Watch These Great Harry Belafonte Screen Performances

With the dying of Harry Belafonte, America misplaced a musical genius and an icon of activism, who rose from a lifetime of poverty to considered one of huge document gross sales and sellout concert events, utilizing his fame as a performer to make clear the causes he believed in.

But Belafonte was additionally a serious film star, and although his cinematic output wasn’t precisely prolific — he appeared, surprisingly, in fewer than two dozen function movies throughout his 65-year movie profession — he made a memorable impression every time he was onscreen. Below are a couple of highlights, all obtainable to stream.

‘Carmen Jones’ (1954)

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Belafonte’s first main position was solely his second movie look, after a supporting flip within the Dorothy Dandridge automobile “Bright Road.” He reteamed with Dandridge for Otto Preminger’s movie adaptation of the Oscar Hammerstein II musical “Carmen Jones,” itself an interpretation of Bizet’s traditional opera “Carmen,” modernized and reimagined for an all-Black forged. The manufacturing was notoriously tempestuous, however Belafonte couldn’t have requested for a challenge extra suited to his abilities: The image gave him the chance to emote and smolder in equal measure because the younger soldier Joe, proving that this was no mere pop singer moonlighting in films. This was the work of a full-fledged movie star.

Yet Belafonte’s first burst of labor was short-lived. After a handful of fantastic dramatic turns within the late Fifties (most notably in Robert Wise’s “Odds Against Tomorrow,” sadly unavailable to stream), Belafonte devoted his time within the Nineteen Sixties to his civil rights activism. But he made a triumphant return to the display on this delightfully odd comedy-drama, taking part in the title position — an honest-to-goodness guardian angel who comes all the way down to earth to assist a poor Jewish tailor (the fantastic Zero Mostel) by means of a patch of dangerous luck and dangerous religion. This form of materials can simply veer into both the maudlin or the blasphemous, however Belafonte’s playful but sensible efficiency achieves the right steadiness of winking wit and mild lesson-learning.

‘Buck and the Preacher’ (1972)

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The comedian chops Belafonte exhibited in “The Angel Levine” would come to outline his finest display work within the Nineteen Seventies. Two years later, he teamed along with his fellow actor-activist Sidney Poitier for what was clearly supposed as a Black riff on “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” with Poitier and Belafonte within the titular roles of Wild West outlaws main a wagon prepare away from white bounty hunters. Poitier performs the straight man, as he usually did in comedies, permitting Belafonte to have a blast as Reverend Willis Oaks Rutherford, a con artist masquerading as a person of the fabric. When the unique director, Joseph Sargent, was fired a couple of days into capturing, Poitier took over directorial duties, launching a brand new profession in movie.

‘Uptown Saturday Night’ (1974)

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Unsurprisingly, when Poitier directed his subsequent comedy, he once more approached Belafonte to take part. Poitier co-stars on this rowdy buddy action-comedy with Bill Cosby (truthful warning), leaving Belafonte to steal scenes galore — no imply feat when showing with Flip Wilson and Richard Pryor — in his uproarious flip as Geechie Dan Beauford, a hot-tempered underworld boss. With “The Godfather” contemporary within the minds of moviegoers, Belafonte performed the position as a spoof on Marlon Brando’s already iconic efficiency as Don Vito Corleone, full with rasping voice, puffed cheeks and pencil-thin mustache. It’s an impressed piece of comedian appearing, and a reminder that the serious-minded performer was simply as snug with broad, “Saturday Night Live”-style tomfoolery.

‘Kansas City’ (1996)

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Belafonte took one other lengthy break — practically 20 years — from display appearing after “Uptown,” and even then, he appeared first as himself in a pair of star-studded Robert Altman photos (“The Player” and “Ready to Wear”). But Altman acquired yet another nice, full-length efficiency out of the performer with this era gangster comedy-drama, set within the metropolis and time of the director’s youth. As the underworld boss of Kansas City, the splendidly named and perpetually whispering Seldom Seen, Belafonte eschews his customary heat and comedian inclinations to play a genuinely menacing villain — the form of man who by no means raises his voice, as a result of he by no means has to. It’s a chilling and unforgettable flip, and signifies the form of third act he may’ve had as a personality actor had he chosen that path.

‘Sing Your Song: Harry Belafonte’ (2012)

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Instead, he selected to maintain combating. This late-in-life biographical documentary from the director Susanne Rostock, made with the participation and blessing of the person himself, veers often into hagiography and skims over the messier facets of his lengthy and complex life. But there’s a lot to have fun, you may hardly blame its makers. Edited at a quick clip from a wealth of wealthy archival supplies (movie and TV clips, residence films, newsreels) and each new and archival interviews, “Sing Your Song” celebrates Belafonte the artist, however much more, celebrates the person — and a life spent working for the causes he believed in, usually placing his personal profession and luxury in danger.

‘BlacKkKlansman’ (2018)

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Belafonte’s last movie look got here, considerably, in a piece of protest by a provocative Black filmmaker. He seems within the cameo position of the civil rights activist Jerome Turner in Spike Lee’s Oscar-winning adaptation of the Ron Stallworth memoir — however he’s additionally taking part in himself, imparting historical past and information of the wrestle for civil rights. In his single, haunting scene, Belafonte displays not solely his expertise and charisma as an actor, however the gravitas of his a long time within the trenches of the wrestle.