HARRY BELAFONTE
(1 March 1927 - 25 April 2023)
The Jamaican-American actor and political activist Harry Belafonte has died of congestive heart failure at 96. He was also an immensely successful singer who became a noted performer on stage, in concert, in films and on TV. He popularised calypso music in the 1950s, was involved in filmmaking and TV shows for over sixty years, became a businessman developing a private community in the Caribbean and worked tirelessly for the Civil Rights Movement and other humanitarian causes. He was one of the good guys.
Harold George Bellafanti Jr was born in Harlem, New York, to Jamaican parents Harold George Bellafanti Sr, a chef, and his wife Melvine. During the 1930s, when his father left the family home, he lived with his grandmother in Jamaica. After high school in New York, he joined the US Navy and while working as a caretaker was given tickets to see the American Negro Theatre. That was a crucial point in his life and also for his friend, one Sidney Poitier.
Belafonte trained in drama at New York’s New School with fellow students Walter Matthau, Marlon Brando and Tony Curtis. To pay for his classes, he took up singing in jazz clubs and subsequently performed at his own restaurant. He began recording in 1949 and his first successful single was ‘Matilda’ while his first album, Calypso, was a hit, becoming the first million-selling LP by a single artist. His ‘Banana Boat Song’ was so popular that the comedy musician Stan Freberg made a parody version. As well as singing he appeared on stage in the 1950s. The musical revue Almanac was a personal success for which he won his Tony Award. On TV he made a memorable show with the black singer Odetta and their duet of ‘There's a Hole in My Bucket’ was a big hit. His version of ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ was so successful, it was re-released for further Christmas seasons. He recorded shows at Carnegie Hall and performed at Kennedy’s inaugural presidential gala. On Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show he interviewed Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and set out to help African musicians, such as Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela, to gain work in America.
He won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy, a Tony and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Humanitarian Award. For much of his early life Belafonte was the target of social and racial prejudice and he sought projects to combat them. He had been in films since the 1950s, making his debut in Bright Road (1953), with Dorothy Dandridge in a mostly all-black film about a problem child. They were both in the film of Carmen Jones, although the two singers were dubbed by operatic stars.
After that Belafonte made Robert Rossen’s ‘problem’ film, Island in the Sun (1957), about miscegenation in which he starred with Joan Fontaine. In Odds Against Tomorrow, he was a bank robber with a racist colleague (Robert Ryan), was in the sci-fi drama The World, the Flesh and the Devil, but turned down Porgy and Bess, on account of racial stereotyping. Sidney Poitier got the part. Both actors appeared together in the Western Buck and the Preacher and in Uptown Saturday Night, both directed by Poitier. In White Man’s Burden (1995) he was kidnapped by John Travolta and for Robert Altman’s Kansas City he was voted best supporting actor by the New York Film Critics’ Circle. He had previously appeared in cameos for Altman’s Pret-a-Porter and The Player. In 2006 Emilio Estevez cast him as Nelson in Bobby, his biopic on Robert Kennedy. His last film was a supporting role in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, in 2018.
Apart from feature films, Belafonte also made documentaries. He narrated King: A Filmed Record... on Martin Luther King for whom he became a financial supporter, Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker, about the African-American civil rights activist, Fidel, about Castro, Motherland, on African history, and Sing Your Song, on Belafonte himself. He was inspired by the great Paul Robeson, who was his mentor, and in Kennedy’s administration he became cultural advisor to the Peace Corps and later on joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement, USA for Africa. From 1987 he was appointed Unicef Goodwill Ambassador for the rest of his life. He was involved in all kinds of humanitarian causes, organising We Are the World, in aid of funds for Africa, took part in Live Aid and chaired an international symposium for African children, in particular those in Rwanda. He received a Humanitarian Award at the Black Entertainment Television Awards in 2006.
Harry Belafonte first married Marguerite Byrd, by whom he has two daughters, Adrienne and Shari. His second wife was the dancer Julie Robinson and they have two children, David and Gina. Then he married the photographer Pamela Frank in 2008.
MICHAEL DARVELL