Harry Belafonte Exposed the 2 Stars Who Risked Everything for Him and the 2 Who Betrayed Him

Harry Belafonte was born in Harlem on March 1, 1927, to a Jamaican mother and a father from Martinique. He served in the U.S. Navy in World War II, studied at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau and Sidney Poitier, won a Tony Award in 1954, and in 1956 released Calypso, the first LP ever to sell a million copies. In 1957 he outsold Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, and in 1959 he became the first Black performer to win an Emmy. He bailed Martin Luther King Jr. out of a Birmingham jail, helped organize the March on Washington, and told his story in his 2011 memoir My Song, written with Michael Shnayerson. He died on April 25, 2023, at his home on Manhattan's Upper West Side, at age 96. This video examines four stars whose choices revealed who truly stood with Harry Belafonte and who did not. Two of them risked everything for him: Joan Fontaine, who received hundreds of hate letters for playing his love interest in Island in the Sun, and Marlon Brando, his classmate from acting school who kept answering his call from 1963 through 1968. Two of them betrayed him: Otto Preminger, who made him a leading man in Carmen Jones and then dubbed his singing voice, and Charlton Heston, who stood beside him at the 1963 March on Washington and later used that day to defend "white pride." What's covered in this video: - #4 Otto Preminger (The Betrayer): In Carmen Jones (1954), Preminger had Belafonte's singing dubbed by LeVern Hutcherson and Dorothy Dandridge's by Marilyn Horne, leaving only Pearl Bailey singing in her own voice. Belafonte later turned down the role of Porgy in Preminger's Porgy and Bess (1959), calling the material racially demeaning. - #3 Joan Fontaine (The Real Friend): The Oscar winner played Belafonte's love interest in Island in the Sun (1957), received hundreds of hate letters stuffed with coins, and turned them over to the FBI. Producer Darryl F. Zanuck banned any kissing, and Fontaine and Belafonte worked out the famous shared-coconut scene themselves. - #2 Charlton Heston (The Betrayer): Heston marched for integration in Oklahoma City in 1961 and co-chaired the Hollywood delegation at the March on Washington in 1963. In a December 7, 1997 speech to the Free Congress Foundation, he defended white pride and said Martin Luther King would have agreed with him, and repeated the march as his credential at Harvard Law School in 1999. - #1 Marlon Brando (The Real Friend): Belafonte's classmate from the late 1940s co-chaired the 1963 Hollywood delegation, helped raise money during 1964's Freedom Summer, walked away from the lead in The Arrangement after King's assassination, and spoke at a Black Panther's funeral rally in Oakland on April 12, 1968. Mentioned in this video: Harry Belafonte, My Song, Michael Shnayerson, Calypso, American Negro Theatre, Dramatic Workshop of the New School, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Revlon Revue: Tonight With Belafonte, CBS, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, March on Washington, Freedom Summer, Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show, Robert Kennedy, Otto Preminger, Carmen Jones, Oscar Hammerstein, Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll, Brock Peters, LeVern Hutcherson, Marilyn Horne, Bosley Crowther, Bright Road, Porgy and Bess, Sidney Poitier, Joan Fontaine, Olivia de Havilland, Alfred Hitchcock, Rebecca, Suspicion, Island in the Sun, Darryl F. Zanuck, Robert Rossen, Alec Waugh, James Mason, Joan Collins, John Justin, Ebony, American Legion, Ku Klux Klan, FBI, Charlton Heston, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Planet of the Apes, Screen Actors Guild, Anna Maude Cafeteria, Philip Dray, United States Information Agency, Free Congress Foundation, Harvard Law School, National Rifle Association, Gregory Peck, Ice-T, Cop Killer, Time Warner, Marlon Brando, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Sacheen Littlefeather, James Garner, Joyce Ladner, The Arrangement, Elia Kazan, Kirk Douglas, Black Panther Party, Bobby Hutton, Bobby Seale, Oakland, Selma, Tony Bennett, Joan Baez, We Are the World, UNICEF #HarryBelafonte, #GoldenAgeHollywood, #HollywoodSecrets