Sammy Davis Jr. Show, The

1 9 6 6 (USA)
14 x 60 minute episodes

“I’m not going to do a variety show,” said the five-foot-five showman Davis. “I’m going to do a show with variety. There’s a difference – no sketches, no bad jokes. When Richard and Liz come on, he’s going to do Camelot and she’s going to watch. When Sean Connery comes on, he’s going to sing There Is Nothing Like a Dame the way he used to do when he was a chorus boy in London.”

“One evening I’ll have Louis Armstrong on one side and Ella Fitzgerald on the other,” Sammy Davis, Jr. added in a pre-show interview in late 1965.

“I want five of the great impressionists and get five James Cagneys going at once. It’s not going to be all fun. The pressures are there . . . ‘first Negro with a big show’.”

“All I really want to do is handle all of it with swinging dignity.”

This optimism was unfortunately misplaced. By the time Sammy Davis made it on the air, his show was nothing more than an hour of uninspired twaddle.

That is, if you can be so flattering as to call Elizabeth Taylor whistling a Welsh folk song twaddle – that, by the way, was one of the “highlights” of Sammy’s premiere outing, telecast on 7 January 1966.

Sammy Davis, Jr. – the consummate performer, the shining star of Broadway’s Golden Boy, the pride of the Rat Pack – opening his “non-variety show” with the show-stopping tune from The Roar of the Greasepaint, Nothing Can Stop Me Now.

Despite Sammy’s supposed friendship with the Burtons, he was totally ill at ease in their company. In fact, he looked nervous throughout the opening show and most of the other programs he fronted during the series’s short run.

Also, Sammy was a “hip” artist, and this got in the way of his performances.

He exuded little warmth and gave the impression that he was too sophisticated to be bothered with TV at all.

Like Judy Garland before him, Davis did not mix well with guests. He was doing a poor job of convincing the public that he was just plain folks.

When Sammy was performing solo – in fact, he headlined an entire hour – he was nothing less than brilliant.

He could hold an audience in the palm of his hand and do it without peer. But laden with undistinguished production and hokey writing, Davis could not rise above mediocrity.

His guests over the 14 weeks included Judy Garland, Tom Jones, The Supremes, Trini Lopez, Milton Berle, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Juliet Prowse, Barbara McNair, Nancy Wilson, Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, Diahann Carroll, Jay and the Americans, Peter Lawford, Mel Tormé, Frank Gorshin, Sarah Vaughan, The Andrews Sisters, Art Carney and Leslie Uggams.

Sammy was actually absent for three of the shows, which were hosted by Johnny Carson, Sean Connery and Jerry Lewis.

For his last number on the closing show, he sang What Kind of Fool Am I? wearing a clown outfit and a red frightwig. It was a song filled with irony.

Davis had allowed himself to be steered in the wrong direction, against his own instincts as a master performer.

When the 1966-67 NBC fall schedule was announced on 23 February 23, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show was nowhere to be found. The network dropped it without a formal announcement.

Davis was predictably nonplussed. He felt the shows were improving, and had hoped that the ratings would eventually follow suit. NBC pulled the show after the 22 April telecast, replacing it with two-year-old reruns of Sing Along With Mitch.

In interviews purporting to explain the show’s demise, Davis vowed never to do another TV variety show. “If I don’t know anything else, I know how to entertain people, but I’ve got to be me,” he explained, referring obviously to NBC’s interference. “I want to do dramatic things on TV now. I’m passing up Ed Sullivan and Hollywood Palace.”

He didn’t stay away long. By 1975, Davis was back on the air with a syndicated variety show. It also flopped.