War & Peace Quote by Sammy Davis, Jr.

Fame, Sammy Davis, Jr. is saying, isn’t a talent contest so much as a camera-ready conflict machine. The line lands because it’s not dressed up as critique; it’s delivered like backstage wisdom, the kind of cynical “how the sausage gets made” advice you’d hear from someone who’s spent a lifetime watching audiences confuse spectacle for skill. Davis frames it as a marketing tip, but the bite is in the shrug: “That’s publicity, man.” Not artistry. Not voice. Publicity.

The specific intent is double-edged. On the surface, he’s describing a tactic for breaking through the noise: outsource attention by staging erotic competition around the male star. Underneath, he’s indicting an industry that rewards a performer who can curate desire and chaos more reliably than one who can sing. The “five sexy chicks” detail is deliberately blunt, a crude inventory of how women get turned into props and plot devices. “Let them fight” isn’t accidental either; it names a media logic that treats rivalry as content, long before “reality TV” became the official language for it.

Context matters. Davis came up in mid-century show business, where image, gossip columns, and televised appearances could make or break careers, and where race constrained what kinds of visibility were available to Black entertainers. His cynicism reads partly as survival knowledge: the spotlight is manufactured, and the manufacturing is often ugly. The quote works because it’s both a dirty joke and a diagnosis of celebrity culture’s engine: sex, conflict, and a star positioned at the center like a prize.