The image might be the way most of us remember that consummate showman, the entertainer’s entertainer, Sammy Davis Jr.
He’s laughing, often as not surrounded by white actors, singers, comics or politicians — some of them his peers — most of them less dazzling in at least one of the singer/dancer/actor and funnyman’s proficiencies.
Somebody — a fellow Rat Packer (Sinatra, Dino, Lawford or Bishop), Nixon, this comic or that Civil Rights icon — has said something funny, maybe only mildly amusing, maybe faintly/comically racist in the case of his Vegas/”Ocean’s 11″ Pack. And Sammy D’s laugh would consume his face, doubling him over, eyes closed, making you think you’d missed the best joke or quip this showbiz legend had ever heard.
But if you listen to audio of such occasions, as Yale professor and cultural historian Matthew Frye Jacobson did, you won’t “hear” that laugh. It was, often as…
View original post 897 more words
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments