Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier shared one theatre ticket, swapping seats between acts
As broke young men in 1940s New York, Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier would buy a single seat for a local play and take turns watching, trading places at each interval and filling each other in on the plot. A decade later, Belafonte's album Calypso became the first LP by one artist to sell a million copies.
Born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. in Harlem on March 1, 1927, to Jamaican-born parents, a chef and a housekeeper, he spent 1932 to 1940 with a grandmother in Jamaica. Back in New York he struggled at high school, later linked to undiagnosed dyslexia and blindness in one eye, dropped out and served in the Navy during the Second World War. Working afterwards as a janitor's assistant, he was tipped by a tenant with two tickets to the American Negro Theater, and fell for the stage.
Acting classes under Erwin Piscator at the New School put him in a room with Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau and Poitier. To pay for them he sang in clubs, and at his first appearance his backing band included Charlie Parker, Max Roach and Miles Davis. He began as a pop singer in 1949 but was soon mining the Library of Congress's folk song archives, and in 1953 he signed with RCA Victor, staying until 1974.
After the film Carmen Jones in 1954 came Calypso in 1956. It spent 31 weeks at number one in the US and brought a Trinidadian style from the early 19th century to American listeners; its Day-O reached number 5 on the pop chart. Critics crowned him King of Calypso, a label he accepted uneasily since he had never won an actual Calypso Monarch title.
He regarded Paul Robeson as a mentor and was among the people Martin Luther King Jr. trusted most in the civil rights years. Honours included three Grammys, an Emmy, a Tony for a 1954 Broadway revue, and in 2014 the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, a non-competitive Oscar that completed his set of all four. His last film role came in Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman in 2018, and he died on April 25, 2023.
Source: Harry Belafonte
