Sammy & Marilyn

Maybe so. As for Marilyn Chambers, that may have been a possibilty. Who knows. His marriage to Altavese , a young black Vegas showgirl, may have been an open marriage.

 

You know it was probably the usual case in that it was "open" as far as HE was concerned even though I believe he loved Altavese.

 

Before Sammy died, the last person he spoke to was actress Kim Novak. He told her before he died that he loved her. I did not know this until Kim told about that time on a show(Entertainment Tonght, I think). I guess he loved Altavese as a friend and close confidant. I remember seeing her in an episode of Charlie's Angels. She was present and was nothing more than a shoulder to cry on. Then, she appeared on a chorus line dancing with the wives of other famous men. I guess they were all showgirls because they really kept in time. The 70's. A decade with a lot of surprises and discoveries.

 

I read something like it in a story from Vanity Fair. Kim and Sammy were tight until Harry Cohn sent gangsters to break them up. In a spirit of poetic justice Cohn died of a heart attack months later.

 

It makes sense they were good friends. Marilyn, a bright and sensitive woman who was reduced to a caricature of sexuality by the studios, and Sammy, who was often reduced to his color, would have easily had a mutual understanding of what it's like to be assumed to be nothing more than the package you came in.

 

I had discovered Marilyn Monroe a little bit late. I had seen pictures and film clips. I could not help but like Marilyn's looks and her playfulness. It was when I heard her taped interviews for Time magazine. It was there I saw who she really was. She tried to start her own production company and make independent films but the studios wanted her back. In the film The Misfits with Clark Gable she looked at Gable as a father figure because she grew up in an orphanage. Her marriages were not fairy tale marriages. Yet, she endured the studio system. She was in many ways a babe in the woods. A total innocent and incomplete woman who had the admiration of everyone who sees her(men lusted after her and women envied her). The studios did not give her the respect that she deserved.

 

Sammy Davis, Jr. was born into show business and all he ever did was entertain an audience. He was very multi-talented, he plays the trumpet and drums. He can dance, sing, do impressions and gun tricks(fast draw and twirling). On stage, I think he truly felt as free as any man can be regardless of color. Frank Sinatra saw that and he took Sammy under his wing. It was said when he lost his left eye in a car accident, no one would take him to the hospital because of his color. Actor Jeff Chandler was working on a movie when he heard about it(I guess the accident happened near the location he was filming). Chandler drove Sammy to the hospital. I remember when i first heard Sammy sing Candy Man, I was so happy when I heard it( I did not even know who wrote the song until I found out it was Anthony Newly, an actor). I felt his passion. I even felt it in a song called New York's My Home. An old song that had that same passion that he would put into every song he sang.

 

It's well known that Sammy and Kim had a very serious affair. Just google it. He did marry a white actress, who never worked in Hollywood again, btw, but he and Kim were a hot thing in the mid fifties, before that.

In the mid-1950s, Sammy was involved with Kim Novak, a film star under contract to Columbia Studios. The head of the studio, Harry Cohn, was worried about the negative effect this would have on the studio because of the prevailing taboo against miscegenation. He called his friend, the mobster Johnny Roselli, who was asked to tell Davis that he had to stop the affair with Novak. Roselli arranged for Davis to be kidnapped for a few hours to throw a scare into him. His hastily arranged and soon-dissolved marriage to black dancer Loray White in 1958 was an attempt to quiet the controversy.[28]
In 1960, Davis caused controversy again when he married white Swedish-born actress May Britt. Davis received hate mail while starring in the Broadway musical adaptation of Golden Boy from 1964–66 (for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor). At the time Davis appeared in the play, interracial marriages were forbidden by law in 31 US states, and only in 1967 were those laws ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.[29] Davis and Britt had one daughter and adopted two sons. Davis performed almost continuously and spent little time with his wife. They divorced in 1968, after Davis admitted to having had an affair with singer Lola Falana. That year, Davis started dating Altovise Gore, a dancer in Golden Boy. They were married on May 11, 1970 by the Reverend Jesse Jackson. They adopted a child and remained married until Davis's death in 1990.