Harry Belafonte brought a seriousness to the screen that could make a romance feel laboured. We find more to recommend in the later parts that let him be comic or menacing, rather than merely an earnest leading man.
Fi1m perspective
When Harry Belafonte’s Joe begins to sing in Carmen Jones (1954), the voice belongs to Le Vern Hutcherson. The change puts distance between the man on screen and the feelings the song is meant to convey. Marilyn Horne supplies Carmen’s singing voice too, so the difficulty is not confined to his side of the romance. We were frustrated by that separation, because it made the romance harder to believe just when it needed to persuade us. Otto Preminger’s musical gives Belafonte a leading role, but it does not give him an easy one.
The problem is not entirely someone else’s voice. Belafonte’s seriousness as Joe makes the drama heavier than it needs to be, while Dorothy Dandridge gives the film its compelling centre. There is enough musical pleasure to reward some patience, and his constrained performance contributes to the awkwardness.
His screen debut had been opposite Dandridge in Bright Road (1953), but the leading-man period was short. He co-produced Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), a heist film that puts his Johnny Ingram alongside a racist partner. That was a different demand from the musical romance, with conflict built into the criminal partnership. After 1959 he largely stepped away from leading screen roles, returning only intermittently.
Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher (1972) and Uptown Saturday Night (1974) offered a less solemn use for him. The latter gives him a hot-tempered underworld boss, Geechie Dan Beauford, and room for broad parody. Robert Altman later cast him as the laconic gangster Seldom Seen in Kansas City (1996), a role that makes menace part of the attraction. These are welcome alternatives to the earnestness of Joe, and better reasons to keep watching beyond the early leading roles. Try the preacher or the gangster before deciding that the romantic lead tells the whole story.
Biography
Harry Belafonte (born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.) was an American actor and singer. He made his feature film debut in Bright Road (1953) and played Joe in Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones (1954).
His other screen roles include Johnny Ingram in Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), a part in The Player (1992), and Jerome Turner in BlacKkKlansman (2018). Belafonte also appeared as a guest on The Muppet Show (1976). He died in 2023.
