I met and listened to the great Harry Belafonte only once. It was during a press junket round-table for Desmond Nakano‘s White Man’s Burden (Savoy, 12.1.95), a racially reversed fantasy about American prejudice and injustice.
I immediately fell in love with Belafonte’s sparkling eyes, bountiful spirit and somewhat bawdy vocabulary (i.e., lotsa fucks), and within 30 seconds I was muttering to myself that this guy should have been the star of the movie, and not so much “Thaddeus Thomas,” the powerful pillar of society whom Belafonte played in the film.
This was my first Belafonte recollection when I read of his death this morning. The second was the fact that in his late 20s and 30s the Jamaican-born Belafonte was easily one of the most handsome…indeed one of the most beautiful famous guys in the big-time showbiz orbit. He was 68 when I met him in late ’95, and in my eyes wasn’t the least bit diminished.
The third was his magnificent, made-for-Calypso singing voice — “Jamaica Farewell,” “Man Smart, Woman Smarter,” “Jump In The Line,” “Day-O”, “Matilda,” “Scarlet Ribbons.”
The fourth was his ballsy endorsement of Bernie Sanders in early 2016, which meant something given that most POCs felt that Bernie, despite having proven his liberal humanist bona fides time and again, was too much of a Vermont white guy to warrant their support.
The fifth was the fact that Belafonte was among the first big-time celebs to ally with Martin Luther King in the early ’60s, not only marching shoulder to shoulder but providing financial support.
Below: Belafonte, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Sidney Poitier and Charlton Heston discussing the civil rights struggle in Washington, D.C., hours after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which culminated in King‘s “I Have A Dream” speech, on Wednesday, 8.28.63. All the noteworthy lefties of the day (including Bob Dylan) were there.