Biography:

Samuel George Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American singer, dancer, actor, comedian, film producer and television director.

At age three, Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and the Will Mastin Trio, which toured nationally, and his film career began in 1933. After military service, Davis returned to the trio and became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro’s (in West Hollywood) after the 1951 Academy Awards. With the trio, he became a recording artist. In 1954, at the age of 29, he lost his left eye in a car accident. Several years later, he converted to Judaism, finding commonalities between the oppression experienced by African-American and Jewish communities.^[2]

He had a starring role on Broadway in Mr. Wonderful with Chita Rivera (1956). In 1960, he appeared in the Rat Pack film Ocean’s 11. He returned to the stage in 1964 in a musical adaptation of Clifford Odets‘ Golden Boy. Davis was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance. The show featured the first interracial kiss on Broadway.^[3] In 1966, he had his own TV variety show, titled The Sammy Davis Jr. Show. While Davis’s career slowed in the late 1960s, his biggest hit, “The Candy Man“, reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1972, and he became a star in Las Vegas, earning him the nickname “Mister Show Business”.^[4]

Davis’s popularity helped break the race barrier of the segregated entertainment industry.^[5] He did, however, have a complex relationship with the black community and drew criticism after publicly supporting President Richard Nixon in 1972. 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.”^[6][7] This was to become a signature comment, recounted in his autobiography and in many articles.^[8]

After reuniting with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in 1987, Davis toured with them and Liza Minnelli internationally, before his death in 1990. He died in debt to the Internal Revenue Service,^[9] and his estate was the subject of legal battles after the death of his wife.^[10] Davis was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and an 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.

Early life

Davis was born on December 8, 1925, in the Harlem section of Manhattan in New York City, the son of African-American entertainer and stage performer Sammy Davis Sr. (1900–1988) and tap dancer and stage performer Elvera Sanchez (1905–2000).^[11] 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 he was Puerto Rican because he feared anti-Cuban backlash would hurt his record sales.^[12][13] Davis’s parents were vaudeville dancers. As an infant, he was reared 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 godfather Will Mastin. 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, for example by dismissing race-based snubs as jealousy. However, when Davis served in the United States Army during World War II, he was confronted by strong 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 18 years, a door which they had always secretly held open.”^[14] At age seven, Davis played the title role in the film Rufus Jones for President, in which he sang and danced with Ethel Waters.^[15] He lived for several years in Boston’s South End and reminisced years later about “hoofing and singing” at Izzy Ort’s Bar & Grille.^[16]

Military service

In 1944, during World War II, Davis was drafted into the U.S. Army at age 18.^[17] 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.^[5]

He was reassigned to the Army’s Special Services branch, which put on performances for troops.^[18] At one show he found himself performing in front of soldiers who had previously racially abused him.^[17] Davis, who earned the American Campaign Medal and World War II Victory Medal, was discharged in 1945 with the rank of private.^[17] 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.”^[19]

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