Sammy Davis Jr.

Samuel George Davis Jr. was born on December 8, 1925, in the Harlem section of New York City. His father, Sammy Davis Sr., was a dancer in a Black vaudeville troupe led by Will Mastin, and his mother, Elvera Sanchez, worked as a chorus dancer. The marriage dissolved when the boy was about three, and his father took him on the road rather than surrender custody ^[1].

Childhood, in any conventional sense, never happened. Davis grew up backstage and on trains, absorbing tap steps, comic timing, and audience craft from working performers. He made his film debut at age seven in the 1933 short Rufus Jones for President, playing a child who dreams of becoming president. He received almost no formal schooling; the troupe dodged child labor inspectors by billing him as a miniature adult, sometimes advertised as a forty-four-year-old midget ^[2].

Because the troupe sheltered him inside Black theatrical circuits, Davis later said he barely understood the reach of American racism until he was drafted. Serving in the United States Army during the Second World War, he endured relentless abuse from white soldiers, including beatings, before transferring to an entertainment unit where performance became, in his words, a weapon that could force respect ^[2].

After the war Davis rejoined his father and Mastin in what was now the Will Mastin Trio, and his singing, impressions, drumming, and dancing quickly made him the act's engine. Bookings improved through the late 1940s, helped by admirers such as Frank Sinatra, who insisted the trio open for him. A breakthrough engagement at Ciro's nightclub in Hollywood in 1951, following that year's Academy Awards ceremony, turned an opening slot into a sensation and brought national attention ^[3].

Decca Records signed him in 1954, and his early albums and singles, including his recording of "Something's Gotta Give," established him as a vocalist beyond the nightclub floor ^[1]. Then, on November 19, 1954, while driving to Los Angeles, Davis crashed near San Bernardino, California, and lost his left eye. Many assumed the accident would end his career. Instead, his return to the stage in early 1955, first with an eye patch and later a glass eye, drew enormous sympathy and curiosity, and his fame grew ^[3].

During his recovery Davis studied Judaism, drawn by what he saw as parallels between Jewish and Black histories of survival, and he formally converted several years later. The decision puzzled some observers and drew mockery from others, but he treated it as a serious spiritual commitment for the rest of his life ^[2].

For anyone asking who was Sammy Davis Jr. at his peak, the answer spans nearly every branch of American show business. On Broadway he starred in Mr. Wonderful (1956), a musical built around his nightclub act, and returned in 1964 in Golden Boy, a drama about a Black boxer that earned him a Tony Award nomination and ran for more than 500 performances ^[1].

In Hollywood he played Sportin' Life in the 1959 film of Porgy and Bess and joined Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop in Ocean's 11 (1960), the heist picture that fixed the public image of the Rat Pack. Their Las Vegas appearances together at the Sands, loose and only partly scripted, became defining entertainment events of the early 1960s. Davis used that leverage to press casinos that welcomed him onstage but barred him from their hotels, dining rooms, and gaming floors, and the color line in Las Vegas gradually gave way ^[3].

His recording career produced signature songs rather than steady chart dominance: "What Kind of Fool Am I" in 1962, "I've Gotta Be Me" in 1968, and "The Candy Man," which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972 even though Davis himself thought little of the song ^[1]. His 1965 autobiography Yes I Can, written with Jane and Burt Boyar, became a bestseller and remains a central document of Black celebrity in mid-century America ^[2]. Among the most cited Sammy Davis Jr. achievements offstage was his civil rights work: he raised large sums for the movement, marched at Selma in 1965, and received the NAACP's Spingarn Medal in 1968 ^[4].

Davis's private life repeatedly collided with the racial politics of his era. A romance with the white actress Kim Novak in the late 1950s reportedly alarmed Columbia Pictures executives, and his brief 1958 marriage to the Black singer Loray White was widely viewed as an arranged retreat from that pressure; the couple divorced within a year ^[3].

In November 1960 he married the Swedish actress May Britt. Interracial marriage was still illegal in a large share of American states, and the union brought hate mail, picketing, and death threats. Reporting at the time and later accounts held that the couple's association was considered politically risky enough that Davis was kept off the stage at John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural gala, a snub that wounded him deeply ^[3]. Davis and Britt had a daughter, Tracey, and adopted two sons, Mark and Jeff, before divorcing in 1968. In 1970 he married the dancer Altovise Gore, who remained his wife until his death; the couple later adopted a son, Manny ^[2].

His politics defied easy sorting. A lifelong Democrat and civil rights donor, he shocked many admirers in 1972 by publicly embracing President Richard Nixon at a rally, an image that drew lasting criticism from parts of the Black community even as Davis defended his access to the White House as a form of influence ^[4]. He was equally candid about personal excess: his memoirs describe heavy drinking, cocaine use in the 1970s, and spending habits that kept him performing constantly to cover debts ^[5].

The 1970s and 1980s brought a mixed ledger. Television kept Davis visible through variety shows, talk show appearances, and a famous 1972 guest spot on All in the Family in which he kissed Archie Bunker on the cheek, one of the most replayed moments in the sitcom's history ^[4]. His nightclub fees remained high, and he stayed among the busiest live performers in the country, though critics sometimes treated his style as a relic of an earlier show business.

Health problems accumulated. Hip surgery in the mid-1980s threatened the dancing that had defined him, yet he recovered enough to appear in the 1989 film Tap alongside Gregory Hines, a role that paid tribute to his roots in Black dance tradition ^[1]. In 1988 he launched a world tour with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin; after Martin withdrew, Liza Minnelli stepped in, and the tour continued to strong business into 1989 ^[3]. That same year he published a second memoir, Why Me?, again with Jane and Burt Boyar ^[5].

In August 1989 doctors found a tumor in his throat, and Davis, a heavy smoker for decades, chose radiation over surgery in the hope of saving his voice. A televised sixtieth anniversary tribute taped in late 1989, featuring Michael Jackson, Ella Fitzgerald, Gregory Hines, and others, aired as the illness advanced. He died at his home in Beverly Hills, California, on May 16, 1990, at age 64. Two nights later the hotels of the Las Vegas Strip dimmed their marquee lights in his honor ^[4].

Davis received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1987, and in 2001 the Recording Academy granted him a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, formal recognition of a career that had rarely fit the categories awards were built for ^[1]. The scale of that career still startles: roughly six decades onstage, beginning in an era when Black performers entered white venues through kitchen doors and ending with presidential tributes.

Biographers and documentarians keep returning to him. Wil Haygood's 2003 study In Black and White examined how Davis absorbed the costs of integration in his own body and reputation, and the 2019 American Masters documentary Sammy Davis, Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me reintroduced him to audiences who knew only the caricature ^[6]. Basic Sammy Davis Jr. facts, the lost eye, the conversion to Judaism, the Rat Pack membership, circulate widely, but the harder truth is structural: he opened doors by walking through them first and absorbing whatever came.

Entertainers as different as Michael Jackson, Gregory Hines, and Billy Crystal cited him directly, and his insistence on total versatility, singing, dancing, acting, and comedy in a single body of work, remains a benchmark. He asked to be judged as an entertainer without qualification, and on that measure his peers gave the verdict during his lifetime: nobody did more things this well ^[3].