orig. Harold George Belafonte, Jr.
born March 1, 1927, New York, N.Y., U.S.
U.S. singer, actor, and producer.
He was born to immigrants from Martinique and Jamaica, and he lived with his mother in Jamaica from 1935 to 1940. In the early 1950s he initiated a fad for calypso music with songs such as "Day-O (Banana Boat Song)" and "Jamaica Farewell." He starred in the films Carmen Jones (1954) and Island in the Sun (1957) and later became the first black television producer. In the 1960s and '70s he was a prominent civil-rights activist. From the 1970s onward his singing career was a secondary occupation, and he acted in films such as Uptown Saturday Night (1974) and Kansas City (1996).