Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Sammy Davis Jr: National Treasure

Episode Date: April 18, 2026

In this classic episode Josh and Chuck sit down and detail the complicated life of the late, great Sammy Davis Jr.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I've chosen our February 2020 episode on Sammy Davis Jr. If I'm not mistaken, this is where I, you, and the rest of the world finds out that Chuck does a killer Sammy Davis Jr. impression, thus booing the podcast for years to come. I don't think anything else is needed to be said about this one. Just enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's guest producer Dylan sitting in again, like a great guy. Like a cool cat, baby. I thought you were doing evil German doctor for a second, and then I figured it out. No man. Wait, I haven't said it yet, and this is stuff you should know. Okay. That was a good one. That no man was wonderful.

I love how Sammy Davis Jr. always said cat and baby. It was just, he was such a cool dude. And, okay, do Sammy Davis Jr. saying, we have ways of making you talk. What sounds German about any of that? Just do it, please. No. Please. We have ways of making you talk, man.

That was pretty great. Pretty great. And that's a little soft shoe. It's great stuff, Chuck. So, you know, Billy Crystal used to do Sammy Davis Jr. Way back in the 80s when Blackface was super cool to do. Right? And not controversial.

Did he do Blackface Sammy Davis Jr.? Yes, dude. He did Blackface Sammy Davis Jr. Eight years of. go at the Oscars. What? What? Yes, you don't remember that? No.

He, it's the last time he hosted the Oscars 8 in 2012. He, they did, you know, a remote intro thing where he was doing different things. And the last bit was him and Blackface again. And people were, like, and then, you know, this was in, you know, 2012. So there was Twitter and that was Facebook and this social media. And people were like, that wasn't cool in the 80s. And I can't believe he's doing that now. For real.

Sammy Davis Jr.'s daughter came out and said, you know what, if there's one thing I know is that my dad is looking down and laughing and smiling at Billy Crystal doing this. He was roasted pretty heavily for it, rightfully so. And he hasn't been around a lot, but he wasn't around a lot before then. Do you think like that did it? Like that was the demise? I don't think it helped. I was, yeah, I haven't seen him in a while either.

Man, how did somebody not step back and be like, okay, wait. we're about to do blackface. I know, like, how did no one on the production crew of the Oscars say? Not a good idea. I don't know. Yeah, well, he did it. So I came across something that I thought was pretty interesting. I saw a 1985 interview with David Letterman.

Yeah, I saw that too. So good. And Sammy Davis Jr. says in this interview, he did blackface. Yeah. He was the little kid. Apparently, his skin was lighter when he was a little kid. kid and they wanted him because he used to tour with his uncle and his dad as we'll see um and to get around labor laws they would pass him off as a midget yes and to do that they're words

right yes thank you they gave him um a candy cigar and uh put him in blackface and and told anyone who would listen that he was a little person that's right although again they didn't say little person no they didn't boy this is a really controversial episode right out of the gate. Well, there's a lot of sort of, I mean, he was a complicated guy who was, you know, his father was black, his mother was Puerto Rican. Right. He eventually would endorse two presidents, both Kennedy and Nixon.

He served in the army. He was a rat packer. He was shunned by racist and also shunned sometimes within his own black community. Yeah, like a little pinball getting bounced around. And little is right. He was also a little guy who always, I think, had a complex about his height, about his looks. He had this weird sort of underbite jaw that would jut out to one side when he talked. Just a really fascinating guy that was super, super talented and had his little tiny fingers and a lot of pies from, you know, singing and dancing and performing live. and movies on TV, and just really, really fascinating guy. Yeah, when you look back at the Rat Pack, he was the one that brought the actual talent to the Rat Pack.

Like Sinatra could sing. Hey, Dee Martin could sing. Everyone in the Rat Pack was talented. Right, right. But he was multi-talented, like dancing, doing impressions. Yeah. He had like a little gunslinger routine for a while. Dude, did you see any of that?

Yeah, I did. He's amazing. I watched a PBS documentary for their series American Masters on him. And it was like an hour, almost two hours long. And it was really in depth and really good. But they had some amazing footage of him just doing all sorts of different stuff. So I guess let me revise that. Yes, the Rat Pack was talented.

Sammy Davis Jr. was more talented than all of them put together. Oh, all right. Okay. So he made Did you see any of that documentary of the U.S.O. tour? There were a few clips in there, yeah. Yeah, so if you want to see a different side, if you think Sammy Davis Jr. as just the Candyman

or Mr. Bojangles, babe. Man, watching him do Mr. Bojangles and going how he felt about that song, it's very heartbreaking. It is. But if you see this documentary in 1972, he did a U.S.O. tour of Vietnam, where he performed at drug rehab camps and some other, you know, forward bases. If you look at this, man, this is like as swinging 70s, kind of rock and roll as it gets really, really cool stuff.

He was a bad A performer. He was at places, like some of them were kind of full-on productions where they were capable of pulling that off. Other times, there's this great footage of him where they had nothing but a microphone. And he's just like, all right, give me the mic. And I will like basically kind of do my own beatboxy rhythm section and sing and dance. And the soldiers are just loving it, man. They're eating it up. Yeah.

And this is 1972, I believe. And like, I mean, like his, like he was a world famous star by them. But also he was an older dude, you know? Like he'd really had his heyday in the late 50s and throughout the 60s. And this is 72. And he's out there in Vietnam, belting out Motown hits and drumming on the mic stand. So, yeah, I didn't see all of it, but, yeah, you can tell.

It's pretty cool. Yeah, he's even more of a talented performer than people realize because, you know, you do think of him as doing, like, standards and show tunes and stuff like that. And he did mostly do those things, but he was talented in all sorts of different ways. So the Grabster helped us out with this one, and he said that there were a few defining sort of things about,

Sammy Davis Jr.'s life that inform who he was. One was that he came from poverty. He performed with his, like he said, his uncle, which was not his real uncle, but his dad and his uncle, Will Maston as the, was it the Maston Trio? The Will Maston Trio, right. And they came from nothing, and he did not have any money. And he talked later in life about the thrill of leaving a waitress. $100 tip and walking around with $1,000 in your pocket.

He said later on in life. Yeah, he's like, that was a year's salary. And he was like, no one understands that unless you've been at the bottom. Right. And he was definitely at the bottom. And he and his father and his uncle Will worked their way up. You know, they started all throughout the Depression on the Chitlin circuit doing vaudeville. And he didn't go to school once because the,

is really important to understand. He spent his entire life in show business and the earliest years constantly on the road with his uncle and his dad. Yeah, so that's the second point. Never went to school at all. Did not learn to read and write until he was in the army and always apparently had trouble writing. And he always looked at it as he was always, you know, sort of ashamed of it. he was proud of who he became, but always was ashamed of his lack of formal schooling. And he called his, what he had was the facade of intelligence,

which Ed rightfully points out as just bunk. Right. Because there are many kinds of intelligence. He was a very intelligent guy. Right. He just didn't have formal schooling. But he was very self-conscious of this and about representing the black community.

So like, have you ever mispronounced something? Because he didn't know, It would make him feel really bad because he thought that that represented black people as a whole. So that's number two. And the third thing is that early on his family, his dad and his uncle really kind of shielded him from racial prejudice. He certainly encountered it on the Chitlin Circuit, but he didn't really get the full deal until he went into the army. And it was a big shock to him. Right.

I think this kind of explains that he approached racism. him differently than some of his contemporaries, especially when he got to the army and was confronted with the full brunt of it. And that that kind of informed how he viewed race and racial discrimination in the dynamic between the races in the United States in the middle of the last century. Because he hadn't really seen it firsthand or experienced the first hand, he hadn't been in school. And so other little white kids hadn't bullied him.

Right. Or he hadn't been around town and just lived in a set space where most kids were introduced to racism firsthand. He didn't get that until he was 18. And so by the time he was 18, he was like, this isn't right. What do you, who do you think you are? And so when he got to the army and was confronted with it full on, he approached it differently. Whereas other, some of his contemporaries in the army who were black just kind of kept their head down. and, you know, tried to go along and get along,

he would fight back. He would not back down. He would not step down. And he spent a lot of time in the army physically fighting white racists who were trying to make things hard for him. And apparently at some point, he fought one, he fought one guy and won. He beat up some white guy who had done something racist to him.

I'm not sure what it was. And then after the fight, the guy beaten said, You know, you may have beaten me, but you're still black. And apparently this got his Sammy Davis Jr. in such a way that it just transformed his approach, that he realized, like, he could fight white boys his whole life. Yeah. And probably win some of the fights, probably get beat up a lot of the fights.

He had his nose broken at least twice. But that it wasn't going to get him anywhere. And so he decided then and there that what he could do is fight prejudice through his performing. That he would be such a good performer. He would transcend race at least while he was performing. Yeah. And he managed to do that or as much as anybody ever has in the history, in modern history, at least in the United States.

Yeah, so he's discharged in the Army in 1945, goes right back to the Maston trio and touring with him. And he was sort of, even though he was just the little kid growing up in that trio, he was sort of the star still. Yeah, little Sammy. Little Sammy. Like little Stevie Wonder. Yeah, he actually, Chuck, he won his first contest at age three.

Yeah. At like an amateur hour or amateur night. And he's saying, I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal you. That's what he knocked the house down at age three. And that was the formal start to his show business. Yeah, he won $10. Yeah, about $150 bucks today. Yeah, which for him, I mean, that's a lot of debt.

for a very, very poor kid. Right. So he gets out of the Army, goes back to the Maston Trio, and this sort of corresponded with the same timeline as when Vegas started to become a big deal and a big entertainment center.

And they played Vegas a little bit, and we should point out to on the Chitland Circuit, they were never making much money. No. It's a grueling thing, and they did get paid, but it's not like they were getting rich out there.

I mean, you'd have to be a vaudeville superstar to make a lot of money. And this is also during the Depression largely, too. So people didn't make money in general. Right. But doing three, four, five shows a day on that circuit. Yeah. But goes to Vegas, starts performing in Vegas, starts doing impressions, which he did

throughout his career, was very good at them. And audiences ate it up. And then Frank Sinatra, the chairman of the board, as they say, gave him a call, or gave their people calls, and said, hey, I want. I want this guy open it up for me in Vegas, this trio opening up. Took him under his wing. That was a big deal. It was a very big deal.

He said, you know, you do these great impressions. You do me. It's hysterical. You're so talented. Open for me in Vegas. And that was where he said, you know, in Vegas for 20 minutes twice a night, our skin had no color. But the second they got finished, he said, other acts to go out and gamble and socialize, have a drink. He said, we had to go through the kitchen with the garter.

And that's when it would all sort of hit home once again. They had to stay in like an entirely different part of Vegas that from the looks of it almost didn't have electricity. It was all dusty roads. Yeah. That's where they had to stay. They were beloved performers. But that's where they had to go stay after the show. And I saw that even after he was a member of the Rat Pack, a superstar, he had used the pool at the sands.

and guests in the 50s complained enough that the sands agreed to drain the pool and refill it because Sammy Davis Jr. had been using the pool. And this is after he was a star already. That's how vile the segregation was, even in a place like Vegas. All right, let's take a break, and we'll come back and talk more about the Candyman right after this. Of you're sure. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart.

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This is going to change my life and my family dynamic forever, because everything that had existed prior in my reality is now untrue. Listen to Deep Cover the Family. Cover the Family Man on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Sammy Davis Jr. wrote a bunch of memoirs and autobiographies over the years, and one of them is a very great spinal tap joke. What? I know you still haven't seen it, right? I saw it, but I've only seen it once, and it was a couple years ago.

Oh, okay. So one of his, I think his first one was called Yes I Can. Sure. And there's a great scene in Spinal Tap. When Bruno Kirby as a limo driver is talking about it, and he said something about, yes, I can. He said, although the real title should have been, yes, I can, if Frank says it's okay,

because Frank called the shots for all those guys. That's right. I remember that, too. It's very funny, Joe. Like, he just keeps going off about that, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's good stuff.

You know, Billy Crystal and Bruno Kirby had a very famous falling out, and... No, why? Legend has it. Billy Crystal sort of had him blackballed. What? is up with Billy Crystal. My impression of him is changing dramatically. He really sells it when the cameras are on, huh? Yeah, well, that's what you do, you know? That's crazy, though, to be that. Wow.

Wow. I mean, we know the game. People think you and I like each other. Right. We got everybody fooled. It's amazing. Like, what were their names, the Mythbusters? Yeah. Like the day the camera stopped rolling, they released press statements saying, we never liked each other. I know. Why would, why would anybody do that even if you didn't like each other why would you just let it go you know i don't know but it's a jamie and um adam that's right adam savage adam's a great guy i know him a little bit so are you implying jamie's not i don't know him any oh okay i'm not siding this took a really weird turn isn't it it did so back to sammy davis junior he also uh started his star started rising well his star had already risen

but in the 70s when the variety show came about which was a big deal in the 70s and even into the 80s Sammy Davis Jr. was perfect for that medium. Well this was I think even earlier than that when TV really started to dominate the earliest shows that they had

were vaudeville shows that led to variety shows. He had his own variety show later in the 70s because he was so, and it wasn't a huge hit but for someone who can dance and sing and do impressions and do comedy and for God's sakes is a real deal gunslinger

a variety show is pretty great it really was so he's you know he he he's getting on the TV their Vegas gigs have really put the Will Maston Trio on the map and they were doing really well they had reliable work that kind of stuff

people knew who Sammy Davis Jr. was he was already a protege of Frank Sinatra by this time but it wasn't until 1951 that the big break came through

and it really came through in like a really kind of Hollywood story kind of way

where like this they were given this one shot and this one particular spot

at just the right time in front of just the right people and they killed it

and that was it Sammy Davis Jr. was a star from that moment on that's right

and that was at Janice Page at a show at Cero's which is now the comedy store. Right.

Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. It became the comedy store after Ceros, but was sort of a legendary place, you know, of its own, in its own right. Oh, yeah. But everyone, you know, apparently it's debatable whether or not

it was an Oscar party, after party or not. But regardless, there were a lot of Hollywood people there. Including Bogie and his rat pack. Sure. The original rat pack, which wasn't called the rat pack. No, it was, actually.

It was? Yeah. Well, why did, well, never mind. I'm not going down that rabbit hole. What? That's all right. Okay. So he kills it there.

He's doing impressions of people that are in the audience. Everyone loves them. They sign with the William Morris Agency. And an overnight sensation, you know, 20, 30 years in the making starts happening. Yeah, and we should say, so Sammy Davis, Jr. became known for his impressions. He was groundbreaking in the sense that he would do impressions of, white people. And up to the time Sammy Davis Jr. started doing impressions of white people, if you're a black performer, you could do impressions of other black people, and that was it.

It was just not okay for you to do white people. Sammy Davis Jr. just started doing white people, and the white people loved it. And at that show at Ceros, he was doing impressions of some of the people in the crowd. Like, he did a killer, Carrie Grant. And Carrie Grant was a member of Humphrey Bogart's Rat Pack, and he was probably there that night. So there were a lot of people who were getting impressions done of them. They just loved it, killed. And I think Janice Page said, I was the headliner tonight.

I think these guys should be the headliner from now on. Yeah. Which is pretty cool of her to do that, you know? It's amazing. Yeah. So he gets a record deal after that. He's putting out like show tunes,

old standards. Sure. He does a pilot in the mid-50s with his father and uncle about a trio of black entertainers that are kind of struggling called Wii 3. Yeah, I would love to see that. Well, there's another pilot we'll talk about later that you definitely need to see.

I haven't checked it out yet, but I know who I know the one. It's pretty legendary. Yeah. So a big thing happened that same year in 1954 is Sammy Davis Jr. had a wreck in his Cadillac. And the Cadillac, and this is just horrific to think about, because I've seen these, you know, in the middle of the steering wheel, they had these little decorative cones that stuck out. Yeah. His left eyeball hit that thing. and he lost it and wore an eye patch for a while and then a glass eye.

Yeah, apparently he remembers coming out of the car with holding his eye in his hand. And then that's the last thing you remember. The next thing you remembers after that was waking up in a hospital bed. And when he woke up and realized that he'd lost his eye for life, his eye was gone, he was really, really scared that his career was over. Yeah. This is 1954. He'd just gotten his big break three years before.

and was on his way up, and now all of a sudden he loses his eye. And the thing about losing your eye, in addition to, say, you know, having to sit for publicity photos and try to be a leading man in movies or on Broadway or that kind of thing, you have to relearn spatial awareness.

Yeah. You're going from binocular vision to monocular vision, and that has all sorts of weird, tricky effects on you. Sure. So if you're a dancer or a gunslinger or doing some old soft shoe or whatever you're doing. You have to relearn how to move. And apparently one of the things that Sinatra did

that was really stand up for Sammy Davis Jr. was he had him basically come convales at Sinatra's place and really guided him in saying, like, you need to relearn how to move. You're going to be fine, but you're going to have to start really attacking this. And you can't really sit around. and feel bad for yourself, you need to get, you know, relearn movement now rather than, you know,

spend a year feeling sad. And that was a huge help for him. It was. And he also was kind of, I don't think, I mean, maybe his life did kind of pass before him because he definitely had an awakening of what have I done here with my life so far? What greater purpose have I served? and what can I do from this point forward He And put a pin in this But this was the first exposure to Judaism In the hospital

You got a visit from a rabbi Yeah And just put a pin in that Because that will come back again later Okay Is there a pin in it? Well look All right

I don't even know where this pin came from you I don't Well you do have that pin cushion right there But yeah This little tomato one With the strawberries dangling off of it Do you remember those Oh man

Do I? Was there a 70s mom that didn't have one of those? Yeah, with a macromay owl hanging on the wall behind me. Yeah. So here's where it gets really kind of great as far as knowing what a stand-up guy, Sammy Davis Jr. was. His success is booming. And you would think, Sammy Davis, Jr., you can leave that Will Maston Trio behind.

Yeah. Because it's really all about you. He said, no man. shine us all up, babe, three-way split. And that's what they did. He ensured contractually that they would get a three-way split that endured 10 years after he left as a solo performer. He was still giving them 33% each. Yeah, for 15 years total, they got a third of the profits, each of them.

And, yeah, they were, you know, originally they were still doing their Vegas show as the Will Maston Trio featuring Sammy David. Jr. But then over time, you know, remember his uncle and his dad were a good 20 years older than him. Yeah. By this time, he's in his 30s. So, you know, they're starting to get, they're losing their step a little bit. So they start to not be in the show quite as much. Sure. Stepping back. But even still, he made sure they were taken care of for another 15 years. A third. A third. And this is a third during Sammy Davis Jr.'s peak earning years. So he got one third of what he would have got. had he just basically said dad uncle will thank you for teaching me everything i know i'm going to move on now best of luck let me know if you need a loan instead he just took a third of what he

could have gotten and gave the other two thirds to those two which is for 15 years chuck yeah that's really amazing it's pretty great yeah uh so that pin it actually wasn't in there that long we can go ahead and take the pen out okay because he uh after that first meeting with a rabbi he reads more and more about Judaism. He draws a correlation between the plight of the Jewish people and the plight of black people. And it really spoke to him. And he converted. And some people said, oh, this big publicity stunt. He's like, no, this is not a publicity stunt. He said, this is my new religion. And he very humorously started referring to himself as a one-eyed black Jew. Sometimes a one-eyed black Puerto Rican Jew, which was very sort of in keeping with his self-deprecating

style. For sure. He's like Tim Watley. He converted for the jokes. Man, I remember that one. I've been plowing through Seinfeld again. Yeah. I love one of my favorite things that always gets me is when Jerry calls George Biff. Yeah, yeah. It never fails to make me laugh. Biff. Yeah. So good. Oh, no, let's not take another break. Let's plow on here, right? Yeah, sure. All right. So dating-wise, he is dating black women and white women.

When he dates white women, he gets racist threats from white people, and he gets condemnation from the black community for betraying the black community by dating a white woman. Right. He can't win. No, he really couldn't win. And apparently from what I saw in that American Masters documentary,

he really, really, really was in love with Kim Novak. From what I saw, she may have been the love of his life. At the very least, he never got to explore whether she was or not. But when he said that he intended to marry her, I guess it was in the 50s, there was a contract put out on his life by the studio head at, I think, Columbia, where Kim Novak was an actress. Yeah, Harry Cohn was the studio head. And this was back when Vegas and Hollywood were, you know, there was some mob and mafia. dealings going on for sure. And Sammy had some mob friends too, just because he was friends with Frank, and, you know,

that was just sort of the thing. These guys would come to these Vegas clubs, and he would meet them. He sought protection from a Chicago gangster that he was in with. The Chicago gangster was like, I can't help you in California. He's like, I'm no good there. I can protect you in Chicago. I can protect you in Vegas. Can't do anything about California.

That's not my territory. And supposedly, and this is where it gets a little. little hazy because some people say it happened. Some people say it didn't. Supposedly, he was even kidnapped for a few hours to scare him. But who knows if that's really true? Well, apparently one of his friends who was there said, no, it wasn't true. He was never kidnapped. But the contract basically said, there was a contract that said, you have 48 hours to marry a black woman or you die. Yeah. And whatever it was, whether there was an actual contract, whether it word just got to him that there was it didn't matter to sammy david's junior at that minute because

he broke it off with kim novac much to his own heart's break and um married to black woman yeah proposed to a woman named loray white yeah who um she was a black singer and i think they had dated years before and i guess he never copped to the um to the idea that it was an arranged marriage that was basically a business proposal. Yeah. But that is definitely how it's portrayed by the people who were there at the time, who were his close friends, that he even paid her $10,000 to do this. And I'm sure it was very, you know, kind and congenial to it. But they described that day, his wedding day, DeLore White, is probably the worst day of his life tied for first with the day that he lost his left eye. Yeah. And he, you know, we can't look over some of the ugly parts of that day. He got

drunk and physically assaulted her in the car just after the wedding reception. Yeah. Not making any excuses for the guy, but it was certainly not right to do that. Right. So their marriage didn't last terribly long. I didn't see how long it lasted, did you? Yeah, a little over a year. Okay, so about a year, and I guess he considered that the heat had gone down or whatever

by that time. But I get the impression that the fact that Kim Novak has... had been taken from him. She's strictly out of racism. Like Harry Cohn, I'm sure, was a racist, but he was also a businessman. And the reason that he was doing this was because he knew America was racist. This was at a time when there were laws that prevented black men and white women or vice versa to marry. Yeah, it wasn't legal yet.

No. So the idea of one of his biggest stars, Kim Novak, marrying a black man, he decided that he just couldn't take that risk business-wise. and so he threatened Sammy Davis Jr. Whatever the reason was, Sammy Davis Jr. really bristled under that. And so in 1960, this was a few years after the

he had to break it off with Kim Novak. He got married to a woman, a Swedish actress named My Brit. And he had children with her and was married to her, but he also ran around on her almost constantly from what I understand.

And you get the impression that my was in part a i'll just put it as pg as possible thumbing his nose at all of the racists out there who took kim novac from him he was he was saying i think as somebody put it i'm big enough now that you can't tell me who to marry and i'm going to marry this beautiful six-foot white woman yeah who looks like margot roby sort of she does yeah she does a little bit i had i hadn't put my finger on it and their children were incredibly beautiful uh thanks large to their mom too but they were um they had three kids together and they were married for eight years and i think it's very sad because my britt immediately lost her career yeah so she gave up her career

to be with sammy davis junior uh i don't know i she must have fallen in love with them um because she she had three kids with them too but she gave up a lot and he gave up nothing uh and i think that it was very unfair on his part to ask for what he asked for from her and give so little in return. Yeah, and what was also not fair and sort of a black eye on John F. Kennedy was that Sammy Davis, Jr. had been scheduled to perform at the 1960 inauguration, and he disinvited him because of his marriage to a white woman. Kennedy personally had him disinvited. This wasn't like Kennedy's like advisors or anything like that. Nope, it was him and he said, you know, apparently people said he, you know, it was a political move because he didn't want to alienate southern Democrats, but either way, that was a big fracturing of the

relationship between JFK and Sammy Davis Jr. He never got over that. No, he never did. And it was also a moment where Sinatra, who had stood up for Sammy Davis Jr., multiple countless times against racists, against studio heads, against record company executives, against all sorts of people, didn't. He did not stand up and argue and try to persuade JFK to change his mind. He just quietly went along with it. And I think that broke Sammy Davis Jr.'s heart as much as JFK betraying him and probably even more, because he expected more from Frank than he did from Kennedy. And the other thing about Kennedy rescinding that invitation,

Harry Belafani's invitation wasn't rescinded, and Harry Belafani was married to a white woman and was there with his white wife at this inauguration party. So Sammy Davis Jr. couldn't help but take it personally, and he really did. Yeah. It was a big deal, a big moment in his life and a very sad moment. And a lot of people think that it led to him later on,

embracing probably ill-advisedly the Nixon campaign in the early 70s. That's right. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break, and we'll talk a little bit about his work in the civil rights movement right after this. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles, stuff you sure. Pride month, Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space, to celebrate your existence.

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Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Keith Giamanka seemed like a mild mess. Manored Suburban Dad, but secretly, he became someone else, a master of disguise who went on a crime spree. At the time, did it seem like a crazy idea? It seemed very crazy, but I felt so desperate that I felt it was the quickest, easiest way out. Did you allow yourself to think about how it could go wrong on what that might look like? No. I didn't want to manifest that. I was trying to make. manifest success.

Every family has its secrets. But what happens when you discover that your dad has been living a double life? That is not the look of an innocent man. This is going to change my life and my family dynamic forever because everything that had existed prior in my reality is now untrue. Listen to Deep Cover the Family Man on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your This cat is interesting, man. Right?

I don't know if everybody's picking up on it. Did you know this before? Because this is your pick, right? Yeah, yeah. I've always been pretty fascinated with him. Because we haven't even gotten to the super weird and interesting stuff. Yeah, right. Which happens in the 70s.

So in the 60s is when, and possibly because of the JFK treatment, is when he really starts to get more socially aware, starts donating money to the cause and marches at Selma for the civil rights efforts. When he supported Nixon, it was not just a thumbing of the nose at Kennedy, but he bought into Nixon and thought that it was going to be a good choice for Black America. He regretted that later on, of course. Sure.

But it wasn't just a poopy pants move like, hey, well, I'm going to support Nixon now because you disinvited me. Exactly. And so one of the other reasons, that he embraced Nixon was that Nixon embraced him as a human being and really stood in stark contrast to the treatment he received from Kennedy. And in that Nixon actually seemed to really like Sammy Davis Jr. A lot of people are like the Nixon administration was just using Sammy Davis Jr.

They were at the same time using what's called the Southern strategy, which is they were stoking racism among Southern whites to get them to turn on the Democrats. But he also apparently really did like Sammy Davis Jr. and admired him. And under Nixon's administration, it tastes like bitter acid saying this, Sammy Davis Jr. became the first black person to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. And apparently Sammy Davis Jr. was an avid Lincoln fan. And sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom with some of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln's personal effects. in this room just blew him away.

Oh, I'm sure. And that was actually how he ended up in Vietnam doing this USO tour in 1972. He said, what can I do to help? And Nixon said, that would probably help a lot. But that just contributed even further to his alienation from not just black people, but young black people too.

Because it was a really tone-deaf move, as I saw it described at the time. That was not the kind of thing you did. Vietnam was so unpopular. that even the troops weren't particularly supported at home. You know, it's not like today where it's like, you know, we really, really hate this, you know, these endless wars. This is, we really disagree with the, you know,

the hawks and the military industrial complex that supports us, but we're still going to be supportive of the troops who have to go there, who are over there, whether by their own choice or, well, I guess it's all volunteer army. They still deserve support, these individuals over there overseas. That was not necessarily how it was during the Vietnam era. So Sammy Davis Jr. going over there to support the troops

after embracing the Nixon administration really furthered this rift between him and the black community, which, and I don't know if we really said this enough, was unfair and unjust because he was a fervent supporter of the civil rights movement during the, 50s and 60s. Yeah. I mean, fervent.

Like, he marched in Selma with Martin Luther King Jr. Scared to death, apparently, but he still went and he still did it. He contributed a ton of money to the civil rights movement. He was legit, for sure. But he also was, you know, friends with Richard Nixon. So one kind of tarnishes the other, you know? Yeah, for sure. So in the 60s, he, he,

is blown up he's everywhere he's on stage he's recording records he's on TV he's doing celebrity roast he's on Broadway he's writing books he's doing the gunslinger thing he's making a lot of money at this point and start spending a lot of money because he came from nothing like we said this is when the rat pack thing really heats up and he's hanging out with Joey Bishop Peter Lofford Dean Martin and of course the chairman Right. And started their first movie together, which was Oceans 11. Not a great movie.

Oh, disagree. I think the original is not very good. Oh, I liked it. I thought the remake was great, but did not care for the original. I like the original. Have you seen Robin in the Seven Hoods? Yeah, also not great. I don't think the Rat Pack ever made a great movie.

Okay. That's just my opinion. What about Time Bandits? Fantastic. Okay. They were hanging out at the Coconut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel, which is a place that I have a neat little quick story.

I did a commercial shoot there before they tore it down, and it was an empty hotel at this point that they just used for movie shoots. And it was an overnight thing, and at like two in the morning, I was working in the art department. They said, here, you need to go assemble all these flags that were going to hang.

And they said, just go in the coconut grove and do it because there's plenty of room. in there and i went in there all by myself sitting in the the dusty old shadows of what was once the great coconut grove and uh for like an hour and a half by myself like sitting in a booth that the rat pack might have sat in wow that's amazing really pretty neat and later that night got to go see where bob kennedy was shot oh that's where he was shot in the house in the ambassador hotel that's right in the kitchen and one of the got the overnight security guy it was just sort of one of those slow shoots he was like to me and my friend he's like you want to go down in the kitchen to her

happen and we went oh yeah wow that's amazing and it was super cool and creepy wow so anyway great story charles they're they're hanging out with the rat pack um and this is where it gets a little like dodgy because the rat pack they were all best buds they genuinely loved each other but when you look at their old schick there is a lot of sort of racial uh joking about sammy um it's all in good fun, but there were often jokes made about him being black, being the only black member. Dean Martin, one of his famous jokes was he would pick little Sammy up on stage because Dean was a big guy and Sammy was small

and thank the audience for the NAACP Award. So stuff like that. So in that documentary, and I'm not justifying that at all, but in that documentary, Whoopi Goldberg is like, you know, you can take any, say, of their show and be like, this was really offensive for Italians or alcoholics or women or black people or Jews. And she said they went hard on everybody. But from what I understand, at least as far as Sammy was concerned, he wasn't secretly, didn't secretly have a chip on his shoulder.

And he had to just put up with this to be a member of the rat pack. He seemed to really not like he didn't take it as if they were being hostile or, or, or, cruel that it was just part of the act and that's how he took it yeah i mean it was certainly a different time i mean there was for sure no doubting about it that back then you could make jokes about all kinds of things that you can't joke about now yeah and it's like it's not like i'm i used to hang out with sammy davis junior and had like quiet talks with him or whatever so it is possible that he did you know harbor resentment from it but that's not the impression that i have from from the research that i've done let me tell you josh right but apparently no one did because this is a really bizarre thing about him when he was talking about converting to Judaism,

I think in like a 1966 Playboy interview, he was talking about losing his eye and then, you know, converting to Judaism and that it happened during a period of soul searching and that he did all this and went through all this, even though he was convalescing at Frank Sinatra's house, even though apparently Jerry Lewis spent seven days at his bedside when he was in the hospital, had all these telegrams coming in, all this outpouring of support, he considered himself alone and that he was a loner

and that that's really bizarre when you step back and look at that because Sammy Davis Jr. always had friends. He was always the life of the party. He was always a good guy. Everybody wanted to be around him. He was always having fun, but he considered himself a loner. Apparently he didn't let people in.

So even if I had been hanging around with him, he probably wouldn't have had that conversation with me anyway. You're like Sammy, I don't feel like I know the real you. Come on, Sammy, let it out. And he said, that's by design, babe. I feel like I'm tripping or something right now. So his career is booming in the 60s and into the 70s, and the result of that, of course, well, through the 60s, I guess,

is that he's not around much. He had a lot of regrets about not being around as a father. As a husband, he was flandering. He was drinking a lot. He was using drugs. So in 1968, he got divorced. In 1970, he married a woman named Altaviz Gore, who was 18 years his junior. Great name.

Backup dancer. His children did not like the fact that she was so much younger. But they stayed married for the rest of his life. Yeah, he was like, oh, if you got a problem with her, you should probably not know about everything else I'm doing. Yeah. So here's where it gets really interesting. Very interesting. Sammy Davis Jr. had a convergence of two interests in the 70s.

He became a member of the Church of Satan. He was an honorary warlock. And he got really, really into porn. And porn, you know, there's no better way to say it than he was a swinger. He was an orgies. He participated in satanic orgies. Right. Yeah, that was actually, I don't know.

know if it was his first orgy or not, but that's how he became a part of, involved in the Church of Satan. Yeah. You know, like the original Church of Satan with Anton LeVay there and everything. Like the real good, like classic golden ears of Church of Satan. Exactly. He went and participated in a satanic orgy. Sammy Davis Jr. Which I think is like a regular orgy, but with just more like red candles?

Yeah, and pentegrams and black robes and stuff like that. But then the black robes come off, but I think the pentagrams stay on. But I read this really interesting vice article about it. I read that too, yeah. He was apparently at the first one, and this would have been in the late 60s, and somebody in a hood is trying to get his attention, and it turns out he lifts the hood, and it's his barber, his barber, Jay Sebring, who would later be killed with Sharon Tate by the Manson family.

But he was basically like, hey, Sam, it's me, Jay. How are you doing? Isn't this awesome? And then they went back to the... They're coming. He pulls the mask back down. Yeah. But he was hugely into pornography. He was into orgies, into swinging. He was, he loved cocaine and loved drinking. I saw Arsenio interview with him. It must have been very shortly before his death where he's like, you know, I had to give everything up. And I don't miss all the other stuff, but I miss booze. I miss whiskey. I miss vodka. I love that stuff. But then I also saw another interview.

where he basically said the same thing to Larry King, like, I've given everything up. I don't smoke anymore or anything like that. And then somebody went backstage, and there's Sammy Davis Jr. smoking a cigarette, drinking a brand. And he goes, Sammy, what are you doing? You just told Larry King that you gave all this up. He's like, I plan to. So who knows what he actually gave up or didn't do.

But his whole jam was, I want to experience every possible human experience. I can and I approach all this stuff without judgment, which is how we ended up becoming involved in the Church of Satan, which went on for years. Yeah, no judgment here. If that's his bag, it's not hurting anybody. Right. Did you see the one quote about the ritual with the lady who was tied to the bed? Where he decided like it was okay?

Yeah, he was talking about it and he was like, that chick was loving it, man. Right. Well, I won't say the rest of the quote. No. But do you remember? Yeah, I remember. I remember. So all of this led to what we were talking about earlier, this TV pilot that is legendary in Hollywood as one of the weirdest, worst things that Hollywood has ever produced.

And it was a pilot for a TV show in 1973 called Poor Devil, which was about a man who was a low down on the totem pole or I guess high on the totem pole. Sure. Cole shoveler in hell Who is offered the chance to work his way up the ranks in hell If he can get the soul of Jack Klugman Yeah of living white man on earth Right Jack Klugman, Quincy MD Yeah and it is on YouTube and dude it is amazing

I have not had a chance to see yet I can't wait to see it But it sounds amazing I saw it described as like He's a reverse clearance from it's a wonderful life which you wouldn't possibly understand that. Yeah, sure. But just imagine that somebody's not trying to get you to be good so that they can or understand how great life is.

He's trying to get him to follow his most bitter revenge impulses and stuff like that. But at one point, apparently Jack Klugman wants to get in touch with Sammy Davis Jr. The Devil and is like, oh, I know. I'll call the Church of Satan downtown. They'll know how to get in touch with them. And the Church of Satan went, because apparently the pilot was aired and they were all about Sammy D.

at this point. That's when they made him an honorary warlock. He used to flash like the devil horns at them from stage when he would come do a show in San Francisco. Christopher Lee, by the way,

played The Devil, which is pretty on the nodes, but perfect. So that doesn't succeed, obviously. It's terrible. The 70s and the 80s, his star starts to fade a little bit. He's still around. course he was on all in the family in a very famous episode where he kissed archie bunker uh on the lips

uh he was we have to talk uh about the great great cannonball run oh yeah he was in that wasn't he man he and dean were uh we're partners they played i forgot about that they dressed up as priests that's right heavily drinking smoking priests they played themselves basically as priests who wanted to drive fast that's pretty great um but you know even though we revere that film I don't think it was looked at generally as one of the big highlights of his career. Oh, I'm sure not. By this time, he's kitsy, Sammy. Yeah.

From what I understand, like, he was fine with that. As long as he was working, he was okay. Because I said earlier that, like, he had a certain affiliation with that song, Mr. Bojangles. Yes. Where if you listen to it, it's about an old performer who's washed up and has been washed up for years. And he's still drinking and just doing, you know, he's been reduced to do. basically sidewalk performances. And apparently Sammy was scared to death

about that being his future. So even just doing what he was doing with Dean and Cannonball Run, I'm sure it was just fine in his mind because he was still working and performing. Yeah. Of course. He looks around and there's Bertman. There's Adrian Barbot.

You're digging the Sammy now, aren't you? Yes, dude. I think Sammy needs to be a recurring character from now on and stuff you should know episode we'll see we'll see okay um the new hippie rob so uh in the 80s he gets into some financial trouble uh to say the least because uh i love how i'd put it he'd been struggling with tax payments since the 1960s i think it was a willy nelson sort of deal from what i could gather oh yeah yeah i mean i think he wasn't really paying his taxes sure sure and and apparently he'd also i don't know if he got bad tax advice or what but he had claimed some very

extravagant stuff as a write-off. And the IRS came back and said, nope, that doesn't count. You also owe on that. And his estate was worth, or his net assets were worth about $4 million, but he owed about $7 million. And he was a profligate spender of money. I saw one interview once where a guy said that he walked six blocks in New York with them. He even named the streets.

So it seems like he really did just walk six blocks and dropped $50,000 along the way, shopping in different stores. I thought you dropped that out of his pocket on the street. No, no. Buying stuff, just buy, buy, buy. He'd just spend it because he'd come from nothing. And he knew that thrill of spending money.

He was terrible with his money. And so as he found out he owed $7 million, he started to organize some shows and specials to try to raise some money to help him pay off this debt. And after the first one, I think in 1989, he found that he had a sore throat. went to the doctor and ultimately was diagnosed with throat cancer yeah after the that very first show that's like such cruel irony yeah uh to raise all this money because when he passed away in

1990 in may 16th uh of cancer he left that tax bill to his wife uh like that that carried over yeah altavis yeah so um that really uh left her kind of destitute for the rest of her life as well oh yeah for sure um i mean like she she she basically owed three million dollars and his estate was sold off like basically at a yard sale auction yeah all of his stuff was um and yeah he that was not that was the the the negative part of his legacy was that tax debt leaving that behind yeah and you know in one way it's like kind of a sad ending uh with the financial stuff and obviously dying way too young of cancer but yeah 65 man He did accomplish everything he set out to accomplish.

He showed everybody who said this diminutive little mixed race, kind of funny-looking guy, is never going to amount to anything. And he had a lifelong career from the age of 3 to 65 in show business. And one of the things, Chuck, is he did not really harbor regret. He apparently, whenever he talked about his life, he talked about it with great satisfaction, which is pretty reassuring. Yeah, that quote on that Letterman's show. show was great.

Yeah. On the 85 episode. He's talking about the younger generation. And he said, I look at the young performers today and I go like this. Yeah, man, go ahead, cook.

I've been there. That's it, man. I have no envy. I did it all. Yeah, pretty great. Go ahead, cook. That's great. Sammy Davis Jr., everybody.

Round of applause. You got anything else? Got nothing else. If you want to know more about Sammy Davis Jr., just start watching some of his old performances. They're pretty amazing.

And while you're doing that, we're going to just move on ahead to listener mail. Yeah, this is about the 911 pizza thing. We heard from a lot of 911 people. Yeah, I'm glad that you picked one of these, ma'am. This is good. Hey, while we are not specifically trained to send EMS to calls where people pretend to order a pizza, most 911 dispatchers will, in fact, ask you, this is 911. Did you dial the wrong number?

And if they respond, no, we will then say, are you in a situation where you can't ask for help, and then they can say yes or no, obviously. There are many stories of this working out, most in domestic violence or kidnapping situations. So even though it is a protocol necessarily or set in stone as a way to ask for help, it could help many people in bad situations. We will not just hang up on you. Even if you keep ordering a pizza and do not acknowledge that you need help, most will still send out law enforcement for a welfare check due to the suspicious nature of the call. I'm glad to hear this. Yeah, please let this be known because in a last ditch effort this may save someone's life.

And that is from responder, Brooke, Diane. Thanks, Brooke. And thank you also not for being like, Josh was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh, I don't remember. Did you say that's not true? Yeah, I said specifically it's an urban legend. Oh, okay, I don't even remember that.

Yeah, so I was really glad when people started writing. I'm glad you picked one to say, like, no, this is for real. Oh, okay. Great. Thanks again, Brooke. That was fantastic. If you want to get in touch of this like Brooke did, even if you do want to say Josh was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. That's all right.

We love to hear that kind of thing. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts to My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Joy is essential and it's also elusive. But now, there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence, Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hoda Kotby. If you're craving inspiration to maximize your joy,

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