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Davis Jr., Sammy
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A multi-talented performer, Davis recorded forty albums and made countless film, television and Las Vegas appearances in his lifetime. Davis began his career in vaudeville, tap dancing and singing at the age of four with his adopted uncle in an act they called “Will Mastin’s Gang, featuring Little Sammy.” When authorities threatened to close down the act due to child labor laws, Mastin gave the tiny Davis a cigar to hold and billed him as “Silent Sam, the Dancing Midget.”
Davis made his film debut by tap dancing in the 1932 short Rufus Jones For President. After continuing to perform with Mastin throughout the 1930s, at age eighteen Davis was drafted and served in the Special Services in World War II. In the late 1940s, Davis opened for Frank Sinatra at the Capitol Theatre in New York, which ignited a friendship that would last a lifetime.
The 1950s brought Davis into the spotlight for both personal and professional reasons. In 1954, he made headlines when he lost his left eye in a near-fatal car crash while driving back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas. During his recovery in the hospital, he converted to Judaism, which was bruited about by the press.
He married the Swedish actress May Brit in 1960 and has three children.
Davis was married three times, first to Loray White, a dancer; to actress May Britt, with whom he had one daughter and adopted two sons; and to Altovise Gore, a former showgirl. He wrote three autobiographies, Yes I Can (1965), Life In A Suitcase (1980) and Why Me? (1989).
Best known for: “Something’s gotta give”, and “The Candy Man”
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