Harry Belafonte has been called “the consummate entertainer” – an artist in every field in which he has participated – a concert singer, a recording artist, a movie, Broadway, and television star and producer.

Belafonte was born in Harlem in New York City. Overwhelmed and intimidated by its ghetto streets and thinking the islands to be a safer place, his immigrant mother sent him back to the island of her birth, Jamaica. The island and all its variety became a cultural reservoir that he drew upon for his artistic expression. At the outbreak of World War II, his mother retrieved him from the island and brought him back to Harlem. He tried to adapt to his new environment, but found it difficult. Before finishing high school, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served for almost two years as a munitions loader. After his tour of duty ended, he was honorably discharged. He then returned to New York where he worked both in the garment center and as a janitor’s assistant.

For doing repairs in an apartment, Belafonte was given, as his gratuity, a ticket to a production of “Home is the Hunter” at the American Negro Theatre (A.N.T.), a Harlem community theater. For the first time, he came face to face with what would be his destiny – a life in the performing arts. He joined the Dramatic Workshop of the New School of Social Research. Under the tutelage of the famed German director Erwin Piscator, he studied alongside classmates that included Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, Rod Steiger and Tony Curtis. For his first Broadway appearance in John Murray Anderson’s Almanac, he received the coveted Tony award. Since that launching, Belafonte has sustained an inordinately successful career.