Sammy Davis Jr. revealed his three real friends and the three who faked their friendship in old Hollywood. For six decades, Sammy Davis Jr. lived at the center of an American entertainment industry that loved his talent and hated his existence. An industry that paid him millions to perform at hotels that refused to let him sleep in their rooms, that planted him on the same stages as the biggest white stars of his era, while refusing him service at the bars where those same stars drank between sets.
Across those 60 years, stretching from his vaudeville childhood through the Will Mastin Trio years into his solo breakthrough in the early 1950s, through the Rat Pack era and the personal crises and the final tours of the late 1980s, >> >> Davis built a vantage point on Hollywood racism no other entertainer of his generation occupied.
Because he was the one being targeted, the one watching white colleagues choose every day whether to stand with him or against him. Davis documented what he witnessed across three published memoirs that remain the foundational sources for understanding mid-century Hollywood from the perspective of its most prominent black entertainer.
The 1965 autobiography Yes, I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis Jr. detailed the racism of his early career and the friendships that helped him survive it. By 1989, his second memoir Why Me? returned to the same territory with the candor of an older man. The posthumous 2000 autobiography Sammy completed the documentation and Will Haygood’s authoritative 2003 biography In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Jr.
corroborated what Davis had been saying for decades. What emerged across those sources was the dual story he had been living. >> >> The story of which white colleagues had actually shown up when standing with him cost them something and which had only performed friendship for the cameras while privately treating him the way the rest of segregated America did.
These are the six figures from old Hollywood Davis named across his memoirs and the documented historical record. The three who faked their friendship for the cameras and the three who stayed real when standing with him meant accepting consequences other people refused to accept. Starting with number six, number six.
Peter Lawford. The brother-in-law who used him. The fake friend. For two decades, Peter Lawford embodied the British-born leading man whose handsome features and connections to American political power placed him at the center of the most photographed social circle of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Marrying Patricia Kennedy in 1954 made him John F. >> >> Kennedy’s brother-in-law 4 years before the presidential campaign, and his Rat Pack membership alongside Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, and Sammy positioned him as Sammy’s apparent close friend through the years when the five men were defining American showroom entertainment.
The documented record reveals a friendship more useful to Lawford than real. His social value to the Rat Pack came partly from the Kennedy connection he provided. The political access that gave the group’s Las Vegas appearances the feel of the social center of the American power elite, and Sammy’s presence in the group lent the public image its racial sophistication.
The black entertainer whose inclusion proved the white members were not what their critics suggested they were. The arrangement benefited Lawford’s image. What it cost him in actual loyalty when standing with Sammy required something was documented by the people closest to both men. James Spada’s 1991 biography Peter Lawford, The Man Who Kept the Secrets recorded the private racial comments Lawford made about Sammy in conversations with people who later wrote them down.
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The way the on-camera warmth dissolved into something colder when Sammy was not in the room, and the pattern of behavior that contradicted the public image of brotherly Rat Pack friendship. November of 1960 brought those limits into focus when Sammy married May Britt. While Sammy was navigating death threats and demonstrations at the venues where he performed, while interracial marriage remained illegal in 31 American states, and his decision to marry a white Swedish actress had turned him into the target of organized hate campaigns.
Lawford remained publicly invisible on the question. The brother-in-law who could have used his Kennedy access to defend Sammy did not defend Sammy. The Rat Pack friend who had built years of public image on his association with the black entertainer chose silence at the moment standing with him would have cost something within the political coalition his marriage to Patricia Kennedy had built.
Number five, Jerry Lewis, the brother who never wavered. The real friend. >> >> For seven decades Jerry Lewis stood with Sammy Davis Jr. In ways the documented record establishes beyond reasonable dispute. The friendship began during the Martin and Lewis years from 1946 to 1956 when the comedy duo’s appearances at the Copa and the Sands placed Lewis in social contact with the black entertainers his Jewish immigrant Newark sensibility refused to treat as anything less than equals.
Lewis documented the friendship in his 2005 memoir Dean and Me, A Love Story where he wrote about the Sammy connection with the candor that defined his later years. What separated Lewis from the merely cordial white entertainers around Sammy was his willingness to be visible when visibility cost something. The Kim Novak crisis of 1957 and 1958 when Sammy’s relationship with the white Hollywood star generated death threats and mafia threats from Columbia Pictures executives found Lewis on Sammy’s side in conversations and public appearances
>> >> at a moment when most of Hollywood was suggesting Sammy should end the relationship for his own safety. Three years later the May Britt marriage tested the friendship in even more public ways and Lewis again did not retreat. While Lawford was disappearing from the question and Dean Martin was managing his public distance and the Kennedy political coalition was working to keep Sammy away from the inaugural celebration.
Lewis was attending events with Sammy and May, defending the marriage publicly, and using his television platform to model the kind of cross-racial friendship his industry was actively working to discourage. Davis wrote about Lewis across all three of his memoirs with the warmth reserved for the colleagues whose support had been real.
Yes, I Can in 1965 named Lewis as one of the comedians whose friendship had mattered through the difficult years of his rise. Why Me? in 1989 returned to the theme, documenting the late-night conversations, the shared performances, the way Lewis had treated Sammy’s family with the seriousness other white entertainers reserved for their own kind.
The friendship continued until Sammy’s death in May 1990, and Lewis spent the following 30 years of his own life publicly defending Sammy’s memory. Number four, Dean Martin, the partner who stayed cool, the fake friend. For 10 years, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis ranked as the most successful comedy duo in American show business, >> >> and for the decade after their 1956 split, Martin became one of the defining figures of the Rat Pack era alongside Sinatra and Sammy.
The public image of the Rat Pack placed Martin in apparent close friendship with Sammy across hundreds of Vegas appearances, film collaborations including Ocean’s 11 and Robin and the Seven Hoods, and the late-night drinking sessions that defined the group’s collective mystique throughout the early 1960s. Nick Tosches’ 1992 biography Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams documented Martin’s actual relationship with Sammy across the Rat Pack years.
The carefully maintained social distance that on-camera warmth concealed, and the pattern of jokes and stage banter that positioned Sammy as the racial butt of routines Martin considered affectionate and Sammy endured rather than enjoyed. The Rat Pack stage shows preserved on Sands recordings document Martin’s comfort with material about Sammy’s race that the contemporary record establishes had limits Sammy did not always feel free to enforce.
Martin’s silence during the Kim Novak crisis of 1957 and 1958 functioned as its own documented signal while Lewis was visibly supporting Sammy through the period when Columbia Pictures threatened the entertainer’s life if he did not end the relationship while Sinatra was using his own power to protect Sammy. Martin remained publicly invisible on the question.
The long-time comedy partner whose name was attached to Sammy through Rat Pack publicity chose not to be associated with the most dangerous moment of Sammy’s life when the association would have cost him something within his own conservative audience. By 1960 the May Britt marriage brought the same silence. Martin attended Rat Pack performances with Sammy throughout the early 1960s, continued sharing stages with him, continued building joint public image on their apparent friendship while remaining publicly invisible on whether the marriage deserved defense against
the death threats and demonstrations the era was generating. The performance of friendship continued. The substance of friendship at the moments that mattered did not appear. Number three, Frank Sinatra, the boss who made them take him. The real friend of all the documented friendships in Sammy Davis Jr.
‘s six decades in American entertainment, no relationship combined complication and substance more dramatically than his friendship with Frank Sinatra. The friendship began in the 1940s, deepened during the 1950s as Sinatra’s career re-stabilized and Sammy’s broke through to mainstream stardom, >> >> and survived through the Rat Pack years and the political fallings out and the periodic reconciliations across the next four decades until Sammy’s 1990 death.
What separated Sinatra from the other Rat Pack figures around Sammy >> >> was his documented willingness to use his power to insist on Sammy’s equal treatment at moments when other entertainers would have accepted the racial status quo of mid-century American venues. James Kaplan’s 2015 biography Sinatra: The Chairman documented Sinatra’s pattern of refusing to play hotels and clubs that would not serve Sammy with the same dignity they extended to white performers, his willingness to threaten cancellation
of major engagements unless the racial accommodations changed and the financial cost his stance imposed on him across years of confrontations with venue management whose racial policies he refused to accept. The 1958 Kim Novak crisis brought Sinatra’s friendship into its most documented form because when Columbia Pictures studio head Harry Cohn used mafia connections to threaten Sammy’s life over the relationship.
When Cohn ordered an arrangement that culminated in Sammy’s hasty marriage to black dancer Loray White in January 1958 to diffuse the situation, Sinatra remained visibly at Sammy’s side in ways the documented record establishes were genuinely protective. November 1960 placed Sinatra in a more complicated position because of his simultaneous role in the Kennedy presidential campaign >> >> and the documented record shows Sinatra navigating that complication imperfectly.
Sinatra reportedly asked Sammy to postpone the wedding to protect the campaign, a request the documented sources confirm caused real damage to the friendship in the months that followed. When Kennedy disinvited Sammy from the inaugural gala, Sinatra was the one who had to deliver the news >> >> and Nancy Sinatra’s documented account in the HBO Sinatra documentary preserved her father’s distress at being placed in that position by the Kennedy political operation.
Davis wrote about Sinatra with the complicated honesty their friendship had earned. The friendship survived its failures because the substance underneath had been real. Number two, John F. Kennedy, the president who disinvited him, the fake friend. There was no documented betrayal of Sammy Davis Jr. more politically consequential than John F.
Kennedy’s because Kennedy was the president of the United States and the betrayal happened at the inaugural celebration that should have been the public reward for the campaign work Sammy had done across the previous year. Sammy and Frank Sinatra had campaigned tirelessly for Kennedy throughout 1960, raising money, performing benefits, using their cultural authority to deliver the entertainment community’s support to the Democratic ticket.
The documented record of what happened next is preserved in multiple corroborating sources. Sammy married May Britt on November 13th, 1960, 6 days after Kennedy’s election victory, and the Kennedy political operation immediately recognized the interracial marriage as a problem for the Southern Democratic coalition that had narrowly delivered the election.
Kennedy and his brother, Robert, directed Sinatra to remove Sammy from the inaugural performer list because the optics of a black entertainer performing alongside his white wife at the presidential celebration would alienate the Southern Democratic voters whose support the new administration would need for its legislative program.
>> >> Tracy Davis, Sammy’s daughter, documented the disinvitation in her 2014 book Sammy Davis Jr., a personal journey with my father, based on conversations with her father in his final months. Nancy Sinatra confirmed the disinvitation in the HBO Sinatra documentary, describing her father’s distress at being forced to deliver the news to Sammy.
Will Haygood’s 2003 biography In Black and White corroborated the full sequence with additional documentary sources, >> >> and the entire episode entered the historical record as one of the more documented examples of John F. Kennedy’s accommodation to Southern racial politics across his presidency. February 12th, 1963 brought a second documented humiliation when Kennedy invited 800 black guests to the White House to commemorate the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The guest list included Sammy and May Britt, added by Democratic operative Louis Martin against the wishes of the Kennedy political team. Martin’s account, preserved in Haygood’s biography, recorded Kennedy’s documented reaction when the interracial couple entered the reception. The president, aghast at the appearance of Sammy and May together, the order to photographers that no images of the couple would be taken at the event.
Davis wrote about Kennedy in Why Me? in 1989 with the documented anger of a man who had finally stopped protecting the political memory other Americans had agreed to preserve. The disinvitation had been a betrayal. The 1963 reception had compounded it. The president who had asked for Sammy’s help and accepted it and used it had then erased Sammy from the celebration of the victory Sammy had helped deliver.
Number one, Eddie Cantor. The old man who started it all. The real friend. There was no documented friendship in Sammy Davis Jr.’s career more foundational than his relationship with Eddie Cantor >> >> because Cantor was the established star who used his television platform to embrace Sammy publicly at a moment in 1952 when nobody else in mainstream American entertainment was willing to risk what the embrace cost.
Cantor was 59 years old and one of the most beloved Jewish entertainers in American history. The former Ziegfeld Follies star whose vaudeville and radio career had made him the highest paid performer of the 1930s. >> >> The first president of the Screen Actors Guild and the partner who had helped Franklin Roosevelt build the March of Dimes.
The Colgate Comedy Hour appearance in February 1952 entered the documented historical record as one of the more consequential moments in mid-century American television. The Will Mastin Trio featuring Sammy Davis Jr. performed on the NBC variety show with Cantor hosting. After the performance, Cantor walked across the stage and mopped Sammy’s brow with his handkerchief then placed his arm around the young entertainer in a public gesture of affectionate brotherhood that the documented racial conventions of 1952 American television
had carefully avoided. The handkerchief gesture was the explosive moment because the racial taboo against shared sweat between white and black performers had been enforced by the broadcasting industry through unspoken consensus since the medium’s beginning. The hate mail arrived immediately.
The historical record preserves the actual letters Cantor and NBC received from southern viewers. The racist and anti-Semitic language Cantor’s gesture had provoked, the threats from sponsors who feared Colgate would lose southern market share, NBC executives pressured Canter to publicly distance himself from Sammy and to never book the Will Mastin Trio again.
The network’s documented response to the controversy was to threaten cancellation of Canter’s hosting position if the booking was repeated. Canter’s response remains one of the more remarkable acts of public moral courage in American broadcasting history. He booked Sammy and the Will Mastin Trio for the following week’s show on March 9th, 1952.
When the network and the sponsors pressured him again after the second appearance, >> >> Canter booked Sammy a third time for March 16th. He continued booking the group across the rest of the season. He made a public point of repeating the handkerchief gesture on subsequent appearances to demonstrate exactly what he thought of the racial taboo his industry had been enforcing.
Davis named Canter across all three of his memoirs as the figure whose public courage had opened the doors his career needed at the moment when no other established white entertainer was willing to provide that opening. Yes, I Can in 1965 credited Canter as one of the small handful of established stars whose embrace had legitimized Sammy with the mainstream television audience.
Why Me in 1989 returned to the Canter story with the documented gratitude of an older performer who understood exactly how much the 1952 gesture had cost the older entertainer and how little of that cost Canter had ever publicly acknowledged. Canter died of his final heart attack in October 1964 and Sammy carried the memory of the Colgate handkerchief moment as the founding act of permission that had let his career become possible.
The friendship Canter offered Sammy in 1952 was the rarest documented kind in American entertainment, the kind that cost the giver and benefited only the recipient and never asked for credit. Canter was already established when he made the choice. He had nothing to gain professionally from booking the Will Mastin Trio.
>> >> He had the secure career and the established legacy and the comfortable retirement waiting for him. He chose instead to use his platform to embrace a young black entertainer at a moment when the embrace generated death threats and sponsor pressure and network panic.
And he absorbed the cost personally so that the young performer whose brow he had wiped could keep working. What Sammy Davis Jr. revealed across his six decades, six names, the British-born Kennedy in-law whose Rat Pack image extracted decades of public benefit from his association with Sammy while contributing nothing of substance when standing with him cost something, the Jewish immigrant comedy partner whose seven decades of documented friendship survived every test the era could devise, the long-time comedy partner whose public warmth concealed a relationship
Sammy understood had limits the cameras were never meant to show, the complicated boss whose intervention opened doors Sammy could not have opened alone, the president of the United States who used Sammy’s campaign work to win an election and then disinvited him from the celebration of the victory, the 59-year-old Jewish entertainer whose 1952 television handkerchief gesture absorbed the documented hate mail and sponsor threats and network panic so that the young black performer whose brow he had wiped could keep
working. The cameras showed America one version of these six relationships and Sammy Davis Jr.’s 60 years of living inside the documented reality revealed something else entirely. And what his memoirs finally made impossible to ignore >> >> was that the friendships that lasted across the changing decades were not the ones the publicity machinery had emphasized but the ones with figures like Jerry Lewis and Eddie Cantor whose costly choices in moments other people walked away from had earned them the loyalty Sammy returned for the rest of
his life. Which revelation shocked you most? Did you know about these documented accounts before today? Share your thoughts in the comments below. And if you found this exploration of Hollywood’s hidden history valuable, do not forget to like and subscribe for more untold stories from entertainment’s complicated past.
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