Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1957)

his time, to make him too busy and too pooped to show up on the streets. Then there was a girl. A girl named Liz Her name was Liz, and she lived in a nearby building. She was "soft, dainty — and smart. She used to come down every evening to walk her dog. I'd be there accidentally on purpose at the right hydrant," laughs Harry. But he knew she was interested because she lingered and talked to him, and he wasn't a sharpie or a lady killer. What they usually talked about were serious things — the future and what they wanted out of life. Sometimes Harry would tell her about Jamaica. Sometimes they'd have arguments about practically anything. "I think she liked me because she could tell I wasn't a toughie," says Harry. "Anyway, I fell hard." Liz was "very annoyed" whenever Harry got in a street scrape. He was much sicker, himself. "I sensed a fight in all this," says Harry, "in which I didn't want to be caught. Something bigger than just fists flying. And it was. It was the tug between classes and races that I saw all around and I wanted no part of it." Because Liz went there, he enrolled in George Washington High over in Washington Heights. He'd probably have done well enough except that — again — he didn't fit. Not anywhere. Most of the students were white, which was no problem to Harry — and yet in a sense it was. He liked them. And he liked his friends in Harlem, too. So he felt like a traitor to them both, and he didn't want to feel that way. "I wanted to seek some sense of balance and sanity for my life," is how Harry expresses the vague but nagging longing to be his own man, away from the pressure and the ever-present threat of trouble in his teens. But where and how? In his junior year at high Harry Belafonte told his mother how he felt, quit school and volunteered for the Navy. He was seventeen. A natural choice The Navy was a natural choice for Harry Belafonte. His father was a sailor, and the sea had been a part of his West Indian boyhood. Navy opportunities seemed good for Negroes after new desegregation rulings. The physical handed Harry a scare in the eye test, because the right one was still weak from that scissors accident, but he secretly punched a hole in the card he held over the left eye and read the chart through that. He racked up a high I.Q. and they sent him to the famous Negro college Hampton Institute in Virginia for Ship's Service School. In fact the only discouraging thing about Harry's joining up was Liz' reaction. "She dropped me cold," he sighs. "I guess she figured a sailor was a lost cause." But somebody else made him forget about Liz almost at once. He saw her minutes after the troop train jolted to a stop at Hampton Roads. With the rest of the dirty, dishevelled and dreary trainees Harry marched on to the campus of Hampton Institute. And there on the lawn, lovely in white frocks, was "a whole slew of beautiful co-eds" having a welcoming party for freshmen. To the bunch of girl-starved beat-up boots, including Apprentice Seaman Belafonte, the vision was devastating. Eyes bugged, ranks broke, and hoarse cries rang out. When the officer finally restored order and got them moving again he was purple with rage. Result — no privileges for one and all for an indefinite period. This was tragedy to Harry. Because from one brief glimpse of a beautiful girl he had fallen instantly, hopelessly in love. Her name 76 was Marguerite Byrd; she was from Washington, D. C, and a junior majoring in teaching. Harry managed an introduction to her. Progress was very slow. "She only tolerated me," allows Harry. "I was just part of Marguerite's war effort." Still, after knowing each other two weeks, he asked her to marry him. The answer was "No." Desperately he served up his strongest pitch: "Don't break my heart. I'm off to the South Pacific any day. I might get killed." "No," she repeated. That was a low blow and suddenly they rained from all sides on Harry. Woozy from giving blood to a hemorrhaging mother in the local hospital, he drowsed on guard duty one night, got court-martialed. Out in the nick of time for a date with Marguerite, he raced over, only to discover she was out with somebody else. That did it. Harry headed for town and the first bar. He'd never drunk whisky in his life. In a few minutes he was loaded, and shouting about the injustice of it all to everyone who'd listen. When an ensign told him to shut up and get back to the base, Harry pushed him. That really did it— striking an officer. This time it was the brig. They let him out just in time to graduate. He volunteered pronto for overseas duty. The end of Marguerite? He got a few letters from Marguerite before they stopped — or got lost. "That's that," he thought. But Marguerite was yet to play her big role in Harry Belafonte's life. At Shoemaker Base an ammo ship Mike Todd's "Around the World" features 1,500 actors and 24 animals. When his cameramen were shooting a final scene off Catalina Island, Todd was entranced by a school of killer whales which suddenly appeared at sunset. Todd studied the whales at play, then turned to an assistant director and said: "Have them back here at ten tomorrow morning so that we can use them in a shot." Leonard Lyons in The Netv York Post exploded in the harbor. It blew Harry right into the hospital and out of the Navy with a medical discharge. He'd served eighteen months. He was nineteen years old. And no questions had been answered for Harry Belafonte; he still did not know what to do with his life. It was a puzzler. He had no real education and no trade. He knew almost no one. His friends at high had all graduated and scattered, and so had the street Apaches — a couple were in jail. His parents, long separated, were divorced and his mother had remarried, this time a building maintenance man. Harry bunked at home and his stepfather gave him a helper's job. But he was restless, lost. One night a friend gave him a ticket to a play staged by the American Negro Theatre and, with nothing to do, he moseyed over. Home Is the Hunter was the first play Harry Belafonte had ever seen, and, he thinks, probably the worst. But his friend took him backstage afterwards, and he stayed until three o'clock in the morning helping strike the sets. Something about the theater was strangely exciting. After work, for the next few months, he hung around there nights attaching himself to the gang. "The first right gang I ever belonged to," says Harry. The next play was Sean O'Casey's Juno And The Paycock. Harry was reading over the script to see how he could help hammer together some sets on a nickel-anddime budget. "I guess the poetry and strength of that play leaked out at id 1 confesses Harry. "Anyway, there I v. half surprised at myself, trying out for c of the big parts — and I got it, too. Sul denly I was gone. And happy to be gor The bug had bit me." Just as sudder his course was as clear as day. He h the GI Bill, didn't he? Harry Belafonte thought he knew ji where to go to learn right, from wh he'd heard around the group. The De matic Workshop met GI Bill standa; and you could cram a four-year coui into two. He signed up, the same day another curly haired fugitive from juv nile delinquency named Bernie Schwa: did. People call him Tony Curtis now. boy nobody knew much about then v. already enrolled, under his right nan Marlon Brando. They all worked like beavers — usua from nine in the morning until ten night — and often until one o'clock t next morning. They studied the classic; Ibsen, Gorky, Shaw, Shakespeare, work out in class plays, fenced, danced, design sets. Harry loved it. "I revved up t motor," is the way he expresses it. "A it hasn't slowed down since." Harry still lived at home. He had The GI bill didn't cover all his expens But there was constant tension. All relatives were plain, hard working peop' Education — his parents were all for th But, argued his mother, go after som. thing that will make you a living. Do. fritter away your youth on a wild-go' chase. You're a Negro. Negroes have work for a living, not play. Sometimes, in moments of depressi and haunting fear of failure, Harry thou;, his mother was right. After all, where v the opportunity in acting — for a Negi Hardly in Hollywood, tv or on Broadw. The most to hope for was an occasioi bit. In these lowspots, Harry miseral told himself, "Anyone like me choosing do what I'm doing must be out of mind!" But there was nothing else n that he wanted. Never suspected he had a voice Harry hit the pavements hunting a joV an acting job. Nothing. Wherever went — agents, tv, radio, movie studi Broadway — nothing. "I got so I star out the door before they could shake th heads," remembers Harry. He had to leave home. His family's d approval battered him so unbearably t finally he left and moved into a flat Bleecker Street down in the Village. W three other Workshop grads. His share the rent was only $9.50 a month, and m of the time it was hard to even get t much together. That summer he coulc even get a job in a stock company for board — no pay, just work for his fo And he couldn't even get that. Half the time he was hungry, but t wasn't nearly as bad as the hours he on his narrow bed — because there was place for him to go, no work to do — lo< ing at the stained, peeling walls and try to figure out how it would feel to live whole life on the wrong side of povei 1 With no place for him to go . . . and work for him to fill his soul with. But at that time, Harry Belafonte 1 never yet sung a note outside his o bathroom, never suspected he had a vo and never dreamed of trying it out. Then something forced him to. Suddenly Harry had a desperate need money. A lot of money. And his despera gave him the courage to walk into a jungle. Read Part II of Harry Belafonte's sf in the July issue of MODERN SCREEN, on s June 6. Harry Belafonte's currently in I Century-Fox's Island In the Sun. '