Clue Watch: Sammy Davis Jr. and More

All this talk of Frank Sinatra this month reminded us of the most talented member (in our opinion, of course), of the Rat Pack: Sammy Davis, Jr. The last clue we can find on J-Archive for Sammy occurred in 2013.

10-28-2013 IT’S IN THE “CAN” $1600: In a 1972 hit, Sammy Davis Jr. told us that he could “take a sunrise, sprinkle it with dew”

Here is a video of Sammy doing impersonations of singers and actors that were well-known during the height of his fame. Let’s look up the last time each one of them had a clue.

04-07-2015 (FJ) CELEBRITY FATHERS & DAUGHTERS: He won a Grammy in 1959, she won 3 in the 1970s & a song by both was 1991’s Song & Record of the Year
05-04-2015 GRAMMY WINNERS $2000: 2006’s Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals went to Tony Bennett & this other music legend for “For Once In My Life”
11-01-2007 MONROE $800: 1940s singing star Vaughn Monroe had a rich voice in this middle male range, hence the nickname “old leather tonsils”
12-16-1987 SHOW BIZ BILLYs $800: Nicknamed “The Vibrato”, he was 1 of the 1st black singers to break the color barrier
07-14-2014 MOVIE MUSICALS $1000: James Cagney won his only Oscar for portraying this composer in 1942’s “Yankee Doodle Dandy”
12-10-2015 MOVIE LIFE HACKS $1000: In “Rear Window” one of the apartment dwellers he spies on lets her dog out with a nifty pulley system
10-05-2015 HOME MOVIES $2000: The title of a Cary Grant film is this character “Builds His Dream House”
05-25-2015 PORTMANTEAU WORDS $600: In 1966 Jerry Lewis began hosting one of these long broadcasts as a fundraiser every Labor Day weekend

The only clues that don’t contain the names of the performers are the FJ for Nat King Cole and his daughter, Jimmy Stewart and Billy Eckstine. Billy’s clue was his one and only and that was also the case for Vaughn Monroe. That’s really kind of sad when you look at that 10/5/2015 clue for Cary Grant. Did they real expect the players to know that?

Billy had a hit with “Prisoner of Love.” It was a later hit for both Perry Como and the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. Surely, the cluewriters could come up with something from that. And the same can be said about Vaughn Monroe. He had the first hit (a No. 1) for “Let it Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” and “There I’ve Said It Again,” later hits for Dean Martin and Bobby Vinton.

Sammy and James Cagney are the only other stars who didn’t get a clue in 2015. So Sammy Davis, Jr., James Cagney, Vaughn Monroe and Billy Eckstine are all DUE FOR A CLUE before Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant and Jerry Lewis. We’ll be on the lookout to see how that shakes out.

Here’s a bonus Sammy Davis, Jr. video in which he is performing “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You” at the tender age of seven.

https://youtu.be/Im-H6ORoNm8