From Joyce Raley Teel to Sofia Tsakopoulos, women do the heavy lifting to keep local stage lights burning.
But when it comes to cultural philanthropy, nobody beats a shy, frustrated playwright named Eleanor Grace McClatchy.
For five decades as Sacramento transformed from sleepy farm burg to capital metropolis, she pumped oxygen into theater arts with cash and publicity.
Which leads us to a backstage mystery. Why would Eleanor McClatchy destroy a photo negative that shows her laughing with Sammy Davis Jr.?
The troublesome image surfaces when my friend Dick Schmidt digs through files from his career as a newspaper photographer. Schmidt joined the Bee’s photo staff in 1964, soon after his 21st birthday. He retired in 2003, the city’s supreme photojournalist.
Shooting pictures for the Bee meant Schmidt worked for Eleanor McClatchy, president of her father’s valley newspaper chain since 1936. Not that Dick knew Eleanor.
She was pathologically private, never pretentious in wealth. She hated spotlights.
Eleanor was the opposite of Sammy Davis Jr. He was a renowned singer, dancer, actor and comedian, the most famous Black entertainer of his generation.
Eleanor was none of those things. But she and Sammy connected.
One July morning in 1970, Sammy Davis, singer Blinky Williams and entourage arrive at 2100 Q St., Bee headquarters. Sammy cruises into the advertising department, signing autographs for awestruck clerks.
Dick Schmidt is working in the darkroom. The phone rings. A Bee executive says grab your camera and go to advertising. Sammy Davis is there.
Schmidt catches up with the star. He follows the entourage to the executive suites—Eleanor’s office. Knowing McClatchy’s fear of cameras, Schmidt slips quietly into the boss’s lair.
“There I was,” Schmidt says. “Crouching on the floor, in a corner, keeping low, but very close, maybe 6 feet, from Eleanor and Sammy.”
Davis and McClatchy laugh like old friends. Schmidt makes pictures. Then back to the darkroom.
The phone rings. Thor Severson, Eleanor’s hatchet man, needs to see Schmidt. Right now. Bring the negatives.
“Image No. 35 was it—the photo,” Schmidt says. “Sammy throws his head back in laughter. Everyone’s laughing. Eleanor’s laughing.”
Severson isn’t laughing. He says image No. 35 must be destroyed. With scissors, he holds the negative and snips Eleanor from the frame.
“He gave me back the censored negative,” Schmidt says. “But he never asked for the prints. Luckily, I made some before he called.”
Why censorship? One answer is racism—McClatchy didn’t want photos of her joking with African American men. But that doesn’t wash.
Davis was in town for the New Breed Unity Festival at Cal Expo, a youth benefit organized by Black business leaders. The Bee—Eleanor—was co-sponsor.
A better explanation is she loved show business but despised attention. In the 1940s, she starts the Civic Repertory Theater, underwrites a drama school and builds Eaglet Theater at 15th and H streets. From 1951 and after her death in 1980, she keeps the Music Circus solvent with support.
All anonymously.
When Joan Didion, age 16, submits a story about a teen dancer, Eleanor publishes it with Joan’s byline (“At least one Sacramento girl is not dancing in the dark,” the story begins).
McClatchy stokes Didion’s ambition but never publishes photos of herself. No Music Circus images exist of Eleanor laughing with Robert Goulet, Mitzi Gaynor or Marlene Dietrich.
When the city library asks the Bee for background on Eleanor, the Bee says no.
Sammy Davis Jr. knows another side of Eleanor McClatchy. Relaxed. Joyful.
As Sammy’s entourage heads toward Q Street, Dick Schmidt hears the showman offer 1970’s ultimate tribute: “Now that’s one groovy lady.”
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
