Sammy Davis Jr.—A Personal Journey With My Father

By Tracey Davis and Nina Bunche Pierce

Where Sammy Davis Jr.’s own memoirs can get wordy and obtuse, Tracey Davis’ big photo book about her dad gets the tone exactly right. There’s some bombast in it—Davis did wear some extraordinary outfits, even for the swinging ‘60s—but there are lots of candid shots of Davis quiet and alone to offset all the ostentatious ones of him headlining in Vegas or mugging with the rest of the Rat Pack. There’s real balance to be found here, including stills of Davis as a toddler, in blackface and striped overalls as part of his parents’ vaudeville act. It’s really the only truly clownish photo in the book, which generally makes Davis come off as distinguished and worldly. One pic shows him standing with Harry Belafonte and Martin Luther King, another with President Nixon’s children at the 1972 Republican National Convention.

The photos make the book. The prose isn’t deeply researched, mainly a child’s reminisces of her famous father. This turns into a kind of advantage, since it gives the biography a less obvious trajectory than if it were based on career highlights. Plenty of good shots from the Broadway Golden Boy period, but also some from TV shows plus a whole chapter titled Elder Statesman showing Davis and Gregory Hines in the movie Tap.

A Personal Journey With My Father makes the grander-than-life Sammy Davis Jr. seem human and approachable. This is the Sammy Davis book for those of us who appreciate his theater and nightclub legacy as well as his Vegas glitz and wacky movies.