[David B.]

I saw a review of this book in the Los Angeles Times today and it is very sad. If true, Altovise Gore, Sammy Davis Jr.'s widow, appears to be one of those lost souls who is determined to make a bad hand dealt to her even worse and is more interested in sabotaging and punishing efforts to help her than in being helped.

Maybe this isn't the right place to post this, I don't know. But it sounds like she could use some prayers from anyone who has special powers in that department.

BOOK REVIEW
As Sammy's star imploded
A fascinating look at the life of Sammy Davis Jr.
By Rich Cohen
November 2, 2008
Deconstructing
Sammy
http://www.latimes.com/features/book...,1077438.story

"Deconstructing Sammy" is two narratives spun together. In the first, you have Sammy Davis Jr., "arguably the greatest entertainer of the twentieth century"; in the second, you have Albert "Sonny" Murray Jr., a young black lawyer who rescued Sammy's estate from its creditors (at his death, Sammy owed the IRS $7 million). Murray was a former federal prosecutor, made famous by the case that brought down E.F. Hutton. Murray's parents owned a resort in the Pocono Mountains that catered to a black clientele. It was while standing in the yard of this resort that Murray first saw the woman who would bring him into Sammy-land. She was standing across the road, "tall, thin and black . . . somewhat disoriented, head bobbing softly back and forth." Her name was Altovise Gore, and she was Sammy's widow. She had washed up in the Poconos like flotsam, alcohol-addicted, broke, the IRS dogging her for the outstanding debt.

...Altovise Gore, according to the book's closing pages, is penniless. She lives in a roach-infested apartment without a refrigerator and picks through dumpsters for bottles. It makes me think of the first line of Ford Madox Ford's novel "The Good Soldier": "This is the saddest story I have ever heard."

Only "Deconstructing Sammy" is much sadder. Whereas the Ford book is set in the expatriate resorts of Europe between world wars, Sammy's story is set in the oxygen-crammed casinos of Vegas, where, as any wiseguy can tell you, the machines are fixed and the house always wins. Sammy stayed at the tables as long as his money held out, then a little longer.

[Oren]

How tragic.

[Ore!]

I am afraid there might be a portion of truth in this story. However, we can be sure that although Sammy made mistakes during his lifetime, he was a wonderful, loving and caring person. Nancy who knew him has repeatedly reported that. Frank kept on saying it. I think there's no doubt about that.

Those books are published with one goal: money - making. They do not intend describe the life of a famous person or to account all their good deeds. This is not the staff that makes money. It's the scandals and the mistakes, wrong - doings etc etc that do.

That's why I do not read such books.