Background and career
Samuel George Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American singer, actor, comedian and dancer. Known as "Mr. Entertainment" and "Mister Show Business", Davis was regarded as one of the most popular entertainers of the 20th century and as a black entertainer, he helped to break racial barriers in several venues, including nightclubs, music, film and television. Davis began his career at the age of two in vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and Will Mastin in the Will Mastin Trio. At seven, he started his film career with the musical shorts Rufus Jones for President and Seasoned Greetings. In 1951, Davis's career breakthrough came after he and the Will Mastin Trio opened for Janis Paige the week before the 23rd Academy Awards at the Hollywood nightclub Ciro's. Three years later he became the first black entertainer to headline a show in Las Vegas and two years later starred in his first Broadway musical, Mr. Wonderful. After starring in his first box-office film, Anna Lucasta (1958), Davis earned rave reviews for his role in Porgy and Bess (1959). A year later he became a member of the Rat Pack alongside lifelong friends Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. In 1964, he returned to Broadway in the musical adaptation of Clifford Odets's Golden Boy, which featured the first interracial kiss in a Broadway play and won Davis a Tony Award nomination. Two years after that, Davis hosted his own variety series. Davis also became a successful recording artist. His 1955 debut album, Starring Sammy Davis Jr., spawned hits such as "Hey There" and "The Birth of the Blues" and topped the Billboard pop albums chart. His other hits included "Something's Gotta Give", "That Old Black Magic" and the Grammy Award-nominated "What Kind of Fool Am I?". Later hits "I've Gotta Be Me", "The Candy Man" (his only number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100) and "Mr. Bojangles" became his signature songs. In 1954, at the age of 29, Davis lost his left eye in a car accident. Three years later, Davis faced backlash for his involvement with white actress Kim Novak at a time when interracial relationships were taboo in the U.S. and when interracial marriage was not yet legalized nationwide (until 1967). In 1960, Davis converted to Judaism, finding commonalities between the oppression experienced by both African Americans and Jewish Americans. 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 who's Jewish." This was to become a signature comment. After reuniting with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in 1987, Davis toured with them and Liza Minnelli internationally before his death from lung cancer in 1990. He died in debt to the Internal Revenue Service, and his estate was the subject of legal battles after the death of his wife. Davis was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and an Primetime Emmy Award for his television performances. He was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1987, and in 2001, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2017, Davis was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.
Davis was born on December 8, 1925, in the Harlem district of Manhattan in New York City, the son of African-American entertainer and stage performer Sammy Davis Sr. (1900–1988) and Cuban-American tap dancer and stage performer Elvera Sanchez (1905–2000). During his lifetime, Davis stated that his mother was Puerto Rican and born in San Juan. However, in the 2003 biography In Black and White, author Wil Haygood wrote that Davis's mother was born in New York City to Cuban parents who were of Afro-Cuban background, and that Davis claimed she was Puerto Rican because he feared anti-Cuban backlash would hurt his record sales. Davis's parents were vaudeville dancers, having met while being members of Will Mastin's Holiday in Dixieland troupe. As an infant, Davis was reared by his paternal grandmother. When he was two years old, his parents separated. His father, not wanting to lose custody of his son, took him on tour as part of what was then known as "Will Mastin's Gang" with Mastin having dropped the "Holiday in Dixieland" title. Davis would learn how to tap dance from troupe member Howard M. Colbert Jr. as well as his father and Mastin, who became his godfather. Davis became a regular performer with the Mastin troupe following a talent show victory at the Standard Theatre in Philadelphia. Some of Davis's early performances had him perform in blackface, due to his father and Mastin disguising Davis as a "44-year-old midget" to avoid child labor laws. Around 1932 or 1933, the troupe was renamed "Will Mastin's Gang Featuring Little Sammy"; along with tap dancing, Davis also sang with the act, his usual song being Louis Armstrong's rendition of "(I'll Be Glad When You're Dead) You Rascal You". In 1933, Davis caught the attention of filmmakers who were seeking to find child performers for the short film, Rufus Jones for President, easily gaining the role of Rufus Jones. His co-star in the film was Ethel Waters. Later that same year, Davis appeared in another short film, Seasoned Greetings. By the early 1940s, the troupe had gradually shortened and when Colbert left in 1941, the name of the troupe was changed to the Will Mastin Trio with just Mastin, Sammy Davis Sr. and Jr. They were billed as "The Will Mastin Trio Featuring Little Sammy" and later, "The Will Mastin Trio Featuring Sammy Davis Jr." after Davis became a teenager. In 1941, 15-year-old Davis first became acquainted with Frank Sinatra, then just 25, when Sinatra was the lead singer of Tommy Dorsey's band and the Will Mastin Trio opened for Dorsey during several performances at the Michigan Theater in Detroit. During Davis's early career, Mastin and his father shielded the youngster from racism, for example by dismissing race-based snubs as "jealousy". Davis recalled living for several years in Boston's South End and reminisced years later about "hoofing and singing" at Izzy Ort's Bar & Grille.
In December 1944, during World War II, Davis was drafted into the United States Army at age 18. There, Davis was confronted by strong prejudice. Davis later stated: "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 18 years, a door which they had always secretly held open." He was frequently abused by white soldiers from the South and later recounted: "I must have had a knockdown, drag-out fight every two days." His nose was broken numerous times and permanently flattened. At one point he was offered a beer laced with urine. He was reassigned to the Army's Special Services branch, which put on performances for troops. At one show he found himself performing in front of soldiers who had previously racially abused him. Davis, who earned the American Campaign Medal and World War II Victory Medal, was discharged in 1945 with the rank of private. He later said, "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." While in Paris in September 1944, he found himself being introduced and guided around the city by a French resistance fighter and left-wing journalist, Madeleine Riffaud.
Following his discharge from the Army, Davis rejoined the family dance act, which were now performing at clubs in the Pacific Southwest, namely clubs in Portland, Oregon. Davis, who had spent his early years mainly dancing in the troupe, added singing pop standards, playing instruments and doing comedic impressions of actors such as James Cagney, Cary Grant and James Stewart into the act, which helped to increase Davis's popularity and helped the trio earn spots in bigger venues though Davis's father and Mastin warned him that doing impressions of white actors rather than black actors was "controversial", fearing backlash. Due to racial segregation, the trio regularly performed at predominantly black venues in the Chitlin' Circuit. During this era, Davis first got acquainted with Mickey Rooney, who tried to give him a role in a box office film but was rebuffed due to Davis's skin color. Davis and the Will Mastin Trio first performed at Las Vegas at the El Rancho Vegas on May 15, 1946, becoming one of the first African American acts to perform at the city, though the trio weren't allowed to stay at the hotel like most performers due to the color of their skin. Following their first performance there, the Review-Journal labeled them a "comedy act" and misspelled their name. The trio gradually became a success in Vegas and in 1947, the trio appeared in the short musical film, Sweet and Low, marking Davis's first film appearance since the 1930s. That same year, the trio made their debut at Harlem's Apollo Theater, winning over the venue's predominantly black audience where Davis's dancing skills, singing and comedic impressions were a hit. That same year, Frank Sinatra, with whom Davis would forge a lifelong friendship, booked the trio to open for him at the Capitol Theater in downtown Manhattan. Around this time, Davis, who had gained a reputation as a singer as much as he had as a dancer and comedian, was given a one-off recording contract with Columbia Records where he recorded a rendition of "The Way You Look Tonight". Davis received his first accolade when jazz music magazine Metronome named him the "Most Outstanding New Personality" of 1946. In 1949, Davis was given a contract with Capitol Records. Fearing he wouldn't find success under his own name, Davis recorded under the pseudonyms Shorty Muggins and Charlie Green and his early recordings consisted of blues music; the recordings flopped. A year later, Davis attempted to get in the Copacabana nightclub to view a performance by Sinatra with Buddy Rich, only to be turned away for being Black. The next night, Sinatra forced the club's owners to allow a solo Davis to walk in on his own.
On March 23, 1951, the Will Mastin Trio appeared at the Los Angeles nightclub Ciro's as the opening act for headliner Janis Paige just prior to the 23rd Academy Awards. The trio were only to perform for twenty minutes, but the reaction from the celebrity-filled crowd was so enthusiastic, especially when Davis launched into his impressions, that they performed for nearly an hour, and Paige insisted the order of the show be flipped. In August 1951, the trio made their national television debut on the Ed Sullivan Show, though Sullivan mispronounced the trio's name ("Will Marsten Trio") and only referred to Davis as "the kid in the middle". Because of a technical error, which forced viewers to watch a black screen as Davis did his impressions, Sullivan invited Davis for a second appearance, this time by himself. Davis's celebrity grew following the two Sullivan show appearances. By then, the Will Mastin Trio was renamed from The Will Mastin Trio Featuring Sammy Davis Jr. to The Will Mastin Trio Starring Sammy Davis Jr. A year later, in February 1952, the trio appeared on the Colgate Comedy Hour, then hosted by Eddie Cantor, which proved to be even more successful for Davis. During his appearances on the show, Cantor befriended Davis and gave him a Jewish mezuzah, which the performer wore on his neck, instead of on the door as was the tradition, for "good luck". By 1953, Davis was starting to be singled out for praise by critics. That year, Davis was offered his own television show on ABC, Three for the Road—with the Will Mastin Trio. The network spent $20,000 filming the pilot, which presented African Americans as struggling musicians, not slapstick comedy or the stereotypical mammy roles of the time. The cast included Frances Davis, who was the first black ballerina to perform for the Paris Opera, actresses Ruth Attaway and Jane White, and Frederick O'Neal, who founded the American Negro Theater. The network could not get a sponsor, so the show was dropped.
In March 1953, the Will Mastin Trio opened at the Copacabana and became the highest paid black act to perform there since Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. The following April, they became the first black act to headline a show at the Las Vegas Strip for $5,000 a week. In November 1954, eight years after first performing in Las Vegas, Davis demanded that the owners of the recently opened New Frontier Hotel and Casino not only book him and the trio for a $7,500 a week headlining gig but also allow the trio to stay in the hotel, which was subsequently granted, breaking a major racial barrier. Prior to this, owing to Jim Crow practices in Las Vegas, Davis had been 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 where his white colleagues were housed. 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, or dine or drink in the hotel restaurants and bars. Davis later refused to work at places that practiced racial segregation, at one time he and the trio canceled a gig at a hotel in Miami Beach after they refused to let them stay inside. On November 19 of the year, Davis got involved in an automobile accident that caused the loss of his left eye. According to Davis later, he wasn't wearing his mezuzah at the time, having left it accidentally at the door of his hotel suite. After doctors prescribed him a glass eye, Davis retreated in Frank Sinatra's home and began recuperating, having to have rehearsals to determine if he could still perform. An eye patch-sporting Davis made his return to Ciro's on January 11, 1955, where his performance received thunderous applause and ovations. The star-studded performance was integral in turning him into a superstar. Davis later removed the eye patch and performed with his glass eye after he took advice from actor Humphrey Bogart. Prior to the accident, Davis had signed with Decca Records, this time under his own name, and released his debut album, Starring Sammy Davis Jr., shortly after his Ciro's comeback. The album included his first charted hit, "Hey There", which had hit the top 20 of the Billboard pop charts as well as a song that would be one of Davis's signature tunes, "The Birth of the Blues". It topped the Billboard Pop Albums chart, making him the first solo Black recording artist to accomplish the milestone. Davis later found chart success with the singles "Something's Gotta Give", his first top ten single; "Love Me or Leave Me" and "That Old Black Magic", the latter two making the top twenty. Around the time of the accident, Davis had been hired to sing the title song for the Universal Pictures film Six Bridges to Cross, which later came out in 1955. In 1956, he starred in the Broadway musical Mr. Wonderful, which was panned by critics but was a commercial success, closing after 383 performances. In 1958, Davis was hired to crown the winner of the Miss Cavalcade of Jazz beauty contest for the famed fourteenth Cavalcade of Jazz concert produced by Leon Hefflin Sr., held at the Shrine Auditorium on August 3. The other headliners were Little Willie John, Sam Cooke, Ernie Freeman, and Bo Rhambo. The event featured the top four prominent disc jockeys of Los Angeles. That same year, Davis made his dramatic acting debut on television in the General Electric Theater before landing his first box-office role in the film, Anna Lucasta, co-starring with actress Eartha Kitt. A year later, Davis won rave reviews for his role as Sportin' Life in the film adaptation of Porgy and Bess, which he co-starred with Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge. Also in 1959, due to American TV refusing to book a special for him due to his skin color, the entertainer hosted a special in Canada titled Sammy's Parade, on the Canadian network CBC. It was a breakthrough event for the performer, as in the United States in the 1950s corporate sponsors largely controlled the screen: "Black people [were] not portrayed very well on television, if at all", according to Jason King of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. That same year, Davis ceased performing with his father and Mastin as they both gradually retired from the stage due to old age. Davis would still pay his father and Mastin well into the mid-1960s.
