MUSIC BREAK: SAMMY DAVIS JR - A KISS FOR CHRISTMAS

PHOTO OF THE DAY: CANDID EDDIE CANTOR

Eddie Cantor has been gone now for over 55 years, but his the memory of his talent and personality should not be diminished. Not only was he a great entertainer, but he was an even better human being. Here are six candid photos of Eddie through the years...

With Eddie Fisher & Sammy Davis Jr

With Laurel & Hardy

With Jane Wyatt

                                         

With Marlene Dietrich

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: ODD PAIRINGS - 6TH EDITION

Here is the sixth edition of odd Hollywood/celebrity pairings. This feature has become an annual thing almost. I love seeing the different pairings of famous people...

Sammy Davis Jr & Clint Eastwood

Elvis Presley & Liberace

Hugh Hefner & Ella Fitzgerald

Danny Devito & Christopher Reeve

Marlene Dietrich and The Beatles

Martin Luther King Jr and Marlon Brando

NEW BOOK: DECONSTRUCTING THE RAT PACK - JOEY, THE MOB, AND THE SUMMIT

"Deconstructing the Rat Pack: Joey, the Mob, and the Summit"
By Richard A. Lertzman with Lon Davis
(Prestige Cinema Books - December 2, 2020)

In celebration of the Rat Pack's 60th anniversary comes an amazing, historical, and wild ride of a tome called "Deconstructing the Rat Pack: Joey, the Mob, and the Summit."

For 28 consecutive nights in February 1960, a dusty town called Las Vegas became the epicenter of the world. All eyes were on the party happening at the Sands Hotel and Casino, the new headquarters for the Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra. Dubbed by many as “The Rat Pack,” “The Clan” and “The Summit”—Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford gave those lucky audiences an entertainment experience, the likes of which will never be seen again.

This explosive tell-all book brings the inside scoop of how the mob, the future president, and five popular performers took the world (Las Vegas and Hollywood with the film Ocean’s 11 ) by storm.

You will read exclusive interviews with the participants themselves, including assorted wise guys Moe Dalitz, Carl Cohen (a relative of the author’s), Mickey Cohen, and Max Diamond (a longtime employee of the author’s liquidation business)—and show business luminaries Jack Entratter, Nancy Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Jerry Lewis, Buddy Hackett, and many, many more.

And what makes this story of the Rat Pack so unique is that it is taken from the perspective of the group’s last surviving member, Joey Bishop, who sat for numerous interviews with the author.

The New York Post, Closer Magazine, and the London Daily Express are among those already singing the praises of “Deconstructing the Rat Pack” by calling it a “A Book That Busts The Rat Pack Myth and a “Must Have.”

And let’s not forget, December 12th would have been Mr. Sinatra’s 105th birthday—so, let’s all celebrate with a swinging, retro time with the Rack Pack...

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: SUMMER WITH CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD

On this first day of summer I wanted to take a look at how some of the classic Hollywood stars celebrated the fun and the sun that is summer. As always, the classic stars always looked great...

Ann Sheridan

Eartha Kitt

Gene Kelly

Bing and Dixie Lee Crosby

Sammy Davis Jr and Maria Stinger

Ava Gardner

HOLLYWOOD LOVE: SAMMY DAVIS JR AND KIM NOVAK

In 1957, Sammy Davis Jr. was a rising star. He’d just completed an acclaimed performance in Mr. Wonderful on Broadway and had a popular nightclub act with his father and uncle called the Will Mastin Trio. It was a strong comeback from a car accident three years earlier, when a pipe went through Davis’s eye, permanently blinding him. For the rest of his life, he would wear a glass eye.

The accident, however did nothing to curtail Davis’s charisma and sex appeal. Hollywood starlet Kim Novak certainly noticed him. She was about to film Hitchcock’s Vertigo when she saw Davis perform in a Chicago nightclub. Though they didn’t speak much at the time, Davis wanted to get to know the actress. His friends Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh obliged by inviting both of them to a party at their house. Soon afterward, there was a blind item in a gossip column: “Which top female movie star (K.N.) is seriously dating which big-name entertainer (S.D.)?”

This bit of idle gossip was far from harmless. An affair between Novak and Davis had the potential to destroy both of their careers. In 1957, interracial marriage was illegal in half the states. Most Americans were against it. A Gallup poll from 1958 showed that only 4 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. On top of that, the United States Supreme Court had only recently ordered the desegregation of public schools, and the showdown in Little Rock, Arkansas, over the integration of the city’s Central High School would occur the following year. The national atmosphere was fraught with racial tension.

As a black man, Davis had been stopped from dating white women before, but this time was different. Novak was a movie star. That year, newspapers were calling her “the hottest female draw at the box office” thanks to films like The Man with the Golden Arm and Pal Joey. Columbia Pictures was grooming her to replace Rita Hayworth, who studio head Harry Cohn disliked. As the latest Hollywood sex goddess, Novak was potentially worth millions.

When he saw the gossip item, Davis called Novak to apologize for putting her in an awkward position with the studio. According to his autobiography Sammy, Novak replied, “The studio doesn’t own me!” and invited him over for spaghetti and meatballs. Soon after, they were dating.

Their affair continued for most of 1957. Davis and Novak were aware of the risks they were taking, but that, it seems, made the relationship more exciting. “She hadn’t thought about me anymore than I had thought about her—until it was forbidden,” Davis wrote in his autobiography. “Then we became conspirators, drawn together by the single thing we had in common: defiance.”

Arthur Silber, a close friend and companion of Davis, often chauffeured the couple to a rented beach house in Malibu. They went to great length to hide their relationship—Davis would sometimes lie on the floor of the car under a blanket to avoid being seen with Novak.

“It was like we were in the FBI or something,” Silber says in an interview. “I would drop him off in front of her house in Beverly Hills and we would set up a time or a day for me to pick him up.” Davis also had a private phone line installed at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas where he worked so he could talk to Novak without the hotel switchboard listening in.

In December, Novak went home to Chicago for the holidays while Davis stayed in Las Vegas. He missed Novak so much that he found a replacement for his act and flew overnight to see her and meet her parents.

Irv Kupcinet of the Chicago Sun-Times heard about the visit and mentioned it in his column. Gossip heated up. There was a rumor Davis and Novak had taken out a marriage license. “Kim Novak is about to become engaged to Sammy Davis Jr. and Hollywood is aghast,” reported The London Daily Mirror. When Columbia Studio head Harry Cohn found out, he became enraged that his star—who he regarded as property he’d invested in—was dating a black man.The next morning, while flying to Los Angeles, he had the first of several heart attacks that would soon kill him.

By all accounts, Cohn was a ruthless studio chief who admired Benito Mussolini and had ties to the Chicago mob. He even wore matching ruby “friendship rings” with gangster Johnny Roselli. There are various accounts of what happened next, but what’s clear is that Cohn took out a mob hit on Davis. Gangster Mickey Cohen found Davis’s father and passed on the threat. Silber was there when Davis received the phone call, and he begged Davis to break up with Kim Novak. Sadly, Sammy called Kim Novak, and they both agreed to end the relationship. It was a sad end to a beautiful romance and another example of how racism destroyed lives and relationships...

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RIP: BUDDY BREGMAN

Buddy Bregman, an arranger and composer who scored and/or orchestrated such films as The Pajama Game, The Wild Party and Born Reckless, died Sunday evening in Los Angeles after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 86.

Bregman’s death was confirmed by his daughter, The Young and the Restless actress Tracey Bregman.

Before his film work, Bregman got his start, at age 25, as the head of A&R at Norman Granz’s Verve Records. While there, he worked as an arranger with such artists as Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. He arranged two of the now-classic albums in Ella Fitzgerald’s song book project as well as several of her early Verve Records singles. Bregman later became Ethel Merman’s personal arranger.

Following his tenure at Verve, Bregman became the musical director of NBC’s The Eddie Fisher Show, and was the first American director hired for the BBC. In 1966, he was appointed head of light entertainment for the weekday ITV company Redifussion London, and later worked as a television producer and director in the United States and Europe.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by son Barry Bregman, former wife Suzanne Lloyd, four grandsons, a great grandson and a brother and sister-in-law...

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: HOLLYWOOD KIDS - PART THREE

Here is our final installment of Hollywood stars and their children that often lived in their shadows...

Ava Astaire, the daughter of Fred Astaire (1899-1987) and Phyllis Astaire (1908-1954)

Ava today at 71

Tracy Davis, the daughter of Sammy Davis Jr (1925-1991) and May Britt (born 1934)

Tracy today at 53

Melissa Montgomery, the daughter of George Montgomery (1916-2000) and Dinah Shore (1917-1994)

Melissa today at 56

MICKEY ROONEY: A LIFE IN PICTURES

The death of Mickey Rooney is the greatest blow to classic Hollywood since the death of Elizabeth Taylor. It is so hard to capture a career like Mickey Rooney's in a blog entry, but I wanted to capture his life in pictures. He was one of the greatest stars that Hollywood would ever know...

with Judy Garland

With Ava Gardner

With Elizabeth Taylor

With Spencer Tracy

 

With Sammy Davis Jr.

SAMMY DAVIS JR'S LIFE STORY HEADED TO COURT

Movie Rights To Sammy Davis Jr.’s Life Center Of $35M Lawsuit
By DOMINIC PATTEN

Who owns the option to the Rat Packer’s life? It seems that Sammy’s daughter may have sold the rights to her father’s story to two different companies and now one of them is taking the other to court for $35 million plus other damages to be determined. In a 12-page civil complaint (read it here) self-filed today independent producer Rick Appling claims he owns the film rights to Davis’ life not Byron Allen and Entertainment Studios.

Appling’s complaint alleges contractual interference on Allen’s part, making it almost impossible for the former to make a film about the performer. The producer says he secured a three-year option to the entertainer’s life for $10,000 from Tracy Davis on February 5, 2011, although the documents accompanying his complaint actually are dated February 7th. Appling wants a judicial declaration that he has those rights. Failing that Appling wants a determination of who does actually own the rights in a one-day jury trial. Tracy Davis is not named as a defendant in the complaint. Mere months after Appling and Davis announced their deal, the star’s daughter entered in another agreement with Allen and his company in December 2011.

A press release from former comedian and Emmy winning TV producer Allen’s company was issued on the eighth of that month announcing the new deal, leaving Appling broadsided he says. The plaintiff alleges that the Entertainment Studios CEO admitted to him in a phone conversation that he knew Appling had the rights to Davis’ life. Because of this apparent conflict of rights, Appling says his co-production partners Invasion TV and Ampersand Media have expressed “displeasure in moving forward” with the project. A project they were discussing working on with Leonardo DiCaprio’s company Appian Way at one point, according to Appling’s complaint. “As a result of the Defendant’s conduct, and each of them, Plaintiff has suffered and will continue to suffer extensive damages which are incapable of precise calculation at this time,” the suit says. Rick Appling is representing himself in the case...

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