Swedish movie star May Britt, 91, died on Dec. 11. She was a photographer’s assistant and model when discovered by Carlo Ponti and cast in Jolanda, the Daughter of the Black Corsair (1952). She made a handful of European films before being snapped up by Hollywood and starred in War and Peace, The Young Lions, and the just-about career-killing remake of The Blue Angel (1959). Britt married Sammy Davis, Jr., in 1960, which pretty much put paid to her career (interracial marriage was illegal in much of the US at the time). It also ended Davis’s friendship with the Kennedys, who barred the couple from the JFK inauguration. Britt worked sporadically through the 1980s (The Danny Thomas Hour, Mission: Impossible, The Most Deadly Game). She and Davis divorced in 1968; Britt remarried, became a painter, and settled down in California. “Sammy has given me self-assurance and confidence,” Britt said. “Sammy enabled me to gain a new sense of values, to cherish the little things in life which are so important but which I took for granted before I met him . . . I didn’t care how bumpy things got for us. When I married I knew my career would be out the window anyway.”
