He was a well-known Black performer and she was a white actress. In 1960, their connection sparked racist backlash, which alarmed John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
On December 11, May Britt, a Swedish actress whose 1960 marriage to Black entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. sparked racist sentiments in Hollywood and beyond as the civil rights movement gained traction, passed away in Los Angeles. She was ninety-one.
In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, her son Mark Davis revealed the death, which occurred in a hospital.
When Ms. Britt, whose first name was pronounced “My,” first met Mr. Davis at a Los Angeles nightclub in 1959, she was a budding film star.
At the time, the civil rights movement was making progress against workplace discrimination and school segregation, but it had much less of an influence on the rules and customs surrounding intimate relationships. Even in apparently liberal places like Hollywood, interracial dating was frowned upon, and although interracial marriage was permitted in California, it remained illegal in many other American states until 1967, when the Supreme Court’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia legalised it nationwide.
Following their romance, Ms. Britt and Mr. Davis were the focus of hate mail, death threats, and neo-Nazi picketing outside of places where Mr. Davis was performing. When they announced their engagement in July 1960, the outcry only intensified.
The hostility continued throughout that year’s presidential campaign, in which Mr. Davis actively backed the Democratic nominee, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Delegates from Southern states jeered Mr. Davis during the July Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
Mr. Davis informed a United Press International reporter, “You know as well as I do why they booed.”
The wedding was originally scheduled for October of that year, but it was ultimately postponed until November. It was held in Hollywood, with Frank Sinatra acting as best man and a number of other Rat Pack members present, including Peter Lawford, who was married to Patricia Kennedy’s sister. (Mr. Davis was a key member of the ensemble and was well-known for their joint performances in Las Vegas.)
The wedding was postponed due to pressure from the Kennedy campaign, which feared the ceremony would attract unfavourable coverage prior to the election, according to journalist Drew Pearson shortly after. Others later claimed that in 1961, Kennedy had given Evelyn Lincoln, his personal secretary, the order to remove Mr. Davis’ invitation to play at a White House inaugural party.
Tracey Davis, the daughter of Mr. Davis and Ms. Britt, recounted both accusations in her 2014 memoir, “Sammy Davis Jr.: A Personal Journey with My Father.”
After a bright beginning, Ms. Britt’s cinematic career was effectively ended by her marriage to Mr. Davis. She started her acting career in Italy, appearing in eleven Carlo Ponti-produced films before signing a deal with 20th Century-Fox to move to Hollywood in 1957.
She starred in a number of well-known movies, such as “The Young Lions” (1958) with Marlon Brando and Dean Martin and “The Hunters” (1958) with Robert Mitchum. She portrayed Lola-Lola, the lead in a 1959 version of “The Blue Angel,” a part that Marlene Dietrich made famous in the 1930 original.
In 1959, Ms. Britt was featured on the cover of Life magazine. Hedda Hopper, a syndicated columnist, described her as “the most interesting Swede to hit Hollywood since Garbo” in a profile that year.
She portrayed the wife of a singer who was ensnared by the mob in her final significant motion picture, Murder, Inc. (1960). Her performance was described as “taut and poignant” by Bosley Crowther, who reviewed the film for The New York Times.
However, her contract was not renewed by 20th Century-Fox that year. Ms. Britt, Mr. Davis, and others felt that the studio’s low box office performance for “The Blue Angel” was due to their interracial relationship.
On March 22, 1934, Majbritt Wilkens was born on the Stockholm island of Lidingo. Her mother, Hillevi, maintained the house while her father, Hugo, worked as a postal clerk.
At the age of 18, she had her big break. When Mr. Ponti and Italian writer and director Mario Soldati visited the studio to view actress photos for a future movie, she was working as a photographer’s assistant.
Rather, they hired Ms. Wilkens, who took on the screen name May Britt and relocated to Rome with her mother.
Adventure-melodramas such as “Jolanda, the Daughter of the Black Corsair” (1953) and “The Ship of Condemned Women” (1953) were among her Italian films. In 1956, Mr. Ponti and Dino De Laurentiis produced a massive, star-studded remake of “War and Peace” for Paramount Pictures.
Hollywood took notice of her and offered her a studio contract because of her performance as Sonya Rostova in the film.
Ms. Britt wed Ed Gregson, a young, affluent Stanford student, in 1958. A year later, they got divorced.
Ms. Britt converted to Judaism after getting engaged to Mr. Davis; he had recently done the same. In 1961, she gave birth to Tracey, their daughter. Following Mr. Davis’s admission of an affair with singer Lola Falana, they divorced in 1968 after adopting two sons, Mark and Jeff. In 2020, Tracey Davis passed away. In 1993, Ms. Britt wed Lennert Rindquist. In 2017, he passed away.
Her five grandchildren, her sister Margot, and her sons are among her survivors.
Following her divorce from Mr. Davis, Ms. Britt, who had stayed in Los Angeles, resumed acting, albeit primarily in cameos and TV series. She last appeared in the horror movie “Haunts” in 1976. Her final television appearance was in an episode of the science fiction show “Probe” in 1988.
Until his passing in 1990 at the age of 64, Ms. Britt and Mr. Davis maintained their friendship.
In 1999, she told Vanity Fair, “I had the opportunity to marry the man I loved, and I loved Sammy.”
