Sammy

 

It's easy to dismiss Sammy Davis, Jr. as a bit of a joke, an unctuous by-product of a somewhat glib, ersatz and often uncomfortable era. But that would be a mistake.

 

Yes, he could be gratuitously flattering ("Ladies and gentlemen, with your very kind permission, I would like to sing for you now."). But he grew up in a time where a man of his color moving through the white world had to flatter the fragile egos of white folk, or else he'd quite likely take a beating...or find himself on the end of a rope from a tree. Such overweening obsequiousness was hard wired into his DNA as a survival mechanism, and it was a hard habit to break.

 

And he had his failings...years of drug and alcohol abuse, a fearful inability to maintain loving and supportive relationships, a tendency to veer toward treacly sentimentality.

 

But his virtues far outshone his vices. Sammy wasn't the best singer, the best dancer, the best impressionist, the best musician, the best actor. But he was the single best blend of all of those talents into one human being. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I call Sammy Davis, Jr. the very best overall entertainer of the 20th Century.

 

And on top of that, he was a genuinely kind and caring individual, ever willing to help a friend (or even a total stranger) in need. To know Sammy was to love him.

 

As a child he joined the dance act his father was a part of, the Will Mastin Trio, and by the ripe old age of 7, Sammy was a national star, even going to Hollywood to star in a musical short.  

 

 

 

The Trio were headliners in both vaudeville and in nightclubs, with young Sammy quickly emerging as the focus. His career was temporarily set aside during World War II when he was drafted.  In the Army, no longer celebrated for his talent, Davis was routinely beaten by white soldiers who found his self-confidence, his brashness, his very 'uppityness' to be an affront to their racism.  Despite his small size...a mere 5'6" and 120 pounds...Sammy never went down without a fight.

After the war he picked up right where he left off.  He was repeatedly urged to go solo, to leave the Trio behind, but they were family to him (literally, in the case of his father), and he knew how much he owed them.  When he finally did strike out on his own in the mid-1950s, he made sure that his dad and Mastin continued to receive a percentage of his earnings for the rest of their lives.  Sammy paid his debts.

 

 

Moving beyond dancing, Sammy established himself as a highly successful singer and actor, recording hit albums, starring on Broadway, and appearing in films and television shows.  Perhaps the great lost opportunity of this era was The Defiant Ones; Elvis Presley had been offered the co-lead as one of the escapes convicts, in what would have been his first dramatic, non-musical performance.  He insisted that the role of the other con who is chained to him be played by Sammy.  Unfortunately, Presley was then drafted...his part went to Tony Curtis, and the producers chose Sidney Poitier, not Davis, for the other role.

He suffered another great loss at the time...his left eye.  He was in a car wreck and his face hit the steering wheel, which in that model of Cadillac had a cone-shaped center.  The accident was such widespread news, General Motors immediately redesigned that feature to eliminate the cone forevermore.  In his hospital bed, Sammy went into a deep depression, believing that his disfigurement would cost him his career...no producer would hire him to be in a film, and audiences would be repulsed and stop coming to his concerts.  For the first time in his life, he lacked confidence in himself.  At this very nadir, the door to his room flew open and in walked Frank Sinatra.  They had known one another since the early 1940s, and Sinatra had long lauded Davis as one of the greatest entertainers he had ever seen.  Now, he was taking their friendship to the next level, that of brothers.  Frank told Sammy to pack his bag, he was busting him out of the hospital and taking him to Palm Springs, where Davis would recuperate at Sinatra's own home.  Frank provided medical care for him, companionship when he wanted it, and solitude when he needed that.  He never once lectured Sammy that he had to return to performing, but by his very presence and involvement silently made it clear that he would be very disappointed if Sammy gave up.

Sammy didn't give up.

 

 

He went on to success after success...but setbacks and heartaches as well.

He was feted on his 60th anniversary in show business...but what only a few knew was that he was dying of throat cancer.  He was noticeably wan and withdrawn as a long list of celebrities stood before him to extol his talents, his generosity, and courage.  But when tapper Gregory Hines honored him with a dance, the old vaudevillian in Sammy couldn't resist; he put on his shoes, and showed that neither time, nor age, nor illness, nor hip replacements could suppress that spark that had been deep inside of him since birth.

 

When he died, Las Vegas...the town where Davis had broken the color barrier, and won the right for African-Americans to stay and eat and gamble at the very hotel casinos where they nightly performed...dimmed the lights on the strip for ten minutes, that storied town's highest accolade.

It's arguably impossible to find any single example which demonstrates Sammy's wide range of talents...as a singer, a dancer, a musician, a comedian, an impressionist...but this one comes close.  Set aside an hour and be mesmerized by the man who wasn't simply an entertainer, but who was entertainment itself.