Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to “30 years in Biloxi,” stripping him of “his Jewish star” and “his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor.” Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish—indeed his lifelong effort—to be white.
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to “30 years in Biloxi,” stripping him of “his Jewish star” and “his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor.” Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish—indeed his lifelong effort—to be white.
The irony, of course, is that Davis had been steeped from childhood in the traditional heritage of black entertainment. Born in Harlem in 1925, he was raised on the chitlin circuit by his father and Will Mastin, tap-dance performers in black vaudeville. Davis never went to school a day in his life. His only education was standing in the wings and joining them onstage, for the first time at the age of four. Self-trained, he was shaped by a cultural inheritance handed down from the minstrel tradition of the 19th century. More than any other black performer of his generation, he had mastered its art and was himself the last great link to consummate black vaudevillians like Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.
Read the complete review of Wil Haygood’s “In Black and White” (Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95) and Gary Fishgall’s “Gonna Do Great Things” (A Lisa Drew Book / Scribner, $26).
