Outside the Davis Estate, Even the Traffic Cop Is a Fan

Visitor after visitor--friends, relatives and colleagues from the entertainment world--drove through the iron gates and up the driveway to Sammy Davis Jr.’s Beverly Hills estate to pay their respects Wednesday, gliding past the hordes of reporters, the television satellite trucks and the smattering of curious fans and tourists from all over the world who gathered outside.

Davis, who associates said died peacefully in his sleep at 5:59 a.m., was remembered with equal fondness by those who knew him personally and those who knew him merely through his appearances on television or in stage shows.

“He was the greatest,” Ken Brown, an officer with the Beverly Hills Police Department, said as he tried to keep the traffic moving on the streets outside Davis’ tree-shrouded home. “He was everything. He did it all. He was Mr. Entertainment. He danced, he sang. . . .

“We’d see him passing in the street,” said Brown, who once worked in Davis’ security detail during a telethon. “He’d wave or he’d speak. He’d always take a minute. If he didn’t have the time, he’d nod to acknowledge you.”

“I never knew anyone like Mr. D,” said Jim Hammond, Davis’ projectionist, after emerging from a visit with the family. “He always took care of me and made me feel at home.”

One of the Davis’ sons, Mark, 30, spoke briefly to reporters outside the gates. His lips trembling as he spoke, Mark Davis said his father’s spirits in his final days were “pretty good.”

“He was comfortable,” he said.

Late in the morning, a young woman carrying a single red rose walked to the driveway gate. She was immediately let in and hugged a security man, but the guards declined to identify her.

Scores of flower arrangements, fruit baskets and telegrams were delivered throughout the day. With each arrival, the black iron gates parted in front of the two-story white stucco Colonial home, revealing several guards, cars and brown plastic sheets strung up to block the view of the curious.

In their Mercedes-Benzes, Miatas and BMWs, celebrities and associates kept up a steady pilgrimage to pay their respects to Davis’ widow, Altovise. Among them: actresses Loretta Swit and Nell Carter, actors Robert Guillaume and Albert Popwell, and Morton Stevens, Emmy award-winning composer of the theme to “Hawaii Five-0.”

Only actor Roscoe Lee Browne would stop to speak to reporters as he drove into the street at the foot of the driveway.

“You never met anyone who lived life so fully,” he said. “No one could do the things he did so perfectly. . . . The purest thing was his delight of life. Nothing ever took away that delight. Lesser people would have collapsed.”

While the family mourned inside, the scene outside was something else.

Japanese newscasters, standing in the street, broadcast the news home to their audiences, while the locals did periodic live updates and special reports. Two writers from Star magazine whispered details into their pocket tape recorders.

Television satellite trucks lined the steep, winding streets leading to Davis’ home as technicians laid cables and wires across the pavement. One crew even asked a neighbor if they could film from her roof. She declined.

Another neighbor, happening by as she walked her dachshund, seemed mortified at the crowd of reporters. “Look, they’re even eating!” she said.

But soon, she, too, had taken her place on the sidewalk among the onlookers, sharing the rumor that Michael Jackson might be coming.

“It’s like a circus here, isn’t it?” said one fan who sat on nearby brick steps. Confessing that he had skipped work to be there, he carefully kept out of view of the TV cameras.

Several vans, from Hollywood Fantasy Tours and other companies, hauled their loads of tourists past the home. Others arrived on foot, following their “Homes-of-the-Stars” maps. And some did not even know what they were stumbling upon.

“We thought they were filming a movie,” said Vera Hamrick, visiting from Perrysburg, Ohio.

“Then we realized it was Sammy,” said her husband, Chuck.

Tourists from San Antonio took turns taking pictures of each other; a German couple turned on their video camera as each visitor arrived--though they admitted they didn’t know who any of the celebrities were.

Lee and Seymour Cash from Queens, N.Y., a retired couple vacationing in Los Angeles, said they heard about Davis’ death on the radio, got into their rental car and drove around looking for his house. They knew they’d found it when they spotted the news crews.

Still others came to pay homage to a man they admired, an entertainer they held up as a model.

“It’s kind of like paying last respects,” said Jay Rucker, a 19-year-old aspiring actor who sat quietly across the street from Davis’ home. “He broke a lot of barriers for black people. He’s an inspiration, definitely.”

Over at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Davis had been a regular through the years, the staff was considering draping a black ribbon on his portrait, which hangs in the star-studded dining room.

On Hollywood Boulevard, a few tourists were drawn to Davis’ sidewalk star, opposite the Pantages Theater. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce placed a basket of white and yellow flowers next to the star with a sign reading, “In Memory of Sammy Davis Jr.”