Celebrities Project: Sammy Davis Jr.

I am wrapping up Sammy Davis Jr. Month. This has been an interesting month, because it took a while for me to really feel like I was starting to understand Sammy Davis Jr. as a performer. I started out the month watching two films: Ocean's 11 (1960) and Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964). Both films were entertaining, but I realized that I didn't really get much sense of Sammy Davis Jr. as a performer or entertainer. He didn't have a leading role in either film. Instead, his contributions were mostly limited to one or two musical numbers, as well as some minor elements to help further the plot.

Performing with the Will Mastin Trio, not long after Sammy lost his left eye in a car accident (he subsequently wore a patch for several months)

So, instead, I turned to watching clips of Sammy's performances on YouTube (I already listed several of them in a previous post). He is quite astounding in his talent as a dancer, singer, and comic. His impressions are so impressive! These clips helped me to get a better sense of his work as an entertainer, both as an individual and in his work with the Will Mastin Trio. For much of his career he worked with his father and "uncle" Will Mastin, and their earlier work (like the "Boogie Woogie" performance from 1947) is entertaining, although his father and Will Mastin seem a lot less entertaining or relevant as Sammy's career takes off (see a clip of them on the Milton Berle show). Sammy really outshone his father and "uncle," but I think it's impressive that he still chose to evenly split the money between them three ways.

As for music, I listened to several songs by Sammy Davis Jr. throughout this month. As I was listening to his voice o The Very Best of the Rat Pack album, I realized that his tone and timbre are much more listenable to me than Frank Sinatra (particularly Frank's older, rougher, "living large" sound). Sammy has much more of a smooth, consistent delivery. These are some songs that I particularly liked listening to:

• Eee-o-Eleven (I like this recording better than the version that appears in Ocean's 11)
• Too Close for Comfort (a song from from Mr. Wonderful, which he performed on Broadway in 1956)
• I've Got a Lot of Livin' To Do 
• What Kind of Fool Am I?

As an individual and a person, I sometimes found Sammy Davis Jr. a bit hard to relate to as a person. And this is kind of a surprising thing to admit, because this month I read a six hundred page autobiography, Yes I Can! (1965) this month, as well as a memoir written about Sammy by his daughter Tracey Davis. In truth, I did have a lot of sympathy for the struggles that he faced as a black entertainer during the Civil Rights Era. But it was hard for me to relate to his spending habits and fixation with purchasing luxury items, etc. I did get the sense that he was a very generous person, though: his "love language" seems to be through giving gifts, and it was important for him to give nice gifts to give to his friends and family.

Perhaps Sammy was less appealing to me as a person because my patience wore thin after reading a couple hundred pages of his autobiography. That book was about twice as long as it needed to be! I never had enough time to read his second autobiography, Why Me? (which is also six hundred pages long), but I'm alright with that. Instead, I watched The Kid in the Middle BBC documentary to help fill in details of his life that I would have missed otherwise. That documentary also helped me to realize how Yes I Can doesn't give readers a full picture of Sammy's life - he only tells the narrative that he wants to tell, and he also tries to protect people too. For example, the extent of his relationship with Kim Novak wasn't revealed in his autobiography, nor the real reasons for why he hastily married Loray White due to a threat from the mob due to his relationship with Kim. Loray White was a woman that Sammy hardly knew, but she was a desirable choice because she was black.

Sammy's second marriage, to the Swedish-born actress May Britt (who wasn't that great of an actress, in my opinion, see this clip of her in Blue Angel), was interesting to learn about because it was so controversial. Interracial marriages were still illegal in several states, and Sammy and May received a lot of negative publicity and threats as a result. In fact, Sammy was un-invited to the inaugural celebration for JFK at the White House (despite his efforts in campaigning for JFK and despite that his friend Frank Sinatra would be leading the entertainment) due to the negative attention that Sammy and May were receiving during their engagement.

Sammy Davis Jr. with his adopted son Mark and wife May Britt, 1964

One of the most impressive things to me about Sammy Davis Jr. was the role that he played in helping black entertainers to be more fully integrated into Hollywood and the entertainment industry. I saw several clips and read quotes by black entertainers who felt like they would not have achieved the opportunities that they did without Sammy Davis Jr. helping to pave the way. (And Sammy Davis Jr. did a lot for equality, not only in working with Martin Luther King, Jr., but also the standards that he held as an entertainer - he refused to accept gigs at clubs that had segregated audiences.) Michael Jackson even composed his own song, You Were There, to share at a tribute celebration of Sammy's sixtieth year in show business. (Michael's song and performance are overwrought, but the sentiment is nice!)

Sammy Davis Jr. Performances

Sammy Davis Jr. Month is going pretty well, although I'm still working my way through Sammy Davis Jr.'s first autobiography (it is 600 pages long, and his second autobiography is about the same in length!!!). I've also been watching more YouTube clips of his stage and television performances, to get a better sense of him as an entertainer. These are some of my favorite clips that I have seen thus far:

 I can't find the source of this clip, but I'm pretty sure that this is from a 1973 episode of The Julie Andrews Hour. Julie serves as a moderator between an "impression contest" between Rich Little and Sammy Davis Jr. I especially love at 5:25 in this clip, when Sammy Davis Jr.'s impression of Frankie
Laine makes Julie Andrews lose it. It's also fun to have two Dean Martins performing at the same time (even with a "Dean and Jerry" moment).



Probably the best compilation of Sammy Davis Jr. clips is this one, which includes not only his impressions but dancing, singing, and some of his on-stage work with the Rat Pack:


Here is one more BBC clip. I especially like the impressions that begin around the middle of the clip, starting with Fred Astaire (at 6:41):

Audrey Hepburn vs. Sammy Davis Jr.

I have just barely started Sammy Davis Jr. Month, but I am already struck with how different he and Audrey Hepburn are. Audrey Hepburn was the daughter of a baroness, went to boarding school in England, lived through horrors of enemy occupation during World War II, and tried to keep aspects of her life private from the public. She also wanted to be a ballerina, and only came into the world of modeling and acting after her dancing career didn't pan out. In contrast, Sammy Davis Jr. didn't receive a formal education, grew up on the vaudeville stage performing acts with his father, and was very public about his personal life and feelings (he wrote two autobiographies: Yes I Can (1965) and Why Me? The Sammy Davis Jr. Story (1989)).

Physical appearance also affected these two individuals' careers. Audrey Hepburn was considered the epitome of fashion, and her attractive European face caused her to receive a lot of leading roles in Hollywood films. While Sammy Davis Jr. appeared in a lot of films, I don't believe that the ever scored a role as a leading man. Undoubtedly, race tied into the roles which Sammy Davis Jr. received. He also was quite short and small to be a leading man (weighing 115 pounds, which was just a few pounds more than the slim Audrey Hepburn). Sammy Davis Jr. used to actually joke about his physical appearance (while also hinting at issues of race). Once, when he heard someone commenting about discrimination, he said, "You got it easy. I'm a short, ugly, one-eyed, black Jew. What do you think it's like for me?"

Interestingly, though, it seems like both Audrey and Sammy Davis Jr. wanted to use their public image to evoke change in society. Audrey focused on work with UNICEF, and Sammy Davis Jr. was involved with politics and the Civil Rights Movement. I especially liked this quote I read in Yes I Can last night, when Sammy Davis Jr. was writing about using his talent to bring about change in regards to discrimination: "My talent was the weapon, the power, the way for me to fight. It was the one way I might hope to affect a man's thinking" (p. 72).

Another similarity is that Sammy Davis Jr. and Audrey Hepburn both were smokers. Sammy Davis Jr. was a chain smoker (he died of throat cancer in 1990) and Audrey Hepburn also was a heavy smoker - she especially seemed to have smoked when nervous, and there are instances in her biographies when she is described as having "chain-smoked her way" through interviews.

I couldn't find a photograph of Audrey and Sammy Davis Jr. together, so it could be that they never met (or perhaps never interacted with each other very much). They did have mutual acquaintances, though, which is why I included the photograph above of Audrey Hepburn with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. (You can see more pictures of Audrey with Dean and Jerry at this webpage and this webpage.)

photography of sammy davis, jr.

One of my favorite Rat Pack singers is Sammy Davis, Jr. Not only is he a great singer and dancer, but he can do particularly good impersonations. (And no, we didn't name our son Samuel David after Sammy Davis!)

This is a really fun television clip that shows Davis' talent at impersonating singers and Hollywood stars. His impersonation of Jerry Lewis is pretty spot-on! I love his Jimmy Stewart impersonation too - it's almost disconcerting to hear Jimmy Stewart's voice coming out of someone else's mouth!


Last week my sister C let me borrow her copy of Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr. I didn't know this before, but Sammy Davis, Jr. was an avid photographer. This book by Burt Boyer is filled with photographs that Davis took at different parties, film sets, and public gatherings (e.g., one of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speeches). There are candid photographs of several celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Rock Hudson, Frank Sinatra, and Jacqueline Kennedy. Some of the photographs are quite artsy too, particularly ones of city life that were taken when Davis was on tour. The book also contains commentary by Boyer (a life-long friend of Davis) and also some excerpts from Davis' autobiographies (which Boyer and his wife co-authored with Davis). I think it's a really fun book - it's interesting to see the world of Sammy Davis, Jr. through his camera lens.