Earlier than lengthy, nonetheless, he would depart Hollywood and are available again once more: First starring in “White Man’s Burden” reverse John Travolta earlier than as soon as once more shedding his main man seems in Robert Altman’s “Kansas Metropolis” (he beforehand cameoed in Altman’s “The Participant” and “Able to Put on”). In “Kansas Metropolis,” he portrays Seldom Seen, a gangster and numbers runner. As anticipated for any Altman venture, Mr. Belafonte ad-libbed a lot of his dialogue. In enjoying a person not too dissimilar from his Uncle Lenny, right here, Belafonte faucets into the swashbuckling power that propelled his flip in “Buck and the Preacher.” There’s a scene the place Seldom tells a joke about Marcus Garvey as his males beat a former worker behind that’s enrapturing: You understand violence is happening within the again, however Mr. Belafonte, his melodious voice that wafts like cigarette smoke within the wind, retains you sucked into his resplendent aura. He’s a ball of violent, opulent, and crazed power that makes you miss him dearly each second Altman decides to chop away from him.
Mr. Belafonte made a couple of extra returns to movie earlier than the top of his life. The primary got here in Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman.” “Each time we cross paths, Mr. B. would say, do it’s important to use Ossie Davis in each movie? He at all times mentioned it playfully, however I knew he was severe,” defined Spike Lee to Deadline. Mr. Belafonte’s scene is pivotal in Lee’s movie: He portrays activist Jerome Turner, a model of himself talking to the youthful Black activists. They’re huddled round him as he remembers, in acute element, the homicide and castration of Jesse Washington, an illiterate Black teenager in Waco, Texas, in 1916, spurred by the discharge of D.W. Griffith’s “Delivery of a Nation.” It’s a hushed, haunting scene that conjures his energy as elder, recorder, and liver of Black life, Black ache, and Black revolution.
His final contribution was to Elvis Mitchell’s incisive ode to Blaxploitation, the documentary “Is That Black Sufficient for You?!?” In it, he remembers being restricted to roles that had been beneath him. Somewhat than take the restrictions placed on his life, he responds with, “F**okay you, I’m going to Paris.” It’s an iconic second that summarizes the tenacity of not only a singular expertise however a singular chief and insurgent.
Mr. Belafonte could also be gone, however he has not been silenced. He could also be resting, however his picture nonetheless energizes. His eyes could also be closed, however his spirited activism stays open and looking out ahead. Mr. Belafonte is off to the following stage, the place extra change could also be attainable. If anybody will get in his manner, I hope he says, “F**okay you, I’m Harry Belafonte.”