The Complicated History of Billy Crystal’s Sammy Davis Jr. Impression

Contemporary culture finally caught up with Billy Crystal when he performed his Sammy Davis Jr. impression while hosting the Academy Awards in 2012. While Crystal had trotted out the character several times during Saturday Night Live’s 10th season and included a “Sammy for Africa” track on his Mahvelous comedy album without incident, many were no longer laughing at his blackface makeup, no matter how affectionate the tribute to Davis. 

Feministing pointed out the obvious: “Blackface is not okay. Ever.” Grantland wondered how the Academy allowed it: “For Crystal to do this bit in blackface, at the exclusion of genuinely any sense, points to, in a Panglossianly benign interpretation of their motives, a world-class indifference to race at the very minimum.” After Octavia Spencer took home a Best Supporting Actress Oscar later that night, comedian Paul Scheer tweeted, “Octavia Spencer’s win shows just how far we’ve come since Billy Crystal performed in blackface.”

Why any white comic would think it’s a good idea to perform in blackface is unfathomable, but one can see how Crystal would be conflicted since Davis’ family loved the character. After the Academy Awards debacle, Sammy’s daughter Tracy Davis rushed to Crystal’s defense. “Billy previously played my father when he was alive, and my father gave Billy his full blessing,” she told Hollywood Reporter (via The Grio). “I am 100 percent certain that my father is smiling.”

Crystal opened for Davis early in Crystal’s career, and it meant the world to him. “Yes, I’m really in show business — I’m opening for Sammy Davis,” he told American Masters. “It was like a really big thing for me.” The two hung out in Lake Tahoe, playing backgammon and talking about Davis’ life in and out of show business. It was a long run of shows, and by the end of it, Davis was pranking Crystal — he swapped a porn film into the onstage monitor for the entirety of the comic’s last set. 

Their friendship led to Crystal’s affectionate impression. “I loved him. And I got him,” Crystal said. “Here’s this giant of a guy speaking Yiddish. He had converted to Judaism, and he had great knowledge, and he would talk to me like one of my uncles.”

After Crystal debuted the impression on Saturday Night Live, Davis called him with a mixed message. “He wasn’t happy with me,” Crystal confessed. “He said, ‘Listen man, it’s cool. I thought it was fantastic. I’m calling to say it was great, but you know, where are we going with this?’” A few weeks later, Davis poked back with a Billy Crystal impression at the CableACE Awards.

Complicating matters even further: Crystal’s impression jump-started Davis’ career in the 1980s, giving the Rat Pack musician cachet with a new generation of fans. If Davis’ daughter was in favor of Crystal’s cool cat character, it was in part because “Saturday Night Live gave (Davis) legendary status.”

Post-2012, Crystal appeared to get the message that the makeup should stay off permanently, even as he was reminiscing about his Davis impression to American Masters and the Television Academy Foundation in the 2010s. Other parts of Crystal’s shtick — he also did bits as Muhammad Ali and Black jazz musicians — weren’t aging well either. Comedy was “becoming a minefield and I get it,” Crystal told The New York Post in 2021. “I understand it. … It’s a totally different world, and it doesn’t mean you have to like it.”