DATE: 2013-01-31
PUBLISHER: HarperCollins
GENRE: Biography
AUTHOR: Matt Birkbeck
PAGES: 300
FORMAT: PDF
URL: http://is.gd/hoHsZ5
LANGUAGE: English
ISBN: 9780061700187
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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