Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
INTRIGUING BIO AND CHRONICLE, 13 Feb 2004
Sammy Davis, Jr., the true "I Gotta Be Me," man was not only a topnotch entertainer but also a tortured individual according to this exhaustive biography by journalist Wil Haygood. More than simply a comprehensive biography "In Black and White" is an intriguing chronicle of black entertainment in our country. Trained by his father and uncle Sammy had no classroom education but a world of stage smarts. As a small child he mastered soft shoe and tap to become the star of the vaudeville threesome "The Will Mastin Trio." There seemed to be nothing the youngster couldn't do whether it was singing, dancing, playing an instrument or miming other performers. This energetic bundle of talent couldn't be contained. He burst upon the television screen and was soon a member of Hollywood's celebrated "Rat Pack" paling around and joking on stage with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Joey Bishop. Nonetheless, Sammy was black and they were white. He was very aware of the difference - where he could stay and where he could not. Once married to a black girl he later started dating blond white actresses and eventually wed May Britt, a union that shocked. He survived a 1954 car accident which caused him to lose an eye, and his face with the black eye patch soon became familiar. For reasons unknown and only surmised he converted to Judaism. When he told Jerry Lewis of his plan, Lewis asked, "Don't you already have enough problems?" Problems were to dog him for all of his life. Beneath the happy veneer was a wellspring of anguish. "In Black and White" is a memorable biography of a one-of-a-kind entertainer and an eye-opening glimpse of the world of entertainment as it once was.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Incisive biography, 30 Mar 2009
This incisive biography reveals Davis hated his own blackness so much that he compulsively pursued white women and cackled at racial putdowns from his Rat Pack cronies. The era's most dazzling entertainer was also its neediest, throwing endless parties and giving extravagant gifts (while piling up debts to the Mob and the IRS). This most enjoyable of biographies traces Sammy's motherless childhood spent on vaudeville stages, his adolescence on the entertainment circuit and his peak years as a star. Sammy's story draws a chilling portrait of a complex man who came to personify Las Vegas' flash as well as its lost soul.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mr Wonderful, 22 Feb 2008
This is a very well-thought out and researched biography of Sammy Davis Jnr, who was probably the greatest entertainer of his generation. Not just dealing with Sammy's life and the complications of his heritage (Cuban and African American, he was raised on the road by his father and Will Mastin, who had put him in their act), his religion (he converted to Judaism), and his hero worship of Frank Sinatra, but also with the social upheaval taking place in Sammy's lifetime and how he participated in it. Along the way we get intriguing mini-biographies of important figures in Sammy's life and summaries of the big political events taking place at the same time. The figures include the likes of Martin Luther King, Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte, Jerry Lewis, Richard Nixon, JFK and Robert Kennedy, Kim Novak and more. Truly a who's who of celebrities and social movers in mid-Twentieth Century USA.
As someone who hadn't been around long when Sammy died, and who knew him primarily through things like the Cannonball Run, documentaries and his songs being used in advertisements, and being British to boot, I hadn't realised just how connected Sammy had been, how big a part he had played (albeit somewhat reluctantly) in the African Americans' movement for equality and respect. What makes it all the more intriguing is that the evidence in the book points to the fact that Sammy was happier with, and felt a greater desire to be with, the mainstream white culture of the time, and that was reflected in how he was perceived. Had Sammy been born into a less volatile society, perhaps there wouldn't be so many seemingly judgmental comments in the book about how Sammy "wanted to be white".
While the book is well-written and I think is a definite buy if you're remotely interested, there are a couple of itches in that Haygood does bring up the same points about Sammy's character - that he is constantly on the move and most happy when on the road, that he "wanted to be white" - pretty consistently throughout the book - even though he does paint a picture of a very complicated, conflicted man. It's a little annoying because the points begin to feel laboured and that you're being forced into accepting these points as truth. The book also skates over the Rat Pack stuff pretty quickly, focussing mainly on the relationship with Sinatra - but then that stuff has been gone over pretty thoroughly elsewhere.
The book is highly poignant. Like many driven people, Sammy Davis Jnr has a life that had incredible highs and deep lows, and there's a sense that the highs could have been higher in a fairer, less racially charged world. I can recommend this book wholeheartedly. You're bound to learn something new.
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