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!)
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