Harry Belafonte
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.[1]
"Belafonte" redirects here. For his album, see Belafonte (album). For other uses, see Belafonte (disambiguation).
Harry Belafonte
March 1, 1927
April 25, 2023 (aged 96)
- Harold George Belafonte Jr.
- Harry Bellanfanti Jr.
- Singer
- actor
- activist
1948–2023
4, including Shari
Vocals
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 considered the actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson to be a mentor. Belafonte was also a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and acted as the American Civil Liberties Union celebrity ambassador for juvenile justice issues.[2] He was also a vocal critic of the policies of the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations.
Belafonte won three Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy Award,[3] 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[4] and in 2022 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category.[5] He is one of the few performers to have received an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT), although he won the Oscar in a non-competitive category.
Early life[edit]
Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.[6] on March 1, 1927, at Lying-in Hospital in Harlem, New York, the son of Jamaican-born parents Harold George Bellanfanti Sr. (1900–1990), who worked as a chef, and Melvine Love (1906–1988), a housekeeper.[7][8][9] There are disputed claims of his father's place of birth, which is also stated as Martinique.[10]
His mother was the child of a Scottish Jamaican mother and an Afro-Jamaican father, and his father was the child of an Afro-Jamaican mother and a Dutch-Jewish father of Sephardic Jewish descent. Harry Jr. was raised Catholic and attended parochial school at St. Charles Borromeo.[11]
From 1932 to 1940, Belafonte lived with one of his grandmothers in her native country of Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer's Schools. Upon returning to New York City, he dropped out of George Washington High School,[12] after which he joined the U.S. Navy and served during World War II.[13][14] In the 1940s, he worked as a janitor's assistant, during which a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and befriended Sidney Poitier, who was also financially struggling. They regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play.[15]
At the end of the 1940s, Belafonte took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York City with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, and Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theater.[16] He subsequently received a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue John Murray Anderson's Almanac (1954).[17]
He also starred in the 1955 Broadway revue 3 for Tonight with Gower Champion.[18]
Business career[edit]
Belafonte liked and often visited the Caribbean island of Bonaire.[129] He and Maurice Neme of Oranjestad, Aruba, formed a joint venture to create a luxurious private community on Bonaire named Belnem, a portmanteau of the two men's names. Construction began on June 3, 1966.[130] The neighborhood is managed by the Bel-Nem Caribbean Development Corporation. Belafonte and Neme served as its first directors.[131] In 2017, Belnem was home to 717 people.[132]