Belafonte and Dandridge movie an Island in the Sun
been the only white woman in Katherine Dunham ' s dance troupe , The Amsterdam News wrote , " Many negroes wonder why a man who waved the flag of justice for his race should part with a black woman to take a white woman ”. When RCA Victor , his record company , promoted him as the " king of calypso ", Mr Belafonte was denounced as pretentious in Trinidad , the recognized birthplace of this fast-paced music , where an annual competition is held to choose a calypso king . Yet he himself never claimed to be a purist when it came to calypso , or any of the other traditional styles he adopted , much less to be the king of calypso . He and his fellow songwriters loved folk music , he said , but saw nothing wrong with shaping it for their own ends . " Purism is the best cover for mediocrity ," he told the New York Times in 1959 . " If there is no change , we might as well go back to the first ' ugh ,' which must have been the first song ." In 1936 , Harry , his mother and his younger brother , Dennis , moved to Jamaica where they spent 8 years of their childhood . Unable to find work there , his mother returned to New York , leaving him and his brother in the care of relatives who , as Belafonte later recalled , were either " unemployed or aside the law ". Belafonte and his brother had to join their mother in Harlem in 1940 .
Mr . Belafonte facing incapacitating dyslexia dropped out of George Washington High School in Upper Manhattan in his early teens . In 1944 he enlisted in the Navy , where he was assigned to load munitions aboard ships . ships . Black shipmates introduced him to the work of W . E . B . DuBois and other African- American authors and urged him to study black history . He received further encouragement from Marguerite Byrd , the daughter of a middle-class Washington family , whom he met while stationed in Virginia studying psychology at the Hampton Institute ( now Hampton University ) . They married in 1948 . He and Mrs . Byrd had two children , Adrienne Biesemeyer and Shari Belafonte , who survive him , as do his two children with Mrs . Robinson , Gina Belafonte and David ; and eight grandchildren . He and Mrs . Robinson divorced in 2004 , and he married Pamela Frank , a photographer , in 2008 . She also survives him , with a stepdaughter , Sarah Frank ; a stepson , Lindsey Frank ; and three stepgrandchildren . Returning to New York from his military service , Mr . Belafonte became interested in acting and enrolled in the G . I . Bill Erwin Piscator ' s drama workshop , where his classmates included Marlon Brando and Tony Curtis . He first took the stage at the American Negro Theater in Manhattan , where he worked as a stagehand and where he would meet his friend and fellow theater novice , Sidney Poitier .
Flashmag ! issue 140 April 2023
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