From 1969 to 1975, ABC put out weekly films. They functioned as TV pilots, testing grounds for up-and-coming filmmakers, and places for new and old stars to shine. Every month, Chloe Walker revisits one of these movies. This is Movie of the Week (of the Month).
Frank Sinatra found almost as much success in the movies as he did in music, even winning an Oscar along the way. Dean Martin worked with such luminaries as Howard Hawks, Vincente Minnelli and Marlon Brando.
And Sammy Davis Jr.?
In his 1965 autobiography, Why Me?, he talks often about his eagerness for movie and TV projects, and his frustration at being shut out due to the color of his skin. He recounts telling his agent, “Look, we both know they aren’t running around town looking for colored actors. But I’m a name. Maybe I can draw a rating, right? The door isn’t locked. It’s just closed, and there must be a way to get it opened.”
It would never open as widely for him as it did for Sinatra and Martin, but he was able to nudge it ajar a little. There was Ocean’s Eleven and the rest of the Rat Pack romps (in which he’d inevitably have the least screen time), his spectacular number in Sweet Charity and memorable supporting roles in films like Porgy and Bess and Anna Lucasta. 1966’s A Man Called Adam gave him the rare chance to lead a movie; while the narrative was messy and too prone to hysteria, he bought real texture and humanity to his fatally flawed trumpeter. Despite the strength of his performance, he’d never get another chance to lead a big screen feature under his own steam.
On the small screen, however, three years later, there’d be The Pigeon—an ABC Movie of the Week.
Elaine Hagen (Dorothy Malone) and her daughter Barbara (Victoria Vetri) are in possession of a diary containing information that could sink the criminal enterprise of Mr. Stambler (Ricardo Montalban). Unsurprisingly, he would very much like this diary back, and is prepared to go to dangerous lengths to get it. Larry Miller (Davis), a private eye for whom Barbara once did a favor, steps in to help the Hagens—but they don’t make it easy for him…
Although from a narrative standpoint, The Pigeon was just another detective story of the kind that had already been around for decades, the MOTW—a failed pilot—still had plenty to recommend it. It boasted an eclectic, eminently watchable supporting cast: Oscar-winning classic Hollywood star Malone, the ever-reliable Montalban (playing a distinctly more threatening villain than in last month’s MOTW), popular crooner Pat Boone as Larry’s partner, and the wonderful Roy Glenn as his police lieutenant father. The teleplay, penned by veteran TV writer Edward J. Lasko and Academy Award nominee Stanley Roberts, contains a bounty of funny lines and exchanges, largely between Larry and his father (“Dad, this guy that jumped me really wanted a girl.” “Yeah? So did your mother and I!”)
And the most important asset was, of course, Sammy Davis Jr. Davis was such a dazzling, multi-talented entertainer, it’s not all that surprising that his ability at straightforward acting has been somewhat lost to time. Perhaps the prime benefit of The Pigeon’s generic nature is how it gave him the opportunity to excel as a regular guy on screen—not singing; not dancing; not having to fend off a constant stream of racism. There’s a real joy in watching Davis take a stab at playing one of the most prototypical of mid-century male roles, the beleaguered private dick, and imbuing him with simple, magnetic warmth. It doesn’t feel like he’s “on” all the time, and yet the knowledge of what he was capable of adds a sparkle to the steadiness of his turn. A generous performer, he has chemistry with everyone, especially Glenn; if the pilot movie had become a series, their father-son dynamic would surely have been the heart of it, and sitting down to watch them every week would have been a treat. Alas, as was all too often the case with these ABC MOTW pilots, it was not to be.
Nevertheless, Davis persisted. Two years after The Pigeon, he had another crack at ABC MOTW stardom with The Trackers; in the Western, he played a Deputy Marshal charged with finding the kidnapped daughter of racist rancher Ernest Borgnine. There’s a patronizing tedium at the core of the movie that makes it far less enjoyable than its predecessor, and we aren’t given all that much to entertain us while we sit around and wait for Borgnine to learn the error of his ways. Still, Davis (who also produced), gives a warmly dignified performance that invites empathy. When he spots a clue as to the kidnapped girl’s whereabouts and quietly indicates it to one of Borgnine’s bigoted friends, letting him take the credit with the rest of the search party, Davis makes you feel viscerally how his Marshal could just not take any more of the abuse that would have occurred if he’d have pointed it out to the group himself. Though Davis’ portrayal of his bone-deep exhaustion with the firehose of racism perennially aimed in his direction does manage to puncture the monotony on several occasions, it’s still not quite enough to lend the MOTW much of an identity or edge.
Two years after The Trackers, at the other end of the self-serious spectrum, came the failed MOTW pilot (this one an NBC production) Poor Devil. A truly lunatic affair, it cast Davis as a friendly demon charged with persuading Jack Klugman’s schlubby accountant to sell his soul; Adam West played Klugman’s hellish boss, and Christopher Lee was Lucifer. Despite a fabulous cast and a wild premise, Poor Devil is a clunky, leaden venture, with a horrible script which boasts vanishingly few jokes that land. That it never made it to series is a relief, honestly.
Davis would continue racking up film and TV credits for the rest of his life, until his untimely 1990 death from oral cancer at the age of 64. Although he continued to be an engaging screen presence, none of these later projects really caught fire; frankly, few of them deserved to.
While it still stings that Davis never had the acting career that his talent merited, The Pigeon stands as one of too-few examples of the magnetic ease with which he could inhabit a lead movie role. The ABC MOTW may have been one of the least glamorous vehicles out there, but as an exhibition center for stars denied access to the grand stages they deserved, it could be invaluable.
Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can read her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Podcast Review, and Paste.