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Deconstructing Sammy : music, money, madness, and the mob / Matt Birkbeck.

by Birkbeck, Matt.

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New York, NY : Amistad, c2008.

Davis, Sammy, Jr., 1925-1990.

Entertainers -- United States -- Biography.

African American entertainers -- Biography.

9780061450662 (hbk.) :

0061450669 (hbk.)

280 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 24 cm.

Sammy Davis Jr. lived a stored life. Adored by millions over a six-decade-long career, he was considered an entertainment icon and a national treasure. But despite lifetime earnings that topped $50 million, Sammy died in 1990 near bankruptcy, His estate was declared insolvent, and there was no possibility of ever using Sammy's name or likeness again. It was as if Sammy had never existed. Years later his wife Altovise was living in poverty when she turned to a former federal prosecutor, Albert "Sonny" Murray, to make one last attempt to resolve Sammy's debts, restore his estate, and revive his legacy. For seven years Sonny probed Sammy's life to understand how someone of great notoriety and wealth could have lost everything, and in the process he came to understand Davis, a man whose complexity makes for a riveting work of celebrity biography as cultural history.--Publisher description.

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