Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 17, 1990 TAG: 9005170321
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. LENGTH: Long
Death came as friends and fans of the 64-year-old entertainer maintained a vigil outside his home. They had been gathering there since Tuesday when word began to circulate that the end was near.
The tributes were immediate:
Frank Sinatra, who with Davis, Joey Bishop, Dean Martin and Peter Lawford became Hollywood's fast-living "Rat Pack" of the 1960s and who knew him for 40 years, said he "wished the world could have known Sam as I did. . . . It was a generous God who gave him to us for all these years and a heaven with his magic gives me warmth. Sam was the best friend a man could have . . . "
Said Bishop: "Guess they must need a good show up in heaven, that's all I can say." Then he added, "God, I'm sorry. I loved him."
Martin hailed Davis as a great entertainer and "an even greater friend, not only to me, but to everyone whose life he touched."
Former President Reagan remembered him as "a special talent which made him more than just a great entertainer - it made him magical," while Bill Cosby said "it would have been fantastic to see him at age 82 still enjoying performing for the people. I'll see him later."
Davis had battled the cancer in his throat since September, when the tumor was discovered growing behind his vocal cords. He began a series of radiation treatments that left his skin discolored and raw enough to bleed when he touched his throat.
When his illness became known, fans around the world deluged him with letters letting him know that he was in their prayers.
The energy he brought to the stage was palpable. And his versatility was such that he could go on a bare stage alone and weave a stunning evening of entertainment with song, dance, impressions and comedy.
"This is what I want on my tombstone," he once told an interviewer:
"Sammy Davis Jr., the date, and underneath, one word: `Entertainer.' That's all, because that's what I am, man."
Behind Davis' superb stagecraft, however, and despite the adoration of faithful fans, Davis was for much of his life a man at war with himself.
He buried his pain in alcohol and cocaine - chasing the delusion that his "swinging" lifestyle somehow compensated for his two divorces, his estrangement from his children and his futile efforts to become what he thought others expected him to be.
"I didn't like me," Davis told an interviewer in 1989. "So it made all the sense in the world to me at the time that if you don't like yourself, you destroy yourself.
"The monkey on my back is that I created a lifestyle that was no good for me. My life was empty. I had drugs, booze and broads, and I had nothing."
He had to fight his way through what he has called "the tortures of the damned," and he credited Altovise, his wife of 20 years, with helping him make a 180-degree turnaround.
The turnaround began when doctors told him in 1983 that his stomach and liver were so damaged that he would die soon if he didn't stop drinking. He stopped. In 1984 and 1985, he underwent hip replacement surgery.
But he returned to dance again and charmed movie fans as Little Mo, the veteran hoofer with still enough moves to accept a "challenge" dance, in the 1989 film "Tap."
Davis was born Dec. 8, 1925, in Harlem, N.Y., where his father was lead dancer and his mother, Elvera, was in the chorus of a vaudeville troupe headed by his adopted uncle Will Mastin.
When the act went on the road, Davis remained with his paternal grandmother, Rosa "Mama" Davis, who raised him until his parents divorced. His father took custody, and by age 3 a mugging little Sammy had made his stage debut.
He learned to dance by watching routines from the wings, and the rhythms from his flashing feet soon became a popular addition to the act. He made his film debut in 1933, at age 7, in "Rufus Jones for President," a comedy in which a boy dreams he is elected president.
Mastin's troupe, which had included 12 members, began to shrink with the decline of vaudeville and eventually was reduced to "The Will Mastin Trio, Featuring Sammy Davis Jr."
Touring in the 1930s and '40s, the trio often could not find hotels that would rent rooms to blacks or restaurants that would serve them.
But it was not until Davis was drafted into the Army's first integrated unit at age 18 that he ran into the naked racism never far beneath the surface of World War II America.
During basic training in Wyoming, he was beaten, kicked and spat upon by bigoted whites in his barracks. Describing those days in his best-selling 1965 biography, "Yes, I Can," Davis said his knuckles were covered with scabs from fighting racists during his first three months in the Army.
Davis rejoined his father and uncle after the war, but the trio led a hand-to-mouth existence as vaudeville died and they tried breaking into nightclubs. They worked hotels in Las Vegas, where they could neither register as guests nor enter the casino because they were black.
During the next two years, the trio appeared with headliners such as Mickey Rooney, Sinatra and Bob Hope. Jack Benny later intervened to get them a booking at Ciro's nightclub in Hollywood where they opened for singer Janis Paige. The audience would not let them off - or Paige on - stage. The next night, Paige was the opening act for the Will Mastin Trio.
By 1954, when Davis released his first album under a contract to Decca Records, his father and Mastin had become background accompaniment to his soaring performances.
With Davis as its centerpiece, the trio sold out clubs from Los Angeles to New York, and the group was in constant demand for guest spots on television variety shows.
But it all nearly ended in November 1954 in a car crash along a stretch of highway between Las Vegas and Los Angeles that cost him his left eye. During his recuperation, he said, he began thinking seriously about religion and converted to Judaism.
After a brief marriage to dancer Loray White in 1959, Davis married Swedish actress May Britt in 1960. The couple had a daughter, Tracey, and adopted two sons, Mark and Jeff. The couple divorced in 1968, and two years later Davis married dancer Altovise Gore. They adopted a son, Manny, last year.
Davis is survived by his wife, four children and two grandchildren. His mother and a sister also survive. Services are scheduled for Friday at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Hollywood Hills with burial to follow at Forest Lawn in nearby Glendale.
The family asked that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the Sammy Davis Jr. National Liver Institute at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark.
by CNB