for performances. Back in Manhattan, she was given a significant part in New Faces of 1952, a stage musical, and emerged a star. She had an hourglass shape, a theatrical purr to her voice, and a raw sensuality in her walk that upended the senses of men.

  Whereas Kitt celebrated an ability to tease and shock, Hazel Scott was seriously refined. A West Indian by birth, she had been a child prodigy at the piano, playing the classics with ease before her tenth birthday. Her piano playing turned heads at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. When Charlie Parker recorded his version of Gershwin’s “Embraceable You,” he sent for Scott to accompany him on piano. Her marriage in 1945 to Adam Clayton Powell Jr.—Sugar Ray’s congressman—shocked some in Harlem because Powell had callously divorced his first wife. Life magazine showed the wedding over a two-page spread; Scott looked gorgeous in a white Chantilly lace dress. (Langston Hughes and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson were among the many guests at the wedding reception.) Five years later Scott became the first black woman to host a network TV program: The Hazel Scott Show premiered on the DuMont network on July 3, 1950. Even though it lasted less than three months, it gave viewers a close-up—albeit on the small screen—of a beautiful and stylish Negro woman.

  There was a peek at the gorgeous Dorothy Dandridge in 1951 with the premiere of The Harlem Globetrotters, but the movie’s success was hobbled by its limited release. The Otto Preminger–directed Carmen Jones, released in 1954 and featuring Dandridge and Harry Belafonte as the leads, received far greater attention: The film garnered Dandridge an Academy Award nomination and she was featured on the cover of Life magazine—a first for a Negro actress.

  Sometimes Sugar Ray’s young friend Mel Dick would drop by his nightclub just to gawk at the movie stars: “And I remember the day I was there and Dorothy Dandridge walked in. Ray just smiled at me.” Beauty, in America, suddenly had another dimension. The men who wooed these women were often men of great accomplishments. Nineteen-year-old Marva Trotter was working as a secretary at the Chicago Defender when she met Joe Louis in 1934. Louis had a number of women after him, but it was Trotter’s attributes—statuesque, raven black hair, cinnamoncolored complexion—that entranced him. Louis married Trotter hours before his September 24, 1935, fight in Manhattan with onetime champion Max Baer. His new bride sat in the audience. Louis mauled Baer, and blood could be seen oozing all over his face. “Here was the coldest concentration ever a man displayed,” syndicated columnist Paul Gallico would write. “And I wonder if his new bride’s heart beat a little with fear that this terrible thing was hers.”

  It was a new kind of beauty that was now illuminating the country. It had come floating, seemingly, out of nowhere. But in reality it had sprung from the habits of a thousand mothers prepping their daughters on a thousand evenings for those Negro Cotillion balls in all those American cities where segregation had ruled for so long. Now the beauty had escaped. It was coming out into the world, and it was fascinating to see up close. At different times, Lena Horne, Hazel Scott, Eartha Kitt, Dorothy Dandridge, Marva Louis, and Edna Mae all strolled the length of the bar inside Sugar Ray’s nightclub. Their images bounced along the large mirror behind the bar—then out into the world at large: Lena at the White House; Hazel on TV; Eartha on Broadway; Dorothy smoldering across the pages of Life; Marva hosting some grand charity event. And Edna Mae walking beside the middleweight champion of the world. Swathed in warm mink, they meant to serve notice to America: They had arrived.

  Edna Mae Robinson had never reached the higher levels of show business. The world of solo engagements had eluded her. But now she had a kindred spirit in Sugar Ray. She could travel with him, watch him enter her show business world, enjoy it all over again.

  For Sugar Ray, this would be the kind of work that could remind him of his childhood dreams when he had paraded outside Broadway theatres, just staring. And it could also be the very thing to take him away from the bloody business that had consumed him for so much of his life.

  His whole life he dreamed of the stage. In 1952 Sugar Ray finally got his chance at the nightclubs. The audiences were large, until they weren’t.

  1953–1954

  the very thought of you onstage

  HE RELISHED EVERY MOMENT of this current undertaking, of creating something new. Whether trying on white tie and tails, or posing while leaning over a piano for a photographer—plenty of publicity shots needed!—or riding through Manhattan with his entertainment agent, Joe Glaser, in Glaser’s Rolls and yakking about planned shows, or sitting on a stool watching dancers audition for his act, Sugar Ray was feeling absolutely giddy. He was amazed at how quickly things began to fall into place. Glaser had started making calls around the country, booking Robinson’s act even though nightclub owners had not seen it yet.

  Robinson shopped for new clothing at Sy Martin’s, the stylish haberdashery on Broadway. Robinson would take his nephew, Ken Bristow, with him, to keep watch over the double-parked Caddy. But sometimes Bristow tagged along inside and was entranced as his uncle picked out suits and got fitted. “He’d have suits and sports jackets made,” Bristow recalls. “I remember he took Nat King Cole to the same place.” Cole told Robinson a little trick he used: He’d have little weights sewn into the lower hem of his suit jacket so that when he raised his arm onstage, the jacket stayed in place. Robinson liked the touch and adopted it as well.

  Sugar Ray Robinson was about to try singing for his supper, just as Lena Horne, Langston Hughes, and Miles Davis were doing. Theirs was an America he had long wished to see from the inside.

  Miles Davis was off heroin as 1953 ticked into view, then he was back on it: The dope fiend’s carousel had claimed him yet again. Playing and getting high; getting high and playing. He played

  Birdland in Manhattan that year. He also did some recordings—Collectors’ Items, Blue Haze—for Prestige. In the fall he found himself in Hermosa Beach, California, working on a live recording. The hipsters and their blonde girlfriends were enraptured. But there was a fight at the club—the bartender had called Davis “a black mother-fucking nigger”—and he was carted off to the police station. He threatened NAACP action and was fortunate when the authorities released him without charges. In Detroit, he got work at a place called the Blue Bird. Back in Manhattan, he feared the carousel would only speed up. So he thought of Sugar Ray: “Sugar Ray looked like a socialite when you would see him in the papers getting out of limousines with fine women on his arms, sharp as a tack,” Miles would recall. “But when he was training for a fight, he didn’t have no women around that anybody knew of, and when he got into the ring with someone to fight, he never smiled like he did in those pictures everybody saw of him … I decided that that was the way I was going to be, serious about taking care of my business and disciplined.” He started recording again; he laced up the gloves again and got back into shape at Stillman’s, the gym. He liked Stillman’s: “Sugar Ray used to train there, and when he came in to train, everybody would stop what they were doing and check him out.” But of course Sugar Ray wasn’t there these days; he was in a rehearsal studio or being fitted at the tailor’s with Edna Mae by his side, or down at his nightclub. So Miles found himself hanging around Robinson’s club a lot: “That’s where a lot of hip people and beautiful women hung out, fighters and big-time hustlers. So they all would be standing there, fat-mouthing and high-signing and styling.” The young man with the horn loved being in the club, watching the women, watching Sugar Ray deal with customers, even the occasional belligerent figure: “He’d be standing there,” Miles would recall of Sugar Ray, “shoulders squared, feet apart, holding one hand in the other in front of hi
m, rocking back and forth on his heels, cleaner than a motherfucker, grinning, his hair all processed back, smiling that crooked, cocky smile he used to smile when he was daring somebody to say anything out of the way.” In the summer of 1954, with Miles in the music world and Robinson new to it, the great prizefighter happily found himself spending as much time as he could with musicians: “He used to come up and tell everyone that I was a great musician who wanted to be a fighter,” Miles would recall of Sugar Ray, “and then laugh that high-pitched laugh of his. He liked being around musicians because he liked to play drums.”

  Miles Davis—who bewitched others—was bewitched by Sugar Ray. Their long friendship revolved around jazz and the mysteries of the fight game.

  In the year Sugar Ray Robinson left the ring, Roy DeCarava, a rising Manhattan photographer, began thinking of a photo project that would illuminate life in Harlem—and thus, in his mind, Negro America. DeCarava—who had studied at the Cooper Union school of art—applied for and received a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship. He walked the streets of Harlem with his camera, aiming to capture the Harlem populace in repose. Cumulatively, the resulting pictures cast a light on a world that much of America barely knew existed: a little boy in a window, reading, wearing eyeglasses and a long-sleeved shirt rolled up to his elbows. A paisley-print curtain hangs behind him. Perhaps he sits in the family sitting room, where a little boy—he could have been any Negro boy; he could have been little Walker Smith Jr. in another time—can sit and dream. Here stands a woman, perhaps in her early fifties, dressed in black, outside, resting her defiantly lined hands upon a gate. Maybe she’s a washwoman; maybe a schoolteacher. Maybe she is already fretting about next month’s rent. But she looks as elegant as Sunday morning. Here walks an old man up out of a subway in a hat that looks as if it has crossed a few state lines. He has that brother-can-you-spare-a-dime stoop. The brim of his hat casts a shadow against a wall. DeCarava liked what he had captured; it was a kind of poetry to him, black-and-white imagery of his landscape—faces plain and innocent, ordinary and beautiful.

  He figured he needed someone who could understand it all, someone who could make sense of the light and shadows and depth in the eyes. So he found the poet Langston Hughes and asked him to do something with the photos, put a kind of word-music to the pictures. Hughes proceeded to write imaginary lives for the people, shaping it all around a make-believe narrative. As Hughes saw them, the people—even if economically strapped—are hardly without dreams. Hughes creates Sister Mary, allows her to narrate the story. The whole effect is a kind of prose poem with pictures; faces and poses come alive to the music of the Hughes touch. Sister Mary says: “I done got my feet caught in the sweet flypaper of life and I’ll be dogged if I want to get loose.” Hughes called his words “a running text.” When Simon & Schuster published The Sweet Flypaper of Life, it received wonderful reviews. The New York Times called it “a delicate and lovely fiction-document of life in Harlem.” The New York Herald Tribune would write: “Langston Hughes’ words and Roy DeCarava’s photographs achieve a harmony which is more than poetry or photography alone, but its own kind of art.”

  Hughes’s book title hinted at the fine and gorgeous things—those moments of magic—that filled the Negro world, and that sometimes took white America by surprise.

  She felt the cold snubs, felt it in the way her Hollywood agent had no work for her. The jowly senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy, had his subcommittee humming; he began accusing media members, entertainers, and even government officials of having Communist sympathies. Lena Horne had been friendly with Paul Robeson, which was enough to have her caught in those fiery winds. She was reduced to working in nightclubs mostly, whose sometimes Mafia-linked owners were far more liberal than the powers behind movies and television. As Lena’s daughter Gail would put it: “Nightclubs were rarely affected by the blacklist—the Mafia did not confuse politics and profits.” Horne became one of the biggest nightclub acts in the country, joining the ranks of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Milton Berle, the Will Mastin Trio starring Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Danny Thomas, Peggy Lee, and Tallulah Bankhead, among others. She acquired a loyal following at the Sands Hotel out in Las Vegas. Critics across the country raved.

  In 1954 the nine black-robed United States Supreme Court justices issued their decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, which outlawed segregation in America’s public schools. It opened political fissures across the land. Those were tense times for the American Negro. But it was, conversely, a fine time to be Miles Davis, Langston Hughes, Lena Horne, or Sugar Ray Robinson. Compared to the lot of most Negroes, they had already defined their lives. Their accomplishments were known. They were living on an elevated plateau, awash in the sweet flypaper of life.

  Sugar Ray Robinson signed his first nightclub performing contract in October of 1952. (To look as handsome as possible, he had had plastic surgery to repair damage done to his nose while in the ring. Both he and Edna Mae were happy with the results.) The contract-signing event at the French Casino nightclub, the venue where he would debut his act, was attended by reporters from both the entertainment and sports sections of several New York City newspapers. Robinson’s new career path caused a clashing of the two reporting disciplines. The signing was full of sequins and feathers and plumes and flashbulbs: background ornamentation was provided by a bevy of beauteous French chorus girls. Naschat Martini, owner of the midtown venue, had personally imported the lovely ladies. This was the appetizing world of before-the-show good times and Robinson relished it. He also shared a bit of news with the gathering: He would soon be headed to the big screen, starring as himself in a major motion picture of his own life. Abner J. Greshler would be the producer. The reporters scribbled away. Robinson, holding up his contract, couldn’t keep the lively grin from his face. He would be paid $15,000 a week. (Gainford—vacationing in Paris and conspicuously absent from the affair—had scoffed at the figure, believing it wasn’t enough. And Robinson himself, in the days leading up to this moment, had expressed displeasure. He could make $100,000 in just one night as a fighter. He complained to Glaser, his agent, who managed to convince him that once he caught on, his fee would soar.)

  To hedge against any type of failure, Robinson surrounded himself with top professionals while preparing his act. He hired Ralph Cooper to manage him. Cooper had cut a dashing figure in a series of Negro films in the early 1940s; he counted both Langston Hughes and Lena Horne among his close acquaintances. He had, in recent years, been a stalwart member of the stage productions at the Apollo Theatre, serving mostly as an emcee. He could also be seen on some nights gliding around Sugar Ray’s nightclub. In addition to Cooper, Robinson enlisted Henry Le Tang, a highly respected dance instructor. (Le Tang had sent Robinson outdoors to do roadwork: five miles a day, he told the fighter, would help get Robinson’s dancing legs ready. Robinson thought Le Tang was joking; he was not.) And Sugar Ray—with some input from Miles Davis—also secured the services of several musicians from accomplished jazz combos willing to go on the road with him.

  The prizefighter was amazed at the grueling work schedule Le Tang put him through in preparation for his November opening. Robinson joked that his boxing training had been no less demanding. Still, it was obvious he was enjoying himself. There was an easy rapport between Robinson and his lovely French chorines. The longer the rehearsals went on, the more Robinson became convinced he had made the right decision in leaving the ring. “A fighter can’t go on forever,” he said. Pedestrians caught glimpses of Robinson coming from rehearsals; he’d stop to sign autographs. And when they’d begin to pepper him with questions—about the fight game, about rising contenders—he’d feign disinterest, complain about his sore feet, and hustle toward his Caddy.

  Martini, the French Casino owner—the club was located near the famed Birdland jazz club—was full of exuberance in the days leading up to Robinson’s ballyhooed opening. He sent out personal invitations; he made phone calls; he made sure his radio and news
paper friends would be coming, reminding them of the good seats they would have. He unleashed a blitz of publicity. And it all paid off.

  A host of celebrities showed for Sugar Ray’s opening night. There was Jackie Robinson and his wife, Rachel; Joe Louis and singer Delores Parker; Deputy Police Commissioner Billy Rowe. There were the comedians Milton Berle, Timmie Rogers, and Nipsey Russell. Hazel Scott and her husband, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., turned heads as they were led to their seats. The men wore black tie; many of the women were draped in white and silver-blue fur. The glitter of jewelry was everywhere. There was a running gag that owner Martini had a couple of undercover Pinkerton detectives on the premises to keep an eye on the diamonds in the room. (The kids, the swells, were led by young Mel Dick, Robinson’s old friend, who had come along with his gang. “We were all underage,” he would remember.) Sportswriter Jimmy Cannon showed and took a seat next to the Brown Bomber. International guests from Haiti and France were there. Well-wishers streamed toward Robinson’s sisters, Evelyn and Marie, and Edna Mae, all looking gorgeous.

  Robinson wrestled with nerves in his dressing room. He didn’t like the pancake makeup on his face. He looked elegant—if a little like a riverboat gambler—in his yellow-and-black plaid tuxedo jacket, black satin pants, white shirt, and black bow tie. There were six costume changes to make during the course of the evening. Opening night telegrams poured in. “One thing for sure, Ray, nobody will heckle you,” came one from a friend. He chuckled; he looked at himself in the mirror. He checked the damn facial makeup again.

  He heard whispering as he neared the stage. (The warm-up act was Dominique, a French magician.) As Robinson was introduced and stepped out before the audience, he was drowned in applause. He opened with a soft-shoe number, trying to mimic Gene Kelly walking along the Seine in the dreamy An American in Paris. The chorines kicked up their long legs beside him, their red feathers and plumes swaying against the stage lights to Robinson’s obvious pleasure. A reviewer would remember that “the tall, shapely showgirls filled the French Casino stage with color, zest and a certain unmistakable amount of sex.” Robinson swayed into another dance number, which he called “Flirtation,” and it elicited howls from audience members: Some of his chorines, after a change, were now practically nude, with only large leaves to shield their most private parts. A few of the female audience members blushed; Joe Louis and Jimmy Cannon did not. Robinson himself soon vanished and reemerged in a white Palm Beach dinner jacket and black satin pants.