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Years later his wife Altovise was living in poverty when she turned to a former federal prosecutor, Albert "Sonny" Murray, to make one last attempt to resolve Sammy's debts, restore his estate, and revive his legacy. For seven years Sonny probed Sammy's life to understand how someone of great notoriety and wealth could have lost everything, and in the process he came to understand Davis, a man whose complexity makes for a riveting work of celebrity biography as cultural history.
Investigative journalist Birkbeck's look at entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.'s flawed life primarily focuses on the tangled financial mess Davis left behind for his widow when he died in 1990. The pouring over of complicated legal matters is tough going regardless of the format, but while a reader might skip about looking for show business anecdotes, such skimming is less easy with audio. That said, the always excellent Peter Jay Fernandez, who reads James Patterson's Alex Cross thrillers, delivers a sympathetic performance. Tax attorneys may find this title fascinating but not general audiences. [Audio clip available through
—Michael Adams
Birkbeck is sure of his mission; on the acknowledgments page, his first words are the rather startlingly self-reverential: "This important book...," while the subtitle reveals his focus: "Music, Money, Madness, and the Mob." While superb musicianship made Sammy's popularity possible, money quickly became his priority, and after he hit the big time, his life became a nonstop orgy of excess. One of the highest-paid entertainers on the Las Vegas strip, Sammy spent the money faster than he could earn it, buying jewelry, furs, and drugs in ever-increasing quantities. He grossed over $50 million in his career, but at the time of his death in 1990, his assets totaled $5 million, while his debts were more than three times that amount. With Davis's estate owing millions to the government, potential purveyors of the Sammy Davis Jr. image were few and far between. As a result, in Birkbeck's words, "Since Sammy's death...it was as if Sammy never existed." How, the author wonders, could such a state of affairs have occurred?
Birkbeck sketches in details of Sammy's professional life, and the difficult path he walked as early-1960s America's most visible black entertainer. Triumphs onstage were offset by his personal difficulties: marriage to the Swedish blonde May Britt drew hate mail and death threats. A negligent parent who spent virtually no time with his children, Davis was so self-absorbed that his son Mark relates flying to Vegas to visit his father, only to be "forced to wait three hours outside Sammy's hotel room while Sammy entertained other guests." Although he was initially hailed as a trailblazer, Davis's gaudy lifestyle and obeisance to Sinatra caused uneasiness within the black community -- an uneasiness that exploded into charges of Uncle Tom–ism when he was photographed hugging President Richard Nixon at the 1972 Republican National Convention.
Birkbeck sorts through Sammy's dabbling in "devil worship," tales of wife swapping, and even the claims of Davis biographer and confidant Burt Boyar that "Sammy knew who killed John F. Kennedy." There's juicy dish aplenty, but time after time the author's workmanlike but uninspired style intrudes: "Sammy was a natural talent, one of those rare people touched by the hand of God." The story may zip, but the prose often plods. Repetition mars the description of the tale's leading characters; more damaging, Birkbeck reconstructs dialogue verbatim from a distance of three decades. There are no footnotes to back up the participants' recall, and no acknowledgment of how wildly memories can vary regarding contentious matters.
According to the note on sources, Sammy's adjutant David Steinberg always refused to discuss Sammy. Nevertheless, when speaking with Birkbeck, Steinberg evidently possessed word-perfect recall of incidents that occurred many years earlier. To wit, Birkbeck recreates the screaming fit that ensued when Davis's arrival to entertain at the 1974 Monaco Red Cross gala had not been accorded what Sammy felt was sufficient respect. " 'Who do they fucking think I am!' he screamed between swigs from a champagne bottle." Princess Grace's cool retort to Steinberg's plea on Sammy's behalf? "Maybe Mr. Davis is just a little too old to be doing this and I suggest he should just get onto his little yacht and toddle off into the sea." One can't help but wonder about Steinberg's instant recall of Princess Grace's exact words so long after the event, or, for that matter, how, without third wife Altovise's participation in the book, Birkbeck can unequivocally claim that "whenever Sammy hosted a late-night orgy and instructed his wife to make love to another woman, she did."
Birkbeck is on firmer ground as he lays out exactly how the high-earning Davis came to leave behind "the largest single open case of an individual taxpayer debt in the nation." Indeed, the real star of the book is not Sammy but dogged attorney Sonny Murray, who was originally retained by Altovise to sort through IRS problems, missing assets, and Davis family dysfunction (which ironically and most notably concerned the alcoholic and irrational Altovise). Dealing with the vodka tippling (out of mayonnaise jars, no less) widow, Murray is portrayed as nothing short of saintly. Unlike Altovise, Murray cooperated with the book, which may partially account for the skewed perspective. Obsessed with regaining her status in Beverly Hills, Altovise emerges as a Cruella de Vil figure, yet sadness at her fate is not hard to summon; when Murray prepared her for an expected onslaught of interviews with a written list of hypothetical press questions, her response to the test query "We heard you were in a mental institution" was a despairing "Every day of my life."
Birkbeck's background as an investigative journalist (he has written three true-crime books) allows him to cleanly lay out Davis's failed investments in dubious real estate ventures and fraudulent tax shelters. What's sorely missing, however, is a true analysis of how Davis succeeded professionally, and why the needy, generous, infuriating star is worthy of a reading audience's rooting interest. Scant attention is paid to the wildly conflicting responses Davis engendered within the African-American community; such historical context regarding his pioneering efforts would have lent resonance to the often mind-boggling accounts of his financial malfeasance. As it is, Birkbeck never fully succeeds in deconstructing the wild contradictions in Davis's personal and professional lives.
In the words of Sammy's daughter Tracey, "Here we are, seventeen years after my dad died, and his estate is still being mismanaged into oblivion. It's horrible." It is indeed a saga of incompetence and neglect, and while readers fascinated by the Rat Pack's seemingly inexhaustible hold on the collective imagination may find the book worth a look, those seeking a true deconstruction of Sammy Davis Jr. and his prominent place in 20th-century American culture will have to wait for a more incisive biography. --Tom Santopietro
Tom Santopietro is a contributor to the Barnes & Noble Review.
Deconstructing Sammy
Chapter One
October 2005
Hundreds of people, many dressed in colorful clothing, slowly filled the vast auditorium at East Stroudsburg University to pay their last respects to Albert R. Murray Sr.
Affectionately known as "the Judge," he died the week before, following a short illness, and after a private burial, his friends, family, and admirers came to East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, not only to say good-bye, but to celebrate an extraordinary life.
The Judge and his wife, Odetta, were the founders and owners of the Hillside Inn in nearby Marshall's Creek. For fifty years, the Hillside catered to a predominantly African-American clientele, carving out an existence on a plot of land in northeastern Pennsylvania as a safe and quiet refuge for African-Americans routinely denied accommodations, especially during the tense racial times of the 1950s and 1960s. The Judge and Odetta personally felt that sting, and when Odetta vowed during a business trip to the Poconos in 1954 never to sleep in a car by the side of a road again, the Hillside was born. Odetta, whom everyone called Mama, died in 2002, and now, with the Judge gone, their only child, Albert Jr., was heir to their legacy.
Known by all as Sonny, he stood in front of the auditorium, dwarfed by a giant image of the Judge projected onto a big screen that hung over the stage. Sonny smiled as he shook hands and gave warm hugs to friends and family members, some of whom traveled from as far as Georgia. Welcoming his guests, he proudly pointed to a framed letter from Pennsylvania governor Edward Rendell. It was a congratulatory letter written the year before, addressed to"Judge Murray," recognizing him not only for his great service to the Commonwealth, but for providing a "model hospitality facility in the Pocono Mountains" and his "courageous vision in a time of considerable discrimination."
"I have no doubt," wrote Rendell, "that the importance of the Hillside Inn Resort Hotel...and its founders...will continue to be felt for lifetimes to come."
Distant aunts and cousins cried after reading the letter, and all offered stern admonishments to Sonny to keep the legacy alive. At fifty-six, with specks of gray hair the only signs of age on a solid, stout body, he nodded his head, placating the well-wishers. Sonny knew the Hillside was a legacy he didn't want. An attorney by trade, Sonny had taken over the daily operation of the Hillside a year before Mama died, which prompted heated arguments with the Judge over its future. The Judge firmly believed the Hillside, a thirty-three-room resort, should remain as it always was through the decades...a last bastion of black pride, a place to rest and to heal the soul. But Sonny thought that time had come and passed. This wasn't the 1950s, he reasoned, and blacks now were accepted everywhere, from large destinations like Disney World to small bed-and-breakfast hotels in Vermont. The Hillside, he argued, was an anachronism that would not, and could not, survive.
He had seen too many times the reaction from a white couple or family who unknowingly booked a stay at the black resort only to leave quickly after arriving. Sonny also knew the strong feelings of the black guests, who didn't want to share their "home" with whites. But Sonny believed that for the Hillside to survive he needed to broaden its clientele, and after taking over the day-to-day operation in 2001 he gave the resort a facelift. He purchased new beds, hired painters, and conceived a marketing plan that touted the Hillside as a multicultural home for jazz and a place of respite for all races and ethnicities.
The Judge was irate.
The grandson of slaves, the Judge was a man of purpose and steadfast resolve. As a child growing up near Augusta, Georgia, he picked cotton and rode his bike ten miles a day, each way, to attend a better high school. He later joined the army, married Mama, and served in England during World War II. After the war, they followed the postwar migration north and settled in Brooklyn, where Mama worked as a nurse while studying for a master's degree in elementary education. The Judge earned his law degree at Brooklyn College and became partners with Abe Kaufman, a Jewish accountant. Together, the unlikely pair began buying up homes and properties in Brooklyn and selling to black buyers who, like the Murrays, left the South to find better homes and jobs. The racial makeup of Brooklyn slowly changed as the steadily rising black population served as the impetus for the white flight to the suburbs of Long Island and New Jersey.
Sonny was born in 1949. When he was one, his parents, working to complete their educations, sent him to live with relatives in Georgia, where he later learned to roll tobacco, pick cotton, and slaughter cows. He also experienced racial prejudice, particularly when he unknowingly attempted to drink from a "whites only" water fountain in Augusta.
"Hey, nigger. You don't drink from there, ever. That's for white people only. You use that one over there. And don't forget that."
Even at a tender age, Sonny never forgot those hurtful words, or the confusion he felt trying to understand why he couldn't share a fountain with anyone else. It was, after all, just water. But Sonny learned the ways of the South before eventually returning to New York. Mama had a nickname ready for him...Sammy...after her beloved father, Sam Sanders, and she'd whisper "How's my little Sammy" into her son's ear while cradling him in her arms.
Mama and the Judge bought the worn-down Hillside Inn in 1954, following a visit to the Poconos. What was a business trip for the young, hardworking couple turned into an unsuccessful quest to find a room, any room. But no hotel or resort would accept them, and they slept in their car. Upon their return to Brooklyn, Mama vowed to open a hotel accepting of minorities, and the Hillside was born. It had only two floors, two bathrooms, and eight rooms, and needed a fresh coat of paint, but together with Kaufman, the Murrays bought what had been a boardinghouse and commuted the seventy-five miles from their home in Brooklyn to oversee what they hoped would be a vacation retreat for blacks. When Kaufman died in 1955, the Murrays gained full ownership. But they were treated poorly and forced to endure numerous indignities from a rural Pennsylvania community that expressed its unhappiness with their new black neighbors in a variety of ways, from suppliers refusing to deliver goods and supplies to local banks declining to even consider business loans.
Deconstructing Sammy. Copyright © by Matt Birkbeck. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.What a sad book this is. I almost didn't want to finish it, but couldn't put it down. The book is about Sammy, but it is also about the people in his life and what a life it was. I was shocked by what I was reading and saddened that this was the life of one of the most talented men in the entertainment business. There are so many details my head was spinning and my jaw was dropped. It was like a traffic accident. You don't want to look but you can't help yourself. I'm still a fan of Sammy Davis Jr. but will never think of him in the same way as I did before I read the book.
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Posted April 17, 2009
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Overview
Years later his wife Altovise was living in poverty when she turned to a former federal ...