Harry Belafonte, singer, actor and civil rights activist, dies
Harry Belafonte, the award-winning entertainer who fueled an international calypso craze in the 1950s with his version of the “Banana Boat Song” and whose long career in show business paralleled his off-stage role as a civil rights activist and globe-trotting humanitarian, has died in New York.
Belafonte, who squeezed so much into his decades-long career that it was difficult to fathom it all, died at his Manhattan home Tuesday of congestive heart failure, his longtime spokesman Ken Sunshine said Tuesday. His wife Pamela was by his side.
The Harlem-born son of poor Caribbean immigrants, Belafonte soared to fame in the early '50s as a folk balladeer whose success as a performer and recording artist grew to encompass the Broadway stage, movies, television, Las Vegas showrooms and concert venues.
Described in Look magazine in 1957 as the first Black matinee idol in entertainment history, the tall, trim and smoothly handsome singer amassed an impressive string of early accolades in an era when Black actors were mostly cast as maids, domestic helpers and laborers.
In 1954, he became the first Black man to win a Tony Award — for best featured actor
