Margaret Bush-Ware met Sammy Davis Jr. on a plane. Years later, he hired her as his personal assistant.

Photograph courtesy of Margaret Bush-Ware

Back in the early ’60s, Sammy Davis Jr.’s entourage took up most of the first-class cabin on TWA flights from New York to Los Angeles. As an 18-year-old flight attendant, Margaret Bush-Ware just happened to work that route out of John F. Kennedy International Airport. “I approached Sammy and told him, ‘I wrote a report on your book Yes I Can and got an A,’” Bush-Ware recalls with a sly smile. “And I said, ‘I know a lot about you.’”

That day she earned a moniker coined by Davis Jr. himself: “Tall, Dark, and Stately.”

“We became fast friends,” remembers Bush-Ware, 76, who retired in Atlanta in 2020 after a colorful, one-of-a-kind career.

The young jet-setter eventually left her flight attendant job to join Operation Breadbasket in Chicago. A project of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Operation Breadbasket fought to secure more jobs for Black people in stores that served Black communities. Originally launched in Atlanta, the organization expanded to Chicago in 1966, led by young activist, theological student, and rising politician Jesse Jackson.

In 1970, Bush-Ware was tasked with coordinating talent for a “Unity Festival” in Sacramento, California, where Operation Breadbasket was leading a rally. The concert lineup featured Ray Charles, Tony Bennett, and the cast of the Broadway musical Hair . Fortuitously for the young organizer, it also included Sammy Davis Jr. When Davis Jr. saw Bush-Ware in the new role, the multifaceted entertainer hired her as his personal assistant and talent coordinator for Los Angeles–based Sammy Davis Enterprises and its television programming.

“I did many shows, including Della Reese’s Della talk show series, and Sammy and Company ,” Bush-Ware says of her 12 years working for Davis Jr., whom she considered a father figure. “And whenever there was a special event of any kind [at Sammy Davis Enterprises], I invited people—everyone from Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli to the Queen of England!”

In 1979, Davis Jr. invited Bush-Ware to a live taping of an All in the Family episode where he would appear in a cameo, performing as himself alongside the show’s bumbling patriarch, Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor. While on set, Davis Jr. introduced Bush-Ware to the All in the Family writer and creator, the legendary Norman Lear.

Toward the end of the episode, the script called for a photographer to capture an interaction between the two iconic characters. As Lear considered his direction for the scene, Bush-Ware leaned over with a suggestion: What if Sammy leaned in and kissed Archie on the cheek?

“So Norman did it, and it was a hit,” Bush-Ware laughs, eyes sparkling. In an instant, the tall, dark, and stately woman had made another lifelong friend.

This article appears in our May 2024 issue.

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