When was harry belafonte popular

In , Belafonte married his second wife Julie Robinson, a former dancer. They had two children, David and Gina. After 47 years of marriage, Belafonte and Robinson divorced. David, Belafonte's only son, is a former model and actor and is an Emmy-winning and Grammy nominated music producer. He is the executive director of the family-held company Belafonte Enterprises Inc.

Gina Belafonte is a TV and film actress, who helped found The Gathering For Justice, a non-profit organization working to reintroduce nonviolence. Harry Belafonte started his career in music as a club singer in New York, helping to pay for his acting classes. The first time he performed in front of an audience, was when he was backed by the Charlie Parker band, which featured Charlie Parker, Max Roach and Miles Davis, among others.

The music he loved the field hollers and chain-gang songs of the prewar South; the work laments of Jamaica stressed the mutual or shared experience. Anger can be crippling when it festers in isolation. Belafonte figured out how to push anger outward by bringing others close. By Amanda Petrusich. More: Harry Belafonte Music Protest. The New Yorker Recommends What our staff is reading, watching, and listening to each week.

Enter your e-mail address. Culture Desk. The New Yorker Radio Hour. The troubled marriage eventually ended in divorce. In , Belafonte married Julie Robinson.

They had a son, David, and a daughter, Gina. Gina became an actress, as well, starring in the s hit television series, "The Commish. Belafonte first studied acting at a dramatic workshop affiliated with the New School for Social Research and run by German director, Erwin Piscator.

Belafonte's recording of "Calypso," with RCA Victor in , was the first recording ever to sell over one million copies. That same year he won a Tony award on Broadway for his performance in a musical revue, "Three for Tonight. Carmen Jones, was the first movie with an entirely black cast to become a box office success. I'm the guy in the cutaway shirt and the tight pants, the guy doing all those catchy songs. People have always brought this image of me into the theater with them, and no matter what I've felt internally, they just wouldn't buy a lot of the things I was trying to project.

Whether Belafonte appeared on television, film or live concerts, the American public was unaware of his anger. He received Grammy awards for recordings in , , and In , he was recognized as a Kennedy Center Honoree, the annual award recognizing careers of distinction in the arts. His complete recording history numbers in the thousands. His soft melodic voice crossed any barriers of racial prejudice, whether or not he approached that subject directly.

After completing work on the light-hearted comedy, "Uptown Saturday Night" in , Belafonte made few films, until he was approached by director Robert Altman in It was unlike any role he had ever taken—breaking his stereotype as a happy, easy-going character.

To have Bob Altman believe that I could do it strongly enough never to let the audience even think of the 'Belafonte' they're familiar with, but just to stick completely to what the character does, was an enormous trust.

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