Sammy Davis Jr. lived a storied life. Adored by millions over a six-decade-long career, he was considered an entertainment icon and a national treasure. But despite lifetime earnings that topped $50 million, Sammy died in 1990 near bankruptcy. His estate was declared insolvent, and there was no possibility of itever using Sammy’s name or likeness again. It was as if Sammy had never existed. Years …
Years later his wife, Altovise, a once-vivacious woman and heir to one of the greatest entertainment legacies of the twentieth century, was living in poverty, and with nowhere else to go, 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 Sammy as a man whose complexity makes for a riveting work of celebrity biography as cultural history.
Matt Birkbeck’s serious work of investigative journalism unveils the extraordinary story of an international celebrity at the center of a confluence of entertainment, politics, and organized crime, and shows how even Sammy’s outsized talent couldn’t save him from himself.
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When I finished the book I felt like I had known Sammy personally!
He was undoubtedly one of the greatest entertainers of our time, A member of the “rat pack”, who made millions and millions of dollars. He was also a troubled man, A lousy father, and he admitted that he was responsible for changing his second wife, Altovise, from a nice young talented woman into a drug addict and a sexual player at his command. …
Sammy seemed to have it all together…at least on the surface. But the mess he left behind after his passing took years to unpack and even longer to straighten out. This is a side of the entertainment world that one does not usually get to see, and it is illuminating.
Too much detail about financial and estate matters; slow going for much of this book.
A thorough documentary approach to the financial instability of this legendary performer.
Highly readable account of fame and it’s consequences. More about Mrs Davis than Sammy tho