The singer, actor, and activist Harry Belafonte has died. From his obituary in Variety by Chris Morris:
Singer, actor, producer and activist Harry Belafonte, who spawned a calypso craze in the U.S. with his music and blazed new trails for African American performers, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his Manhattan home. He was 96.
An award-winning Broadway performer and a versatile recording and concert star of the ’50s, the lithe, handsome Belafonte became one of the first Black leading men in Hollywood. He later branched into production work on theatrical films and telepics.
As his career stretched into the new millennium, his commitment to social causes never took a back seat to his professional work.
I think that Mr. Belafonte has been somewhat overshadowed, unfairly I think, by Sidney Poitier, his precise contemporary. Not only did he have hit records while Sidney Poitier was still playing supporting roles, he began playing leading men in movies before Mr. Poitier. To the best of my knowledge he was the first black actor to have a white love interest (in The World, the Flesh, and the Devil) almost ten years before Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. None of that is to take anything away from Mr. Poitier—I just think a revival of interest in Harry Belafonte is long overdue.
Yep.