Bedtime Biography: Yes I Can summary

In many ways, Sammy Davis, Jr. was born onstage. By the tender age of three, he was already a professional vaudeville performer.

In real life – off-stage – Sammy was born in Harlem in 1925. His father, Sammy Davis, Sr., and his mother, Elvera Sanchez, both professional dancers, were members of a popular vaudeville troupe that toured America under the leadership of a dancer named Will Mastin.

By the time he was 15, Sammy Davis Jr. had crisscrossed the US 23 times. He, his father, and Will had pared their act down to a tap-dancing threesome, and they toured the country together as the “Will Mastin Trio,” sharing all their profits evenly.

But the vaudeville business was faltering. Movies with sound, known as “talkies,” had become mainstream, and audiences were starting to see vaudeville as out of date.

Now that Sammy was free from the army, the Will Mastin Trio was reunited. Sammy, his dad, and Will went back on the road. After Sammy’s experience performing for the troops, he was full of new ideas. The group restructured their act to showcase Sammy’s skills.

One thing Sammy insisted on was eliminating the racist caricatures from their act. He wanted the audience to focus exclusively on the trio’s talents: dancing, singing, comedy. Will and Sammy’s father were concerned about straying so far from their vaudeville roots, but after Sammy’s experiences in the army, he refused to do an act where Black people were targets of the jokes.

The following years were a whirlwind. After the show at Ciro’s, Sammy began fielding offers from every major club in the country. He and the Will Mastin Trio would fly in for a few weeks, wow the audiences, and move on. 

Left and right, Sammy was breaking down barriers. He was one of the first Black entertainers to appear on TV, performing on the popular Eddie Cantor show. It was a huge moment for Sammy. When Cantor embraced him after his dazzling performance, however, the Cantor studio was flooded with hate mail and death threats. How could a TV channel dare show a white man and Black man embracing on air?

Celebrity status didn’t end the relentless racism Sammy faced. A favorite pastime of gossip columnists was to invent romantic entanglements between Sammy and blonde white women. Any time he was photographed beside a blonde movie star, newspapers ran salacious headlines suggesting entirely fictional love affairs. In many US states, interracial marriage was still illegal, so the suggestion that Sammy was “flouting customs” was guaranteed to sell papers.

At the same time, he also faced criticism from Black newspapers. For his whole career, Sammy had focused on breaking down barriers, on communicating his talent to a white audience. As a consequence, certain Black audiences began to feel he was neglecting them. Some even accused him of being an “Uncle Tom” figure.

You’ve reached the end of this Bedtime Biography. Thank you for listening. Why not pause listening now so you can stay in a relaxed state? And if you’re off to bed now, I wish you a good night’s sleep.