Sammy Davis Jr.: His Life, Career And The Tough Obstacles He Overcame

Dec 06, 2021

Sammy Davis Jr. was one of the members of the notorious Rat Pack, which also included Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, among others. During his six-decade spanning career, he earned the nickname, "Mr. Show Business" and he sure lived up to it. 

But despite having an enviable career, Davis also experienced many obstacles during his life in the limelight. These included deep-rooted racism, controversial love affairs and even an odd confession on his deathbed. Let's take a look at his incredible life.

Born in Harlem on Dec. 8, 1925, Samuel George Davis Jr. began his performance career early on. Some might even say he was destined for the stage — after all, his parents, father Sammy Davis Sr. and mother Elvera Sanchez were both vaudeville dance performers. 

After his parents divorced, his father took him on tour and taught him to dance. Soon enough he had joined the Will Mastin Trio, a troupe of vaudeville dancers and singers formed by Davis' father, his uncle Will Mastin and young performer Howard M. Colbert Jr. He first performed with them on stage at a nightclub at the tender age of 4. He went on to land his first role in a film at just 7 years old when he appeared in 1933's "Rufus Jones for President." By the time he was 16, he had replaced Colbert in the Will Mastin Trio, after he left in 1941.  

In his 1965 autobiography, "Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis Jr," he revealed that as a child, his father and uncle would shield him from racist remarks and discrimination, and claimed that the race-based snubs the trio would be subject to came from a place of "jealousy," according to Vanity Fair. 

However, that all changed when Davis was drafted into the U.S. Army as a young adult during WWII. He recounted much of the appalling abuse he experienced while he served, which even led to his nose becoming permanently damaged after getting beaten one-too-many times by "Southerners." He said in his memoir:

"I had been drafted into the army to fight, and I did ... with Southerners and Southwesterners who got their kicks out of needling me. ... I must have had a knockdown, drag-out fight every two days."

After being discharged in 1945, Davis' career began to take off. But tragedy would strike in 1954 when a car accident caused him to lose his left eye. The up-and-coming singer went through a rigorous rehabilitation but returned to his beloved stage just weeks later. The entertainer kept his head high and continued to perform in clubs, as usual, and even made self-deprecating jokes about his eyepatch. 

By the end of the decade he had befriended Sinatra, Martin, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford and the so-called Rat Pack was formed. It was also around that time that Davis found love. But even that wasn't without complications.

After filming for Alfred Hitchcock's film "Vertigo" wrapped up in 1957, the stunning, blue-eyed actor Kim Novak found herself at the Chez Paree nightclub, Chicago's most lively hotspot at the time. Davis performed that night and he took an immediate interest in the young actress, which led the two to begin a relationship.

The actor Tony Curtis later told Vanity Fair that it was at his party that they "spent the evening together — deep in thought, deep in talk." Curtis added he "could see right from the beginning that they were getting along in an intense way, and that was the beginning of the relationship."

However, Columbia Pictures' boss Harry Cohn, opposed the relationship as he believed it would make Novak undesirable in Hollywood. According to a BBC documentary, Cohn recruited mobsters to warn Davis that if he didn't marry a Black woman within 48 hours, they would break his legs and take out his working eye. He paid a friend, Loray White, $10,000 to marry him for protection, and the couple divorced just months later. Meanwhile, Novak later clarified that the two hadn't actually dated but for Davis' sake, she decided to stop seeing him in case there was any more trouble.

But his love life was the subject of controversy once again when he married Swedish actor May Britt, who was white. In fact, his interracial relationships plagued him throughout his entire life. It was even rumored that the reason Davis wasn't asked to play at John F. Kennedy's inauguration was because of his marriage to a white woman.

Although he and Britt had a biological daughter, Tracey, and two adopted sons named Mark and Jeff, their marriage didn't last. He later married Altovise Gore, and the couple remained together until his death in 1990. 

After being diagnosed with throat cancer, when he was on his deathbed, Davis told his son Mark "You are my son," which Mark took to believe he was his biological son. The topic caused tension between Mark and Tracey, who believed she was the only biological child of Davis. Eventually, Mark took a DNA test and it proved that he was not his father's biological child.

Davis died at the age of 64 and people all over mourned his death, including 2,500 fans who attended his funeral and the city of Las Vegas, which switched off its lights in his honor. 

Are you a fan of Sammy Davis Jr.? Did you know about all of the obstacles he had to overcome in his life? Let us know then pass this on so others can read about it too.