Go
 

  Get this audio book:

( Amazon.com )        # of Discs: 5




Learn More About
Find More Titles by
This Author: Matt Birkbeck
This Narrator: Peter Jay Fernandez
This Publisher: Harper Audio

Deconstructing Sammy by Matt Birkbeck

Deconstructing Sammy

Music, Money, Madness, and the Mob

by Matt Birkbeck


Title Details

Author
Publisher
 
Abridged Edition
Running Time
6 Hrs. 30 Min.

Description

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 20th 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.


People Who Liked Deconstructing Sammy Also Liked These Titles:
  Late, Late at Night
by Rick Springfield

  Superman in Myth and Folklore
by Daniel Peretti

  Power Over People
by Dennis Dalton