Deconstructing Sammy: Music, Money, Madness, and the Mob (Hardcover)
by Matt Birkbeck

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.

http://www.latimes.com/fe...7438.story

http://www.pluggd.tv/audi...odes/4n81p

carlcranshaw said:

Well sure there a lot of negatives there after his passing...but surely you can't ever say that it was almost he "never existed"...he has legendary status. A man of great talent, he surely paved the way for a lot of great talents to follow, for all races. The man could dance, sing, act, produce, write, and entertain. Say what you wish, but to say that his bankruptcy status at the time of his death diminished his estate to that it was almost as if he never existed is blasphemy. Some celebs just don't flat out know how to manage money. Thats just a harsh reality to face.

I can only imagine how hard it was for his widow to struggle financially after his death, but still, I don't think he deliberately left the world without financial security, he may have known he was in financial trouble while he was ailing....at least it wasn't like James Brown...isn't his estate still in limbo with his relatives and ex-wife still fighting over his estate??? Sad situations

And hasn't all of this been talked about before by the man himself in this book:



There won't ever be another Sammy:






[Edited 11/16/08 17:04pm]

I just ordered it...thankies.

Sammy was the Joe Louis of entertainment for black artists.

carlcranshaw said:

That is such a shame when they put it that way, but it's probably Altovise's unfortunate reality that she is probably not going to ever receive monies in her late husband's name using his likeliness.

missfee said:

-----
The Mob took Sammy's money.

its the difference between having good advisors and bad ones, i guess.

elvis presley was also near bankruptcy at the time of his death. for all the money he made, he barely had anything at the end. i've heard his ex-wife say that inheritance taxes and other debts would have left the estate nearly insolvent within a few years after his death.

but she got some good lawyers who managed to make sure anyone who wanted to exploit elvis' image or likeness had to go through the estate first. the estate also marketed his image and likeness in a controlled, limited way i.e., sleek 50s elvis or 70s aloha tv special elvis, the elvis as they wanted him to be remembered and who would be the most marketable. (can you image trying to make a profit on fat, druggie 70s vegas kitch elvis?) then they opened up graceland as a tourist attraction. thirty years later, it's a mult-million dollar organization.

i'm not sure why altovise couldn't find someone sooner to help dig her out of the hole sammy left them in. except that no one thought there would be anything in it for them at the end of the day. still, even allowing for the differences between elvis and sammy, i find it surprising that no enterprising lawyer, such as those affiliated with the elvis estate, saw a benefit in exploiting sammy's potential 'life after death' earnings right away.

Just finished the book...couldn't put it down actually.

It's a well written, well researched and pretty much un-biased account of how the attorney hired by Sammy's widow struggled to untangle the estate and what he discovered about Sammy and his associates over the course of seven years.

Apparently, Altovese couldn't manage due to being sick with alcoholism and the estate was just as much of a mess and James Brown's, to answer some of the questions posted above.

It's really a fascinating read. You have to pity how such gifted people get caught up in their private demons and exploited by so many vultures in show business. The saddest part was how his employees were looting his possessions while he lay on his death bed, practically a skeleton on morphine for the pain...awful!

that's really sad.

i know he had a son that he and altovise adopted; did the book say anything about what happened to him?

heck, i guess i'll get the book, too.

kibbles said:

At the end the author gives a "where are they now" summary of all of his kids and associates. He actually had 4 kids...one daughter and three adopted sons.

babynoz said:

thanks. i read the reviews over at amazon and they echo your sentiments exactly. some were harsh on altovise, some were sympathetic. one reviewer said his jaw was dropping by the second page.

kibbles said:

There were quite a few shockers in there for me too.

I can only describe Altovise as pathetic and incredibly self destructive despite her talent and beauty.

babynoz said:

the reviewers also made clear why altovise has not been able to 'exploit' sammy's legacy, a la priscilla presley. apparently, a lot of sammy's image is owned, so to speak, by the irs for debts and what not.

carlcranshaw said:

This will be a gift to myself...







...as one of the remembrances of this man's supreme talent.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

This is a GREAT book, a must read...poor Sammy...
Here's the review from the New York Times Book Review...

DECONSTRUCTING SAMMY
Music, Money, Madness, and the Mob.
By Matt Birkbeck.
Amistad/HarperCollins, $25.95.


“Deconstructing Sammy” was written by an investigative journalist, and it shows: Birkbeck has killer leads, gripping kickers and sensational descriptions. This cinematic book reads more like a detective story than a traditional “life of.” It revolves around Sonny Murray, a federal prosecutor and the son of the founders of the Hillside Inn, a famous black-owned hotel in the Poconos. Murray takes it upon himself to get Sammy Davis Jr.’s alcoholic widow, Altovise, sober, and to solve the mystery of the star’s enormous I.R.S. debt: $7 ­million-plus. How, Murray wonders, could a man with boundless talent, who worked almost every day of his life and grossed more than $50 million, die owing so much money? In the course of his rigorous and emotional investigation, Murray learns that Davis became an entertainer because he believed that “by entertaining, he could make all the hurt feelings go away.” He had plenty of those, having been subjected to horrible prejudice and racial violence in the Army. He turned to Judaism after losing his eye in a car accident: “He believed Jews and blacks suffered similarly, and he found comfort in the Torah and its teachings.” With less success, he later turned to cocaine, Satanism and orgies. In the end, Murray cracks the case and saves the widow — sort of. He discovers Davis was so eager to please that he trusted some truly awful people, and no one who had his best interests at heart. As he lay dying in 1990, Birkbeck says, his supposed friends were looting his home. Davis led a rich life — performing as part of the Rat Pack, marching with Martin Luther King, winning a Kennedy Center Honor — but because of the mishandling of his affairs, his legacy has suffered. The book has a stark moral: for a performer without business acumen or good management, all the talent in the world can’t guarantee immortality.

Ada Calhoun is the editor in chief of Babble.com, a blogger for AOL News and a frequent contributor to the Book Review.