At the end of 1989, less than a year before he died, Sammy Davis Jr. was pulled onstage by Gregory Hines at Davis’ 60th anniversary celebration. His hip had been replaced less than five years earlier and he was undergoing treatment for throat cancer which left him unable to speak. Both Davis and Hines starred in the 1989 movie Tap and Hines had just finished his routine on stage when he approached Davis, helped him put his tap shoes on, and stood out of the elderly entertainers way. Watch the video and see for yourself how, in the distance between his chair and the stage, Davis transforms from a frail old man to an entertainer. His legs are thin in his pants and he is noticeably frail but he dances so well that at the end of the video Hines bends down to kiss the dying man’s shoes.
In Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell uses this celebration of Davis to illustrate how the entertainer paved the way for black entertainers in America. Gladwell talks about how Sammy Davis Jr. was the first entertainer to break into a white-dominated industry and had to make sacrifices in order to succeed. Sacrifices like urging his body to dance onstage while managing to make another tap-dancing legend seem ordinary.
