Documentary honors legendary singer and activist Harry Belafonte
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Harry Belafonte in Los Angeles on his way to meet ex-gang members in the documentary "Sing Your Song."
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"Sing Your Song" doubles as a 105-minute argument for Harry Belafonte to receive Oscar's Jean Hersholt Award for his humanitarian work.
It's a celebratory look at an entertainer who was the first artist to sell more than 1 million albums but who also became a partner in the struggle for civil rights alongside Martin Luther King Jr., who saw children dying of hunger in Ethiopia and did something about it, who championed the release of Nelson Mandela and who called a meeting of the elders to fight "incarceration ... the new slavery."
"Sing Your Song" made the first cut for Oscar consideration but didn't advance from the shortlist of 15 to the five nominees.
It's told in conventional, chronological fashion and pairs excellent archival footage with recollections and interviews with the likes of Sidney Poitier, Coretta Scott King, Diahann Carroll and Tom Smothers.
- Rating: No MPAA rating but PG-13 in nature due to an f-word and subject matter.
But it's not a warts-and-all look at the man who will turn 85 on March 1. His work and, especially, his activism often took him away from home, and his four children forgive or explain away his absences or preoccupation by, as son David says, noting he had two families. "Us and the family of man."
Yes, but what did he and his sisters think at the time? If they were a teeny bit angry or bewildered, that wouldn't have tarnished the legacy of their father.
The documentary, by Susanne Rostock, is a vivid reminder that Mr. Belafonte rose from the humblest of beginnings. He was born in Harlem and sent, with his brother, to live with relatives in Jamaica after his father abandoned his mother, a domestic.
He was back in New York working as a janitor's assistant when a tenant's request to fix the venetian blinds led to two free tickets to the American Negro Theatre. He was inspired and his plans to become an actor took a slight turn when he discovered he could also sing.
Mr. Belafonte earned a Tony, Emmy and two Grammys, walked away from television specials when ordered to abandon his racially mixed cast and later broke TV taboos and launched a film production company.
The sex symbol who made white teenyboppers scream survived being blacklisted, spied on by the feds (betrayed by a man he hired as his manager) and threatened by a state trooper when he attempted to use a rest room during a cross-country tour with Marge and Gower Champion in the mid-1950s.
He risked injury or death from the Klan when he accepted a harrowing mission to travel to Mississippi days after the discovery of the bodies of three civil rights workers in 1964.
"Sing Your Song" could have tempered the saintly tone with some questions about regrets Mr. Belafonte might have, his 2002 characterization of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell as a "house slave" or his assessment of today's entertainer-humanitarians.
But "Sing" is a good Black History Month choice, a continuing call to action and a salute to a man who went to the barricades on matters of race and justice, and hasn't given up on love or life.
Opens Friday at the Harris Theater, Downtown.
First Published February 9, 2012 12:00 am
