He’ll be remembered, if for nothing else, for the answer he gave when he was asked during a discussion of golf “What’s your handicap?” He answered “I’m a one-eyed, Negro, Jew married to a white woman. What more of a handicap do I need?”
You have summed it up properly and wrapped it in a nice neat package. He was one of the few black enterainers that fit into this mold perfectly.
He also sometimes was introduced as “The hardest working 5 foot two one eyed black Jew in show business!”, a takeoff on James Brown’s intro.
He was on The Tonight Show once when I was watching and I wish I could remember the details but IIRC he was talking about working with a child actor and how aggravating it was. Carson quipped “Well at least you have a co-star you could see eye to eye with”, which had a huge laugh and Sammy did his usual thing of walking off a few paces then coming back and saying “I congratulate you- that’s a rare double whammy- you got the short and you got the eye in the same joke!” Carson both turned red and burst out laughing- it was clear he had forgotten about the eye and really hadn’t intended it that way and was both kind of proud and kind of embarassed by it.
There are all kinds of stories about his post-death adventures. By all accounts he died deep in debt but I’ve read accounts that he left his widow in poverty and I’ve read accounts she was actually pretty well provided for due to his untouchable pensions and trust funds. His daughter with Britt was on a talk show and said she and her brothers did receive sizeable inheritances (not enough to make them rich but very significant) due to trust funds he’d set up back in his heyday that couldn’t be touched by his creditors. The wildest story is that his widow had his body exhumed and stripped of $70,000 worth of jewelryhe was buried with (which if it’s true I frankly wouldn’t blame her- he was Jewish, not Egyptian, why bury valuables with him?).
Trivia: he was 65 years old when he died but he was survived by his mother AND his grandmother, Louisa Sanchez, who lived to be 112 (cite). He was close to his grandmother but not to his mother.
An unbelievably talented performer, who started as a child on the road with his father and uncle. He was far more talented than any modern performers in the same genre (think Madonna). Add to that his success at breaking through the barriers of racism, which he did by ignoring them, making him courageous as well.
I saw Sammy at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles in the 1970s, and he was an excellent performer with a topnotch, flawless show. Sadly, both the Grove and Sammy now exist only in memory.
Also an excellent shot and quick draw artist. No, really. He was usually “packin’” due to the many death threats he received, especially after marrying May Britt, and worked pistol play into his act. He said he always had a fantasy of shooting up a KKK rally.
Posted for no reason other than I’ve always liked this clip: Sammy and Mama Cass. They sample various famous singers and Sammy dances like James Brown.
(Interesting that they changed the lyrics and they no longer reference The Mamas and the Papas.)
To address the OP: No.
He was a very talented man who did great work, but he hardly had any influence on younger performers and he never had the kind of iconic performance that would make him stick in the popular imagination. In another generation he’ll be as forgotten as Arthur Godfrey.
So, you’re saying you condone that stuff?
It looks like we’ll be kissing Nat King Cole!
Best wishes,
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Don’t forget his role as Sportin’ Life from Porgy and Bess. Here are some clips of him performing some of the music from it.
I spent a day on the set while they were filming that.
DiosaBellissima found something I’d been trying to find for years. I’m the shorter of the two young white girls to the left of Sammy in the photo.
He was a very sweet man, very kind, very generous and HUGELY talented. HUGELY. He was considered the best entertainer in the world by many people. He really could do it all: he was a very good actor, an excellent singer, a fantastic dancer, a very good impressionist and he was funny. His father (Daddy Sam to me - his wife PeeWee was my mom’s best friend.) raised him to be exactly what he became. All Sammy knew was show business, from his earliest years.
I’ve been listening to some of his recordings recently and he was wonderful. Beautiful tone and phrasing. He became a bit of a joke later, the Nehru jacket and the grooviness of it all. And his style is certainly not to everyone’s taste. But his talent is beyond question.
And legacy? Watch Micheal Jackson and Prince. There’s his legacy.
As far as impressions, check this out.
Some won’t be familiar to you, but he NAILS Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Louis Armstong, Jerry Lewis…
[quote=“Sampiro, post:23, topic:555270”]
Sammy was incredibly generous. He supported lots of people. He supported his father in excellent style. He was generous with himself, too… I got a ride in his Duesenberg a couple of times… I know I must not remember it right, but my kid brain remembers gold plate. And PeeWee got a new Jag every two years.
As somebody just said above, Michael Jackson and Prince. They were influenced by Sammy Davis Jr., and in turn they have influenced a ridiculous amount of performers. I don’t know much about Sammy Davis Jr. but I sure as hell know a lot about MJ and Prince, and when I think of who influenced them I think of… Sammy Davis Jr. (not just him, but he’s a name that always comes up).
Wow, Stoid; I’d forgotten how versatile Sammy was! He not only nailed the ones you mentioned, he moved seamlessly from a pitch perfect Billy Eckstine through uncanny renditions of Vaughn Monroe, Tony Bennett, Mel Torme and Frankie Laine*. Just wish he’d done Sinatra!
IMHO regarding artistic legacy: I respect that the OP’s question is asked sincerely and honestly. But it reminds me a little bit of a comment someone made in the Ray Charles passing thread, about Ray being “a novelty act.” I don’t mean that the question is as ignorant as that particular comment, just that the dismissive opinion is borne of unfamiliarity with Sammy Davis Jr.'s artistic output and his influence on successive generations of performers.
Sammy was a versatile showman who stood out as a performer in an era full of brilliant showmen. The OP is right that he won’t be remembered as a great vocalist; he didn’t have a distinctive style the way Sinatra or any of the singers he impersonated in Stoid’s clip did. His style was “in the mold” of a nightclub entertainer, which he performed flawlessly and with panache.
His legacy isn’t his dancing, although he was truly great as a tap artist. Even as a member of the Rat Pack, as a black artist in the 50’s and 60’s he was never going to get the kind of motion picture venues that made Astaire so well loved in the 30’s and 40’s, or that Gene Kelly so memorably starred in during the 40’s and 50’s. Even so, Sammy belongs in the same sentence with any of the great hoofers. (Look at this clip for a very small taste of him with contemporaries.)
But Sammy did get tremendous popular exposure in the mid 20th Century, through television and his nightclub shows. If it were only his influence on MJ and Prince, he could be listed as an artist with a great legacy, but Sammy Davis Jr.'s influence on American pop culture of the mid century was pervasive. No account of the era will be complete without reference to the type of nightclub/Vegas entertainment that he epitomized, and no reference will be correct without mention of Sammy as an exemplar of the form.
*[sub]Yes, I’m old enough to have recognized all of 'em except Eckstine without having to look 'em up.[/sub]
That’s a very good way to describe it, although I wouldn’t say “an” exemplar - THE.
He was a giant, he really was. I watched more videos, including one of Micheal Jackson singing “You Were There” in tribute to him, the barriers he broke. And he broke them because his talent was undeniable and irresistible. He was too talented to ignore.
More really good Sammy impersonations: Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Cagney, Jimmy Stewart , WC Fields, Cary Grant, Marlon Brando. The voices vary in how solidly he nails them, but his capture of their physical mannerisms and facial expressions is excellent, better than most impressionists I’ve seen. (Except for Jim Carey, who’s supernatural in his ability… sad that so little video seems to exist of his impressions)
What’s also interesting for the OP to note, if he’s still paying attention, is the comments on all these videos…people just raving over and over again about how extraordinary Sammy’s talent was.
So acsenray, I hope you have revised your opinion of one of the greatest entertainers of all time, whether he’s to your taste or not.
Revised completely? No. His work by itself still looks like hackery to me, if well executed hackery. I was ready to accept Hamster King’s assessment in post No. 28, until it was mentioned that Davis was an influence on Michael Jackson and Prince. So far, that is the only thing that seems solid evidence of a legacy. If that’s the case, I’m willing to consider that he does indeed have some legacy, but the case is still open regarding how important of a legacy that is. How much of Jackson’s and Prince’s accomplishments are dependent upon what Davis did?
Sammy could play the drums, and do some pretty fancy gunslinging as well.
A comment on that video:
Legacy? Hard to imagine a performing artist with more of a legacy than Sammy. The fact that I knew him about as well as any child knows an unrelated adult, slept in his home, sat in his LAP [once while he was driving, coming back from the Joey Bishop show - he let me pretend to drive. What’s funny is that he wasn’t really much bigger than me, since he was a very tiny man and I was a very large child…no, nothing weird, don’t even go there) I guess it makes me feel kinda protective of his memory - it makes me sad that anyone would even ask this question to begin with, since I’ve always expected that Sammy will be remembered as a giant for decades into the future, if not more.
Out of curiosity, was PeeWee a lot younger than Sam, Sr. or was she an old lady who felt the need for speed?