Book Description

The untold story of Sammy Davis, Jr.: This incisive biography and sweeping cultural history conjures "the many worlds [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" (The New York Times). For decades one of America’s most recognizable stars, the real Sammy Davis, Jr. has long remained hidden behind the persona the performer so vigorously generated—and so fiercely protected. Here Wil Haygood brings Davis’s life into full relief against the backdrop of an America in the throes of racial change. He made his living entertaining white people but was often denied service in the very venues he played, and in his broad and varied friendships—not to mention his romances—Davis crossed racial lines in ways few others had. In Black and White vividly draws on painstaking research and more than two hundred and fifty interviews to trace Davis, Jr.’s journey from the vaudeville stage to Broadway, Hollywood, and, of course, Las Vegas. It is an important record of a vanished America—and of one of its greatest entertainers.