"Auf Wiedersehen" was one of the great moments in television history. 33-year-old Sammy Davis Jr. performed in one of the first starring roles ever for a black actor, bringing emotion and life to a heart-tugging story that was written by Kurt Vonnegut.

Davis plays an isolated soldier named Spider Johnson, whose troop is stationed near a German orphanage. Though it's been years since the end of World War II, there's been something left behind - a single black orphan, who has never seen his father. Davis pities the young child, and asks him in broken German, "Who is your papa?" Unfortunately, he's chosen the wrong words, and discovers to his horror that he's inadvertently told the orphan boy: "I am your papa."

Davis amazed audiences with a performance that proves that beyond his skills as an entertainer, he could really act. The soldier he plays is an orphan himself, and one night, alone in his barracks, he sings to himself "Look Down That Lonesome Road." There's no music, and no show biz pizzazz - just a lonely man singing to himself. When the orphan boy appears at his door, private Johnson will return him to the orphanage. But he'll ultimately have to show stronger emotions in the face of the child's faith that the soldier really is his father.

Kurt Vonnegut's original short story eliminates that crucial scene. (In that story, titled "D.P.," the orphan describes their final conversation to his fellow orphans.) But the television version finds Sammy delivering the full force of that dramatic moment. "I'm not your papa!" the solitary private shouts. "Go away! I don't need you!" And then looking at the boy, reminding him of his only lonely self, he collapses to his knees, sobbing. Tears reportedly flowed even among the production crew of the TV drama, as Sammy's character sobs out his change of heart.

"I need you."

The year was 1958, and it was a television milestone that the short drama was even broadcast. 32 years later, just one year before his death, Sammy Davis remembered it fondly. The world had changed over his lifetime. (The man who had introduced the TV drama would go on to be President - Ronald Reagan.) Sammy could take pride in the knowledge that he was one of the first black actors to star in a television drama. But the show also represented an even greater artistic triumph.

Sammy had turned in an unforgettable performance.

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
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