A stage performer of enormous energy whom the cinema mostly filmed rather than used. The films around the Rat Pack hand him a song and a gag and little else; the evidence of what he could do is largely elsewhere.
Fi1m perspective
Sammy Davis Jr. arrives in Ocean's Eleven (1960) at the wheel of a rubbish truck, and within a minute he is singing. That is how the films tended to treat him. He is let in, given a number, and the picture moves on to whoever is holding the plot. The singing is good. It is also the whole of the part.
He was a vaudeville child, on stage with the Will Mastin Trio from the age of three or four, and he was a nightclub act before he was anything else. A run at Ciro's in Hollywood in 1951 made his name, and Mr. Wonderful on Broadway in 1956 confirmed it. The best-regarded of his screen parts came early: Sportin' Life in Porgy and Bess (1959), a sly turn that critics have long singled out and that we have not reviewed. Then came the Rat Pack films with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, around 1959 and 1960, and the pattern set.
We scored Ocean's Eleven 55. The heist is worth waiting for; the first hour is not. Davis is introduced in a scene with nothing in it, like Dean Martin at his piano and Peter Lawford with his mother, and we were bored, and then irritated at being bored, because everyone on screen is capable of more and has decided not to bother. The complaint that has followed him is that he did impressions where a character was wanted, and that his eagerness to please showed. Watching the Rat Pack pictures, it is hard to argue. The comedy also leaned on racial gags, and he was the one it leaned on.
He went back to Broadway for Golden Boy in 1964, which tells you where he thought the real work was. Bob Fosse got a proper musical scene out of him as Big Daddy in Sweet Charity (1969), and late in life he appeared in Tap (1989) alongside Gregory Hines, doing the thing he had done first and best. Those are the films to look for. The Rat Pack ones show what the era was prepared to give him, which was a chair at the table and a song when the plot slowed.
He said what he wanted plainly enough: "All I want is they should like me—say this is a nice guy. Just let them give me one thing—applause—and I'm happy." Cinema does not applaud. He spent a career waiting for it to.
Biography
Sammy Davis Jr. was an American actor, singer, dancer and entertainer. He was born on 8 December 1925 in Harlem, New York City, and died on 16 May 1990 in Beverly Hills, California.
Davis began performing as a child in vaudeville with the Will Mastin Trio. He appeared in films including Ocean's Eleven (1960) as Josh Howard, The Cannonball Run (1981) and Cannonball Run II (1984) as Fenderbaum, and Sweet Charity (1969). He was a member of the Rat Pack with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. His television credits include appearances in I Dream of Jeannie, Batman, The Cosby Show and Charlie's Angels. He is credited as Self (archive footage) in Koyaanisqatsi (1983).
