A Man Called Adam

Great late Kennedy/early LBJ urban look to this film. A lot of it is set inside The Great Hipster Jazz Club with lots of Jackie hair do's on the gals and narrow black ties and glasses on the guys (horn rims for the Ofays and shades for the Brothers). You expect to see Lei Roi Jones, before he became Amiri Baraka, flagging down a cocktail waitress and Capote holding forth to Jill St. John (or vice versa). And there are three very good musical interludes featuring Satch, Mel and Sammy, respectively. Also, it's good to see Cicely Tyson just before she hit it big as well as Satch playing a character at least somewhat removed from himself.

Otherwise, this thing's a bore with endless, repetitive scenes of the title character either about to fall apart, falling apart or feeling guilty after falling apart, and Davis' performance, to put it at its kindest, is more energetic than nuanced. And Les and Tina Pine's dialogue is strictly from Squaresville, as they would have Adam say. C plus.

PS...Peter Lawford was forty two when this movie was made and easily looks sixty two. Ah, the vagaries of The Pack!

I am floored that I have never seen this film before...much less ever heard of it! And now I am hooked until the end. The cast, the era, the theme, the music and even the opening is WORTH the price of admission on Netflix!

Great movie the best SAMMY DAVIS JR film to date,did anybody notice MORGAN FREEMAN doing background extra work, when i was young I heard old people talk about his film people like my DAD, I know he saw this film this film was very appealing to him, I know,he was in to this type of music pure jazz, all the actors were great, know I would love to own it on DVD, it help me to understand the emotionally charged 1960s I lived thru that period.and the only program that bought laughter into our hope was a show called I DREAM OF JEANNIE which MR DAVIS did a guest spot and the number that OLD BLACK MAGIC if you look carefully you'll notice the cast is mesmerized at Sammy's performance Barbara Larry Hayden and bill even the background club atmosphere was awed by this man energy,,,,,wish I could've meet him

Sammy Davis Jr. does well with a self-destructive, unlikable role, that of a jazz trumpet player (with the ridiculously Anglo-ized name of Adam Johnson) who finds true love for the first time with a virginal bleeding heart: a sensible civil rights activist who wants to reform the hot-headed musician of his hard liquor and hard-living. Adam, carrying around a multitude of shoulder-chips, lashes out at everybody and never seems to land on his feet; after burning all his bridges, he finds himself at the end of his professional rope--yet the faithful are still hopeful he can make a comeback. Davis mimes the trumpet well enough, but this character is tough to take (if he's not humiliating himself, he's hurting all his loved ones). Much better are Ossie Davis as a friend with a strong center and endless patience, as well as love-interest Cicely Tyson (her sparkling smile is particularly ingratiating, though she has a speech late in the movie about robbing Davis of his manhood that plays all wrong). Mel Tormé stops the show with a terrific rendition of "All That Jazz", while the superb soundtrack and Jack Priestley's gleaming cinematography are first-rate throughout. Director Leo Penn is best at the smaller bits of business; the action happening just left of center is far more interesting than the film's big dramatic moments, which tend to run away from Penn. Worse, the montage-heavy final act is movie-shorthand for the Last Hurrah, a worn-out cliché even in 1966. ** from ****

This film, made in 1966, was a bold attempt at addressing the contemporary conflicts of race and identity as it affected an African American jazz musician during the turbulent civil rights era. Adam (Sammy Davis Jr.) is a celebrated yet self destructive jazz musician and womanizer. Possessing a mean temper with a short fuse, he also has a serious drinking problem. In the opening scenes we are introduced to Adam leading his band in a sensuous slow number to an appreciative audience at a jazz club. When a drunken audience member insists he play something up-tempo, the volatile Adam abruptly stops playing and nearly assaults his heckler before storming out of the club and hopping a plane back to New York without explanation. Arriving home drunk with a sexy stewardess whose name he can't remember (a very lovely Lola Falana in her first screen role, which amounts to a brief cheesecake walk-on) Adam inconveniently discovers his apartment has been loaned for the week-end by his best friend (played by Ossie Davis) to a respected, elderly jazz musician (Louis Armstrong) and his chaperon/grand-daughter, a young civil rights activist (Cicely Tyson). Honored by the presence of the senior musician and attracted to his grand- daughter's sharp wit, politic-ism, and natural beauty (unlike the other African American actresses in this film, Tyson wears her hair in a short afro and wears little to no make-up). To his best friend's dismay, Adam attempts to embark upon a serious relationship with the activist, and to meet her challenge to him to be "nothing less and nothing less" than what what he is, "a man. With the support of his no-nonsense girlfriend and his young protégé (Frank Sinatra Jr.) Adam's efforts to tame his drinking and his anger look promising until an unexpected confrontation with the police tips the scale. Neither the elder musician's (Armstrong) brand of courteous subservience nor Tyson's subscription to non- violent protest works for Adam, In an era where his art cannot shield him from the stigma and crisis of his race, Adam is a time-bomb waiting to happen. Davis' performance is riveting as is Tyson's. The issues presented in this film were raw at the time of its making, and Davis and Tyson present African American characters that were almost unprecedented in their dramatic intensity and three dimensionality--an exception would be Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln's startling performances in "Nothin' But AMan", (1961). Rat-pack bad boy Peter Lawford joins the cast as Adam's powerful and vindictive agent who, after twice being humiliated by Adam (don't miss the scene in famed NY restaurant, 21), blackballs him, then forces him back to the humiliation of the segregated south. Also look for a brief yet strong performance from an uncredited Jan'et DuBois ("Willona" on 1970s TV show, "Good Times") as Adam's pride-less sometimes girlfriend, and Academy award winning actor Morgan Freeman an extra in a party scene featuring singer Mel Torme.