Performing was the only life that Sammy Davis Jr. knew. Sammy's parents were vaudevillians; his mother a Puerto Rican tap dancer, and Sammy Sr. was part of Will Mastin's dance troupe. When little Sammy was three his parents separated. Sammy Sr., not wanting to lose custody of his son, took him on the road. Soon the boy joined the act, which became the Will Mastin Trio. (When a theater manager would object to such a young child performing, Sammy Sr. would hand Sammy Jr. a rubber cigar and bill him as "Silent Sam, the Dancing Midget.”) Show business and his father's protection largely shielded Sammy from racial prejudice while he was young, but he saw racism first hand when he answered the call to serve in the Army during WWII . "Overnight the world looked different. It wasn't one color anymore. I could see the protection I'd gotten my whole life from my father and Will... It was as if I had been walking through a swinging door for eighteen year, a do...
Old Time Radio Shows from the Golden Age of Radio