Harry Belafonte, EGOT Winner and Activist, Dead at 96
etonline.comUptown Saturday Night, Island in the Sun, Odds Against Tomorrow, Carmen Jones, The World, theFlesh and the Devil, White Man's Burden, and most recently, Spike Lee’s 2018 film, BlacKkKlansman.In childhood, Belafonte lived somewhat nomadically, traveling between the Caribbean and New York City, where he was born on March 1, 1940.
The son of Jamaican immigrants, Belafonte spent his pre-teen years living in Jamaica with his grandmother before moving back to Harlem, New York, where he attended high school.After joining the Navy during World War I, Belafonte returned to the Big Apple to find work.
Unsure of what he wanted to do as a profession, he initially worked as a janitor’s assistant. “The job could not be considered artistic, but I did the job artistically," he told NPR in 2011.“I loved mopping the halls, and I tried to look a little like Charlie Chaplin on skates as I just rushed up and down the hallway with a wet mop, trying to take the boredom out of all day long mopping halls and hauling garbage and stoking furnaces,” he recalled. “But it paid off, because one day I did a repair at a tenant's apartment and they gave me, as a gratuity, two tickets to a theater.
So I went to this place, the American Negro Theater, and it was there that the universe opened for me.”Sitting in the audience was an exciting, albeit “overwhelming,” experience for Belafonte who intern discovered his talent for performing.
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