Sammy Davis Jr. never went anywhere without a camera. That’s the first thing you need to know about this book, and it changes everything.
Most photography books about the Rat Pack era give you the officially sanctioned images — the staged publicity shots, the approved portraits. Photo By Sammy Davis Jr. is something different. These are Sammy’s own pictures, taken with his own eye, of people who let their guard down because the photographer was their friend. Frank Sinatra off-duty. Marilyn Monroe unposed. Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, Paul Newman — all captured by someone who genuinely belonged in that world and understood it from the inside.
Burt Boyar — Davis’s longtime confidant and co-author of the autobiography Yes I Can — provides the text, which traces both the public performer and the private man. Together, the photographs and the writing reveal a side of Davis that the world rarely saw: thoughtful, perceptive, ambitious not just to perform but to document.
This is a beautiful hardcover — a genuine artifact of Hollywood’s most glamorous era, seen from an angle no one else had.
This copy is in Very Good condition with light shelf wear to the spine.
Sammy Davis Jr. never went anywhere without a camera. That’s the first thing you need to know about this book, and it changes everything.
Most photography books about the Rat Pack era give you the officially sanctioned images — the staged publicity shots, the approved portraits. Photo By Sammy Davis Jr. is something different. These are Sammy’s own pictures, taken with his own eye, of people who let their guard down because the photographer was their friend. Frank Sinatra off-duty. Marilyn Monroe unposed. Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, Paul Newman — all captured by someone who genuinely belonged in that world and understood it from the inside.
Burt Boyar — Davis’s longtime confidant and co-author of the autobiography Yes I Can — provides the text, which traces both the public performer and the private man. Together, the photographs and the writing reveal a side of Davis that the world rarely saw: thoughtful, perceptive, ambitious not just to perform but to document.
This is a beautiful hardcover — a genuine artifact of Hollywood’s most glamorous era, seen from an angle no one else had.
This copy is in Very Good condition with light shelf wear to the spine.
