April 25 (Reuters) – Listed below are some info about actor-activist Harry Belafonte, who has died on the age of 96:
* Belafonte was born in New York’s Harlem neighborhood however his mom took him to her Jamaican homeland at an early age for a couple of years earlier than returning to New York.
* Belafonte’s “Calypso,” launched in 1956, was the primary album to promote greater than 1 million copies.
* Belafonte acquired a Tony Award in 1954 for his function in Broadway’s “Almanac” and have become the primary Black actor to win an Emmy for a 1959 tv selection particular.
* Belafonte acquired three Grammys, together with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
* Though Belafonte and co-star Dorothy Dandridge had been completed singers, their vocals within the 1954 film “Carmen Jones” had been sung by LeVern Hutcherson and Marilyn Horne.
* Belafonte’s motion pictures typically had racial themes. The prospect of his character having a relationship with a white girl performed by Joan Fontaine in “Island within the Solar” in 1954 led to threats towards theaters within the American South.
* Belafonte determined to prepare the fund-raising hit tune “We Are the World” after watching a information report on the Ethiopian famine in 1984. The tune, which raised greater than $62 million, featured superstars like Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Stevie Marvel, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Ray Charles.
* In 2002, Belafonte had likened Colin Powell, then President George W. Bush’s secretary of state, to a plantation slave who curried favor with “the grasp.” In 2006 he labeled Bush “the best terrorist on the earth” and in contrast the U.S. Homeland Safety Division to the Gestapo of Nazi Germany.
* Belafonte produced the 1984 film “Beat Avenue,” one of many first motion pictures about break-dancing and hip-hop tradition.
Writing by Invoice Trott; Modifying by Diane Craft
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