Histrionic 1966 picture about a struggling musician has worthy ambitions but is deeply unhip
Time has not lent much to this histrionically earnest issue picture starring Sammy Davis Jr from 1966, in which the life of a troubled African
American jazz hepcat is quaintly imagined by the husband-and-wife screenwriting team of Lester and Tina Pine; the director is industry stalwart Leo Penn (father of Sean), who had been blacklisted in his former career as an
Actor after refusing to testify to the red-baiting Huac. Well, the film certainly challenges the all-white consensus, and a supporting cast including Cicely Tyson and no less a figure than Louis Armstrong gives it substance.
Davis plays Adam Johnson, a brilliant but mercurial jazz musician and
Singer, facing casual
racism from the cops and stricken with depression and alcoholism after a car crash killed his wife and child and blinded one of his own musicians. His wild fits of anger on and off stage bring him close to meltdown; but then he meets and falls in love with the charismatic and beautiful civil liberties campaigner Claudia Ferguson (Tyson) whose grandfather is the much-respected jazzman Willie Ferguson (Armstrong). Adam’s life looks like it’s taking an upward path, and he is also mentoring a young white musician called Vincent, played by a very callow Frank Sinatra Jr, who – unlike Davis – does not convincingly master the art of miming to other people’s horn playing. But then Adam is forced to go on a tour of the south by his exploitative and arrogant recording company boss, played by Davis’s fellow Rat Packer Peter Lawford. This character’s name happens to be … erm … Manny. Some stereotypical thinking here?