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Harry Belafonte - Try To Remember - YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=l76Fhl7K-mc
With heartfelt and genuine thanks for your kind visit. Have a wonderful and beautiful day, be well, keep your eyes open, appreciate the beauty surrounding you, enjoy creating, stay safe and laugh often! ❤️❤️❤️
Come Missa Tally man,Tally me Banana…..
Dieses Lied sang Harry Belafonte 1956.
Er wurde 01.03.1927 geboren und starb am Dienstag den 25.04.2023.
Harry Belafonte war ein Sänger,Schauspieler,Entertainer und
#UNICEF Botschafter#…
Auswahlfoto:
Für:“Smile on Saturday“ am 29.04.2023.
Thema:“Music For The Eyes“. ( Musik für die Augen)
Thanks for views,faves and comments:-))
Downy Woodpecker on hole-filled snag. It reminds me of the nursery rhyme. Here's one of the best versions: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVAvMIhvqfk
Harry Belafonte, der bahnbrechende Sänger, Schauspieler und Aktivist, der zu einer wichtigen Kraft in der Bürgerrechtsbewegung wurde, ist im Alter von 96 Jahren gestorben.
In Erinnerung an ihn ein großes Danke, seine Lieder waren für mich immer präsent !!
Harry Belafonte, the barrier-breaking singer, actor and activist who became a major force in the civil rights movement, has died at 96.
In memory of him a big thank you, his songs were always present for me !!
listen:
"Deep in December, it's good to remember the fire of September that made us mellow." ~ Ed Ames
My parents are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary this week. They became husband and wife on August 19, 1949.
This is a musical composite project, in their honor.
Here are two of my favorite old songs by Ed Ames (who is now in his 80s also) to commemorate this special time:
Try to Remember :
kaneta.multiply.com/video/item/337/YouTube_-_Harry_Belafo...
MY FAVORITE VOICE for this from a younger Ed Ames:
My Cup Runneth Over with Love:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG_8vIEGCXk&NR=1
[VIDEOGRAPHIC OPTION www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyA55x0-gqE&feature=fvw]
My parents love Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, and all of the old classics. In fact my parents love, love, love beautiful, old romantic music. If you don't know these, well . . .
Take my hand and slip silently into the darkened audience of legendary Tony Bennett signing "Because of You" with the gifted k.d. lang.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9sesopGFqA
It may be hard to imagine, but if you are young and this fortunate, this aging and mellowing may happen to you too. My wish for you and yours is that you also be so blessed.
Congratulations on 60 big years of love, Mom and Dad.
Love you,
Nightshooter09
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
ADDED MUSIC SAMPLER Young Tony Bennett with Andy Williams:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoV0q_q6VCk&feature=related
[FRENCH VERSION of "Try to Remember" with NANA MOUSKOURI and HARRY BELAFONTE
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMigXnXMhQ4
© All rights reserved Anna Kwa. Please do not use this image on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit written permission
Eine Insel Sonnenblumen in einem Meer von Getreide.
An island of sunflower in a sea of grain.
Holidays in Hungary, image #190 of 506
H1707 (190)a
SONY alpha 6000 & SEL18200 (18-200mm F3.5-6.3 OSS, E-Mount)
57 mm _ f/13 _ 1/500s _ ISO200
© all rights reserved / Lutz Koch 2017
For personal display only !
All other uses, including copying or reproduction of this photograph or its image, in whole or in part, or storage of the image in any medium are expressly forbidden.
Written permission for use of this photograph must be obtained from the copyright holder !
I wish you a nice new not too hot
summer week in the :
This is my island in the sun
Where my people have toiled since time begun
I may sail on many a sea
Her shores will always be home to me
Oh, island in the sun
Willed to me by my father′s hand
All my days I will sing in praise
Of your forest, waters,
Your shining sand
As morning breaks
The heaven on high
I lift my heavy load to the sky
Sun comes down with a burning glow
Mingles my sweat with the earth below ...
well .... what can I say . There was an elephant at the Beardsley Park Zoo in Bridgeport Ct.
We used to call him ' Mr. Elephante '
so I drew this elephant with ink and and acrylics on muslin and made it into a pillow
.
Wildlife Photography, Jungle.
Nikon D300 DX Camera.
Nikkor 70-300 VR Lens.
Just having some fun here, enjoy .. ;-)
Harry Belafonte
Banana Boat Song.....
.
Thank You.
Jon&Crew.
Please help with your donations here.
www.gofundme.com/f/help-for-abandoned-thai-temple-dogs
Please,
No Political Statements, Awards, Invites,
Large Logos or Copy/Pastes.
© All rights reserved.
.
For those of you that may remember, Harry Belafonte at age 73 in a September 2000, performance in Victoria BC Canada. Harold George "Harry" Bellanfanti, Jr. (born March 1, 1927), better known as Harry Belafonte, is an American singer, songwriter, actor, and social activist. One of the most successful Caribbean American pop stars in history, he was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million selling album by a single artist.[1] Belafonte is perhaps best known for singing "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature lyric "Day-O". He has recorded in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He has also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957) and Robert Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Belafonte is 88 and still performing. From my archives.
A Performing Arts Theatre...
The photo used on the above program was the - 1990 Press Photo of Harry Belafonte, Recipient of the Nelson Mandela Courage Award.
Harry Belafonte is a Jamaican-American singer, songwriter, activist, and actor. He has achieved lasting fame for songs like "The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)." Harry performed at The Grand 1894 Opera House in March 1991 and February 19971.
Harry Belafonte (born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927 – April 25, 2023) was an American singer, actor, and civil rights activist who popularized calypso music with international audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Belafonte's career breakthrough album Calypso (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.
Belafonte was best known for his recordings of "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)", "Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)", "Jamaica Farewell", and "Mary's Boy Child". He recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He also starred in films such as Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), Buck and the Preacher (1972), and Uptown Saturday Night (1974). He made his final feature film appearance in Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman (2018).
Belafonte won three Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. In 1989, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994. In 2014, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the academy's 6th Annual Governors Awards and in 2022 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category. He is one of the few performers to have received an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, although he won the Oscar in a non-competitive category.
LINK to a video - The Grand 1894 Opera House, Galveston Island, Texas - www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAvgI4k_Rmo&t=1s
LINK to video - Harry Belafonte - Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) - www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5dpBWlRANE
Link to video - Harry Belafonte,Jamaica Farewell - www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-PTafd-ymQ
Former Yugoslavian (Croatian) postcard. 3 K, No. 3845, mailed on 18-7-1963. Harry Belafonte in Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger, 1954).
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927-2023) was one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million-selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
Harry Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. at Lying-in Hospital in 1927, in Harlem, New York. He was the son of Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper, and Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., who worked as a chef. His mother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish white mother and a black father. His father also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and Dutch Jewish father of Sephardi origins. From 1932 to 1940, he lived with one of his grandmothers in her native country of Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer's Schools. When he returned to New York City, he attended George Washington High School after which he joined the Navy and served during World War II. In the 1940s, he was working as a janitor's assistant in NYC when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and also met Sidney Poitier. The financially struggling pair regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play. At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, and Sidney Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theatre in such plays as 'Days of Our Youth' (1946). In 1954, he would receive a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue 'John Murray Anderson's Almanac'.
Belafonte started his career in music as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. The first time he appeared in front of an audience at the Village Vanguard in New York, he was backed by the Charlie Parker band, which included Charlie Parker himself, Max Roach, and Miles Davis, among others. At first, he was a pop singer, launching his recording career on the Roost label in 1949, but later he developed a keen interest in folk music, learning material through the Library of Congress' American folk songs archives. With guitarist and friend Millard Thomas, Belafonte soon made his debut at the legendary jazz club The Village Vanguard. In 1952, he received a contract with RCA Victor. His first widely released single, which went on to become his 'signature' song with audience participation in virtually all his live performances, was 'Matilda' (1953). His breakthrough album 'Calypso' (1956) became the first LP in the world to sell over 1 million copies within a year. It spent 31 weeks at number 1, 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the U.S. charts. The album introduced American audiences to calypso music, which had originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 20th century. Belafonte was dubbed the 'King of Calypso', a title he wore with reservations since he had no claims to any Calypso Monarch titles. One of the songs included in the album is the now famous 'Banana Boat Song' (listed as 'Day O' on the original release), which reached number five on the pop charts. His other smash hit was 'Jump in the Line'. Many of the compositions recorded for Calypso, including 'Banana Boat Song', gave songwriting credit to Irving Burgie. His triumphant success as an entertainer in the arts did not protect Belafonte from racial discrimination, particularly in the South. As a result, he refused to perform in the southern region of the United States from 1954 until 1961.
Belafonte's first film role was in Bright Road (Gerald Mayer, 1953), in which he appeared alongside Dorothy Dandridge. In this low-budget film adapted from the Christopher Award-winning short story 'See How They Run' by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, Dandridge starred as an idealistic first-year elementary school teacher trying to reach out to a problem student. Belafonte played the principal of the school. The two subsequently starred in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954). The screenplay by Harry Kleiner was based on the lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1943 stage musical of the same name, set to the music of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera 'Carmen'. Ironically, Belafonte's singing in the film was dubbed by an opera singer, as Belafonte's own singing voice was seen as unsuitable for the role. Using his star clout, Belafonte was subsequently able to realise several then-controversial film roles. Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957) is about race relations and interracial romance set on the fictitious island of Santa Marta. The film was controversial at the time of its release for its hints of an affair between Belafonte's character and the character played by Joan Fontaine. The film also starred James Mason, Dorothy Dandridge, and Joan Collins. In 1959, he starred in and produced the Film Noir Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), in which he played a bank robber uncomfortably teamed with a racist partner (Robert Ryan). He also co-starred with Inger Stevens in the Science-Fiction doomsday film The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall, 1959). Belafonte was offered the role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959), based on the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin. Here he would have once again starred opposite Dorothy Dandridge, but he refused the role because he objected to its racial stereotyping. Sidney Poitier would play the role in the film. Dissatisfied with the film roles available to him, Belafonte returned to music during the 1960s.
While primarily known for calypso, Harry Belafonte has recorded in many different genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. His second-most popular hit, which came immediately after 'The Banana Boat Song', was the comedic tune 'Mama Look at Bubu', also known as 'Mama Look a Boo-Boo' (originally recorded by Lord Melody in 1955), in which he sings humorously about misbehaving and disrespectful children. It reached number eleven on the pop chart. In 1959, he starred in Tonight With Belafonte, a nationally televised special that featured Odetta. Belafonte was the first Jamaican American to win an Emmy, for Revlon Revue: Tonight with Belafonte (1959). Belafonte recorded for RCA Victor from 1953 to 1974. Two live albums, both recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1959 and 1960, enjoyed critical and commercial success. From his 1959 album, 'Hava Nagila' became part of his regular routine and one of his signature songs. He was one of many entertainers recruited by Frank Sinatra to perform at the inaugural gala of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. That same year he released his second calypso album, 'Jump Up Calypso', which went on to become another million-seller. During the 1960s he introduced several artists to American audiences, most notably South African singer Miriam Makeba and Greek singer Nana Mouskouri. His album 'Midnight Special' (1962) included a young harmonica player named Bob Dylan. As The Beatles and other stars from Britain began to dominate the pop charts, Belafonte's commercial success diminished. His 'Belafonte at The Greek Theatre' was his last album to appear in Billboard's Top 40. His last hit single, 'A Strange Song', was released in 1967 and peaked at number 5 on the charts. Belafonte has received Grammy Awards for the albums 'Swing Dat Hammer' (1960) and 'An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba' (1965). The latter album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid. In 1967, Belafonte was the first non-classical artist to perform at the prestigious Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in Upstate New York, soon to be followed by concerts there by The Doors, The 5th Dimension, The Who, and Janis Joplin. In February 1968, Belafonte guest-hosted The Tonight Show substituting for Johnny Carson. Among his interview guests were Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. During the 1960s, he appeared on TV specials alongside such artists as Julie Andrews, Petula Clark, Lena Horne, and Nana Mouskouri. In 1968, Belafonte appeared on a Petula Clark TV special on NBC. In the middle of a song, Clark smiled and briefly touched Belafonte's arm. The show's sponsor, Plymouth Motors, wanted to cut out the segment, but Clark, who had ownership of the special, told NBC that the performance would be shown intact or not at all. American newspapers published articles reporting the controversy and, when the special aired, it grabbed huge ratings.
In the early 1970s, Belafonte returned to the cinema in two films with Sidney Poitier. The Western Buck and the Preacher (Sidney Poitier, 1972) broke Hollywood Western traditions by casting blacks as central characters and portraying both tension and solidarity between African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th century. Buck and the Preacher was one of the first films directed by an African American and to be based on a band of African Americans fighting against the White majority. The film was produced by Belafonte Enterprises, Columbia Pictures Corporation, and E & R Productions Corp. Uptown Saturday Night (Sidney Poitier, 1974) is an action-comedy crime film written by Richard Wesley and starring Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Harry Belafonte. Although the film received mixed reviews, it was a commercial success and was part of the Blaxploitation wave. Later, Cosby and Poitier teamed up again, without Belafonte, for the sequels Let's Do It Again (Sidney Poitier, 1975) and A Piece of the Action (Sidney Poitier, 1977).
Harry Belafonte's recording activity slowed after he left RCA in the mid-1970s. RCA released his fifth and final Calypso album, 'Calypso Carnival' in 1971. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Belafonte spent the greater part of his time touring Japan, Europe, Cuba, and elsewhere. In 1977, he released the album 'Turn the World Around' at Columbia Records. The album, with a strong focus on world music, was never issued in the United States. He subsequently was a guest star on a memorable episode of The Muppet Show (1978), in which he performed his signature song 'Day-O' on television for the first time. However, the episode is best known for Belafonte's rendition of the spiritual song 'Turn the World Around', from the album of the same name, which he performed with specially made Muppets that resembled African tribal masks. Belafonte reprised the song at John Henson's memorial in 1990. In 1984, Belafonte produced and scored the musical film Beat Street (Stan Lathan, 1984). Set in the South Bronx, the film follows the lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends, all of whom are devoted to various elements of early hip hop culture. The cast included Rae Dawn Chong and Guy Davis. Together with Arthur Baker, Belafonte produced the gold-certified soundtrack of the same name. Beat Street's impact was felt internationally as well as throughout the United States. In Germany, for example, films as Beat Street are credited with introducing the hip-hop movement to the country.
In 1985, Belafonte was one of the organisers behind the Grammy Award-winning song 'We Are the World', a multi-artist effort to raise funds for Africa, and performed in the Live Aid concert that same year. Belafonte's involvement in 'USA for Africa' resulted in renewed interest in his music, culminating in a record deal with EMI. He subsequently released his first album of original material in over a decade, 'Paradise in Gazankulu', (1988). The album contains ten protest songs against the South African former Apartheid policy and is his last studio album. As UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Belafonte attended in 1988 a symposium in Harare, Zimbabwe, to focus attention on child survival and development in Southern African countries. As part of the symposium, he performed a concert for UNICEF. A Kodak video crew filmed the concert, which was released as a 60-minute concert video titled Global Carnival. Also in 1988, Tim Burton used 'The Banana Boat Song' and 'Jump in the Line' in his film Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988). Belafonte appeared with John Travolta in the film drama White Man's Burden (1995), about racism in an alternative America where black and white Americans have reversed cultural roles. The film was written and directed by Desmond Nakano. The film revolves around Louis Pinnock (Travolta), a white factory worker, who kidnaps Thaddeus Thomas (Belafonte), a black factory owner for firing him over a perceived slight. The film gained a negative reception from the critics and was not a box office success. For Robert Altman's jazz age drama Kansas City (1996), he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. Kansas City, which stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson, is also notable for its musical score being integrated into the film, with modern-day musicians recreating the Kansas City jazz of 1930s. For instance, Craig Handy played the role of Coleman Hawkins, Geri Allen played Mary Lou Williams, and James Carter played Ben Webster.
Following a lengthy recording hiatus, 'An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Friends' (1997), a soundtrack and video of a televised concert, were released by Island Records. 'The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music', a huge multi-artist project recorded by RCA during the 1960s and 1970s, was finally released by the label in 2001. Belafonte went on the Today Show to promote the album on 11 September 2001 and was interviewed by Katie Couric just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Awards for Best Boxed Recording Package, for Best Album Notes, and for Best Historical Album. On television, Harry Belafonte starred as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in the TV drama Swing Vote (David Anspaugh, 1999) with Andy Garcia. In 2006, Belafonte appeared in the film Bobby, Emilio Estevez's ensemble drama about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Belafonte played Nelson, a friend of an employee of the Ambassador Hotel (Anthony Hopkins). Belafonte received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and he won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He performed sold-out concerts globally through the 1950s to the 2000s. Owing to illness, he was forced to cancel a reunion tour with Nana Mouskouri planned for the spring and summer of 2003 following a tour in Europe. His last concert was a benefit concert for the Atlanta Opera on 25 October 2003. In a 2007 interview, he stated that he had since retired from performing.
In 2017 Harry Belafonte released 'When Colors Come Together', an anthology of his music for Sony Legends produced by his son David Belafonte. David wrote a remake of 'Island In The Sun', arranged by longtime Belafonte musical director Richard Cummings featuring Harry Belafonte's grandchildren Sarafina and Amadeus and a children's choir. Always outspoken in his beliefs, Belafonte achieved widespread attention for his political views in 2002 when he began making a series of negative comments about President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Belafonte created controversy in October 2002 when he made disparaging remarks about Secretary of State Colin Powell. Far from being upset, Powell reportedly took the remarks good-humoured, refusing to inflame the situation any further. Belafonte's other controversial political statements on U.S. foreign policy have included opposing the U.S. embargo on Cuba, praising Soviet peace initiatives, attacking the U.S. invasion of Grenada, praising the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, honouring Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and praising Fidel Castro. On a Martin Luther King Day speech at Duke University in 2006, Belafonte compared the American government to the 9/11 terrorists.
Belafonte and his first wife Marguerite Byrd were married from 1948 to 1957. They have two daughters: Adrienne and Shari, who also worked as an actress. In 1957, Belafonte married his second wife Julie Robinson, a former dancer with the Katherine Dunham Company who was of Jewish descent. They had two children, David and Gina. David, the only son of Harry Belafonte, is a former model and actor and is an Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated music producer and the executive director of the family-held company Belafonte Enterprises Inc. As a music producer, David has been involved in most of Belafonte's albums and tours and productions. After 47 years of marriage, Belafonte and Robinson got a divorce. In April 2008, Harry Belafonte married photographer Pamela Frank. Recently, Belafonte returned to the cinema in Spike Lee's biographical crime film BlacKkKlansman (2018) as an elderly civil rights pioneer. Set in 1970s Colorado Springs, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. BlacKkKlansman premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. Belafonte appears in the film recounting the lynching of Jesse Washington, a black teenage farmhand who was lynched in the county seat of Waco, Texas, on 15 May 1916, in what became a well-known example of racially motivated lynching. In 2019, the film won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee.
Harry Belafonte died in New York on 25 April 2023, due to congestive heart failure. He was 96.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
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French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 143, offered by Les Carbones Korès "Carboplane", no. 174.
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927) is one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million-selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
Harry Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. at Lying-in Hospital in 1927, in Harlem, New York. He was the son of Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper, and Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., who worked as a chef. His mother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish white mother and a black father. His father also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and Dutch Jewish father of Sephardi origins. From 1932 to 1940, he lived with one of his grandmothers in her native country of Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer's Schools. When he returned to New York City, he attended George Washington High School after which he joined the Navy and served during World War II. In the 1940s, he was working as a janitor's assistant in NYC when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and also met Sidney Poitier. The financially struggling pair regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play. At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, and Sidney Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theatre in such plays as 'Days of Our Youth' (1946). In 1954, he would receive a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue 'John Murray Anderson's Almanac'. Belafonte started his career in music as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. The first time he appeared in front of an audience at the Village Vanguard in New York, he was backed by the Charlie Parker band, which included Charlie Parker himself, Max Roach, and Miles Davis, among others. At first, he was a pop singer, launching his recording career on the Roost label in 1949, but later he developed a keen interest in folk music, learning material through the Library of Congress' American folk songs archives. With guitarist and friend Millard Thomas, Belafonte soon made his debut at the legendary jazz club The Village Vanguard. In 1952, he received a contract with RCA Victor. His first widely released single, which went on to become his 'signature' song with audience participation in virtually all his live performances, was 'Matilda' (1953). His breakthrough album 'Calypso' (1956) became the first LP in the world to sell over 1 million copies within a year. It spent 31 weeks at number 1, 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the U.S. charts. The album introduced American audiences to calypso music, which had originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 20th century. Belafonte was dubbed the 'King of Calypso', a title he wore with reservations since he had no claims to any Calypso Monarch titles. One of the songs included in the album is the now famous 'Banana Boat Song' (listed as 'Day O' on the original release), which reached number five on the pop charts. His other smash hit was 'Jump in the Line'. Many of the compositions recorded for Calypso, including 'Banana Boat Song', gave songwriting credit to Irving Burgie. His triumphant success as an entertainer in the arts did not protect Belafonte from racial discrimination, particularly in the South. As a result, he refused to perform in the southern region of the United States from 1954 until 1961. Belafonte's first film role was in Bright Road (Gerald Mayer, 1953), in which he appeared alongside Dorothy Dandridge. In this low-budget film adapted from the Christopher Award-winning short story 'See How They Run' by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, Dandridge starred as an idealistic first-year elementary school teacher trying to reach out to a problem student. Belafonte played the principal of the school. The two subsequently starred in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954). The screenplay by Harry Kleiner was based on the lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1943 stage musical of the same name, set to the music of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera 'Carmen'. Ironically, Belafonte's singing in the film was dubbed by an opera singer, as Belafonte's own singing voice was seen as unsuitable for the role. Using his star clout, Belafonte was subsequently able to realise several then-controversial film roles. Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957) is about race relations and interracial romance set on the fictitious island of Santa Marta. The film was controversial at the time of its release for its hints of an affair between Belafonte's character and the character played by Joan Fontaine. The film also starred James Mason, Dorothy Dandridge, and Joan Collins. In 1959, he starred in and produced the Film Noir Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), in which he played a bank robber uncomfortably teamed with a racist partner (Robert Ryan). He also co-starred with Inger Stevens in the Science-Fiction doomsday film The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall, 1959). Belafonte was offered the role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959), based on the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin. Here he would have once again starred opposite Dorothy Dandridge, but he refused the role because he objected to its racial stereotyping. Sidney Poitier would play the role in the film. Dissatisfied with the film roles available to him, he returned to music during the 1960s.
While primarily known for calypso, Harry Belafonte has recorded in many different genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. His second-most popular hit, which came immediately after 'The Banana Boat Song', was the comedic tune 'Mama Look at Bubu', also known as 'Mama Look a Boo-Boo' (originally recorded by Lord Melody in 1955), in which he sings humorously about misbehaving and disrespectful children. It reached number eleven on the pop chart. In 1959, he starred in Tonight With Belafonte, a nationally televised special that featured Odetta. Belafonte was the first Jamaican American to win an Emmy, for Revlon Revue: Tonight with Belafonte (1959). Belafonte recorded for RCA Victor from 1953 to 1974. Two live albums, both recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1959 and 1960, enjoyed critical and commercial success. From his 1959 album, 'Hava Nagila' became part of his regular routine and one of his signature songs. He was one of many entertainers recruited by Frank Sinatra to perform at the inaugural gala of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. That same year he released his second calypso album, 'Jump Up Calypso', which went on to become another million-seller. During the 1960s he introduced several artists to American audiences, most notably South African singer Miriam Makeba and Greek singer Nana Mouskouri. His album 'Midnight Special' (1962) included a young harmonica player named Bob Dylan. As The Beatles and other stars from Britain began to dominate the pop charts, Belafonte's commercial success diminished. His 'Belafonte at The Greek Theatre' was his last album to appear in Billboard's Top 40. His last hit single, 'A Strange Song', was released in 1967 and peaked at number 5 on the charts. Belafonte has received Grammy Awards for the albums 'Swing Dat Hammer' (1960) and 'An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba' (1965). The latter album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid. In 1967, Belafonte was the first non-classical artist to perform at the prestigious Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in Upstate New York, soon to be followed by concerts there by The Doors, The 5th Dimension, The Who, and Janis Joplin. In February 1968, Belafonte guest-hosted The Tonight Show substituting for Johnny Carson. Among his interview guests were Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. During the 1960s, he appeared on TV specials alongside such artists as Julie Andrews, Petula Clark, Lena Horne, and Nana Mouskouri. In 1968, Belafonte appeared on a Petula Clark TV special on NBC. In the middle of a song, Clark smiled and briefly touched Belafonte's arm. The show's sponsor, Plymouth Motors, wanted to cut out the segment, but Clark, who had ownership of the special, told NBC that the performance would be shown intact or not at all. American newspapers published articles reporting the controversy and, when the special aired, it grabbed huge ratings. In the early 1970s, Belafonte returned to the cinema in two films with Sidney Poitier. The Western Buck and the Preacher (Sidney Poitier, 1972) broke Hollywood Western traditions by casting blacks as central characters and portraying both tension and solidarity between African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th century. Buck and the Preacher was one of the first films directed by an African American and to be based on a band of African Americans fighting against the White majority. The film was produced by Belafonte Enterprises, Columbia Pictures Corporation, and E & R Productions Corp. Uptown Saturday Night (Sidney Poitier, 1974) is an action-comedy crime film written by Richard Wesley and starring Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Harry Belafonte. Although the film received mixed reviews, it was a commercial success and was part of the Blaxploitation wave. Later, Cosby and Poitier teamed up again, without Belafonte, for the sequels Let's Do It Again (Sidney Poitier, 1975) and A Piece of the Action (Sidney Poitier, 1977).
Harry Belafonte's recording activity slowed after he left RCA in the mid-1970s. RCA released his fifth and final Calypso album, 'Calypso Carnival' in 1971. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Belafonte spent the greater part of his time touring Japan, Europe, Cuba, and elsewhere. In 1977, he released the album 'Turn the World Around' at Columbia Records. The album, with a strong focus on world music, was never issued in the United States. He subsequently was a guest star on a memorable episode of The Muppet Show (1978), in which he performed his signature song 'Day-O' on television for the first time. However, the episode is best known for Belafonte's rendition of the spiritual song 'Turn the World Around', from the album of the same name, which he performed with specially made Muppets that resembled African tribal masks. Belafonte reprised the song at John Henson's memorial in 1990. In 1984, Belafonte produced and scored the musical film Beat Street (Stan Lathan, 1984). Set in the South Bronx, the film follows the lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends, all of whom are devoted to various elements of early hip hop culture. The cast included Rae Dawn Chong and Guy Davis. Together with Arthur Baker, Belafonte produced the gold-certified soundtrack of the same name. Beat Street's impact was felt internationally as well as throughout the United States. In Germany, for example, films as Beat Street are credited with introducing the hip-hop movement to the country. In 1985, he was one of the organisers behind the Grammy Award-winning song 'We Are the World', a multi-artist effort to raise funds for Africa, and performed in the Live Aid concert that same year. Belafonte's involvement in 'USA for Africa' resulted in renewed interest in his music, culminating in a record deal with EMI. He subsequently released his first album of original material in over a decade, 'Paradise in Gazankulu', (1988). The album contains ten protest songs against the South African former Apartheid policy and is his last studio album. As UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Belafonte attended in 1988 a symposium in Harare, Zimbabwe, to focus attention on child survival and development in Southern African countries. As part of the symposium, he performed a concert for UNICEF. A Kodak video crew filmed the concert, which was released as a 60-minute concert video titled Global Carnival. Also in 1988, Tim Burton used 'The Banana Boat Song' and 'Jump in the Line' in his film Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988). Belafonte appeared with John Travolta in the film drama White Man's Burden (1995), about racism in an alternative America where black and white Americans have reversed cultural roles. The film was written and directed by Desmond Nakano. The film revolves around Louis Pinnock (Travolta), a white factory worker, who kidnaps Thaddeus Thomas (Belafonte), a black factory owner for firing him over a perceived slight. The film gained a negative reception from the critics and was not a box office success. For Robert Altman's jazz age drama Kansas City (1996), he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. Kansas City, which stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson, is also notable for its musical score being integrated into the film, with modern-day musicians recreating the Kansas City jazz of 1930s. For instance, Craig Handy played the role of Coleman Hawkins, Geri Allen played Mary Lou Williams, and James Carter played Ben Webster. Following a lengthy recording hiatus, 'An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Friends' (1997), a soundtrack and video of a televised concert, were released by Island Records. 'The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music', a huge multi-artist project recorded by RCA during the 1960s and 1970s, was finally released by the label in 2001. Belafonte went on the Today Show to promote the album on 11 September 2001 and was interviewed by Katie Couric just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Awards for Best Boxed Recording Package, for Best Album Notes, and for Best Historical Album. On television, Harry Belafonte starred as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in the TV drama Swing Vote (David Anspaugh, 1999) with Andy Garcia. In 2006, Belafonte appeared in the film Bobby, Emilio Estevez's ensemble drama about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Belafonte played Nelson, a friend of an employee of the Ambassador Hotel (Anthony Hopkins). Belafonte received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and he won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He performed sold-out concerts globally through the 1950s to the 2000s. Owing to illness, he was forced to cancel a reunion tour with Nana Mouskouri planned for the spring and summer of 2003 following a tour in Europe. His last concert was a benefit concert for the Atlanta Opera on 25 October 2003. In a 2007 interview, he stated that he had since retired from performing. In 2017 Harry Belafonte released 'When Colors Come Together', an anthology of his music for Sony Legends produced by his son David Belafonte. David wrote a remake of 'Island In The Sun', arranged by longtime Belafonte musical director Richard Cummings featuring Harry Belafonte's grandchildren Sarafina and Amadeus and a children's choir. Always outspoken in his beliefs, Belafonte achieved widespread attention for his political views in 2002 when he began making a series of negative comments about President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Belafonte created controversy in October 2002 when he made disparaging remarks about Secretary of State Colin Powell. Far from being upset, Powell reportedly took the remarks good-humoured, refusing to inflame the situation any further. Belafonte's other controversial political statements on U.S. foreign policy have included opposing the U.S. embargo on Cuba, praising Soviet peace initiatives, attacking the U.S. invasion of Grenada, praising the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, honouring Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and praising Fidel Castro. On a Martin Luther King Day speech at Duke University in 2006, Belafonte compared the American government to the 9/11 terrorists. Belafonte and his first wife Marguerite Byrd were married from 1948 to 1957. They have two daughters: Adrienne and Shari, who also worked as an actress. In 1957, Belafonte married his second wife Julie Robinson, a former dancer with the Katherine Dunham Company who was of Jewish descent. They had two children, David and Gina. David, the only son of Harry Belafonte, is a former model and actor and is an Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated music producer and the executive director of the family-held company Belafonte Enterprises Inc. As a music producer, David has been involved in most of Belafonte's albums and tours and productions. After 47 years of marriage, Belafonte and Robinson got a divorce. In April 2008, Harry Belafonte married photographer Pamela Frank. Recently, Belafonte returned to the cinema in Spike Lee's biographical crime film BlacKkKlansman (2018) as an elderly civil rights pioneer. Set in 1970s Colorado Springs, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. BlacKkKlansman premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. Belafonte appears in the film recounting the lynching of Jesse Washington, a black teenage farmhand who was lynched in the county seat of Waco, Texas, on 15 May 1916, in what became a well-known example of racially motivated lynching. In 2019, the film won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
West-German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3659. Photo: Centfox. Harry Belafonte in Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957).
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927-2023) was one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million-selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
Harry Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. at Lying-in Hospital in 1927, in Harlem, New York. He was the son of Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper, and Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., who worked as a chef. His mother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish white mother and a black father. His father also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and a Dutch Jewish father of Sephardi origins. From 1932 to 1940, he lived with one of his grandmothers in her native country of Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer's Schools. When he returned to New York City, he attended George Washington High School after which he joined the Navy and served during World War II. In the 1940s, he was working as a janitor's assistant in NYC when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and also met Sidney Poitier. The financially struggling pair regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play. At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, and Sidney Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theatre in such plays as 'Days of Our Youth' (1946). In 1954, he would receive a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue 'John Murray Anderson's Almanac'.
Belafonte started his career in music as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. The first time he appeared in front of an audience at the Village Vanguard in New York, he was backed by the Charlie Parker band, which included Charlie Parker himself, Max Roach, and Miles Davis, among others. At first, he was a pop singer, launching his recording career on the Roost label in 1949, but later he developed a keen interest in folk music, learning material through the Library of Congress' American folk songs archives. With guitarist and friend Millard Thomas, Belafonte soon made his debut at the legendary jazz club The Village Vanguard. In 1952, he received a contract with RCA Victor. His first widely released single, which went on to become his 'signature' song with audience participation in virtually all his live performances, was 'Matilda' (1953). His breakthrough album 'Calypso' (1956) became the first LP in the world to sell over 1 million copies within a year. It spent 31 weeks at number 1, 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the U.S. charts. The album introduced American audiences to calypso music, which had originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 20th century. Belafonte was dubbed the 'King of Calypso', a title he wore with reservations since he had no claims to any Calypso Monarch titles. One of the songs included in the album is the now famous 'Banana Boat Song' (listed as 'Day O' on the original release), which reached number five on the pop charts. His other smash hit was 'Jump in the Line'. Many of the compositions recorded for Calypso, including 'Banana Boat Song', gave songwriting credit to Irving Burgie. His triumphant success as an entertainer in the arts did not protect Belafonte from racial discrimination, particularly in the South. As a result, he refused to perform in the southern region of the United States from 1954 until 1961.
Belafonte's first film role was in Bright Road (Gerald Mayer, 1953), in which he appeared alongside Dorothy Dandridge. In this low-budget film adapted from the Christopher Award-winning short story 'See How They Run' by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, Dandridge starred as an idealistic first-year elementary school teacher trying to reach out to a problem student. Belafonte played the principal of the school. The two subsequently starred in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954). The screenplay by Harry Kleiner was based on the lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1943 stage musical of the same name, set to the music of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera 'Carmen'. Ironically, Belafonte's singing in the film was dubbed by an opera singer, as Belafonte's own singing voice was seen as unsuitable for the role. Using his star clout, Belafonte was subsequently able to realise several then-controversial film roles. Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957) is about race relations and interracial romance set on the fictitious island of Santa Marta. The film was controversial at the time of its release for its hints of an affair between Belafonte's character and the character played by Joan Fontaine. The film also starred James Mason, Dorothy Dandridge, and Joan Collins. In 1959, he starred in and produced the Film Noir Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), in which he played a bank robber uncomfortably teamed with a racist partner (Robert Ryan). He also co-starred with Inger Stevens in the Science-Fiction doomsday film The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall, 1959). Belafonte was offered the role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959), based on the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin. Here he would have once again starred opposite Dorothy Dandridge, but he refused the role because he objected to its racial stereotyping. Sidney Poitier would play the role in the film. Dissatisfied with the film roles available to him, Belafonte returned to music during the 1960s.
While primarily known for calypso, Harry Belafonte has recorded in many different genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. His second-most popular hit, which came immediately after 'The Banana Boat Song', was the comedic tune 'Mama Look at Bubu', also known as 'Mama Look a Boo-Boo' (originally recorded by Lord Melody in 1955), in which he sings humorously about misbehaving and disrespectful children. It reached number eleven on the pop chart. In 1959, he starred in Tonight With Belafonte, a nationally televised special that featured Odetta. Belafonte was the first Jamaican American to win an Emmy, for Revlon Revue: Tonight with Belafonte (1959). Belafonte recorded for RCA Victor from 1953 to 1974. Two live albums, both recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1959 and 1960, enjoyed critical and commercial success. From his 1959 album, 'Hava Nagila' became part of his regular routine and one of his signature songs. He was one of many entertainers recruited by Frank Sinatra to perform at the inaugural gala of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. That same year he released his second calypso album, 'Jump Up Calypso', which went on to become another million-seller. During the 1960s he introduced several artists to American audiences, most notably South African singer Miriam Makeba and Greek singer Nana Mouskouri. His album 'Midnight Special' (1962) included a young harmonica player named Bob Dylan. As The Beatles and other stars from Britain began to dominate the pop charts, Belafonte's commercial success diminished. His 'Belafonte at The Greek Theatre' was his last album to appear in Billboard's Top 40. His last hit single, 'A Strange Song', was released in 1967 and peaked at number 5 on the charts. Belafonte has received Grammy Awards for the albums 'Swing Dat Hammer' (1960) and 'An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba' (1965). The latter album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid. In 1967, Belafonte was the first non-classical artist to perform at the prestigious Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in Upstate New York, soon to be followed by concerts there by The Doors, The 5th Dimension, The Who, and Janis Joplin. In February 1968, Belafonte guest-hosted The Tonight Show substituting for Johnny Carson. Among his interview guests were Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. During the 1960s, he appeared on TV specials alongside such artists as Julie Andrews, Petula Clark, Lena Horne, and Nana Mouskouri. In 1968, Belafonte appeared on a Petula Clark TV special on NBC. In the middle of a song, Clark smiled and briefly touched Belafonte's arm. The show's sponsor, Plymouth Motors, wanted to cut out the segment, but Clark, who had ownership of the special, told NBC that the performance would be shown intact or not at all. American newspapers published articles reporting the controversy and, when the special aired, it grabbed huge ratings.
In the early 1970s, Belafonte returned to the cinema in two films with Sidney Poitier. The Western Buck and the Preacher (Sidney Poitier, 1972) broke Hollywood Western traditions by casting blacks as central characters and portraying both tension and solidarity between African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th century. Buck and the Preacher was one of the first films directed by an African American and to be based on a band of African Americans fighting against the White majority. The film was produced by Belafonte Enterprises, Columbia Pictures Corporation, and E & R Productions Corp. Uptown Saturday Night (Sidney Poitier, 1974) is an action-comedy crime film written by Richard Wesley and starring Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Harry Belafonte. Although the film received mixed reviews, it was a commercial success and was part of the Blaxploitation wave. Later, Cosby and Poitier teamed up again, without Belafonte, for the sequels Let's Do It Again (Sidney Poitier, 1975) and A Piece of the Action (Sidney Poitier, 1977).
Harry Belafonte's recording activity slowed after he left RCA in the mid-1970s. RCA released his fifth and final Calypso album, 'Calypso Carnival' in 1971. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Belafonte spent the greater part of his time touring Japan, Europe, Cuba, and elsewhere. In 1977, he released the album 'Turn the World Around' at Columbia Records. The album, with a strong focus on world music, was never issued in the United States. He subsequently was a guest star on a memorable episode of The Muppet Show (1978), in which he performed his signature song 'Day-O' on television for the first time. However, the episode is best known for Belafonte's rendition of the spiritual song 'Turn the World Around', from the album of the same name, which he performed with specially made Muppets that resembled African tribal masks. Belafonte reprised the song at John Henson's memorial in 1990. In 1984, Belafonte produced and scored the musical film Beat Street (Stan Lathan, 1984). Set in the South Bronx, the film follows the lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends, all of whom are devoted to various elements of early hip hop culture. The cast included Rae Dawn Chong and Guy Davis. Together with Arthur Baker, Belafonte produced the gold-certified soundtrack of the same name. Beat Street's impact was felt internationally as well as throughout the United States. In Germany, for example, films as Beat Street are credited with introducing the hip-hop movement to the country.
In 1985, Belafonte was one of the organisers behind the Grammy Award-winning song 'We Are the World', a multi-artist effort to raise funds for Africa, and performed in the Live Aid concert that same year. Belafonte's involvement in 'USA for Africa' resulted in renewed interest in his music, culminating in a record deal with EMI. He subsequently released his first album of original material in over a decade, 'Paradise in Gazankulu', (1988). The album contains ten protest songs against the South African former Apartheid policy and is his last studio album. As UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Belafonte attended in 1988 a symposium in Harare, Zimbabwe, to focus attention on child survival and development in Southern African countries. As part of the symposium, he performed a concert for UNICEF. A Kodak video crew filmed the concert, which was released as a 60-minute concert video titled Global Carnival. Also in 1988, Tim Burton used 'The Banana Boat Song' and 'Jump in the Line' in his film Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988). Belafonte appeared with John Travolta in the film drama White Man's Burden (1995), about racism in an alternative America where black and white Americans have reversed cultural roles. The film was written and directed by Desmond Nakano. The film revolves around Louis Pinnock (Travolta), a white factory worker, who kidnaps Thaddeus Thomas (Belafonte), a black factory owner for firing him over a perceived slight. The film gained a negative reception from the critics and was not a box office success. For Robert Altman's jazz age drama Kansas City (1996), he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. Kansas City, which stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson, is also notable for its musical score being integrated into the film, with modern-day musicians recreating the Kansas City jazz of 1930s. For instance, Craig Handy played the role of Coleman Hawkins, Geri Allen played Mary Lou Williams, and James Carter played Ben Webster.
Following a lengthy recording hiatus, 'An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Friends' (1997), a soundtrack and video of a televised concert, were released by Island Records. 'The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music', a huge multi-artist project recorded by RCA during the 1960s and 1970s, was finally released by the label in 2001. Belafonte went on the Today Show to promote the album on 11 September 2001 and was interviewed by Katie Couric just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Awards for Best Boxed Recording Package, for Best Album Notes, and for Best Historical Album. On television, Harry Belafonte starred as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in the TV drama Swing Vote (David Anspaugh, 1999) with Andy Garcia. In 2006, Belafonte appeared in the film Bobby, Emilio Estevez's ensemble drama about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Belafonte played Nelson, a friend of an employee of the Ambassador Hotel (Anthony Hopkins). Belafonte received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and he won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He performed sold-out concerts globally through the 1950s to the 2000s. Owing to illness, he was forced to cancel a reunion tour with Nana Mouskouri planned for the spring and summer of 2003 following a tour in Europe. His last concert was a benefit concert for the Atlanta Opera on 25 October 2003. In a 2007 interview, he stated that he had since retired from performing.
In 2017 Harry Belafonte released 'When Colors Come Together', an anthology of his music for Sony Legends produced by his son David Belafonte. David wrote a remake of 'Island In The Sun', arranged by longtime Belafonte musical director Richard Cummings featuring Harry Belafonte's grandchildren Sarafina and Amadeus and a children's choir. Always outspoken in his beliefs, Belafonte achieved widespread attention for his political views in 2002 when he began making a series of negative comments about President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Belafonte created controversy in October 2002 when he made disparaging remarks about Secretary of State Colin Powell. Far from being upset, Powell reportedly took the remarks good-humoured, refusing to inflame the situation any further. Belafonte's other controversial political statements on U.S. foreign policy have included opposing the U.S. embargo on Cuba, praising Soviet peace initiatives, attacking the U.S. invasion of Grenada, praising the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, honouring Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and praising Fidel Castro. On a Martin Luther King Day speech at Duke University in 2006, Belafonte compared the American government to the 9/11 terrorists.
Belafonte and his first wife Marguerite Byrd were married from 1948 to 1957. They have two daughters: Adrienne and Shari, who also worked as an actress. In 1957, Belafonte married his second wife Julie Robinson, a former dancer with the Katherine Dunham Company who was of Jewish descent. They had two children, David and Gina. David, the only son of Harry Belafonte, is a former model and actor and is an Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated music producer and the executive director of the family-held company Belafonte Enterprises Inc. As a music producer, David has been involved in most of Belafonte's albums and tours and productions. After 47 years of marriage, Belafonte and Robinson got a divorce. In April 2008, Harry Belafonte married photographer Pamela Frank. Recently, Belafonte returned to the cinema in Spike Lee's biographical crime film BlacKkKlansman (2018) as an elderly civil rights pioneer. Set in 1970s Colorado Springs, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. BlacKkKlansman premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. Belafonte appears in the film recounting the lynching of Jesse Washington, a black teenage farmhand who was lynched in the county seat of Waco, Texas, on 15 May 1916, in what became a well-known example of racially motivated lynching. In 2019, the film won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee.
Harry Belafonte died in New York on 25 April 2023, due to congestive heart failure. He was 96.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
West-German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 174. Photo: dpa / Centfox.
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927) is one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million-selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
Harry Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. at Lying-in Hospital in 1927, in Harlem, New York. He was the son of Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper, and Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., who worked as a chef. His mother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish white mother and a black father. His father also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and Dutch Jewish father of Sephardi origins. From 1932 to 1940, he lived with one of his grandmothers in her native country of Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer's Schools. When he returned to New York City, he attended George Washington High School after which he joined the Navy and served during World War II. In the 1940s, he was working as a janitor's assistant in NYC when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and also met Sidney Poitier. The financially struggling pair regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play. At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, and Sidney Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theatre in such plays as 'Days of Our Youth' (1946). In 1954, he would receive a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue 'John Murray Anderson's Almanac'. Belafonte started his career in music as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. The first time he appeared in front of an audience at the Village Vanguard in New York, he was backed by the Charlie Parker band, which included Charlie Parker himself, Max Roach and Miles Davis, among others. At first, he was a pop singer, launching his recording career on the Roost label in 1949, but later he developed a keen interest in folk music, learning material through the Library of Congress' American folk songs archives. With guitarist and friend Millard Thomas, Belafonte soon made his debut at the legendary jazz club The Village Vanguard. In 1952, he received a contract with RCA Victor. His first widely released single, which went on to become his 'signature' song with audience participation in virtually all his live performances, was 'Matilda' (1953). His breakthrough album 'Calypso' (1956) became the first LP in the world to sell over 1 million copies within a year. It spent 31 weeks at number 1, 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the U.S. charts. The album introduced American audiences to calypso music, which had originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 20th century. Belafonte was dubbed the 'King of Calypso', a title he wore with reservations since he had no claims to any Calypso Monarch titles. One of the songs included in the album is the now famous 'Banana Boat Song' (listed as 'Day O' on the original release), which reached number five on the pop charts. His other smash hit was 'Jump in the Line'. Many of the compositions recorded for Calypso, including 'Banana Boat Song', gave songwriting credit to Irving Burgie. His triumphant success as an entertainer in the arts did not protect Belafonte from racial discrimination, particularly in the South. As a result, he refused to perform in the southern region of the United States from 1954 until 1961. Belafonte's first film role was in Bright Road (Gerald Mayer, 1953), in which he appeared alongside Dorothy Dandridge. In this low-budget film adapted from the Christopher Award-winning short story 'See How They Run' by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, Dandridge starred as an idealistic first-year elementary school teacher trying to reach out to a problem student. Belafonte played the principal of the school. The two subsequently starred in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954). The screenplay by Harry Kleiner was based on the lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1943 stage musical of the same name, set to the music of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera 'Carmen'. Ironically, Belafonte's singing in the film was dubbed by an opera singer, as Belafonte's own singing voice was seen as unsuitable for the role. Using his star clout, Belafonte was subsequently able to realise several then-controversial film roles. Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957) is about race relations and interracial romance set on the fictitious island of Santa Marta. The film was controversial at the time of its release for its hints of an affair between Belafonte's character and the character played by Joan Fontaine. The film also starred James Mason, Dorothy Dandridge, and Joan Collins. In 1959, he starred in and produced the Film Noir Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), in which he played a bank robber uncomfortably teamed with a racist partner (Robert Ryan). He also co-starred with Inger Stevens in the Science-Fiction doomsday film The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall, 1959). Belafonte was offered the role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959), based on the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin. Here he would have once again starred opposite Dorothy Dandridge, but he refused the role because he objected to its racial stereotyping. Sidney Poitier would play the role in the film. Dissatisfied with the film roles available to him, he returned to music during the 1960s.
While primarily known for calypso, Harry Belafonte has recorded in many different genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. His second-most popular hit, which came immediately after 'The Banana Boat Song', was the comedic tune 'Mama Look at Bubu', also known as 'Mama Look a Boo-Boo' (originally recorded by Lord Melody in 1955), in which he sings humorously about misbehaving and disrespectful children. It reached number eleven on the pop chart. In 1959, he starred in Tonight With Belafonte, a nationally televised special that featured Odetta. Belafonte was the first Jamaican American to win an Emmy, for Revlon Revue: Tonight with Belafonte (1959). Belafonte recorded for RCA Victor from 1953 to 1974. Two live albums, both recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1959 and 1960, enjoyed critical and commercial success. From his 1959 album, 'Hava Nagila' became part of his regular routine and one of his signature songs. He was one of many entertainers recruited by Frank Sinatra to perform at the inaugural gala of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. That same year he released his second calypso album, 'Jump Up Calypso', which went on to become another million-seller. During the 1960s he introduced several artists to American audiences, most notably South African singer Miriam Makeba and Greek singer Nana Mouskouri. His album 'Midnight Special' (1962) included a young harmonica player named Bob Dylan. As The Beatles and other stars from Britain began to dominate the pop charts, Belafonte's commercial success diminished. His 'Belafonte at The Greek Theatre' was his last album to appear in Billboard's Top 40. His last hit single, 'A Strange Song', was released in 1967 and peaked at number 5 on the charts. Belafonte has received Grammy Awards for the albums 'Swing Dat Hammer' (1960) and 'An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba' (1965). The latter album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid. In 1967, Belafonte was the first non-classical artist to perform at the prestigious Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in Upstate New York, soon to be followed by concerts there by The Doors, The 5th Dimension, The Who, and Janis Joplin. In February 1968, Belafonte guest-hosted The Tonight Show substituting for Johnny Carson. Among his interview guests were Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. During the 1960s, he appeared on TV specials alongside such artists as Julie Andrews, Petula Clark, Lena Horne, and Nana Mouskouri. In 1968, Belafonte appeared on a Petula Clark TV special on NBC. In the middle of a song, Clark smiled and briefly touched Belafonte's arm. The show's sponsor, Plymouth Motors, wanted to cut out the segment, but Clark, who had ownership of the special, told NBC that the performance would be shown intact or not at all. American newspapers published articles reporting the controversy and, when the special aired, it grabbed huge ratings. In the early 1970s, Belafonte returned to the cinema in two films with Sidney Poitier. The Western Buck and the Preacher (Sidney Poitier, 1972) broke Hollywood Western traditions by casting blacks as central characters and portraying both tension and solidarity between African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th century. Buck and the Preacher was one of the first films directed by an African American and to be based on a band of African Americans fighting against the White majority. The film was produced by Belafonte Enterprises, Columbia Pictures Corporation, and E & R Productions Corp. Uptown Saturday Night (Sidney Poitier, 1974) is an action-comedy crime film written by Richard Wesley and starring Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Harry Belafonte. Although the film received mixed reviews, it was a commercial success and was part of the Blaxploitation wave. Later, Cosby and Poitier teamed up again, without Belafonte, for the sequels Let's Do It Again (Sidney Poitier, 1975) and A Piece of the Action (Sidney Poitier, 1977).
Harry Belafonte's recording activity slowed after he left RCA in the mid-1970s. RCA released his fifth and final Calypso album, 'Calypso Carnival' in 1971. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Belafonte spent the greater part of his time touring Japan, Europe, Cuba, and elsewhere. In 1977, he released the album 'Turn the World Around' at Columbia Records. The album, with a strong focus on world music, was never issued in the United States. He subsequently was a guest star on a memorable episode of The Muppet Show (1978), in which he performed his signature song 'Day-O' on television for the first time. However, the episode is best known for Belafonte's rendition of the spiritual song 'Turn the World Around', from the album of the same name, which he performed with specially made Muppets that resembled African tribal masks. Belafonte reprised the song at John Henson's memorial in 1990. In 1984, Belafonte produced and scored the musical film Beat Street (Stan Lathan, 1984). Set in the South Bronx, the film follows the lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends, all of whom are devoted to various elements of early hip hop culture. The cast included Rae Dawn Chong and Guy Davis. Together with Arthur Baker, Belafonte produced the gold-certified soundtrack of the same name. Beat Street's impact was felt internationally as well as throughout the United States. In Germany, for example, films as Beat Street are credited with introducing the hip-hop movement to the country. In 1985, he was one of the organisers behind the Grammy Award-winning song 'We Are the World', a multi-artist effort to raise funds for Africa, and performed in the Live Aid concert that same year. Belafonte's involvement in 'USA for Africa' resulted in renewed interest in his music, culminating in a record deal with EMI. He subsequently released his first album of original material in over a decade, 'Paradise in Gazankulu', (1988). The album contains ten protest songs against the South African former Apartheid policy and is his last studio album. As UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Belafonte attended in 1988 a symposium in Harare, Zimbabwe, to focus attention on child survival and development in Southern African countries. As part of the symposium, he performed a concert for UNICEF. A Kodak video crew filmed the concert, which was released as a 60-minute concert video titled Global Carnival. Also in 1988, Tim Burton used 'The Banana Boat Song' and 'Jump in the Line' in his film Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988). Belafonte appeared with John Travolta in the film drama White Man's Burden (1995), about racism in an alternative America where black and white Americans have reversed cultural roles. The film was written and directed by Desmond Nakano. The film revolves around Louis Pinnock (Travolta), a white factory worker, who kidnaps Thaddeus Thomas (Belafonte), a black factory owner for firing him over a perceived slight. The film gained a negative reception from the critics and was not a box office success. For Robert Altman's jazz age drama Kansas City (1996), he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. Kansas City, which stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson, is also notable for its musical score being integrated into the film, with modern-day musicians recreating the Kansas City jazz of 1930s. For instance, Craig Handy played the role of Coleman Hawkins, Geri Allen played Mary Lou Williams, and James Carter played Ben Webster. Following a lengthy recording hiatus, 'An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Friends' (1997), a soundtrack and video of a televised concert, were released by Island Records. 'The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music', a huge multi-artist project recorded by RCA during the 1960s and 1970s, was finally released by the label in 2001. Belafonte went on the Today Show to promote the album on 11 September 2001 and was interviewed by Katie Couric just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Awards for Best Boxed Recording Package, for Best Album Notes, and for Best Historical Album. On television, Harry Belafonte starred as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in the TV drama Swing Vote (David Anspaugh, 1999) with Andy Garcia. In 2006, Belafonte appeared in the film Bobby, Emilio Estevez's ensemble drama about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Belafonte played Nelson, a friend of an employee of the Ambassador Hotel (Anthony Hopkins). Belafonte received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and he won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He performed sold-out concerts globally through the 1950s to the 2000s. Owing to illness, he was forced to cancel a reunion tour with Nana Mouskouri planned for the spring and summer of 2003 following a tour in Europe. His last concert was a benefit concert for the Atlanta Opera on 25 October 2003. In a 2007 interview, he stated that he had since retired from performing. In 2017 Harry Belafonte released 'When Colors Come Together', an anthology of his music for Sony Legends produced by his son David Belafonte. David wrote a remake of 'Island In The Sun', arranged by longtime Belafonte musical director Richard Cummings featuring Harry Belafonte's grandchildren Sarafina and Amadeus and a children's choir. Always outspoken in his beliefs, Belafonte achieved widespread attention for his political views in 2002 when he began making a series of negative comments about President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Belafonte created controversy in October 2002 when he made disparaging remarks about Secretary of State Colin Powell. Far from being upset, Powell reportedly took the remarks good-humoured, refusing to inflame the situation any further. Belafonte's other controversial political statements on U.S. foreign policy have included opposing the U.S. embargo on Cuba, praising Soviet peace initiatives, attacking the U.S. invasion of Grenada, praising the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, honouring Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and praising Fidel Castro. On a Martin Luther King Day speech at Duke University in 2006, Belafonte compared the American government to the 9/11 terrorists. Belafonte and his first wife Marguerite Byrd were married from 1948 to 1957. They have two daughters: Adrienne and Shari, who also worked as an actress. In 1957, Belafonte married his second wife Julie Robinson, a former dancer with the Katherine Dunham Company who was of Jewish descent. They had two children, David and Gina. David, the only son of Harry Belafonte, is a former model and actor and is an Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated music producer and the executive director of the family-held company Belafonte Enterprises Inc. As a music producer, David has been involved in most of Belafonte's albums and tours and productions. After 47 years of marriage, Belafonte and Robinson got a divorce. In April 2008, Harry Belafonte married photographer Pamela Frank. Recently, Belafonte returned to the cinema in Spike Lee's biographical crime film BlacKkKlansman (2018) as an elderly civil rights pioneer. Set in 1970s Colorado Springs, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. BlacKkKlansman premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. Belafonte appears in the film recounting the lynching of Jesse Washington, a black teenage farmhand who was lynched in the county seat of Waco, Texas, on 15 May 1916, in what became a well-known example of racially motivated lynching. In 2019, the film won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. 3241.
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927-2023) was one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million-selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
Harry Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. at Lying-in Hospital in 1927, in Harlem, New York. He was the son of Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper, and Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., who worked as a chef. His mother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish white mother and a black father. His father also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and Dutch Jewish father of Sephardi origins. From 1932 to 1940, he lived with one of his grandmothers in her native country of Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer's Schools. When he returned to New York City, he attended George Washington High School after which he joined the Navy and served during World War II. In the 1940s, he was working as a janitor's assistant in NYC when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and also met Sidney Poitier. The financially struggling pair regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play. At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, and Sidney Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theatre in such plays as 'Days of Our Youth' (1946). In 1954, he would receive a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue 'John Murray Anderson's Almanac'.
Belafonte started his career in music as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. The first time he appeared in front of an audience at the Village Vanguard in New York, he was backed by the Charlie Parker band, which included Charlie Parker himself, Max Roach, and Miles Davis, among others. At first, he was a pop singer, launching his recording career on the Roost label in 1949, but later he developed a keen interest in folk music, learning material through the Library of Congress' American folk songs archives. With guitarist and friend Millard Thomas, Belafonte soon made his debut at the legendary jazz club The Village Vanguard. In 1952, he received a contract with RCA Victor. His first widely released single, which went on to become his 'signature' song with audience participation in virtually all his live performances, was 'Matilda' (1953). His breakthrough album 'Calypso' (1956) became the first LP in the world to sell over 1 million copies within a year. It spent 31 weeks at number 1, 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the U.S. charts. The album introduced American audiences to calypso music, which had originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 20th century. Belafonte was dubbed the 'King of Calypso', a title he wore with reservations since he had no claims to any Calypso Monarch titles. One of the songs included in the album is the now famous 'Banana Boat Song' (listed as 'Day O' on the original release), which reached number five on the pop charts. His other smash hit was 'Jump in the Line'. Many of the compositions recorded for Calypso, including 'Banana Boat Song', gave songwriting credit to Irving Burgie. His triumphant success as an entertainer in the arts did not protect Belafonte from racial discrimination, particularly in the South. As a result, he refused to perform in the southern region of the United States from 1954 until 1961.
Belafonte's first film role was in Bright Road (Gerald Mayer, 1953), in which he appeared alongside Dorothy Dandridge. In this low-budget film adapted from the Christopher Award-winning short story 'See How They Run' by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, Dandridge starred as an idealistic first-year elementary school teacher trying to reach out to a problem student. Belafonte played the principal of the school. The two subsequently starred in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954). The screenplay by Harry Kleiner was based on the lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1943 stage musical of the same name, set to the music of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera 'Carmen'. Ironically, Belafonte's singing in the film was dubbed by an opera singer, as Belafonte's own singing voice was seen as unsuitable for the role. Using his star clout, Belafonte was subsequently able to realise several then-controversial film roles. Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957) is about race relations and interracial romance set on the fictitious island of Santa Marta. The film was controversial at the time of its release for its hints of an affair between Belafonte's character and the character played by Joan Fontaine. The film also starred James Mason, Dorothy Dandridge, and Joan Collins. In 1959, he starred in and produced the Film Noir Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), in which he played a bank robber uncomfortably teamed with a racist partner (Robert Ryan). He also co-starred with Inger Stevens in the Science-Fiction doomsday film The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall, 1959). Belafonte was offered the role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959), based on the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin. Here he would have once again starred opposite Dorothy Dandridge, but he refused the role because he objected to its racial stereotyping. Sidney Poitier would play the role in the film. Dissatisfied with the film roles available to him, Belafonte returned to music during the 1960s.
While primarily known for calypso, Harry Belafonte has recorded in many different genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. His second-most popular hit, which came immediately after 'The Banana Boat Song', was the comedic tune 'Mama Look at Bubu', also known as 'Mama Look a Boo-Boo' (originally recorded by Lord Melody in 1955), in which he sings humorously about misbehaving and disrespectful children. It reached number eleven on the pop chart. In 1959, he starred in Tonight With Belafonte, a nationally televised special that featured Odetta. Belafonte was the first Jamaican American to win an Emmy, for Revlon Revue: Tonight with Belafonte (1959). Belafonte recorded for RCA Victor from 1953 to 1974. Two live albums, both recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1959 and 1960, enjoyed critical and commercial success. From his 1959 album, 'Hava Nagila' became part of his regular routine and one of his signature songs. He was one of many entertainers recruited by Frank Sinatra to perform at the inaugural gala of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. That same year he released his second calypso album, 'Jump Up Calypso', which went on to become another million-seller. During the 1960s he introduced several artists to American audiences, most notably South African singer Miriam Makeba and Greek singer Nana Mouskouri. His album 'Midnight Special' (1962) included a young harmonica player named Bob Dylan. As The Beatles and other stars from Britain began to dominate the pop charts, Belafonte's commercial success diminished. His 'Belafonte at The Greek Theatre' was his last album to appear in Billboard's Top 40. His last hit single, 'A Strange Song', was released in 1967 and peaked at number 5 on the charts. Belafonte has received Grammy Awards for the albums 'Swing Dat Hammer' (1960) and 'An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba' (1965). The latter album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid. In 1967, Belafonte was the first non-classical artist to perform at the prestigious Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in Upstate New York, soon to be followed by concerts there by The Doors, The 5th Dimension, The Who, and Janis Joplin. In February 1968, Belafonte guest-hosted The Tonight Show substituting for Johnny Carson. Among his interview guests were Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. During the 1960s, he appeared on TV specials alongside such artists as Julie Andrews, Petula Clark, Lena Horne, and Nana Mouskouri. In 1968, Belafonte appeared on a Petula Clark TV special on NBC. In the middle of a song, Clark smiled and briefly touched Belafonte's arm. The show's sponsor, Plymouth Motors, wanted to cut out the segment, but Clark, who had ownership of the special, told NBC that the performance would be shown intact or not at all. American newspapers published articles reporting the controversy and, when the special aired, it grabbed huge ratings.
In the early 1970s, Belafonte returned to the cinema in two films with Sidney Poitier. The Western Buck and the Preacher (Sidney Poitier, 1972) broke Hollywood Western traditions by casting blacks as central characters and portraying both tension and solidarity between African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th century. Buck and the Preacher was one of the first films directed by an African American and to be based on a band of African Americans fighting against the White majority. The film was produced by Belafonte Enterprises, Columbia Pictures Corporation, and E & R Productions Corp. Uptown Saturday Night (Sidney Poitier, 1974) is an action-comedy crime film written by Richard Wesley and starring Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Harry Belafonte. Although the film received mixed reviews, it was a commercial success and was part of the Blaxploitation wave. Later, Cosby and Poitier teamed up again, without Belafonte, for the sequels Let's Do It Again (Sidney Poitier, 1975) and A Piece of the Action (Sidney Poitier, 1977).
Harry Belafonte's recording activity slowed after he left RCA in the mid-1970s. RCA released his fifth and final Calypso album, 'Calypso Carnival' in 1971. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Belafonte spent the greater part of his time touring Japan, Europe, Cuba, and elsewhere. In 1977, he released the album 'Turn the World Around' at Columbia Records. The album, with a strong focus on world music, was never issued in the United States. He subsequently was a guest star on a memorable episode of The Muppet Show (1978), in which he performed his signature song 'Day-O' on television for the first time. However, the episode is best known for Belafonte's rendition of the spiritual song 'Turn the World Around', from the album of the same name, which he performed with specially made Muppets that resembled African tribal masks. Belafonte reprised the song at John Henson's memorial in 1990. In 1984, Belafonte produced and scored the musical film Beat Street (Stan Lathan, 1984). Set in the South Bronx, the film follows the lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends, all of whom are devoted to various elements of early hip hop culture. The cast included Rae Dawn Chong and Guy Davis. Together with Arthur Baker, Belafonte produced the gold-certified soundtrack of the same name. Beat Street's impact was felt internationally as well as throughout the United States. In Germany, for example, films as Beat Street are credited with introducing the hip-hop movement to the country.
In 1985, Belafonte was one of the organisers behind the Grammy Award-winning song 'We Are the World', a multi-artist effort to raise funds for Africa, and performed in the Live Aid concert that same year. Belafonte's involvement in 'USA for Africa' resulted in renewed interest in his music, culminating in a record deal with EMI. He subsequently released his first album of original material in over a decade, 'Paradise in Gazankulu', (1988). The album contains ten protest songs against the South African former Apartheid policy and is his last studio album. As UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Belafonte attended in 1988 a symposium in Harare, Zimbabwe, to focus attention on child survival and development in Southern African countries. As part of the symposium, he performed a concert for UNICEF. A Kodak video crew filmed the concert, which was released as a 60-minute concert video titled Global Carnival. Also in 1988, Tim Burton used 'The Banana Boat Song' and 'Jump in the Line' in his film Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988). Belafonte appeared with John Travolta in the film drama White Man's Burden (1995), about racism in an alternative America where black and white Americans have reversed cultural roles. The film was written and directed by Desmond Nakano. The film revolves around Louis Pinnock (Travolta), a white factory worker, who kidnaps Thaddeus Thomas (Belafonte), a black factory owner for firing him over a perceived slight. The film gained a negative reception from the critics and was not a box office success. For Robert Altman's jazz age drama Kansas City (1996), he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. Kansas City, which stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson, is also notable for its musical score being integrated into the film, with modern-day musicians recreating the Kansas City jazz of 1930s. For instance, Craig Handy played the role of Coleman Hawkins, Geri Allen played Mary Lou Williams, and James Carter played Ben Webster.
Following a lengthy recording hiatus, 'An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Friends' (1997), a soundtrack and video of a televised concert, were released by Island Records. 'The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music', a huge multi-artist project recorded by RCA during the 1960s and 1970s, was finally released by the label in 2001. Belafonte went on the Today Show to promote the album on 11 September 2001 and was interviewed by Katie Couric just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Awards for Best Boxed Recording Package, for Best Album Notes, and for Best Historical Album. On television, Harry Belafonte starred as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in the TV drama Swing Vote (David Anspaugh, 1999) with Andy Garcia. In 2006, Belafonte appeared in the film Bobby, Emilio Estevez's ensemble drama about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Belafonte played Nelson, a friend of an employee of the Ambassador Hotel (Anthony Hopkins). Belafonte received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and he won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He performed sold-out concerts globally through the 1950s to the 2000s. Owing to illness, he was forced to cancel a reunion tour with Nana Mouskouri planned for the spring and summer of 2003 following a tour in Europe. His last concert was a benefit concert for the Atlanta Opera on 25 October 2003. In a 2007 interview, he stated that he had since retired from performing.
In 2017 Harry Belafonte released 'When Colors Come Together', an anthology of his music for Sony Legends produced by his son David Belafonte. David wrote a remake of 'Island In The Sun', arranged by longtime Belafonte musical director Richard Cummings featuring Harry Belafonte's grandchildren Sarafina and Amadeus and a children's choir. Always outspoken in his beliefs, Belafonte achieved widespread attention for his political views in 2002 when he began making a series of negative comments about President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Belafonte created controversy in October 2002 when he made disparaging remarks about Secretary of State Colin Powell. Far from being upset, Powell reportedly took the remarks good-humoured, refusing to inflame the situation any further. Belafonte's other controversial political statements on U.S. foreign policy have included opposing the U.S. embargo on Cuba, praising Soviet peace initiatives, attacking the U.S. invasion of Grenada, praising the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, honouring Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and praising Fidel Castro. On a Martin Luther King Day speech at Duke University in 2006, Belafonte compared the American government to the 9/11 terrorists.
Belafonte and his first wife Marguerite Byrd were married from 1948 to 1957. They have two daughters: Adrienne and Shari, who also worked as an actress. In 1957, Belafonte married his second wife Julie Robinson, a former dancer with the Katherine Dunham Company who was of Jewish descent. They had two children, David and Gina. David, the only son of Harry Belafonte, is a former model and actor and is an Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated music producer and the executive director of the family-held company Belafonte Enterprises Inc. As a music producer, David has been involved in most of Belafonte's albums and tours and productions. After 47 years of marriage, Belafonte and Robinson got a divorce. In April 2008, Harry Belafonte married photographer Pamela Frank. Recently, Belafonte returned to the cinema in Spike Lee's biographical crime film BlacKkKlansman (2018) as an elderly civil rights pioneer. Set in 1970s Colorado Springs, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. BlacKkKlansman premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. Belafonte appears in the film recounting the lynching of Jesse Washington, a black teenage farmhand who was lynched in the county seat of Waco, Texas, on 15 May 1916, in what became a well-known example of racially motivated lynching. In 2019, the film won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee.
Harry Belafonte died in New York on 25 April 2023, due to congestive heart failure. He was 96.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2186. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Publicity still for Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957).
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927) is one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb. See for more vintage postcards of Hollywood stars our sets Vintage B&W Hollywood and Hollywood Colour Postcards or follow us at Tumblr or Pinterest.
Harry Belafonte, known for popularizing Caribbean folk music, breaking down barriers and advocating for civil rights, has died. He was 96.
According to a spokesperson, Belafonte died in his home on Tuesday from congestive heart failure.
Born Harold George Belafonte, Jr. in the Harlem district of New York on March 1, 1927, Belafonte was the son of Caribbean island emigrants. In the 1950s, the dashing singer burst to fame, despite the era of racial segregation, and his 1956 album “Calypso” sold more than a million copies.
The album’s hit song, “Day-O! (the Banana Boat Song),” is still recognizable today, with Belafonte’s husky voice belting out an a cappella “Day-O!” before easing into the flow of the Caribbean-inspired song. The success of the song dubbed him the “King of Calypso.”
By 1959, Belafonte was the most highly paid Black performer in history, according to the New York Times, with contracts for appearances in Las Vegas, at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles and at the Palace in New York.
But Belafonte would soon move from behind the microphone to in front of the camera.
In 1953, Belafonte became the first Black man to win a Tony Award on Broadway for his revue “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.” Just six years later, he became the first Black producer to win an Emmy Award for “Tonight With Belafonte,” a CBS special that presented a history of Black American life through music. He also became close friends with Sidney Poiter, a groundbreaking Hollywood actor in his own right.
But Belafonte’s work would carry him past the hills of Hollywood and into the streets of the civil rights movement. A lifelong friend and supporter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Belafonte would help finance the start of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and fundraise for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
He would also provide bail money for King and other activists arrested for their demonstrations, according to the New York Times, and he participated in the 1963 March on Washington.
“I’ve often responded to queries that ask, ‘When as an artist did you decide to become an activist?’” Belafonte once said. “My response to the question is that I was an activist long before I became an artist. They both service each other, but the activism is first.”
But like many Black Americans at the time — famous or not — Belafonte was struck by the racism he faced every day.
Following the assassination of King, Belafonte sat down with the Washington Post to express his frustration over how most of his fans were white, despite his music having roots in the Black culture.
But it was the racist outage of others that undoubtedly infuriated him.
His role in the 1957 movie “Island in the Sun” generated outrage in the South for its suggestion of a romance between his character and Joan Fontaine’s. In the South Carolina Legislature, a bill was introduced that would have fined theaters for showing the film.
When he was in Atlanta for a benefit concert for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1962, Belafonte was refused service — twice — in the same restaurant. And times when he appeared on television with white female singers, such as Petula Clark in 1968 and Julie Andrews in 1969, threatened to cost him sponsors.
But Black Americans were also unhappy with Belafonte, with some crediting his success to his light skin tone. Others criticized him for marrying Julie Robinson, a white dancer and actress.
Still, Belafonte carried on. In the 1980s, he helped organize the Live Aid concert and the all-star recording “We Are the World,” to fight famine in Africa. In 1987, he became UNICEF’s good-will ambassador.
The singer would also express his opinions about political leaders at home — sometimes with harsh words. In 2002, he accused Secretary of State Colin Powell of abandoning his principles to “come into the house of the master.” In 2006, he called former President George W. Bush “the greatest terrorist in the world.”
But his words weren’t just for Republicans; he also criticized former President Barack Obama.
“For all of his smoothness and intellect, Barack Obama seems to lack a fundamental empathy with the dispossessed, be they White or Black,” Belafonte said.
Still, he is remembered by many fondly for his songs and for his activism.
In a statement following his death, NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said Belafonte “exemplified fearless activism.”
“Sharing his love for the arts, Mr. Belafonte played an instrumental role in bringing the music of Africa to other parts of the world,” Johnson said. “His contributions to the arts, indisputable. He possessed an infinite talent which truly surpasses all understanding of time and life and will be greatly missed.”
Bernice King, daughter of MLK Jr., honored her father’s friend in a tweet.
“When I was a child, #HarryBelafonte showed up for my family in very compassionate ways,” she tweeted. “In fact, he paid for the babysitter for me and my siblings. Here he is mourning with my mother at the funeral service for my father at Morehouse College. I won’t forget…Rest well, sir.”
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump also paid tribute to Belafonte on Tuesday, calling him “a tireless activist, EGOT winner, and successful singer.”
AP African American studies course undergoing changes
They graduated during the pandemic. Now they face their first student loan payments
“Through his extraordinary contributions, including his notable advocacy for human rights and social justice, he leaves an indelible mark on this world,” Crump tweeted. “Rest In Power, Mr. Belafonte.”
Dutch postcard by Editions Altona, Amsterdam, no. 5167. Photo: Teldec / RCA.
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927) is one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million-selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
Harry Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. at Lying-in Hospital in 1927, in Harlem, New York. He was the son of Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper, and Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., who worked as a chef. His mother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish white mother and a black father. His father also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and Dutch Jewish father of Sephardi origins. From 1932 to 1940, he lived with one of his grandmothers in her native country of Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer's Schools. When he returned to New York City, he attended George Washington High School after which he joined the Navy and served during World War II. In the 1940s, he was working as a janitor's assistant in NYC when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and also met Sidney Poitier. The financially struggling pair regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play. At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, and Sidney Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theatre in such plays as 'Days of Our Youth' (1946). In 1954, he would receive a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue 'John Murray Anderson's Almanac'. Belafonte started his career in music as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. The first time he appeared in front of an audience at the Village Vanguard in New York, he was backed by the Charlie Parker band, which included Charlie Parker himself, Max Roach and Miles Davis, among others. At first, he was a pop singer, launching his recording career on the Roost label in 1949, but later he developed a keen interest in folk music, learning material through the Library of Congress' American folk songs archives. With guitarist and friend Millard Thomas, Belafonte soon made his debut at the legendary jazz club The Village Vanguard. In 1952, he received a contract with RCA Victor. His first widely released single, which went on to become his 'signature' song with audience participation in virtually all his live performances, was 'Matilda' (1953). His breakthrough album 'Calypso' (1956) became the first LP in the world to sell over 1 million copies within a year. It spent 31 weeks at number 1, 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the U.S. charts. The album introduced American audiences to calypso music, which had originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 20th century. Belafonte was dubbed the 'King of Calypso', a title he wore with reservations since he had no claims to any Calypso Monarch titles. One of the songs included in the album is the now famous 'Banana Boat Song' (listed as 'Day O' on the original release), which reached number five on the pop charts. His other smash hit was 'Jump in the Line'. Many of the compositions recorded for Calypso, including 'Banana Boat Song', gave songwriting credit to Irving Burgie. His triumphant success as an entertainer in the arts did not protect Belafonte from racial discrimination, particularly in the South. As a result, he refused to perform in the southern region of the United States from 1954 until 1961. Belafonte's first film role was in Bright Road (Gerald Mayer, 1953), in which he appeared alongside Dorothy Dandridge. In this low-budget film adapted from the Christopher Award-winning short story 'See How They Run' by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, Dandridge starred as an idealistic first-year elementary school teacher trying to reach out to a problem student. Belafonte played the principal of the school. The two subsequently starred in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954). The screenplay by Harry Kleiner was based on the lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1943 stage musical of the same name, set to the music of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera 'Carmen'. Ironically, Belafonte's singing in the film was dubbed by an opera singer, as Belafonte's own singing voice was seen as unsuitable for the role. Using his star clout, Belafonte was subsequently able to realise several then-controversial film roles. Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957) is about race relations and interracial romance set on the fictitious island of Santa Marta. The film was controversial at the time of its release for its hints of an affair between Belafonte's character and the character played by Joan Fontaine. The film also starred James Mason, Dorothy Dandridge, and Joan Collins. In 1959, he starred in and produced the Film Noir Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), in which he played a bank robber uncomfortably teamed with a racist partner (Robert Ryan). He also co-starred with Inger Stevens in the Science-Fiction doomsday film The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall, 1959). Belafonte was offered the role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959), based on the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin. Here he would have once again starred opposite Dorothy Dandridge, but he refused the role because he objected to its racial stereotyping. Sidney Poitier would play the role in the film. Dissatisfied with the film roles available to him, he returned to music during the 1960s.
While primarily known for calypso, Harry Belafonte has recorded in many different genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. His second-most popular hit, which came immediately after 'The Banana Boat Song', was the comedic tune 'Mama Look at Bubu', also known as 'Mama Look a Boo-Boo' (originally recorded by Lord Melody in 1955), in which he sings humorously about misbehaving and disrespectful children. It reached number eleven on the pop chart. In 1959, he starred in Tonight With Belafonte, a nationally televised special that featured Odetta. Belafonte was the first Jamaican American to win an Emmy, for Revlon Revue: Tonight with Belafonte (1959). Belafonte recorded for RCA Victor from 1953 to 1974. Two live albums, both recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1959 and 1960, enjoyed critical and commercial success. From his 1959 album, 'Hava Nagila' became part of his regular routine and one of his signature songs. He was one of many entertainers recruited by Frank Sinatra to perform at the inaugural gala of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. That same year he released his second calypso album, 'Jump Up Calypso', which went on to become another million-seller. During the 1960s he introduced several artists to American audiences, most notably South African singer Miriam Makeba and Greek singer Nana Mouskouri. His album 'Midnight Special' (1962) included a young harmonica player named Bob Dylan. As The Beatles and other stars from Britain began to dominate the pop charts, Belafonte's commercial success diminished. His 'Belafonte at The Greek Theatre' was his last album to appear in Billboard's Top 40. His last hit single, 'A Strange Song', was released in 1967 and peaked at number 5 on the charts. Belafonte has received Grammy Awards for the albums 'Swing Dat Hammer' (1960) and 'An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba' (1965). The latter album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid. In 1967, Belafonte was the first non-classical artist to perform at the prestigious Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in Upstate New York, soon to be followed by concerts there by The Doors, The 5th Dimension, The Who, and Janis Joplin. In February 1968, Belafonte guest-hosted The Tonight Show substituting for Johnny Carson. Among his interview guests were Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. During the 1960s, he appeared on TV specials alongside such artists as Julie Andrews, Petula Clark, Lena Horne, and Nana Mouskouri. In 1968, Belafonte appeared on a Petula Clark TV special on NBC. In the middle of a song, Clark smiled and briefly touched Belafonte's arm. The show's sponsor, Plymouth Motors, wanted to cut out the segment, but Clark, who had ownership of the special, told NBC that the performance would be shown intact or not at all. American newspapers published articles reporting the controversy and, when the special aired, it grabbed huge ratings. In the early 1970s, Belafonte returned to the cinema in two films with Sidney Poitier. The Western Buck and the Preacher (Sidney Poitier, 1972) broke Hollywood Western traditions by casting blacks as central characters and portraying both tension and solidarity between African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th century. Buck and the Preacher was one of the first films directed by an African American and to be based on a band of African Americans fighting against the White majority. The film was produced by Belafonte Enterprises, Columbia Pictures Corporation, and E & R Productions Corp. Uptown Saturday Night (Sidney Poitier, 1974) is an action-comedy crime film written by Richard Wesley and starring Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Harry Belafonte. Although the film received mixed reviews, it was a commercial success and was part of the Blaxploitation wave. Later, Cosby and Poitier teamed up again, without Belafonte, for the sequels Let's Do It Again (Sidney Poitier, 1975) and A Piece of the Action (Sidney Poitier, 1977).
Harry Belafonte's recording activity slowed after he left RCA in the mid-1970s. RCA released his fifth and final Calypso album, 'Calypso Carnival' in 1971. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Belafonte spent the greater part of his time touring Japan, Europe, Cuba, and elsewhere. In 1977, he released the album 'Turn the World Around' at Columbia Records. The album, with a strong focus on world music, was never issued in the United States. He subsequently was a guest star on a memorable episode of The Muppet Show (1978), in which he performed his signature song 'Day-O' on television for the first time. However, the episode is best known for Belafonte's rendition of the spiritual song 'Turn the World Around', from the album of the same name, which he performed with specially made Muppets that resembled African tribal masks. Belafonte reprised the song at John Henson's memorial in 1990. In 1984, Belafonte produced and scored the musical film Beat Street (Stan Lathan, 1984). Set in the South Bronx, the film follows the lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends, all of whom are devoted to various elements of early hip hop culture. The cast included Rae Dawn Chong and Guy Davis. Together with Arthur Baker, Belafonte produced the gold-certified soundtrack of the same name. Beat Street's impact was felt internationally as well as throughout the United States. In Germany, for example, films as Beat Street are credited with introducing the hip-hop movement to the country. In 1985, he was one of the organisers behind the Grammy Award-winning song 'We Are the World', a multi-artist effort to raise funds for Africa, and performed in the Live Aid concert that same year. Belafonte's involvement in 'USA for Africa' resulted in renewed interest in his music, culminating in a record deal with EMI. He subsequently released his first album of original material in over a decade, 'Paradise in Gazankulu', (1988). The album contains ten protest songs against the South African former Apartheid policy and is his last studio album. As UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Belafonte attended in 1988 a symposium in Harare, Zimbabwe, to focus attention on child survival and development in Southern African countries. As part of the symposium, he performed a concert for UNICEF. A Kodak video crew filmed the concert, which was released as a 60-minute concert video titled Global Carnival. Also in 1988, Tim Burton used 'The Banana Boat Song' and 'Jump in the Line' in his film Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988). Belafonte appeared with John Travolta in the film drama White Man's Burden (1995), about racism in an alternative America where black and white Americans have reversed cultural roles. The film was written and directed by Desmond Nakano. The film revolves around Louis Pinnock (Travolta), a white factory worker, who kidnaps Thaddeus Thomas (Belafonte), a black factory owner for firing him over a perceived slight. The film gained a negative reception from the critics and was not a box office success. For Robert Altman's jazz age drama Kansas City (1996), he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. Kansas City, which stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson, is also notable for its musical score being integrated into the film, with modern-day musicians recreating the Kansas City jazz of 1930s. For instance, Craig Handy played the role of Coleman Hawkins, Geri Allen played Mary Lou Williams, and James Carter played Ben Webster. Following a lengthy recording hiatus, 'An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Friends' (1997), a soundtrack and video of a televised concert, were released by Island Records. 'The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music', a huge multi-artist project recorded by RCA during the 1960s and 1970s, was finally released by the label in 2001. Belafonte went on the Today Show to promote the album on 11 September 2001 and was interviewed by Katie Couric just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Awards for Best Boxed Recording Package, for Best Album Notes, and for Best Historical Album. On television, Harry Belafonte starred as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in the TV drama Swing Vote (David Anspaugh, 1999) with Andy Garcia. In 2006, Belafonte appeared in the film Bobby, Emilio Estevez's ensemble drama about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Belafonte played Nelson, a friend of an employee of the Ambassador Hotel (Anthony Hopkins). Belafonte received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and he won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He performed sold-out concerts globally through the 1950s to the 2000s. Owing to illness, he was forced to cancel a reunion tour with Nana Mouskouri planned for the spring and summer of 2003 following a tour in Europe. His last concert was a benefit concert for the Atlanta Opera on 25 October 2003. In a 2007 interview, he stated that he had since retired from performing. In 2017 Harry Belafonte released 'When Colors Come Together', an anthology of his music for Sony Legends produced by his son David Belafonte. David wrote a remake of 'Island In The Sun', arranged by longtime Belafonte musical director Richard Cummings featuring Harry Belafonte's grandchildren Sarafina and Amadeus and a children's choir. Always outspoken in his beliefs, Belafonte achieved widespread attention for his political views in 2002 when he began making a series of negative comments about President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Belafonte created controversy in October 2002 when he made disparaging remarks about Secretary of State Colin Powell. Far from being upset, Powell reportedly took the remarks good-humoured, refusing to inflame the situation any further. Belafonte's other controversial political statements on U.S. foreign policy have included opposing the U.S. embargo on Cuba, praising Soviet peace initiatives, attacking the U.S. invasion of Grenada, praising the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, honouring Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and praising Fidel Castro. On a Martin Luther King Day speech at Duke University in 2006, Belafonte compared the American government to the 9/11 terrorists. Belafonte and his first wife Marguerite Byrd were married from 1948 to 1957. They have two daughters: Adrienne and Shari, who also worked as an actress. In 1957, Belafonte married his second wife Julie Robinson, a former dancer with the Katherine Dunham Company who was of Jewish descent. They had two children, David and Gina. David, the only son of Harry Belafonte, is a former model and actor and is an Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated music producer and the executive director of the family-held company Belafonte Enterprises Inc. As a music producer, David has been involved in most of Belafonte's albums and tours and productions. After 47 years of marriage, Belafonte and Robinson got a divorce. In April 2008, Harry Belafonte married photographer Pamela Frank. Recently, Belafonte returned to the cinema in Spike Lee's biographical crime film BlacKkKlansman (2018) as an elderly civil rights pioneer. Set in 1970s Colorado Springs, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. BlacKkKlansman premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. Belafonte appears in the film recounting the lynching of Jesse Washington, a black teenage farmhand who was lynched in the county seat of Waco, Texas, on 15 May 1916, in what became a well-known example of racially motivated lynching. In 2019, the film won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Dutch postcard by Uitgeverij Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 3680. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Harry Belafonte in Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957). Belafonte's name is misspelled on the card.
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927) is one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million-selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
Harry Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. at Lying-in Hospital in 1927, in Harlem, New York. He was the son of Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper, and Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., who worked as a chef. His mother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish white mother and a black father. His father also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and Dutch Jewish father of Sephardi origins. From 1932 to 1940, he lived with one of his grandmothers in her native country of Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer's Schools. When he returned to New York City, he attended George Washington High School after which he joined the Navy and served during World War II. In the 1940s, he was working as a janitor's assistant in NYC when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and also met Sidney Poitier. The financially struggling pair regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play. At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, and Sidney Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theatre in such plays as 'Days of Our Youth' (1946). In 1954, he would receive a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue 'John Murray Anderson's Almanac'. Belafonte started his career in music as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. The first time he appeared in front of an audience at the Village Vanguard in New York, he was backed by the Charlie Parker band, which included Charlie Parker himself, Max Roach and Miles Davis, among others. At first, he was a pop singer, launching his recording career on the Roost label in 1949, but later he developed a keen interest in folk music, learning material through the Library of Congress' American folk songs archives. With guitarist and friend Millard Thomas, Belafonte soon made his debut at the legendary jazz club The Village Vanguard. In 1952, he received a contract with RCA Victor. His first widely released single, which went on to become his 'signature' song with audience participation in virtually all his live performances, was 'Matilda' (1953). His breakthrough album 'Calypso' (1956) became the first LP in the world to sell over 1 million copies within a year. It spent 31 weeks at number 1, 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the U.S. charts. The album introduced American audiences to calypso music, which had originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 20th century. Belafonte was dubbed the 'King of Calypso', a title he wore with reservations since he had no claims to any Calypso Monarch titles. One of the songs included in the album is the now famous 'Banana Boat Song' (listed as 'Day O' on the original release), which reached number five on the pop charts. His other smash hit was 'Jump in the Line'. Many of the compositions recorded for Calypso, including 'Banana Boat Song', gave songwriting credit to Irving Burgie. His triumphant success as an entertainer in the arts did not protect Belafonte from racial discrimination, particularly in the South. As a result, he refused to perform in the southern region of the United States from 1954 until 1961. Belafonte's first film role was in Bright Road (Gerald Mayer, 1953), in which he appeared alongside Dorothy Dandridge. In this low-budget film adapted from the Christopher Award-winning short story 'See How They Run' by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, Dandridge starred as an idealistic first-year elementary school teacher trying to reach out to a problem student. Belafonte played the principal of the school. The two subsequently starred in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954). The screenplay by Harry Kleiner was based on the lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1943 stage musical of the same name, set to the music of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera 'Carmen'. Ironically, Belafonte's singing in the film was dubbed by an opera singer, as Belafonte's own singing voice was seen as unsuitable for the role. Using his star clout, Belafonte was subsequently able to realise several then-controversial film roles. Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957) is about race relations and interracial romance set on the fictitious island of Santa Marta. The film was controversial at the time of its release for its hints of an affair between Belafonte's character and the character played by Joan Fontaine. The film also starred James Mason, Dorothy Dandridge, and Joan Collins. In 1959, he starred in and produced the Film Noir Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), in which he played a bank robber uncomfortably teamed with a racist partner (Robert Ryan). He also co-starred with Inger Stevens in the Science-Fiction doomsday film The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall, 1959). Belafonte was offered the role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959), based on the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin. Here he would have once again starred opposite Dorothy Dandridge, but he refused the role because he objected to its racial stereotyping. Sidney Poitier would play the role in the film. Dissatisfied with the film roles available to him, he returned to music during the 1960s.
While primarily known for calypso, Harry Belafonte has recorded in many different genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. His second-most popular hit, which came immediately after 'The Banana Boat Song', was the comedic tune 'Mama Look at Bubu', also known as 'Mama Look a Boo-Boo' (originally recorded by Lord Melody in 1955), in which he sings humorously about misbehaving and disrespectful children. It reached number eleven on the pop chart. In 1959, he starred in Tonight With Belafonte, a nationally televised special that featured Odetta. Belafonte was the first Jamaican American to win an Emmy, for Revlon Revue: Tonight with Belafonte (1959). Belafonte recorded for RCA Victor from 1953 to 1974. Two live albums, both recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1959 and 1960, enjoyed critical and commercial success. From his 1959 album, 'Hava Nagila' became part of his regular routine and one of his signature songs. He was one of many entertainers recruited by Frank Sinatra to perform at the inaugural gala of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. That same year he released his second calypso album, 'Jump Up Calypso', which went on to become another million-seller. During the 1960s he introduced several artists to American audiences, most notably South African singer Miriam Makeba and Greek singer Nana Mouskouri. His album 'Midnight Special' (1962) included a young harmonica player named Bob Dylan. As The Beatles and other stars from Britain began to dominate the pop charts, Belafonte's commercial success diminished. His 'Belafonte at The Greek Theatre' was his last album to appear in Billboard's Top 40. His last hit single, 'A Strange Song', was released in 1967 and peaked at number 5 on the charts. Belafonte has received Grammy Awards for the albums 'Swing Dat Hammer' (1960) and 'An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba' (1965). The latter album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid. In 1967, Belafonte was the first non-classical artist to perform at the prestigious Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in Upstate New York, soon to be followed by concerts there by The Doors, The 5th Dimension, The Who, and Janis Joplin. In February 1968, Belafonte guest-hosted The Tonight Show substituting for Johnny Carson. Among his interview guests were Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. During the 1960s, he appeared on TV specials alongside such artists as Julie Andrews, Petula Clark, Lena Horne, and Nana Mouskouri. In 1968, Belafonte appeared on a Petula Clark TV special on NBC. In the middle of a song, Clark smiled and briefly touched Belafonte's arm. The show's sponsor, Plymouth Motors, wanted to cut out the segment, but Clark, who had ownership of the special, told NBC that the performance would be shown intact or not at all. American newspapers published articles reporting the controversy and, when the special aired, it grabbed huge ratings. In the early 1970s, Belafonte returned to the cinema in two films with Sidney Poitier. The Western Buck and the Preacher (Sidney Poitier, 1972) broke Hollywood Western traditions by casting blacks as central characters and portraying both tension and solidarity between African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th century. Buck and the Preacher was one of the first films directed by an African American and to be based on a band of African Americans fighting against the White majority. The film was produced by Belafonte Enterprises, Columbia Pictures Corporation, and E & R Productions Corp. Uptown Saturday Night (Sidney Poitier, 1974) is an action-comedy crime film written by Richard Wesley and starring Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Harry Belafonte. Although the film received mixed reviews, it was a commercial success and was part of the Blaxploitation wave. Later, Cosby and Poitier teamed up again, without Belafonte, for the sequels Let's Do It Again (Sidney Poitier, 1975) and A Piece of the Action (Sidney Poitier, 1977).
Harry Belafonte's recording activity slowed after he left RCA in the mid-1970s. RCA released his fifth and final Calypso album, 'Calypso Carnival' in 1971. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Belafonte spent the greater part of his time touring Japan, Europe, Cuba, and elsewhere. In 1977, he released the album 'Turn the World Around' at Columbia Records. The album, with a strong focus on world music, was never issued in the United States. He subsequently was a guest star on a memorable episode of The Muppet Show (1978), in which he performed his signature song 'Day-O' on television for the first time. However, the episode is best known for Belafonte's rendition of the spiritual song 'Turn the World Around', from the album of the same name, which he performed with specially made Muppets that resembled African tribal masks. Belafonte reprised the song at John Henson's memorial in 1990. In 1984, Belafonte produced and scored the musical film Beat Street (Stan Lathan, 1984). Set in the South Bronx, the film follows the lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends, all of whom are devoted to various elements of early hip hop culture. The cast included Rae Dawn Chong and Guy Davis. Together with Arthur Baker, Belafonte produced the gold-certified soundtrack of the same name. Beat Street's impact was felt internationally as well as throughout the United States. In Germany, for example, films as Beat Street are credited with introducing the hip-hop movement to the country. In 1985, he was one of the organisers behind the Grammy Award-winning song 'We Are the World', a multi-artist effort to raise funds for Africa, and performed in the Live Aid concert that same year. Belafonte's involvement in 'USA for Africa' resulted in renewed interest in his music, culminating in a record deal with EMI. He subsequently released his first album of original material in over a decade, 'Paradise in Gazankulu', (1988). The album contains ten protest songs against the South African former Apartheid policy and is his last studio album. As UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Belafonte attended in 1988 a symposium in Harare, Zimbabwe, to focus attention on child survival and development in Southern African countries. As part of the symposium, he performed a concert for UNICEF. A Kodak video crew filmed the concert, which was released as a 60-minute concert video titled Global Carnival. Also in 1988, Tim Burton used 'The Banana Boat Song' and 'Jump in the Line' in his film Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988). Belafonte appeared with John Travolta in the film drama White Man's Burden (1995), about racism in an alternative America where black and white Americans have reversed cultural roles. The film was written and directed by Desmond Nakano. The film revolves around Louis Pinnock (Travolta), a white factory worker, who kidnaps Thaddeus Thomas (Belafonte), a black factory owner for firing him over a perceived slight. The film gained a negative reception from the critics and was not a box office success. For Robert Altman's jazz age drama Kansas City (1996), he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. Kansas City, which stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson, is also notable for its musical score being integrated into the film, with modern-day musicians recreating the Kansas City jazz of 1930s. For instance, Craig Handy played the role of Coleman Hawkins, Geri Allen played Mary Lou Williams, and James Carter played Ben Webster. Following a lengthy recording hiatus, 'An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Friends' (1997), a soundtrack and video of a televised concert, were released by Island Records. 'The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music', a huge multi-artist project recorded by RCA during the 1960s and 1970s, was finally released by the label in 2001. Belafonte went on the Today Show to promote the album on 11 September 2001 and was interviewed by Katie Couric just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Awards for Best Boxed Recording Package, for Best Album Notes, and for Best Historical Album. On television, Harry Belafonte starred as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in the TV drama Swing Vote (David Anspaugh, 1999) with Andy Garcia. In 2006, Belafonte appeared in the film Bobby, Emilio Estevez's ensemble drama about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Belafonte played Nelson, a friend of an employee of the Ambassador Hotel (Anthony Hopkins). Belafonte received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and he won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He performed sold-out concerts globally through the 1950s to the 2000s. Owing to illness, he was forced to cancel a reunion tour with Nana Mouskouri planned for the spring and summer of 2003 following a tour in Europe. His last concert was a benefit concert for the Atlanta Opera on 25 October 2003. In a 2007 interview, he stated that he had since retired from performing. In 2017 Harry Belafonte released 'When Colors Come Together', an anthology of his music for Sony Legends produced by his son David Belafonte. David wrote a remake of 'Island In The Sun', arranged by longtime Belafonte musical director Richard Cummings featuring Harry Belafonte's grandchildren Sarafina and Amadeus and a children's choir. Always outspoken in his beliefs, Belafonte achieved widespread attention for his political views in 2002 when he began making a series of negative comments about President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Belafonte created controversy in October 2002 when he made disparaging remarks about Secretary of State Colin Powell. Far from being upset, Powell reportedly took the remarks good-humoured, refusing to inflame the situation any further. Belafonte's other controversial political statements on U.S. foreign policy have included opposing the U.S. embargo on Cuba, praising Soviet peace initiatives, attacking the U.S. invasion of Grenada, praising the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, honouring Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and praising Fidel Castro. On a Martin Luther King Day speech at Duke University in 2006, Belafonte compared the American government to the 9/11 terrorists. Belafonte and his first wife Marguerite Byrd were married from 1948 to 1957. They have two daughters: Adrienne and Shari, who also worked as an actress. In 1957, Belafonte married his second wife Julie Robinson, a former dancer with the Katherine Dunham Company who was of Jewish descent. They had two children, David and Gina. David, the only son of Harry Belafonte, is a former model and actor and is an Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated music producer and the executive director of the family-held company Belafonte Enterprises Inc. As a music producer, David has been involved in most of Belafonte's albums and tours and productions. After 47 years of marriage, Belafonte and Robinson got a divorce. In April 2008, Harry Belafonte married photographer Pamela Frank. Recently, Belafonte returned to the cinema in Spike Lee's biographical crime film BlacKkKlansman (2018) as an elderly civil rights pioneer. Set in 1970s Colorado Springs, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. BlacKkKlansman premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. Belafonte appears in the film recounting the lynching of Jesse Washington, a black teenage farmhand who was lynched in the county seat of Waco, Texas, on 15 May 1916, in what became a well-known example of racially motivated lynching. In 2019, the film won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Shake, shake, shake, Senora, shake your body line
Shake, shake, shake, Senora, shake it all the time
Music was my inspiration for this week's dip for Dip-It-Thursday. The theme for this week is 'Move it, Baby'~ and what better way than through music. Long shutters are so much fun, watch as the light goes round and round and round! Got to have some fun, baby, got to 'Jump in the Line'!!
Jump in the line, rock your body in time~~
Quick Tutorial: I used a small flashlight with the head off, so only the bulb was exposed... then I set my camera to shutter priority at 30" and twirled the flashlight around until the shutter released! Then you get these super cool light ribbons! ^^
**Just because there's so much music out there, here's some song recommendations to put you in the mood, lol, okie, here goes:
Put Your Records On - Corinne Bailey-Rae
Turn Turn Turn - The Byrds recommeded by Brian :D
Squeeze Me - Kraak & Smaak One of my favourites~
Happy listening !!
West-German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. V 143.
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927) is one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million-selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
Harry Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. at Lying-in Hospital in 1927, in Harlem, New York. He was the son of Melvine (née Love), a housekeeper, and Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., who worked as a chef. His mother was born in Jamaica, the child of a Scottish white mother and a black father. His father also was born in Jamaica, the child of a black mother and Dutch Jewish father of Sephardi origins. From 1932 to 1940, he lived with one of his grandmothers in her native country of Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer's Schools. When he returned to New York City, he attended George Washington High School after which he joined the Navy and served during World War II. In the 1940s, he was working as a janitor's assistant in NYC when a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and also met Sidney Poitier. The financially struggling pair regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play. At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, and Sidney Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theatre in such plays as 'Days of Our Youth' (1946). In 1954, he would receive a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue 'John Murray Anderson's Almanac'. Belafonte started his career in music as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. The first time he appeared in front of an audience at the Village Vanguard in New York, he was backed by the Charlie Parker band, which included Charlie Parker himself, Max Roach and Miles Davis, among others. At first, he was a pop singer, launching his recording career on the Roost label in 1949, but later he developed a keen interest in folk music, learning material through the Library of Congress' American folk songs archives. With guitarist and friend Millard Thomas, Belafonte soon made his debut at the legendary jazz club The Village Vanguard. In 1952, he received a contract with RCA Victor. His first widely released single, which went on to become his 'signature' song with audience participation in virtually all his live performances, was 'Matilda' (1953). His breakthrough album 'Calypso' (1956) became the first LP in the world to sell over 1 million copies within a year. It spent 31 weeks at number 1, 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the U.S. charts. The album introduced American audiences to calypso music, which had originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 20th century. Belafonte was dubbed the 'King of Calypso', a title he wore with reservations since he had no claims to any Calypso Monarch titles. One of the songs included in the album is the now famous 'Banana Boat Song' (listed as 'Day O' on the original release), which reached number five on the pop charts. His other smash hit was 'Jump in the Line'. Many of the compositions recorded for Calypso, including 'Banana Boat Song', gave songwriting credit to Irving Burgie. His triumphant success as an entertainer in the arts did not protect Belafonte from racial discrimination, particularly in the South. As a result, he refused to perform in the southern region of the United States from 1954 until 1961. Belafonte's first film role was in Bright Road (Gerald Mayer, 1953), in which he appeared alongside Dorothy Dandridge. In this low-budget film adapted from the Christopher Award-winning short story 'See How They Run' by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, Dandridge starred as an idealistic first-year elementary school teacher trying to reach out to a problem student. Belafonte played the principal of the school. The two subsequently starred in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954). The screenplay by Harry Kleiner was based on the lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1943 stage musical of the same name, set to the music of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera 'Carmen'. Ironically, Belafonte's singing in the film was dubbed by an opera singer, as Belafonte's own singing voice was seen as unsuitable for the role. Using his star clout, Belafonte was subsequently able to realise several then-controversial film roles. Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957) is about race relations and interracial romance set on the fictitious island of Santa Marta. The film was controversial at the time of its release for its hints of an affair between Belafonte's character and the character played by Joan Fontaine. The film also starred James Mason, Dorothy Dandridge, and Joan Collins. In 1959, he starred in and produced the Film Noir Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), in which he played a bank robber uncomfortably teamed with a racist partner (Robert Ryan). He also co-starred with Inger Stevens in the Science-Fiction doomsday film The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall, 1959). Belafonte was offered the role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959), based on the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin. Here he would have once again starred opposite Dorothy Dandridge, but he refused the role because he objected to its racial stereotyping. Sidney Poitier would play the role in the film. Dissatisfied with the film roles available to him, he returned to music during the 1960s.
While primarily known for calypso, Harry Belafonte has recorded in many different genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. His second-most popular hit, which came immediately after 'The Banana Boat Song', was the comedic tune 'Mama Look at Bubu', also known as 'Mama Look a Boo-Boo' (originally recorded by Lord Melody in 1955), in which he sings humorously about misbehaving and disrespectful children. It reached number eleven on the pop chart. In 1959, he starred in Tonight With Belafonte, a nationally televised special that featured Odetta. Belafonte was the first Jamaican American to win an Emmy, for Revlon Revue: Tonight with Belafonte (1959). Belafonte recorded for RCA Victor from 1953 to 1974. Two live albums, both recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1959 and 1960, enjoyed critical and commercial success. From his 1959 album, 'Hava Nagila' became part of his regular routine and one of his signature songs. He was one of many entertainers recruited by Frank Sinatra to perform at the inaugural gala of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. That same year he released his second calypso album, 'Jump Up Calypso', which went on to become another million-seller. During the 1960s he introduced several artists to American audiences, most notably South African singer Miriam Makeba and Greek singer Nana Mouskouri. His album 'Midnight Special' (1962) included a young harmonica player named Bob Dylan. As The Beatles and other stars from Britain began to dominate the pop charts, Belafonte's commercial success diminished. His 'Belafonte at The Greek Theatre' was his last album to appear in Billboard's Top 40. His last hit single, 'A Strange Song', was released in 1967 and peaked at number 5 on the charts. Belafonte has received Grammy Awards for the albums 'Swing Dat Hammer' (1960) and 'An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba' (1965). The latter album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid. In 1967, Belafonte was the first non-classical artist to perform at the prestigious Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) in Upstate New York, soon to be followed by concerts there by The Doors, The 5th Dimension, The Who, and Janis Joplin. In February 1968, Belafonte guest-hosted The Tonight Show substituting for Johnny Carson. Among his interview guests were Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. During the 1960s, he appeared on TV specials alongside such artists as Julie Andrews, Petula Clark, Lena Horne, and Nana Mouskouri. In 1968, Belafonte appeared on a Petula Clark TV special on NBC. In the middle of a song, Clark smiled and briefly touched Belafonte's arm. The show's sponsor, Plymouth Motors, wanted to cut out the segment, but Clark, who had ownership of the special, told NBC that the performance would be shown intact or not at all. American newspapers published articles reporting the controversy and, when the special aired, it grabbed huge ratings. In the early 1970s, Belafonte returned to the cinema in two films with Sidney Poitier. The Western Buck and the Preacher (Sidney Poitier, 1972) broke Hollywood Western traditions by casting blacks as central characters and portraying both tension and solidarity between African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th century. Buck and the Preacher was one of the first films directed by an African American and to be based on a band of African Americans fighting against the White majority. The film was produced by Belafonte Enterprises, Columbia Pictures Corporation, and E & R Productions Corp. Uptown Saturday Night (Sidney Poitier, 1974) is an action-comedy crime film written by Richard Wesley and starring Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Harry Belafonte. Although the film received mixed reviews, it was a commercial success and was part of the Blaxploitation wave. Later, Cosby and Poitier teamed up again, without Belafonte, for the sequels Let's Do It Again (Sidney Poitier, 1975) and A Piece of the Action (Sidney Poitier, 1977).
Harry Belafonte's recording activity slowed after he left RCA in the mid-1970s. RCA released his fifth and final Calypso album, 'Calypso Carnival' in 1971. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Belafonte spent the greater part of his time touring Japan, Europe, Cuba, and elsewhere. In 1977, he released the album 'Turn the World Around' at Columbia Records. The album, with a strong focus on world music, was never issued in the United States. He subsequently was a guest star on a memorable episode of The Muppet Show (1978), in which he performed his signature song 'Day-O' on television for the first time. However, the episode is best known for Belafonte's rendition of the spiritual song 'Turn the World Around', from the album of the same name, which he performed with specially made Muppets that resembled African tribal masks. Belafonte reprised the song at John Henson's memorial in 1990. In 1984, Belafonte produced and scored the musical film Beat Street (Stan Lathan, 1984). Set in the South Bronx, the film follows the lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends, all of whom are devoted to various elements of early hip hop culture. The cast included Rae Dawn Chong and Guy Davis. Together with Arthur Baker, Belafonte produced the gold-certified soundtrack of the same name. Beat Street's impact was felt internationally as well as throughout the United States. In Germany, for example, films as Beat Street are credited with introducing the hip-hop movement to the country. In 1985, he was one of the organisers behind the Grammy Award-winning song 'We Are the World', a multi-artist effort to raise funds for Africa, and performed in the Live Aid concert that same year. Belafonte's involvement in 'USA for Africa' resulted in renewed interest in his music, culminating in a record deal with EMI. He subsequently released his first album of original material in over a decade, 'Paradise in Gazankulu', (1988). The album contains ten protest songs against the South African former Apartheid policy and is his last studio album. As UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Belafonte attended in 1988 a symposium in Harare, Zimbabwe, to focus attention on child survival and development in Southern African countries. As part of the symposium, he performed a concert for UNICEF. A Kodak video crew filmed the concert, which was released as a 60-minute concert video titled Global Carnival. Also in 1988, Tim Burton used 'The Banana Boat Song' and 'Jump in the Line' in his film Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988). Belafonte appeared with John Travolta in the film drama White Man's Burden (1995), about racism in an alternative America where black and white Americans have reversed cultural roles. The film was written and directed by Desmond Nakano. The film revolves around Louis Pinnock (Travolta), a white factory worker, who kidnaps Thaddeus Thomas (Belafonte), a black factory owner for firing him over a perceived slight. The film gained a negative reception from the critics and was not a box office success. For Robert Altman's jazz age drama Kansas City (1996), he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. Kansas City, which stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson, is also notable for its musical score being integrated into the film, with modern-day musicians recreating the Kansas City jazz of 1930s. For instance, Craig Handy played the role of Coleman Hawkins, Geri Allen played Mary Lou Williams, and James Carter played Ben Webster. Following a lengthy recording hiatus, 'An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Friends' (1997), a soundtrack and video of a televised concert, were released by Island Records. 'The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music', a huge multi-artist project recorded by RCA during the 1960s and 1970s, was finally released by the label in 2001. Belafonte went on the Today Show to promote the album on 11 September 2001 and was interviewed by Katie Couric just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Awards for Best Boxed Recording Package, for Best Album Notes, and for Best Historical Album. On television, Harry Belafonte starred as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in the TV drama Swing Vote (David Anspaugh, 1999) with Andy Garcia. In 2006, Belafonte appeared in the film Bobby, Emilio Estevez's ensemble drama about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Belafonte played Nelson, a friend of an employee of the Ambassador Hotel (Anthony Hopkins). Belafonte received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and he won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He performed sold-out concerts globally through the 1950s to the 2000s. Owing to illness, he was forced to cancel a reunion tour with Nana Mouskouri planned for the spring and summer of 2003 following a tour in Europe. His last concert was a benefit concert for the Atlanta Opera on 25 October 2003. In a 2007 interview, he stated that he had since retired from performing. In 2017 Harry Belafonte released 'When Colors Come Together', an anthology of his music for Sony Legends produced by his son David Belafonte. David wrote a remake of 'Island In The Sun', arranged by longtime Belafonte musical director Richard Cummings featuring Harry Belafonte's grandchildren Sarafina and Amadeus and a children's choir. Always outspoken in his beliefs, Belafonte achieved widespread attention for his political views in 2002 when he began making a series of negative comments about President George W. Bush and the Iraq War. Belafonte created controversy in October 2002 when he made disparaging remarks about Secretary of State Colin Powell. Far from being upset, Powell reportedly took the remarks good-humoured, refusing to inflame the situation any further. Belafonte's other controversial political statements on U.S. foreign policy have included opposing the U.S. embargo on Cuba, praising Soviet peace initiatives, attacking the U.S. invasion of Grenada, praising the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, honouring Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and praising Fidel Castro. On a Martin Luther King Day speech at Duke University in 2006, Belafonte compared the American government to the 9/11 terrorists. Belafonte and his first wife Marguerite Byrd were married from 1948 to 1957. They have two daughters: Adrienne and Shari, who also worked as an actress. In 1957, Belafonte married his second wife Julie Robinson, a former dancer with the Katherine Dunham Company who was of Jewish descent. They had two children, David and Gina. David, the only son of Harry Belafonte, is a former model and actor and is an Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated music producer and the executive director of the family-held company Belafonte Enterprises Inc. As a music producer, David has been involved in most of Belafonte's albums and tours and productions. After 47 years of marriage, Belafonte and Robinson got a divorce. In April 2008, Harry Belafonte married photographer Pamela Frank. Recently, Belafonte returned to the cinema in Spike Lee's biographical crime film BlacKkKlansman (2018) as an elderly civil rights pioneer. Set in 1970s Colorado Springs, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. BlacKkKlansman premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. Belafonte appears in the film recounting the lynching of Jesse Washington, a black teenage farmhand who was lynched in the county seat of Waco, Texas, on 15 May 1916, in what became a well-known example of racially motivated lynching. In 2019, the film won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
TAN magazine cover of Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belefonte for the movie, Carmen Jones," 1955.
TAN magazine targeted African-American women and was published by Johnson Publishing, the same people who brought you the Ebony and Jet magazines of today.
Editor's Note: Amazingly, the headline "Will Hollywood let Negroes...." will still very pertinet question until very recently.
Vintage African American photography courtesy of Black History Album, The Way We Were.
Follow Us On Twitter @blackhistoryalb
I'm a big fan of John Sayles, who makes interesting, independent movies (his biggest mainstream hit was Lone Star). We went to see his new movie on Saturday, and to our surprise, the director and two of its stars were at the theater for a Q&A session. Below in comments I posted pics of co-stars Edward James Olmos (with Harry Belafonte as a bonus) and Yolonda Ross.
I'm not that happy with the technical quality of these photos (two of them were taken with built-in flash, which I really don't like to use, but there was no other way), and I usually don't post "celeb shots", but I wanted to do my small part in promoting this great little movie: like all of his movies, it is quirky and character driven and not anything like your typical Hollywood fare. The move is called "Go for Sisters", and you can check out the website here: goforsistersmovie.com/.
More Street Portraits
Uptown Saturday Night
Uptown Saturday Night is a 1974 comedy film written by Richard Wesley, and directed by Sidney Poitier, who also stars in this film, along with Bill Cosby and Harry Belafonte. Cosby and Poitier teamed up again for Let's Do It Again (1975) and A Piece of the Action (1977). Although their characters have different names in each film, the three films are considered to be a trilogy. It opened to positive reviews and helped Poitier get into other films as star and director.
Contents
1 Synopsis
2 Cast
3 Television pilot
4 References in popular culture
5 Remake
6 References
7 External links
Synopsis
Steve Jackson (Sidney Poitier), a blue-collar worker at a steel mill, has just begun a two-weeks-long vacation. He is convinced by his friend Wardell Franklin (Bill Cosby) to go to a party that Saturday night at Madam Zenobia's, an uptown nightclub.
While the two are at the party, the club is robbed. The masked bandits force the patrons to strip to their underwear, then steal their money and jewelery, including Steve's wallet.
The following day, Steve is at home and reading his newspaper when he learns he has won the lottery. However, he realizes that the lottery ticket was in the wallet that was stolen from him, and Steve and Wardell spend the remainder of the film tracking down his wallet by consulting with crooked politicians, fake detectives, con-artists, and underworld crime bosses. As the ad for the film states: "They get funny when you mess with their money".
Cast
Sidney Poitier — Steve Jackson
Bill Cosby — Wardell Franklin
Harry Belafonte — Geechie Dan Beauford
Flip Wilson — The Reverend
Richard Pryor — Sharp Eye Washington
Calvin Lockhart — Silky Slim
Rosalind Cash — Sarah Jackson
Roscoe Lee Browne — Congressman Lincoln
Paula Kelly — Leggy Peggy
Lee Chamberlin — Madame Zenobia
Johnny Sekka — Geechie's Henchman
Lincoln Kilpatrick — Slim's Henchman #1
Don Marshall — Slim's Henchman #2
Harold Nicholas — Little Seymour Pettigrew
cameo appearances by:
Ketty Lester — Irma Franklin
Jophery C. Brown — Geechie Dan henchman
Gene McDaniels — Member of the Choir
Ray Parker Jr. — Ray
George Reynolds — Big Percy
Richard Warren — Driver
Television pilot
Shortly after the film's release, NBC commissioned a pilot for a sitcom version of Uptown Saturday Night,[1] starring Cleavon Little and Adam Wade, playing the respective roles played by Cosby and Poitier in the film. The pilot did not sell, though it was seen on NBC during the summer of 1979 as part of Comedy Theater, one of many showcases featuring unsold pilots.
References in popular culture
An episode of Martin spoofed the club/robbery scene at Madame Zenobia's. "Jerome" owns a club called "Club Shiznit" that Tommy and Cole go to visit one night. As armed masked women enter the club and rob everyone "down to the underwear," one of them overhear Cole murmur to Tommy about being relieved that they did not discover the diamond earrings he was holding for Martin (who had planned to surprise Gina with them upon their return from a trip). The masked woman motions to Cole to hand the earrings over; Tommy tells her to just shoot him for running his big mouth.
The rapper Nas referenced Madame Zenobia's in his 2006 track "Money Over Bullshit."
Macedonian house duo Latenta Project released their track "Only One Life" with Apollo Records in 2010 which includes vocal samples and references to Madame Zenobia's throughout the track, featuring remixes by Those Twins, Artette and Ocean Gaya.
The 1996 album Uptown Saturday Night by the rap duo Camp Lo was named after the movie, with one member (Geechie Suede) taking his stage name from the film.
Remake
In 2002, it was announced that Will Smith and his production company, Overbrook Entertainment, had secured the rights to the trilogy for remakes to star Smith and to be distributed by Warner Bros. Smith stated that he hoped to get Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence and other famous African-American stars to be in the films.[2][3] In 2012, it was revealed that Adam McKay will direct the remake of Uptown Saturday Night, with Smith and Denzel Washington in the leads.[
abgetippter Text siehe Kommentar. Typewritten version: see comment.
auf dem blauen Boden in der blauen Küche: Einpackpapier, Bananenaufkleber mit heutigem Datum ja natürlich bio fairtrade merkur, Marker grün, Tinte gelb, Bananen zum Beschweren des Papiers, Bananenschale als Pinsel
Part of: "an apple a day keeps the doctor away - An ENSO (circle, Kreis) a day .... " Aktion Kreis Tagebuch A circle diary - Start of the Project: 1. September // color: blue + yellow = green
Diptych:
DMC-G2 - P1850634 - 2014-10-11
DMC-G2 - P1850638 - 2014-10-11
Photographer: unknown
Date: 1965
Medium: Black and white photograph
Repository: American Jewish Historical Society
Parent Collection: American Jewish Congress Collection (I-77)
Location: Original photograph found in Box 744, Folder 41 of the American Jewish Congress Collection (I-77).
Call Number: aa-i77-b744-f41-014
Persistent URL: access.cjh.org/1432401
Rights Information: No known copyright restrictions; may be subject to third party rights. For more copyright information, click here.
See more information about this image and others at CJH Digital Collections.
To inquire about rights and permissions, or if you have a question regarding the collection to which the image belongs, please contact the Reference Department of the American Jewish Historical Society by email.
Digital images created by the Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory at the Center for Jewish History.
These scans come from my rather large magazine collection. Instead of filling my house with old moldy magazines, I scanned them (in most cases, photographed them) and filled a storage area with moldy magazines. Now they reside on an external hard drive. I thought others might appreciate these tidbits of forgotten history.
Please feel free to leave any comments or thoughts or impressions... They are happily appreciated!
Enjoy!
Dutch postcard by D.R.C., Holland, no. 1172. Photo: MGM /Ufa.
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927) is one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
See for more vintage postcards of Hollywood stars our sets Vintage B&W Hollywood and Hollywood Colour Postcards. Or enjoy and please join these wonderful Flickr groups: Vintage American Film Stars or Classic Movie Star Postcards.
Long time ago in Bethlehem
So the Holy Bible say
Mary's boy child, Jesus Christ
Was born on Christmas Day.
Hark now hear the angels sing
A king was born today
And man will live for evermore
Because of Christmas Day.
Mary's Boy Child carol - recorded by Harry Belafonte and BoneyM
The Seven Sorrows of Mary rosary devotion.
Detail of the jukebox at Daddypop's in PA, the world's best diner.
Part of Explore Interestingness for July 7, 2006.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4022. Photo: Centfox. Publicity still for Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957).
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927) is one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
See for more vintage postcards of Hollywood stars our sets Vintage B&W Hollywood and Hollywood Colour Postcards. Or enjoy and please join these wonderful Flickr groups: Vintage American Film Stars or Classic Movie Star Postcards.
Postcard with a photo of a music magazine cover released in 1957, featuring Elvis Presley, Harry Belafonte and Tommy Sands. This is from a postcard book called Rip It Up, featuring photos of the music scene in the late 1950s. Sent to a Postcrossing member in the United States.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 3793. Photo: Centfox. Publicity still for Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957).
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927) is one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
See for more vintage postcards of Hollywood stars our sets Vintage B&W Hollywood and Hollywood Colour Postcards. Or enjoy and please join these wonderful Flickr groups: Vintage American Film Stars or Classic Movie Star Postcards.
German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3791. Photo: Centfox. Publicity still for Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957).
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927) is one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
See for more vintage postcards of Hollywood stars our sets Vintage B&W Hollywood and Hollywood Colour Postcards. Or enjoy and please join these wonderful Flickr groups: Vintage American Film Stars or Classic Movie Star Postcards.
Nana up to more of her tricks. Harry was actually romantically linked with Auntie Eileen – who had just nipped off to get some doughnuts – so sliding her hand up towards his wallet pocket was pointless. Eileen had the wallet, to pay for the 'nuts. Silly girl!
Six foot, seven foot, eight foot, BUNCH!
Daylight come and he wan' go home....
~ Harry Belafonte, Banana Boat
I know, this is pretty dumb. LOL! but somebody gave us this huge bunch of bananas and i thought I'd use it as a prop.
British postcard in the Greetings series. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte in Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger, 1954). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
In four days, on 14 February 2023, it will be Valentine's Day and for everyone who believes in romance, there will be a La Collectionneuse special on our blog European Film Star Postcards!
German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4282. Photo: Leslie Frewin Organisation Ltd.
Singer, actor, composer, author, and producer Harry Belafonte (1927) is one of the most successful African-American artists in history. As the 'King of Calypso', he popularized the Caribbean musical style internationally in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million selling album by a single artist and his hit The Banana Boat Song has become an evergreen. He also starred in several films, most notably in Otto Preminger's hit musical Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959), Robert Altman's Kansas City (1996) and Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006). Throughout his career he has been an advocate for humanitarian causes, such as the anti-apartheid movement and USA for Africa.
Click the Download Arrow (at the right). A window will open and then select View All Sizes. This will enlarge this photo so you may read it clearly.
I thought others might appreciate these tidbits of forgotten history of People of Color.
Please feel free to leave any comments or thoughts or impressions. I look forward to reading them!