BOOTLEG FILES 865: “Sammy Stops the World” (1979 filmed record of Sammy Davis Jr.’s stage production of “Stop the World – I Want to Get Off”).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: Back in the early VHS and Betamax days.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: An obscure film that fell through the cinematic cracks.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.
One of the most unusual figures in the movie world was Bill Sargent, who commanded a unique niche – he would videotape prominent stage productions, transfer the video to 35mm film, and release the work into cinemas. Sargent reckoned that moviegoers would pay to see recordings of shows that theatrical and concert audiences paid to see – and he was right, when he had the vehicle that demanded attention. Beginning in 1964 with the gimmicky banner “Electronovision,” Sargent packaged video-to-film presentations that included Richard Burton’s Broadway turn in “Hamlet,” the all-star music concert “The T.A.M.I. Show,” the Truman tribute “Give ‘Em Hell, Harry!” with James Whitmore in his Oscar-nominated role, and the definitive comedy concert presentation “Richard Pryor: Live in Concert.”
But not every video-to-film production from Sargent was a hit. Case in point: “Sammy Stops the World,” a 1979 recording of the previous year’s theatrical revival of the Leslie Bricusse – Anthony Newley musical “Stop the World – I Want to Get Off” starring Sammy Davis Jr. (This production was not made in New York, but rather in California’s Long Beach Terrace Theater after the Broadway run).
Sargent produced the 1966 film adaptation of “Stop the World – I Want to Get Off,” which retained the theatrical version’s circus setting and stage dynamics, although he abandoned the video-to-film route for a straightforward 35mm film production. That offering was not a commercial success, so it hard to imagine why he thought lightning would strike a second time if there was no jolt the first go-round.
It is also not clear why Sargent opted to change the work’s title from the well-established original to “Sammy Stops the World.” It didn’t help – this production was barely seen in theaters and mostly disappeared after a very brief home entertainment release.
What went wrong? For starters, Bricusse and Newley updated their 1961 London musical to fit a 1978 American environment. In the original show, Newley took the starring role of Littlechap, a lower-class and amoral outsider who works his way to the top of British society through dumb luck, stubborn determination and, ultimately, the lack of consideration for those who love him. Newley, who performed the role in a clown’s costume and chalk-white make-up, gave the role a degree of abrasive charisma that would define his career.
Davis, however, had a very different performing persona from Newley, so Littlechap needed to be reconfigured. The chalk-white make-up was gone in favor of self-deprecatory acknowledgement of Davis’ race – in the updated show, he refers to himself in his initial bottom-of-the-ladder job as a “coffee-colored coffee vendor” and twice he is the object of a now-verboten racial epithet that rhymes with “trigger.” Whereas Newley’s Littlechap is scheming and moody, Davis’ Littlechap is plucky and too eager-to-please. This throws off the Bricusse-Newley concept of an outsider clawing his way to the top of a socioeconomic world, only to discover (surprise!) it’s lonely at the top.
By contemporary standards, some of the updated aspects of the show are wildly out of place in today’s woke society. There is a joke about rape that is so crass that it wouldn’t get muttered today in a cable television roast, and a segment where Davis seeks political office by pandering to different demographics goes beyond the political correctness of 2024 – though one has to wonder if anyone under the age of 60 would get the joke about Davis seeking the Jewish joke via his appearance before the congregants of “Temple Bess Myerson.”
This video-to-film recording of the show also cruelly reveals one major problem with Davis at this point in his career – he was not a team player. Granted, audiences packed the show to see him, but on stage he had an unfortunate habit of constantly trying to upstage his co-stars. In the duets he shared with Marian Mercer, who played the different women that shaped Littlechap’s life, Davis constantly mugs and distracts from Mercer’s singing. And in the solo segments when Littlechap gets lost in self-pity, Davis turns on the pathos with too much gusto.
But where “Sammy Stops the World” works is when Davis turns on his full star power. He leads the ensemble in a kinetic gospel-style reworking of “Gonna Build a Mountain” and his renditions of “Once in a Lifetime” and “What Kind of Fool Am I?” (which were already staples of his Vegas act) are brutally effective roof-raising solos.
Indeed, it is no surprise that the New York critics who reviewed the Broadway premiere of the show praised the star but rued that he was in the wrong vehicle for his talents. The critics who saw this video-to-film offering found nothing of value. Michael Clark of the Detroit Free Press declared “Sammy Stops the World” marked “some kind of nadir in the history of motion picture exhibition” while Greg Tozian of the Tampa Tribune informed his readers that he was the sole audience member in a Saturday night screening of what he dubbed a “terrible movie.”
“Sammy Stops the World” came and went too quickly in theaters and it had an equally brief home entertainment release in the early 1980s. It has been mostly unseen in the subsequent years, although an unauthorized YouTube posting pried it from oblivion and put it into the digital realm. Proceed with caution, but don’t be afraid – it is an interesting work, if mostly for the wrong reasons.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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