When I met Harry Belafonte

It was the spring of 2011 — a dozen years ago, almost exactly — when I met Harry Belafonte at a London hotel. Mayfair; a bright spring day. He had just published his eloquent autobiography, My Song; a documentary about his life, Sing Your Song, was about to be released. I’ve been fortunate enough to interview a great many remarkable people in my time, but spending time with Harry Belafonte was a truly extraordinary experience; and to feel a real personal connection with him, even more so.

I hardly need to recount his achievements here. “A question most asked is: When in my artistic journey did I become an activist?” he said to me in his distinctive husky voice. “And I’ve answered that you’ll probably have an easier time if you look at it the other way.” His album Calypso spent 31 weeks in the Billboard charts when it was released in 1956; it was the first album by a single artist to sell over a million copies. Where Harry led, Elvis followed. But his support of the Civil Rights movement was central to his life. He formed a deep friendship with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; he funded King’s operations, seeding the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and becoming one of the principal fund-raisers for Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He knew, and worked with, President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. All three of those great men were assassinated; in that sunny, comfortable room I asked Belafonte what it was like to know they were gone, had been taken from the world, and that he remained behind to continue the work. It was tough, he said, it was tough.

“Often when I become frustrated, and reach a place of enormous doubt, that this thing” — the world’s inequality, the injustice he saw all around — “will ever be fixed, I call up my memories with them,” he told me. “I have in my computer all of Dr. King’s speeches; I can tap into them, anywhere, and listen to him. And I’ll do this especially if there’s a problem facing me. I may not find a specific answer, but just hearing his voice, and recalling how he came to that moment to make this kind of speech, to make the selections that he did because of the problems he was facing, and what he demanded of us in the service of his mission — that keeps me on point. Because then I say to myself, I really have no right to give in. Too many have paid too great a price. So the very last thing I would do is to give in.”

He was 84 years old when we met. He was 6’ 1” and completely unbowed by his years. I offer a sincere apology to every man I know when I say: he was the most attractive men I ever met and — I am certain — ever will meet. His New York Times obituary calls him “handsome and charismatic”: but, my friends, that hardly begins to cover it. The light in his eye, the warmth of his smile, the breadth of his chest in the green sweater he wore that day… oh, my. His was a beautiful presence, the presence of someone who lived in truth and in the fullness of his intention and his art. I knew how lucky I was just to be there.

And then we made a special link, one I’ll remember to the end of my days. As we spoke informally, the tape recorder no longer running, I told him that my parents had worked for the Muppets. When I was growing up, their job was to answer all the Muppets’ fan mail. Yes, really; if you head to the Jim Henson Exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, you’ll see my Mom’s handwriting framed on the wall — but that’s another story. The point is that my folks knew Jim well and loved him — and Harry Belafonte did too.

Harry and Jim met in 1978 to prepare for Belafonte’s star turn on The Muppet Show in 1979; as Henson archivist Karen Falk writes on the Muppet blog Jim Henson's Red Book, the two felt an immediate connection and built an enduring friendship. Harry Belafonte penned an introduction to a coffee table book, Jim Henson: The Works, published in 1993 — three years after Henson’s shocking and sudden death at the age of just 53. At Henson’s funeral, he sang “Turn the World Around”, the song he wrote for his appearance on the show.

If you’ve never seen it, those few moments of The Muppet Show — Harry Belafonte singing with a group of specially-made puppets whose faces are authentic recreations of African masks — you have a treat in store. To my mind, they are one of the most extraordinary moments of television ever made. The gorgeous music, the extraordinary artistry of the Muppets, and Belafonte’s evident joy at interacting with them never fail to lift my spirits. It is perfection, pure and simple; and Henson himself regarded the episode with Belafonte as one of the finest his team made.

Do you know who I am?

Do I know who you are?

See we one another clearly?

Do we know who we are?

When Belafonte and I spoke, my parents had been gone for a few years; Jim Henson too, of course. His eyes grew wide as I told him of my bond with this creative aspect of his life; he rose from his chair, and I did too, and we embraced, standing for a long moment remembering those who were no longer with us and the wonders they had made. I didn’t need to be told how special Belafonte’s work with Jim Henson had been to him; but it was extraordinarily meaningful to hear it from the man himself.

In our conversation he had spoken about his beloved mother, Melvine, born in Jamaica, who worked as a domestic and instilled in him his values of hard work and self-belief. “My mother said something to me, and I quoted it in the picture,” he said, speaking of the film Sing Your Song. “’Never wake up in the day that there’s something you could do to change injustice, and know that you didn’t step into the fray.’”

Harry Belafonte spent his life in that fray, never giving up hope, always believing that there was something he could do, that we all could do, to change things. That if we choose, we can — you know what’s coming, don’t you? — turn the world around. Rest in peace, Harry Belafonte. Godspeed. Thank you.