Sammy Davis, Jr.

Samuel George Davis Jr. was born on December 8, 1925, in the Harlem district of Manhattan, New York City, to Sammy Davis Sr., an African-American entertainer and stage performer, and Elvera Sanchez, a Cuban-American tap dancer. His parents were vaudeville dancers who separated when he was three years old. His father, unwilling to lose custody of his son, took him on tour, and Davis learned to dance from both his father and his godfather, Will Mastin. The group performed together as the Will Mastin Trio, a billing Davis maintained throughout his career. At age seven, he played the title role in the 1933 film Rufus Jones for President, singing and dancing alongside Ethel Waters.

Davis began his professional career in vaudeville at age four. In 1944, at age eighteen, he was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II, where he was frequently subjected to racial abuse by white soldiers. He was reassigned to the Army's Special Services branch, which staged performances for troops, and was discharged in 1945 with the rank of private, having earned the American Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal. Following his discharge, he rejoined the family act, which performed at clubs around Portland, Oregon. In 1949, he recorded blues songs for Capitol Records under the pseudonyms Shorty Muggins and Charlie Green.

In March 1951, the Will Mastin Trio appeared at Ciro's in West Hollywood as the opening act for Janis Paige. The crowd's enthusiastic response extended their scheduled twenty-minute set to nearly an hour, and Paige had the billing order reversed. Davis continued to build his solo reputation through the early 1950s, releasing several albums and earning critical recognition. In 1954, at age twenty-nine, he lost his left eye in a car accident. That same year, he was hired to sing the title song for the Universal Pictures film Six Bridges to Cross. Several years after the accident, he converted to Judaism, having found commonalities between the experiences of Black Americans and Jewish communities.

Davis made his Broadway debut in 1956, starring in the musical Mr. Wonderful alongside Chita Rivera. Though critics panned the production, it was a commercial success, running for 383 performances. His Broadway career spanned from 1956 to 1978 and also included appearances in Golden Boy, Stop the World - I Want to Get Off, and Sammy. He returned to Broadway in 1964 in Golden Boy, a musical adaptation of Clifford Odets's play of the same name. The production featured the first interracial kiss on Broadway, and Davis received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical in 1965 for his performance.

In 1959, Davis became a member of the Rat Pack, led by Frank Sinatra, which also included Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. The following year, he appeared in the Rat Pack film Ocean's 11. In 1966, he hosted his own television variety program, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show. While his career slowed in the late 1960s, his recording of "The Candy Man" reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1972, and he became a prominent figure in Las Vegas entertainment, earning the nickname "Mister Show Business." His popularity contributed to breaking racial barriers within the segregated entertainment industry.

Davis received numerous honors over the course of his career. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP and received nominations for both a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award for his television work. In 1987, he was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, the same year he reunited with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin for an international tour that also featured Liza Minnelli. His final album, the country-influenced Closest of Friends, was released in 1982. Davis was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001 and was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in 2017. He died on May 16, 1990.