Harry Belafonte passed d!ed at the age of 96. Paula M. Witt of Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis reports that Belafonte p@ssed away on Tuesday(April 25) at his New York home from congestive heart failure with his wife Pamela at his side.
Belafonte was well-known for many things, including his singing, acting, and support of the civil rights movement. The man who founded Motown has fond memories of Belafonte, too.
For example, Berry Gordy told Fox News Digital, “My friend, Harry Belafonte, was truly a man of cause, conviction, and principle.” In addition to being a great performer, he was also a prominent political figure throughout the Civil Rights struggle. The day Harry and I participated in the 1968 Poor People’s March to Freedom is seared into my memory.
I want to express my deepest sympathies to his loved ones for their loss. Belafonte has been influential in the music industry since the 1950s. In 1954, he won a Tony for his portrayal as the lead in “Almanac,” a play by John Murray Anderson. Five years later, in 1980, his television notable “Tonight with Harry Belafonte” earned him the first Black actor to win an Emmy.
In addition, he shared the screen with Dorothy Dandridge in the 1954 smash hit musical “Carmen Jones,” which had an all-Black ensemble and was directed by Otto Preminger. The 1957 film “Island in the Sun,” starring Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine in an interracial rom@nce, was banned in several Southern communities after the Ku Klux Klan threatened theater owners.
The 1950s singer became famous for hits like “Day-O” and “Jamaica Farewell.” After just two years between releases, in 1954, his second album, “Belafonte,” landed at number one on the Billboard album list.
His third studio album, “Calypso,” became his most successful commercially. It was the first record by a solo artist to sell over a million copies in the United States. Belafonte has been married three times and has four children from his marriage to his third wife, photographer Pamela Frank.
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Besides his wife, Belafonte is survived by his four daughters and a son: Adrienne Belafonte Biesemeyer, Shari Belafonte, Gina Belafonte, and David Belafonte; and eight grandchildren. Over the years, the singer and actor battled prostate c@ncer. Even when he felt better, he didn’t stop spreading knowledge about the disease via his talks.
He thought he could “improve” other people’s c@ncer experiences by talking about his own. In The Los Angeles Times, he said he had “watched people speak about c@ncer in varying degrees of misinformation for a long time.”
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