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Music, Money, Madness, and the Mob
Amistad
September 2008
On Sale: September 16, 2008
288 pages
ISBN: 0061450669
EAN: 9780061450662
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
Sammy Davis Jr. lived a storied 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 it ever using Sammy's name
or likeness again. It was as if Sammy had never existed. Years later his wife, Altovise, a once-vivacious woman and
heir to one of the greatest entertainment legacies of the
twentieth century, was living in poverty, and with nowhere
else to go, 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 Sammy
as a man whose complexity makes for a riveting work of
celebrity biography as cultural history. Matt Birkbeck's serious work of investigative journalism
unveils the extraordinary story of an international
celebrity at the center of a confluence of entertainment,
politics, and organized crime, and shows how even Sammy's
outsized talent couldn't save him from himself.
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