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Samuel George "Sammy" Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American entertainer and was also known for his impersonations of actors and other celebrities.
Primarily a dancer and singer, Davis started as a child vaudevillian who became known for his performances on Broadway and Las Vegas. He went on to become a world famous recording artist, television and film star. Davis was also a member of Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack".
At the age of three Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father and "uncle" as the Will Mastin Trio, toured nationally, and after military service, returned to the trio. Davis became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro's after the 1951 Academy Awards. With the trio, he became a recording artist. In 1954, he lost his left eye in an automobile accident.
Though his film career had begun as a child in 1933, in 1960 he appeared in the first Rat Pack movie, Ocean's 11. After a starring role on Broadway in 1956's Mr Wonderful, Davis returned to the stage in 1964's Golden Boy, and in 1966 had his own TV variety show, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show. Davis' career slowed in the late sixties, but he had a hit record with "The Candy Man", in 1972, and became a star in Las Vegas.
As an African American, Davis was the victim of racism throughout his life, and was a large financial supporter of civil rights causes. Davis had a complex relationship with the African-American community, and attracted criticism after physically embracing Richard Nixon in 1970. One day on a golf course with Jack Benny, he was asked what his handicap was. "Handicap?" he asked. "Talk about handicap — I'm a one-eyed Negro Jew." This was to become a signature comment, recounted in his autobiography, and in countless articles.
After reuniting with Sinatra and Dean Martin in 1987, Davis toured with them and Liza Minnelli internationally, before dying of throat cancer in 1990. He died in debt to the Internal Revenue Service, and his estate was the subject of legal battles.
Davis was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP, and was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award for his television performances. He was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1987, and in 2001, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Samuel George Davis, Jr. was born in New York City, New York, to Sammy Davis, Sr. (1900–1988), an African-American entertainer, and Elvera Sanchez (1905–2000), a tap dancer. During his lifetime, Davis, Jr. stated that his mother was Puerto Rican and born in San Juan; however, in the 2003 biography In Black and White, author Wil Haygood writes that Davis, Jr.'s mother was born in New York City to Cuban American parents, and that Davis, Jr. claimed he was Puerto Rican because he feared anti-Cuban backlash would hurt his record sales.
Davis' parents were vaudeville dancers. As an infant, he was raised by his paternal grandmother. When he was three years old, his parents separated. His father, not wanting to lose custody of his son, took him on tour. Davis learned to dance from his father and his "uncle" Will Mastin, who led the dance troupe his father worked for. Davis joined the act as a child and they became the Will Mastin Trio. Throughout his career, Davis included the Will Mastin Trio in his billing. Mastin and his father shielded him from racism. Snubs were explained as jealousy, for instance. When Davis served in the United States Army during World War II, however, he was confronted by strong racial prejudice. He later said, "Overnight the world looked different. It wasn't one color any more. I could see the protection I'd gotten all my life from my father and Will. I appreciated their loving hope that I'd never need to know about prejudice and hate, but they were wrong. It was as if I'd walked through a swinging door for eighteen years, a door which they had always secretly held open."
Davis Jr. was hired to sing the title track for the Universal Pictures film Six Bridges to Cross, recording it on December 2, 1954.
During service in WWII, the Army assigned Davis to an integrated entertainment Special Services unit and he found that the spotlight lessened the prejudice. Even prejudiced white men admired and respected his performances. "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," he said.
After his discharge, Davis rejoined the family dance act, which played at clubs around Portland, Oregon. He began to achieve success on his own and was singled out for praise by critics, releasing several albums. This led to his appearance in the Broadway play Mr. Wonderful in 1956.
In 1959, Davis became a member of the famous "Rat Pack", led by his friend Frank Sinatra, which included fellow performers such as Dean Martin, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford. Initially, Sinatra called the gathering "the Clan", but Sammy voiced his opposition, saying that it reminded people of the racist Ku Klux Klan. Sinatra renamed the group "the Summit", but the media referred to them as the Rat Pack.
Davis was a headliner at The Frontier Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, but he was required (as were all black performers in the 1950s) to lodge in a rooming house on the west side of the city, instead of in the hotels as his white colleagues did. No dressing rooms were provided for black performers, and they had to wait outside by the swimming pool between acts. Davis and other black artists could entertain, but could not stay at the hotels where they performed, gamble in the casinos, nor dine or drink in the hotel restaurants and bars. Davis later refused to work at places which practiced racial segregation.
In 1964, Davis was starring in Golden Boy at night and shooting his own New York-based afternoon talk show during the day. When he could get a day off from the theater, he would be recording new songs in the studio, or performing live, often at charity benefits as far away as Miami, Chicago, and Las Vegas, or doing television variety specials in Los Angeles. Davis knew he was cheating his family of his company, but he could not help himself; as he later said, he was incapable of standing still.
Although he was still a draw in Las Vegas, Davis' musical career had sputtered by the latter 1960s, although he had a #11 hit (#1 on the Easy Listening singles chart) with "I've Gotta Be Me" in 1969. His effort to update his sound and reconnect with younger people resulted in some embarrassing "hip" musical efforts with the Motown record label. But then, even as his career seemed at its nadir, Sammy had an unexpected hit with "Candy Man". Although he did not particularly care for the song and was chagrined that he was now best known for it, Davis made the most of his opportunity and revitalized his career. Although he enjoyed no more Top 40 hits, he did enjoy popularity with his performance of the theme song from the T.V. series Baretta (1975–1978) which was not released as a single but was given radio play and he remained a live act beyond Vegas for his career. He occasionally landed television and film parts, including cameo visits to the All in the Family (during which he kisses Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) on the cheek) and, with wife Altovise Davis, on Charlie's Angels. In the 1970s, he appeared in commercials in Japan for Suntory whiskey.
On December 11, 1967, NBC broadcast a musical-variety special entitled Movin' With Nancy. In addition to the Emmy Award-winning musical performances, the show is notable for Nancy Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. greeting each other with a kiss, one of the first black-white kisses in U.S. television history.
It's been said Davis had a friendship with Elvis Presley. Davis sang a cover-version of Presley's song "In The Ghetto" and made a cameo-appearance in Presley's concert-movie Elvis: That's the Way It Is. One year later, he made a cameo appearance in a James Bond movie, but the scene he appeared in was deleted.
In Japan, Davis appeared in television commercials for coffee, and in the U.S. he joined Sinatra and Martin in a radio commercial for a Chicago car dealership.
Davis was a fan of the daytime soap operas, particularly the shows produced by the American Broadcasting Company. This led to a cameo appearance on General Hospital and a recurring role as character Chip Warren on One Life to Live, for which he received a Daytime Emmy nomination in 1980. He was featured on the CBS News with Walter Cronkite in a profile filed by current CBS News political correspondent Jeff Greenfield about the final episode of Love of Life in 1980. He was also a game show fan, appearing on the ABC version of Family Feud in 1979, and hosting a question with Richard Dawson watching from the sidelines. He appeared on Tattletales with third wife Altovise Davis in the 1970s. He made a cameo during an episode of the NBC version of Card Sharks in 1981.
In addition to American soaps, he was also a huge fan of the Australian show Prisoner: Cell Block H. While in Melbourne during the mid-eighties he visited the set of the show, at Grundy's studio in Nunawading, to see production for himself. Arriving in the grounds by helicopter, he toured the studio and met several of the cast, including his favorite actress in the show, Maggie Kirkpatrick. Davis wanted to make an appearance in Prisoner, but the show had ended (in 1986) before this could be arranged.
Davis was an avid photographer who enjoyed shooting family and acquaintances. His body of work was detailed in a 2007 book by Burt Boyar. "Jerry gave me my first important camera, my first 35 millimeter, during the Ciro's period, early '50s", Boyar quotes Davis. "And he hooked me." Davis used a medium format camera later on to capture images. Again quoting Davis, "Nobody interrupts a man taking a picture to ask ... 'What's that nigger doin' here?'". His catalog includes rare photos of his father dancing onstage as part of the Will Mastin Trio and intimate snapshots of close friends Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, James Dean, Nat "King" Cole, and Marilyn Monroe. His political affiliations also were represented, in his images of Robert Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. His most revealing work comes in photographs of wife May Britt and their three children, Tracey, Jeff and Mark.
Davis was an enthusiastic shooter and gun owner. He participated in fast-draw competitions—Johnny Cash recalled that Sammy was said to be capable of drawing and firing a Colt Single Action revolver in less than a quarter of a second. Davis was skilled at fast and fancy gunspinning, and appeared on TV variety shows showing off this skill. He appeared in Western films and as a guest star on several "Golden Age" T.V. Westerns.
Davis died in Beverly Hills, California on May 16, 1990, of complications from throat cancer. Earlier, when he was told that surgery (laryngectomy) offered him the best chance of survival, Davis replied he would rather keep his voice than have a part of his throat removed; he subsequently was treated with a combination of chemotherapy and radiation. However, a few weeks prior to his death his entire larynx was removed during surgery. He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California next to his father and Will Mastin.
On May 18, 1990, two days after Davis' death, the neon lights of the Las Vegas strip were darkened for ten minutes, as a tribute to him.
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