Why Sammy Davis Jr. Got Bomb Threats on His Wedding Day
Sixty-four years ago today, on Nov. 13, 1960, Sammy Davis Jr. married Swedish actress May Britt. Britt was Davis’ second wife, and by all accounts, their wedding day was a beautiful one: It was conducted in Davis’ Hollywood Hills home, under a canopy of flowers, with Davis’ family present, Frank Sinatra as his best man and fellow Rat Packer Peter Lawford by his side (both men signed as witnesses on Davis’ marriage certificate).
Getty Images, Credit: Bettman
However charming Davis’ home wedding was, however, his reasons for holding it at home are shocking. His original plan to wed at a local Los Angeles synagogue resulted in threatening phone calls; callers promised violence to both the synagogue and its clergy if Davis’ interracial wedding occurred on its grounds. Some workers at the synagogue feared rioting and civil unrest if they allowed Davis to marry the white Britt within its walls. At the time, many states still had bans on interracial marriage; it wouldn’t be declared unconstitutional until 1957.
Rabbi William Kramer’s speech to the couple, reprinted in Davis’ memoir Yes, I Can, describes the couple as “people without prejudice … [but] because you are normal in an abnormal society — society will treat you as sick.”
The love lives of most members of the Rat Pack were the subject of rabid tabloid interest — so much so that Frank Sinatra’s relationship with Lauren Bacall supposedly collapsed partially due to press attention. But Davis had to deal with far more dire consequences in his love life. Black and Jewish, Davis was subject to repeated threats to his life and livelihood over his relationships with white women. And he wasn’t just threatened by anonymous telephone cranks — high-ranking Hollywood businessmen were among those who demanded Davis choose between his personal safety and his love life.
Kim Novak
Everett Collection
The ’50s were an exciting time for Davis, as his career began to pick up steam; TV appearances and a Broadway run turned the musician and actor into a nationally recognized figure. It was also a time of struggle, as Davis recovered from the 1954 car accident that nearly killed him and cost him his left eye.
Into the middle of all of this walked actress Kim Novak. The gorgeous star was one of the biggest box office draws of the 1950s, starring alongside Sinatra in 1955’s The Man With the Golden Arm and 1957’s Pal Joey. In 1957, Davis spotted Novak when he was performing at a Chicago club; mutual friends Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh agreed to invite Novak and Davis to a party at their house, so that they could get to know each other better.
The tabloid rumors were instantaneous; when Davis called Novak up to apologize for the gossip, Novak reported that she had already fielded calls from her studio about their brief party conversation. Then she invited him to dinner at her house.
Everett Collection
The pair began dating, and the gossip was overwhelming. According to Davis in his memoir, tabloids described their relationship as “the Kiss of Death” to Novak’s career; Davis himself was the subject of editorials urging him to stop seeing Novak. “Can you begin to know how sick I am of being watched and judged and criticized and told what to do?” Davis wrote.
Davis rented a beach house in Malibu where he could privately meet with Novak and rode there on the floor of his car, under a blanket, to avoid the prying eyes (and camera lenses) of paparazzi. When Davis flew to Chicago over the holidays to meet Novak’s family, the tabloids reported that they were engaged.
George W. Hales/Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
This angered Columbia Pictures studio head Harry Cohn, who owned Novak’s contract. Cohn supposedly called upon crime underworld contacts to threaten Davis’ life and demand that he immediately break up with Novak and marry a Black woman. Davis supposedly sought out protection from his own organized crime contacts, but ultimately gave in to the demands, marrying Loray White, a young singer he had been on a handful of dates with in the past.
In his memoir, Davis claimed he impulsively asked White to marry him after they ran into each other while he was drunk. According to Davis’ friend, Arthur Silbur, Davis offered White a lump sum of cash to marry him. Either way, their marriage was brief; they married in January 1958 and had filed for divorce by September.
May Britt
Photo by J. Wilds/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A few months later, Davis spotted May Britt in the 20th Century Fox studio commissary. The young Swedish actress had come stateside to shoot a remake of The Blue Angel. Davis described his early infatuation with Britt in his memoir: “I could have affairs with a thousand chicks and walk away without thinking to ask their names, but every time I thought about May I could feel myself getting drawn in deeper.”
The pair dated, and Davis soon proposed. As soon as their engagement was announced, Davis fielded wildly intimate press questions about whether he felt comfortable with having mixed-race children and whether he and Britt would be the first married interracial couple in Hollywood. A number of his public appearances in the following months were protested by neo-Nazi groups. Davis was involved in supporting Democratic politics and supposedly agreed to schedule the wedding after election day in 1960, in case the public became so enraged about his marriage that they refused to vote for the Democratic candidate, John F. Kennedy. The marriage also resulted in Kennedy revoking an invitation for Davis to perform at his inauguration.
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Britt’s career sputtered out soon after the wedding; studio heads did not believe a movie star in a mixed-race marriage could be a box office draw in the early ’60s. Davis and Britt had three children together, but divorced in 1968, allegedly due to Davis’ infidelity.
Altovise Gore
Photo by Doug McKenzie/Getty Images
In 1968, Davis began dating Altovise Gore, who was his costar in stage play. They married in 1970 and stayed married until his death from cancer in 1990. Gore said of their relationship, “We loved each other very much. I was like a kid in a candy store, and he wanted me to have the best.”
Though Novak withdrew from Hollywood not long after she and Davis broke up, they met again two more times. Once was at the 1979 Academy Awards; they danced together at an after-party, where Davis supposedly marveled that no one seemed to gossip or care about it. They met again when Novak went to visit him on his death bed in 1990.
Gore died in 2009; Britt and Novak are still alive at 90 and 91 years old, respectively.
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