I see that Lloyd Grove, the new gossip columnist at the Daily News in New York, leads this morning with an item about Sammy Davis Jr. that "rips the zipper off the pint-size entertainer's gigantic sexual appetites." Oooh. And he got it all from Wil Haygood's first-class biography "In Black and White," just out from Knopf.

Having just reviewed that biography and another by Gary Fishgall for the Chicago Sun-Times, which will run the review next Sunday, I have to say two things: 1) The key to Sammy Davis Jr. was not the sex stuff but rather, as Haygood points out, his devout wish to be white; and 2) Grove must be coming up dry in his new job if he has to reach back 40 years to a long-dead entertainer for a lead item on a Monday morning.