Sammy Davis, Jr. American Masters: Sammy Davis Jr. Yet, his life was complex, complicated, and contradictory. A veteran of increasingly outdated show business traditions, Davis strove to stay relevant, even as he found himself bracketed by the bigotry of white America and the distaste of black America. Featuring interviews with such luminaries as Billy Crystal, Norman Lear, Jerry Lewis, Whoopi Goldberg, and Kim Novak, with never-before-seen photographs from Davis' vast personal collection and footage of his electric performances, this film explores the life and art of a uniquely gifted entertainer whose trajectory highlighted the major flashpoints of American society from the Depression through the s.
Why the Institutional version? Because it provides additional usage options for PBS videos. View All 0. American Masters. Find Episodes. Air Date From. Discover how Moreno defied her humble upbringing and racism to become one of a select group of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award winners.
Explore her year career with new interviews, clips of her iconic roles and scenes of the star on set today. The first major film documentary to examine Sammy Davis, Jr. A proud Black trans woman, a drag mother and, a pageant girl, Crystal LaBeija was the cause of an iconic moment in drag history that paved the way for house culture, voguing, Paris is Burning, and the TV series Pose.
Jean Malin was one of the first openly gay performers in the Prohibition era during the "pansy craze" of the early s. No, couldn't play in the casino, couldn't go in to have a sandwich after the show.
In , a mixed-race act in show business, even though everyone was a star, was a bold statement. Here was a show that featured one black, one Jew, two Italians taking to the stage and laying claim to American tradition and the right to define what it meant to be cool.
And I think that that's what made people feel -- some people feel uncomfortable about the whole thing. Even if the guys on stage all loved each other, which I don't doubt that they did love each other.
That some people would probably think that he was a mascot, or, you know, a Stepin Fetchit thing, some racially subservient Man, it sure was nice to be in the company of all them big names and the movie stars.
When you're hungry and you're trying to get there, not trying to get my own identity, it was submerging me as a human being. He felt as though his musical credentials, his dancing credentials were all there.
He said, 'Mr. Penn, I want you to know that I am willing to prepare, I will do whatever you say to prepare, I just would like to know how you do it. I've got the most expensive show ever put on Broadway, and my star doesn't know how to prepare.
He said, 'Look, take whatever you walk into the theatre with and play the part the way you feel that day. And one of the first things Arthur Penn was saying, 'I've never seen a love scene in my life where people don't kiss, or hold each other's hands or embrace or something. It was daring and trying to do some things that had never been done in a musical -- a dramatic musical of any kind. Like being a father and Sammy Davis, Jr. The worst offense that had been perpetrated had been perpetrated on the kids because I was on that theatrical roll, and it was hot and heavy.
I've never seen Sammy so moved. He told me how much he particularly liked the song called 'No More,' which was about -- that said, 'I ain't bowing down no more. So much was happening at that time -- Martin Luther King, the marches -- and he was involved in every single aspect of it.
They had the ear of mainstream publications, they had a lot of fans -- both black and white fans, mainstream fans. And they were able to reach audiences that movement organizations and movement activists couldn't necessarily do. And he was very taken by the heroism of those young Civil Rights workers going out there doing what they were doing.
They didn't like me because I was black, they didn't like me because I was a black Jew, and they didn't like a black Jew who was also, at that time, married to a white lady. And Sammy said he couldn't leave the play because it would close, and so Harry said 'I'll buy the house,' and did, and Sammy went to Selma. He stepped to the table, and not only gave money, but got a lot of his friends in Las Vegas involved. Meaning that he never really felt accepted by black people throughout his career.
Color wouldn't have had existed, and I think that's the world he would have loved to live in. Martin Luther King, the apostle of non-violence in the Civil Rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee. There was shock in Harlem tonight when word of Dr.
King's murder reached the nation's largest Negro community. Our adding to it, no matter what our frustrations, no matter what our anger, what our justifications might be, it becomes fevering when the carnival atmosphere that Mr.
Wilkins talks about does prevail. I don't want to call those people who are laughing less than 48 hours after our leader died and stealing Those are not really brothers. Those cannot be the people who are striving for the dignity that we should have at this point. We remember, too, that he overcame the poverty and the prejudice and went clear to the top. I don't feel now, under normal circumstances, you're supposed to keep your hits until the end of the show so the people in the theater or the nightclub can say, 'Oh, I wonder if he's ever going to do it,' you know?
Because as they used to say on the corner, 'This as far uptown as I'm ever gonna get. And I said, 'No. They call him the candy man. And what they were selling Sammy was, 'You know what, Sam? You're not going to be a performer forever, and you know where we think you should be after 'Good evening, ladies and gentlemen'?
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