All through the last half of 1956, Elvis and I traded top places with each other on that Billboard chart. I’d been around a bit longer, but Elvis was now huge, after his scandalous, hip-gyrating television appearances, and so not surprisingly, his follow-up album, Elvis, knocked Calypso out of the top spot by early December.
Here, though, is the historical fact: At the end of that landmark year, generally conceded to be the birth year of rock ’n’ roll, the bestselling album wasn’t Elvis Presley or Elvis. It was Calypso. Critics took bets on which kind of music would prevail, rock ’n’ roll or calypso. Even well into 1957, many critics predicted calypso would win. John S. Wilson, reviewing my next album in mid-1957 in The New York Times, would declare, “Reports from the epidemic areas of popular music suggest that Elvis Presley and rock ’n’ roll are giving way before the onslaughts of Harry Belafonte and Calypso.”
By the end of that next year, of course, the raw power of Presley’s rhythm-and-blues rock ’n’ roll would dominate the charts, and calypso as a trend would peter out. Fortunately, I’d kept my repertoire varied, and so managed not to peter out with it. In my act, I never performed more than a handful of calypso songs, even when the trend was at its peak, and my follow-up album, An Evening with Belafonte, had folk songs from around the world—from “Hava Nageela” to “Danny Boy.” I was deeply aware of the consequences of being pigeonholed.
Calypso’s success startled the industry and set a trend. A very talented folk trio, the Tarriers, had a hit with their own version of the “Banana Boat Song.” One of the Tarriers would soon be better known as an actor: Alan Arkin.
Much as I loved having Calypso make history and sell a million copies, I was also thrilled that by the summer of 1956 it had pulled up the earlier Belafonte, because with two such different albums at the top of the charts, I couldn’t be seen as just a calypso singer. A couple of times, with Calypso at the top of the charts, I put on classic calypso clothes for The Ed Sullivan Show or The Colgate Comedy Hour and sang “Day-O” against an elaborate banana-boat backdrop. But then I put an end to that, and for the longest time afterward, I never sang the “Banana Boat Song” publicly. I didn’t want to be put in a box and categorized. Somehow I’d known, from that first audition in the Royal Roost, that I would command respect or not perform at all. Not just as an entertainer, but as a black entertainer. Race was the cutting edge in everything I did. To let myself be turned into an object of ridicule would undermine not just my stage persona, but my purpose as well.
All through this time, I kept going to Janet Kennedy for psychotherapy. Of course I said nothing to her of my new misgivings about her husband as my manager, so the therapeutic process, if it had had any value before, had a lot less now. What was the point of having a therapist if you couldn’t share your greatest concern with her? But one day I realized I was dealing with a far larger issue.
Janet, I’d noticed, always encouraged me in our sessions to share the details of my political life with her. She was fascinated by Paul Robeson; she wanted to know what I talked about with him. Instinctively, I avoided sharing details of his private thoughts about his personal life. And about Stalin and communism—he’d begun to have his doubts, especially as Russian artists that he’d met began to disappear, but the last thing he wanted was to give J. Edgar Hoover and the rest of his U.S. persecutors any reason to crow. Whatever insignificant news I did pass along, though, Janet seized on. What was that about? I wondered.
Then, with Jay, I mentioned that some black friends had come to me with a real estate investment scheme in Harlem, and it looked pretty good. I asked Jay for a check, and he balked. “It sounds like a bad idea,” he said. It might be, I said, stiffening, but these were friends and I wanted to take that chance with them. Once again, Jay’s face turned red, and his voice rose to that high-pitched squeak. My timing was bad, he said. He’d invested most of my portfolio into soybean commodities, and to undo that package right now would be costly.
Who were these Kennedys? And what was their real agenda with me? Had they come at me from any different angle, I would have asked myself that question long before. In my personal life, I was a tough judge of character; as a performer, I’d learned to be a tough negotiator. But they’d sensed the soft core that lay within. At first I’d fought to keep them from it. But the whole point of analysis was to open up. With Janet’s gentle prodding, I’d come to believe that I had to let them in, or spend the rest of my life haunted by my demons. And it had worked! As soon as I’d put down the armor and let them in, I’d felt so much better. For the first time I could express my real feelings. Even with the women in my life I hadn’t done that. Especially with the women. But what if the same two people who’d made it their mission to win my trust had an ulterior motive? I didn’t know what to believe. All I knew was that I needed help.
Through a friend, I contacted a lawyer named Charlie Katz, a very shrewd, tough, left-wing guy who worked for the longshoremen’s union. Katz had contacts in some of the same political groups that Jay Richard Kennedy had professed to be part of in the 1940s. Katz said he’d start investigating. Meanwhile, I should just avoid rousing any suspicions.
For the next few months, I kept up my regular schedule of sessions with Janet. Her curiosity in Robeson was unmistakable now, but rather than take note of it, I would just nudge the conversation down another track. And with Jay, I stopped pushing the Harlem investment idea.
Then, at last, I heard back from Charlie Katz. “I have to see you,” he said.
“Let me take a look at my calendar,” I said.
“No calendar,” Katz said. “I’m flying in today. You meet me at the airport. We’ll talk in the car.”
Charlie’s story was, quite simply, mind-boggling. The name Jay Richard Kennedy, he explained, was fake. I was dealing with one Samuel Richard Solomonick, former treasurer for the American Communist party’s Chicago operation. At some point, Katz relayed, Solomonick had absconded with a lot of the party’s money, gone south of the border, invested it, and gotten entangled in some financial fraud. When the FBI had caught up with him on the fraud charge and learned of his past with the Communist party, they’d given him a choice: go to jail or become a spy for the agency.
He’d chosen the latter.
The FBI had then given Solomonick a complete makeover, according to Katz’s sources. Plastic surgery, a new identity, and a new past. He was now Jay Richard Kennedy, an Irish-born laborer who’d come to the Midwest, survived the Dust Bowl, and worked a string of different jobs. What about his Hollywood novel, Prince Bart? I asked Katz. Was that a fake, too?
No, Katz said. The man we now knew as Kennedy really had written that book. He wasn’t without talent, and like all good con men, his lies were wrapped around a kernel of truth. But at the same time, he was working for the FBI to establish contacts with various high-profile, left-leaning artists, actors, writers, directors, and entertainers, learn what he could of any communist ties they had, and try to substantiate ties with any hard-core communists they knew.
I was all for exposing the little creep—calling the press that day. Katz shook his head. Kennedy, he pointed out, had all my money under his control, with power of attorney. If I went public, he could make life difficult for me. He might also sue, claiming I’d libeled him. Even if I won in the long run, I’d be in for a messy fight. “Let’s do this my way,” Katz said.
Katz called Kennedy’s office to make an appointment. He was now representing me, he said, and he had matters to discuss. Kennedy kept him waiting an hour in his outer office, then greeted him with a curt “So you’re here to talk about that bum?”
“Yes, Mr. Solomonick,” Katz said most pointedly, “that’s exactly what I’m here to talk about.”
The instant that Katz uttered the name Solomonick, Kennedy fell back in his chair, his face red, gagging in what almost appeared to be an epileptic fit. In raced his secretary. “What have you done to him?” she demanded of Katz. Kennedy waved her back out and had her c
lose the door behind her.
Grimly, Katz ticked off his terms. He wanted Solomonick to surrender his power of attorney, hand over all my money, and sign papers promising never to bring any legal claim against me. In return, we would sign a nondisclosure agreement, which he would sign as well, stipulating that neither side would divulge any details of the situation or go after each other in any way.
And that’s what we did. To my surprise and relief, Solomonick hadn’t stolen my money or invested it badly. It really was in soybeans, and soybeans, as it turned out, were a good investment that year, so I got all my money back and then some. I did lose all the new Hollywood friends I’d made through Jay Richard Kennedy. Richard and Ruth Conte were furious when they heard that I’d abruptly dropped Kennedy as my manager. They saw it as a betrayal on my part, as did Gene Kelly, Anthony Mann, Robert Ryan, and the rest of Kennedy’s circle. By the terms of our agreement, I could say nothing to disabuse them of that notion, nor warn them that Kennedy was their enemy, not their friend.
What lay behind this strange skulduggery? Without question the FBI was using Solomonick to dig for incriminating information about me, Paul Robeson, and other outspoken progressives. In retrospect, the whole exercise seems nutty and ridiculous, but in those early, crazy Cold War years, it was pursued in deadly earnest. I could have told those faceless FBI agents behind the scheme, if they’d asked me directly, that I was loyal to America and our Constitution, certainly more than any of them were. I no more advocated the downfall of the United States government than they did. When I spoke out on political issues, it was with the full understanding and appreciation that I lived in a democracy where I could express those views. But they had chosen to waste a lot of time and taxpayer money trying to prove otherwise.
Unburdened of a manager and a therapist, not to mention two surrogate parents, I managed to land my next big Hollywood role on my own, just by answering the phone.
Darryl Zanuck, the imperious head of Twentieth Century–Fox, didn’t ask me if I wanted to star in his next film, Island in the Sun. In typical Zanuck fashion, he just told me I was doing it. “You’re more than perfect for it,” he told me. “Quite frankly, there’s no one else I can even think of casting for the role. If you don’t sign on, I won’t make the film. God knows I’ve got enough people telling me not to do it.” Assuming I did sign on, I would be matched up for the third time with Dorothy Dandridge, but she wouldn’t be my love interest. That would be the very beautiful Joan Fontaine.
Alec Waugh, the older brother of novelist Evelyn Waugh, had reached the best-seller list the year before with his steamy tale of passion and politics set in the West Indies. With the success of my album Calypso coming right after it, the Caribbean was suddenly hot. And Zanuck was right: who better to play the movie role of a people’s leader on the fictional island of Santa Marta, giving fiery political speeches in one scene and singing calypso songs in the next?
Everything about Island in the Sun made it seem a story Waugh had written with me in mind—though he hadn’t. For me, Santa Marta was just Jamaica with the name changed. David Boyeur, the black political activist I was to play, seemed a mirror image of myself. Maxwell Fleury, the well-bred Englishman running against me for political office under the island’s new constitution, was like all the English transplants I’d seen at the Pigous’ dinner table in Kingston. (And so was James Mason, who played him flawlessly.) I liked the prospect of breaking another color barrier, a very important one at that. I would be the first American Negro to play a romantic lead in a feature film opposite a white leading actress.
Everything seemed perfect, until Zanuck, having rounded out his cast, declared he was hiring Robert Rossen to direct. To me, and to almost everyone I knew, Rossen was the worst choice. He’d grown up as Robert Rosen on the Lower East Side, absorbing his Russian-Jewish parents’ left-wing politics, then joined the American Communist party in 1937 and remained a member for ten years. That wasn’t what I had against him—not at all. What infuriated me was that after taking the Fifth before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951 and being blacklisted for two years, Rossen had reversed himself, gone back to HUAC, and offered up fifty-seven names of “communist” colleagues. Many of those he named spent the next few years in jail or scraping for work, while Rossen resumed his career with Mambo in 1954 and Alexander the Great in 1956. I didn’t want to contribute to his ongoing rehabilitation, but I had no choice; I’d signed my contract. If I backed out, the studio would have every right to sue, and would. I had misgivings about that, but I had to pick my battles. I hadn’t become an actor to speak for the souls of other men. I was in the real world, fighting for work as a black actor when there was almost no work to be had. Let Rossen fight his own demons. I had a movie to make.
The filming—most of it, at any rate—was to take place in Grenada. Shrewdly, Zanuck decided to make a press junket of it, sending a plane full of European and American journalists along with the cast and crew to soak up the Caribbean sun and presumably write long datelined reports. When we landed first at Port of Spain in Trinidad, we held a press conference, both for our junketeers and for Caribbean journalists. The questions were all softballs, until a Trinidadian journalist raised her hand.
“I have a question for Mr. Belafonte,” she said. “I’d like to ask you, sir—have you any conscience? That you would take the songs of the people of this region, cheapening them, changing them, and singing them in a way no one ever heard of, and then have the audacity to steal the title ‘King of Calypso’ with no regard for the culture of the Caribbean?”
The room got very quiet, all eyes on me.
“First of all,” I said, “let me say that I have never personally laid claim to be ‘King of Calypso.’ That was the decision of those I work for.” That was true; to my great embarrassment, and over my objections, RCA Victor had promoted me that way. I knew just how presumptuous that would make me look in the islands, especially in Trinidad, where the annual calypso festival produced a new “King of Calypso” by popular acclaim.
“But even if I could be the true King of Calypso, I wouldn’t want to be,” I went on. “Because although I admire how clever and how interesting calypsonians can be in the songs they write and sing, I also find that most of those lyrics are not in the best interests of black people, because their songs are always filled with the need to make Europeans laugh at us. They glorify and dig deep into promiscuity, they go into genitalia…. I’d rather sing to the honor and glory of the region, and the beauty and dignity of our women.”
There was another silence as the Trinidadian journalist, and the rest of the room, took that in. And then the caravan moved on. For some time afterward, I knew, that journalist’s perception dogged me, and calypsonians here and there disparaged me. But already, my versions, popular as they were, were wending their way back into the Caribbean culture. Eventually, all those very same calypsonians would be singing their songs my way! And the different versions they’d sung before would be forgotten.
Grenada was beautiful, the cast top-rate, but by the second day of shooting, we realized our director was a full-fledged alcoholic. Rossen wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill drunk who got juiced at night. He was drunk all day, so much so that he rarely made it to his director’s chair for shooting. Instead, he’d dictate notes in his hotel room each night to his script adviser, Elise Gaige. The next day, she’d direct us herself, relaying his comments and changes while Rossen slept through the morning. On the rare occasions when he showed up, we literally couldn’t understand what he was telling us, so much was he slurring his words. Clearly the guilt he’d felt at handing up those fifty-seven names would haunt him for the rest of his life.
As detrimental as Rossen was to the production, though, Island in the Sun was its own worst enemy. Its story line had not one but two interracial romances; in addition to mine with the elegant Englishwoman played by Joan Fontaine, Dorothy Dandridge played a pharmacy clerk who gets romanced by a white governor’s aide. Doro
thy ends up flying off to a new life with her own British lover (played by John Justin, a Peter Lawford type), while my romance with Joan Fontaine ends in a smoldering stalemate. Yet in neither romance do the characters kiss or even embrace! To his credit, Zanuck had pushed the film through knowing its interracial romances would anger or at least discomfit a large number of moviegoers. But he’d made clear in the columns that there would be no interracial kissing. Not even a peck on the cheek. Asked about this by one columnist, Zanuck airily declared, “There is no scene that calls for kissing. There was no conscious effort to avoid it.”
That edict left us acting scenes that had no credibility. Out by the old sugar mill overlooking the valley, Joan and I have our first moments alone, and exchange passionate looks. “Do you still feel that anyone whose skin is different from yours is an enemy?” Joan asks me.
“Do you think I do?” I ask in return.
But there the scene ends. No kiss, no embrace, just—cut! It was absurd. How could two characters in the islands feel this strong mutual attraction and not do anything about it? Not only would our relationship look foolish onscreen, but the whole picture would seem false.
Over dinner one night early in the filming, Joan and I hatched our own subversive attempt to remedy this. We had another romantic scene the next day. In this one, I was to slice open a coconut with a machete and offer it to Joan so she could sample the milk inside. What I did the next day was hand it to her and watch, intensely, as she drank. Then I took it back, my eyes on the place where she’d put her lips. Slowly and deliberately, I put my lips where hers had been. Then I took the sip that consummated the moment. For anyone who followed it carefully enough, the scene would have, in its own way, a passionate climax.
My Song Page 21