Harry Belafonte: Singer, actor, and activist who matched his genial persona with political commitment
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By the mid-1950s, the singer Harry Belafonte had taken the lead role in an Oscar-nominated film, ; reached No 1 with his album , which helped find a mainstream audience for that musical style and became the first album ever to sell more than 1m copies; and headlined major venues around the US.
However, Belafonte found himself unable to use the main entrance to the Las Vegas hotels where he regularly performed — nor could he eat, stay or gamble in them. On tour in the south, he faced an evening curfew because of his skin colour. When he starred with Joan Fontaine in the then controversial film about an interracial relationship, (1957), he was advised not to mention Fontaine in press interviews for fear of suggesting a romance between them. He learned that the power and respect that usually accompany fame and fortune could be largely illusory as far as black entertainers were concerned.
The enduringly handsome Belafonte, who has died aged 96, had great success not just as a honey-voiced singer and a compelling actor, but also as a passionate and erudite campaigner for civil rights.
The seeds of his ambition and his social conscience were sown by his tough childhood. Harold Bellanfanti was born in Harlem, New York, and raised in a cramped apartment. His parents came from the Caribbean. His father, also called Harold, had been born in Martinique and was an itinerant ship’s cook; his mother, Melvine, born in Jamaica, worked as a domestic servant.
When Harry was six, his father left the family.
Harry was sent by his mother to study in Jamaica, where his American accent made him feel like an outsider at school.
After a few years, Belafonte returned to New York, dropped out of high school, and entered the navy. It was 1944 and he was 17.
Two strokes of good fortune changed his life. First, he met Marguerite Byrd, a young teacher from a black middle-class family, who four years later became his wife. He abandoned the menial jobs he had been doing and, thanks to the GI Bill of Rights, became a student and enrolled at Erwin Piscator’s drama school, where his peers included Marlon Brando and Sidney Poitier. With the latter, Belafonte trained at the studio theatre of the pioneering American Negro theatre in Harlem.
Except for some off-Broadway shows, he found little work as an actor and began singing, mainly in jazz clubs. He also began recording, including some of his own songs. Tiring of the routine, in 1950 he opened a small restaurant, the Sage, in Greenwich Village, entertaining customers with folk songs. This, and his attachment to Calypsos (he became known as “the Calypso King”), changed his style, and he was soon performing in more prestigious venues. He had signed a deal with Jubilee Records in 1949, and his records began to sell. Throughout his career, he recorded dozens of albums, including live concerts at Carnegie Hall, New York.
Belafonte won a Tony award in 1954 for his performance in the musical revue . By then, his film career was also underway.
In 1957, Belafonte had top 10 hits with 'The Banana Boat Song' and the title track from 'Island in the Sun', before achieving his biggest recording success with 'Mary’s Boy Child', which spent seven weeks at No 1 in 1957 and was re-released for the following two Christmases.
He began to appear on television, and toured successfully in Europe, becoming one of the first major artists to tour with a multiracial band. He integrated black performers into orchestras in prestige venues where the musicians had been exclusively white.
Belafonte and Byrd divorced in 1957, and he married Julie Robinson, the first white dancer to work with the Katherine Dunham company. The breakdown of his marriage led Belafonte to seek psychiatric treatment, and his psychiatrist’s husband, a stockbroker, subsequently became Belafonte’s agent and manager, replacing Jack Rollins, the man responsible for masterminding Belafonte’s early career.
The 1950s was a period of considerable civil rights activism for Belafonte, who cited his friend Martin Luther King as the dominant influence on his life.
When they first met, in 1954, they were in their mid-20s. He embraced King’s message of nonviolence and lent his support to protest movements. With King, Belafonte was one of those who planned the 1963 march on Washington.
A television show, (1959), brought Belafonte an Emmy, making him the first African American man to win the award.
The 1960s brought Grammy success before a return to acting in the 1970s, before he organised the chairty single 'We Are the World', working with Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson. The song reached No 1 in the US and the UK and won a Grammy.
The 1990s saw further acting work and also the prospect of entering full-time politics with the Democratic Party, but he chose to not go down this route, citing work and family commitments.
Among his ongoing social concerns over the years were the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; a school for emotionally disturbed boys; the prevention of gang violence; and his own Belafonte Foundation of Music and Arts.
In 2008, following divorce from his second wife, he married Pamela Frank. She survives him, along with the two daughters of his first marriage, and the son and daughter from his second.