KAAAAAAAAAY-O!
He said “dead.” He said “dead.” He said “dead.” So described the scene when the coroner checked into the Belafonte residence. Yep, the Banana Boat has set sail for the great Harry Belafonte at a ripe old 96. Belafonte first set his sights on the theatre, befriending a young Sidney Potter Poitier as the duo scrapped their way through acting careers. Belafonte had respectable acting success – Almanac won him a Tony, while film roles included musical Carmen Jones opposite Dorothy Dandridge and Island in the Sun, where his relationship with Joan Fontaine was one of Hollywood’s earliest depictions of interracial romance. But he never quite achieved the movie stardom Poitier did, and music would prove his entertainment motherlode.
Belafonte hit mainstream heights few non-Satchmo black entertainers before him were accorded in wake of his 1956 album Calypso, the first LP to sell over a million copies. Headlined by his signature “Day-O (Banana Boat Song)”, which is undoubtedly playing in your head right now, the album ranged from the cheeky (“Man Smart (Woman Smarter)”) to the heartfelt (“Jamaica Farewell”) and gave calypso an American audience like no artist before or after. Subsequent hits included UK No. 1 “Mary’s Boy Child” and the infectiously catchy “Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)”, and his “Midnight Special” was the first recording released to contain playing by Bob Dylan.
He was now a superstar and fully cognizant of that significance, and from that he carved his finest legacy as a civil rights activist. Mentored by Paul Robeson, Belafonte was unflinching in his civil rights support even before his career fully took off. He was hit with the blacklist pre-Calypso, but his wit and charisma wooed Ed Sullivan, and allowed him his gravity-defying, top-concert-draw national audience. Belafonte befriended Martin Luther King Jr. in 1956 and became one of King’s closest confidants in his fight for justice, financially supporting King and arranging concerts to support the Montgomery bus boycotts.
Though Belafonte continued to record, commercial success paled post-Beatlemania next to his 50s zenith, and civil rights increasingly became his prime focus. In 1963, he bailed King out of Birmingham Jail, and co-organised the March on Washington while recruiting celebrity starpower for the march from Poitier to Charlton Heston. He bankrolled the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and continued to fund King’s family after his assassination. And he didn’t stop with America for his activism, becoming a loud voice against apartheid while bringing US prominence to South African artists including Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela.
Belafonte continued to break ground on TV, and 1968 was a fruitful year: he hosted The Tonight Show for a week (not the very first black guest host – that was Sammy Davis Jr. – but still a milestone), and went against the ire of Southern sponsors on a Petula Clark special when Pet did a daringly risqué move – touching Belafonte’s arm for a few seconds. He had a longtime association with Jim Henson, and bore heavy influence shaping his 1978 episode of The Muppet Show, one of the series’ best. His episode ends with a performance (accompanied by Muppets based off African masks) of African spiritual “Turn the World Around”, with a poignant message that we don’t have a lot of time on this world, but there is a lot we can do with the time we have. He later performed the song at Henson’s funeral.
He returned to film on an intermittent basis, including 70s Poitier collaborations Buck and the Preacher and Uptown Saturday Night, an award-winning 90s role as a gangster in Robert Altman’s Kansas City, and his final role in 2018 playing an aged civil rights pioneer in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansmen. His extraordinary career racked up many honours, including a rare EGOT, the Kennedy Center Honors, and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction as an Early Influence. The fire in his belly never diminished, and he added the fights against poverty and AIDS to his later-life campaigns. He was a blunt critic of George W. Bush, even during Dubya’s post-9/11 honeymoon, though sometimes veered into gaffe territory, and formed alliances with dubious Bush foes such as Hugo Chávez. He likewise did not go easy on Obama, and co-chaired the Woman’s March on Washington after Trump’s election.
Like all great men, Belafonte was not without his flaws. He had affairs and bouts of temper. There were spats with those closest in his life – he argued with Poitier over career differences, and relations grew so frigid with the King family that he sued the surviving King children in 2013 over ownership of some of King’s documents. He masterminded “We Are the World”. But all that pales next to his towering accomplishments, that of a man who achieved the unthinkable in becoming a star entertainer while black and outspoken in segregationist 50s America, and rather than slink into comfort when he got to the top, unyieldingly used his platform to fight for justice no matter how it imperiled his career and life.
Or to sum it up another way, at the end of that Muppet Show episode, Statler and Waldorf didn’t make fun of him. Perhaps the ultimate mark of respect!
Last year’s Drop 40 exodus meant a good few geriatric A-listers were going to get their time in the limelight, and a six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch of you lifted Belafonte onto the Drop 40 docks. Among his pickers were Deathlist.net, Eternity Tours, Mortem Omnibus, and jokers for Exiting The Stage, Spectre of Death, and Who Turned out the lights? Hey Mr. Tally Man, tally de points…
Harry Belafonte
1 March 1927 – 25 April 2023, aged 96
36 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀💀 + 40 = 8 POINTS, 🃏 (x3) 16 POINTS)