Word: haygood
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...Haygood chases after him in a new biography, In Black and White (Knopf; 516 pages). Oddly, it's one of two published this month--the other is Gary Fishgall's Gonna Do Great Things (Scribner; 448 pages)--but it would take at least a dozen volumes to capture a life that encompassed tapping with Bojangles and making Cannonball Run with Jackie Chan. Haygood's book is the more interesting of the two, mostly because it's less sympathetic. Davis was a man who would do anything to be liked, and that's a mistake Haygood wisely avoids...
...shoes) or his funny face, all big nose and jutting jaw, or the car crash that took his left eye, but Davis was a howling void of insecurity that drowned out all other emotion. He craved affection, especially from white people, preferably famous, preferably Frank. In Haygood's telling, Davis' marriages, his compulsive gift giving, his surprising conversion to Judaism, even his support for the civil rights movement, all play like bids for applause, just another snappy routine...
Davis' uncanny impersonations and his fancy footwork are almost too perfect a metaphor for a man who was so desperate to fit in he affected an English accent whenever he was in London. Haygood's Sammy is a hall of mirrors with nothing behind them. You can't quite like him--there's not enough of him there to like--but you can't look away. The book ends with a heart-stopping photo of Sammy at age 5, blacked up, ready for his killer impression, his Al Jolson: a black kid impersonating a white guy in blackface...
...Margo G. Haygood '76, a member of a special advisory committee which met last week to assist Donald Fredrickson, the director of NIH, in his final decision on research guidelines, said yesterday that she approves "the basics of the guideline," adding that she was called on "to provide public input...
Lesson for Today. In Montgomery, Ala., the Rev. Dallas Haygood discovered that his car had been stripped of headlights, battery, tail lights, two tires and two wheels, decided to devote his Sunday sermon to the subject of stealing...
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