Sammy Davis Jr. Biography

Fast Facts

• In 1968, he received the NAACP Spingarn Medal Award
• In 2008, he was posthumously inducted into the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame
• Learned to dance at three years old, and his father took him on tour in a dance troupe at a young age
• Quote: "If you had to worship something mortal on Earth, I would go and bow twice a day to wherever [Laurence Olivier] was standing․"
• Quote: "You have to be able to look back at your own life and say, 'Yeah, that was fun․' The only person I ever hurt was myself and even that I did to the minimum․ If you can do that and you're still functioning, you're the luckiest person in the world․"
• Widely recognized for the glass eye on the left side of his face
• Well known for his impersonations of other celebrities
• In order to overcome child labor laws in his youth, he was billed as "Silent Sammy, the Dancing Midget․"
• Performing in a vaudeville act since the age of five, he never attended school of any kind
• With a Cuban-American mother, he would claim to be of Puerto Rican descent due to the fear that anti-Cuban backlash would hurt his record sales