In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. - Hardcover

Haygood, Wil

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 037540354X ISBN 13: 9780375403545

Publisher: Knopf, 2003

Synopsis

He was, for decades, one of the most recognizable figures in the cultural landscape, his image epitomizing a golden age of American show business. His career spanned a lifetime, but for years he has remained hidden behind the persona he so vigorously generated, and so fiercely protected. Now, in this surprising, illuminating, and compulsively readable biography, we are taken beyond the icon, into the extraordinary, singular life of Sammy Davis, Jr.

In scrupulous detail and with stunning powers of evocation, Wil Haygood takes us back to the era of vaudeville, where it all began for four-year-old Sammy who ran out onstage one night and stole the show. From then on it was a motherless childhood on the road, singing and dancing his way across a segregated America with his father and the formidable showman Will Mastin, struggling together to survive the Depression and the demise of vaudeville itself.

With an ambition honed by poverty and an obsessive need for applause, Sammy drove his way into the nightclub circuit of the 1940s and 1950s, when, his father and Mastin aging and out of style, he slowly began to make a name for himself, hustling his way to top billing and eventually to recording contracts. From there, he was to stake his claim on Broadway, in Hollywood, and, of course, in Las Vegas.

Haygood brings Sammy’s showbiz life into full relief against the backdrop of an America in the throes of racial change. Sammy grew up trapped between the worlds of blacks and whites, with so much invested in both. He made his living entertaining white people but was often denied service in the very venues he played. Drafted into a newly integrated U.S. Army in the 1940s, he saw up close the fierce tensions that seethed below the surface. Dragged into the civil rights movement, he witnessed a hatred that often erupted into violence. In his broad and varied friendships and alliances (with Frank Sinatra; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Richard Nixon; Sidney Poitier; Marilyn Monroe, to name just a few), not to mention his romances (his relationship with Kim Novak and his marriage to the blond beauty May Britt drew death threats), he forged uncharted paths across racial lines. Admired and reviled by both blacks and whites, he was tormented all his life by raging insecurities, and never quite came to terms with his own skin. Ultimately, his only true sense of his identity was as a performer.

Based on painstaking research and more than 250 interviews, Wil Haygood brings us a sweeping and vivid cultural history of the twentieth century, chronicling black entertainment from its beginnings and the birth of popular culture as we know it. In Black and White transcends simple biography to become an important record, both celebratory and elegiacal, of a vanished America and its greatest entertainer.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“Reading this book is a very moving experience: because of the power of Wil Haygood’s prose; because of the compassion with which he writes about his complex and tortured subject; and because of the penetrating historical insight — indeed brilliance–with which he weaves Sammy Davis Jr.’s life and the poignant and fascinating story of black entertainment in America into the whole tragedy of race relations in our country. Mr. Haygood writes with great power and great compassion, and he has created a book that I couldn’t put down and that I will never forget.”
–Robert A. Caro
"In this moving, exhaustive life of one of America’s greatest entertainers, Haygood (King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell Jr.) casts Sammy Davis Jr. as a man shifting between identities, between the worlds of black people and white people."
–Starred PW Review
"An American life considered with art and understanding in a major work of biography."
–Starred Kirkus Reviews
"A fascinating American life story, brilliantly told."
–Booklist, Starred and Boxed Review
"IN BLACK AND WHITE... presents a full picture of one of the most recognizable entertainers of the last century­--a picture with all the shades of gray. In reading IN BLACK AND WHITE, it becomes clear why author Wil Haygood not only has won honors for his journalism, but also high praise for his work in biography."
–Ebony
"... [Haygood] does a vivid job of conjuring the many worlds [Sammy Davis, Jr.] traversed, and shows how the issue of race, in his own mind and in the minds of his fans and detractors, shaped his career and life."
–Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"[Haygood] writes like a demon, with perspective, understanding and compassion to burn. It's a pleasure not to be missed."
–Jan Herman, Chicago Sun-Times

"One of the best showbiz biographies in a long while... IN BLACK AND WHITE does splendid justice to its subject while brilliantly touching on the larger theme of race in 20th century America... a fascinating read."
–Eric Monder, Weekly Variety

About the Author:

Wil Haygood is currently a staff writer for the Style section of the Washington Post. For seventeen years he was a feature writer, and national and foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe. He has received numerous awards, including the Sunday Magazine Editors Award, which he received twice; the New England Associated Press Award; the National Association of Black Journalists Award for Foreign Reporting (which he also won twice); the James Thurber Literary Fellowship; an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship; and a Yaddo Fellowship. He is also the author of Two on the River; King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.; and The Haygoods of Columbus: A Family Memoir, which was awarded the Great Lakes Book Award. He lives in Washington, D.C.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 037540354X
• ISBN 13: 9780375403545
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 528