Sammy Davis Jr Revealed His 3 Real Friends and the 3 Who Faked Their Friendship in Old Hollywood

Sammy Davis Jr.'s six decades inside the American entertainment industry placed him in direct documented relationship with five other Old Hollywood figures and one US President whose private treatment of him contradicted the public friendships they performed for the cameras, with three turning out to be real and three exposed as fakes in the historical record. The video traces Davis from his vaudeville childhood through the Will Mastin Trio years, into his early 1950s solo breakthrough, the Rat Pack era of the late 1950s and 1960s, and the final tours of the late 1980s, drawing on his three published memoirs Yes I Can from 1965, Why Me? from 1989, and the posthumous Sammy from 2000, along with Wil Haygood's authoritative 2003 biography In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Jr. The three exposed as fakes are Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, and President John F. Kennedy. The three confirmed as real are Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, and Eddie Cantor. Each entry draws on specific academic biographies, congressional records, and family testimonies preserved in published memoirs. What's covered in this video: Sammy Davis Jr.'s six-decade career from the Will Mastin Trio years through the Rat Pack era and his final tours of the late 1980s, his three published memoirs Yes I Can from 1965, Why Me? from 1989, and the posthumous Sammy from 2000, and Wil Haygood's authoritative 2003 biography In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Jr. Peter Lawford as the British-born leading man who married Patricia Kennedy in 1954 to become John F. Kennedy's brother-in-law, his Rat Pack membership alongside Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, and Sammy, the private racial comments documented in James Spada's 1991 biography Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept the Secrets, and his public invisibility during the May Britt marriage controversy of November 1960. Jerry Lewis as the lifelong friend whose Jewish-immigrant Newark sensibility shaped the friendship that began during the Martin and Lewis years from 1946 to 1956, his documented support of Sammy during the 1957 to 1958 Kim Novak crisis when Columbia Pictures executives issued Mafia threats, his defense of the May Britt marriage in 1960, his 2005 memoir Dean and Me: A Love Story, and the thirty years he spent publicly defending Sammy's memory after Sammy's death in May 1990 Dean Martin as Jerry Lewis's former comedy partner who became a Rat Pack defining figure alongside Sinatra and Sammy across hundreds of Vegas appearances and films including Ocean's 11 and Robin and the 7 Hoods, the documented social distance Nick Tosches recorded in his 1992 biography Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, the Rat Pack stage banter that positioned Sammy as the racial butt of routines, and Martin's documented silence during both the Kim Novak crisis and the May Britt marriage controversy. Frank Sinatra as the complicated boss whose friendship began in the 1940s and survived until Sammy's 1990 death, his documented pattern of refusing to play hotels and clubs that would not serve Sammy as recorded in James Kaplan's 2015 biography Sinatra: The Chairman, his protective role during the 1958 Kim Novak crisis when Columbia Pictures studio head Harry Cohn used Mafia threats to force Sammy's hasty marriage to Black dancer Loray White in January 1958. Eddie Cantor as the 59-year-old Jewish entertainer, former Ziegfeld Follies star, first president of the Screen Actors Guild, and Franklin Roosevelt's March of Dimes partner whose February 1952 appearance on The Colgate Comedy Hour with Sammy and the Will Mastin Trio led him to mop Sammy's brow with his handkerchief on national television, the resulting hate mail and sponsor threats from NBC and Colgate, and his decision to book Sammy three more times on March 9 and March 16 and across the rest of the season until his October 1964 death. Mentioned in this video: Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Eddie Cantor, Patricia Kennedy, May Britt, Kim Novak, Loray White, Tracey Davis, Nancy Sinatra, Wil Haygood, James Spada, Nick Tosches, James Kaplan, Harry Cohn, Louis Martin, Franklin Roosevelt, Joey Bishop, Will Mastin, Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis Jr., Why Me?, Sammy, In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept the Secrets, Dean and Me: A Love Story, Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, Sinatra: The Chairman, Sammy Davis Jr.: A Personal Journey with My Father, Ocean's 11, Robin and the 7 Hoods, The Colgate Comedy Hour, HBO Sinatra documentary, Will Mastin Trio, Rat Pack, Martin and Lewis, Columbia Pictures, NBC, Colgate, Ziegfeld Follies, Screen Actors Guild, March of Dimes, the Copa, the Sands, Las Vegas, Hollywood, Emancipation Proclamation centennial, White House, 1960 presidential election, Southern Democratic coalition, Old Hollywood Golden Age. #SammyDavisJr #RatPack #OldHollywood