{"id":62092,"date":"2020-09-08T14:16:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T11:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/when-harry-belafonte-hosted-the-tonight-show-and-changed-television-forever\/"},"modified":"2020-09-08T14:16:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T11:16:00","slug":"when-harry-belafonte-hosted-the-tonight-show-and-changed-television-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/when-harry-belafonte-hosted-the-tonight-show-and-changed-television-forever\/","title":{"rendered":"#When Harry Belafonte Hosted \u2018The Tonight Show\u2019 and Changed Television Forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#When Harry Belafonte Hosted \u2018The Tonight Show\u2019 and Changed Television Forever<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

In television, \u201clate night\u201d is a time slot monopolized by white male comedia<\/a>ns. It\u2019s been that way since the format was invented and continues to be true today when the top late-night talk shows and their top earners all consist of straight, white, male hosts. But, in 1968, for the first time in history, a Black man was invited to be the guest host of a late-night program \u2014 in fact, <\/span>the<\/span><\/i> late-night program: <\/span>The<\/span><\/i> Tonight Show<\/span><\/i>. That man was Harry Belafonte<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The streaming service Peacock has released a documentary about that historic week in February titled <\/span>The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show<\/i><\/strong>. The film is<\/span> directed by Yoruba Richen<\/strong>, whose <\/span>previous credits include <\/span>The New Black<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>The Green Book: Guide to Freedom, <\/span><\/i>an Emmy-nominated documentary for the Smithsonian Channel. Journalist Joan Walsh<\/strong>, who serves as a producer on the documentary, wrote the 2017 <\/span>article that inspired the film<\/span>. Walsh also app<\/a>ears as a talking head alongside <\/span>Whoopi Goldberg<\/strong>, Questlove<\/strong>, film critic Wesley Morris<\/strong>, former late-night host and comedian Robin Thede<\/strong>, and Belafonte himself, as well as his daughter Gina.<\/span><\/p>\n

Belafonte, now in his nineties, came to prominence at a time when segregation was legal but his star power was undeniable. He was a household name in both Black and white homes and an accomplished singer, actor, and activist. Though the more famous of the two, regular Tonight Show <\/em>host Johnny <\/strong>Carson<\/strong> had an easier path to success. \u201cHe was as average an American as you could possibly get,\u201d Belafonte says of Carson in the documentary. <\/span><\/p>\n

While not a particularly political man since he took over the program in 1962, Carson felt that giving up his show to Belafonte would allow the issues bubbling in the national conscience<\/a> \u2014 the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war protests of the escalating US involvement in Vietnam \u2014 to have their due without having to go out on that limb himself. To explain Carson\u2019s position, Richen uses footage of the TV personality on his own show explaining that his fear of speaking out on sociopolitical issues came from the knowledge that he\u2019d potentially lose half his audience if he took a stance.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the great obstacles of the documentary wasn\u2019t budgetary concerns or access to subjects but that NBC\u2019s then-policy of re-recording over their shows to save money and\/or tape meant that Belafonte\u2019s historic week was nearly-completely lost to history. \u201cWe were telling the story about this week,\u201d Richen <\/span>explains to Deadline<\/span>, \u201cbut one of the big challenges is that we only had an hour of footage from it.\u201d Two half-hour videos with guests <\/span>Martin Luther King Jr.<\/span> (watch in full here) and <\/span>Bobby Kennedy (watch in full here)<\/span> \u2014 both of whom were assassinated mere months after their appearances \u2014 are all that survive of Belafonte\u2019s tenure.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How do you produce a documentary of a historic week of television without footage of that week? By a stroke of luck, Phil Gries<\/strong>, a private collector of television show tapes, happened to have recorded audio of two of the five nights Belafonte hosted. That footage is spread across the documentary\u2019s soundtrack, and Richen uses other archival footage to make up the difference. Richen explains to Deadline, \u201cI<\/span>t was about this week in the time in 1968, but it was really how Harry saw what was going on in the world and Harry\u2019s relationship with these guests\u2026that\u2019s the place where we start from.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

There is footage of Belafonte standing before a microphone opposite Dr. King at a protest and more intimate <\/span>photographs of King in Belafonte\u2019s apartment, snippets from his movie appearances (<\/span>Carmen Jones<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Bright Road<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Island In the Sun<\/span><\/i>) and television projects including his 1959 CBS variety special, <\/span>Tonight With Belafonte, <\/span><\/i>for which he won an Emmy <\/span>\u2014 <\/span>becoming <\/span>the first African-American to ever win the award<\/span>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

That supplemental archival footage more than makes up for the lost material. It gives the audience a feel for the type of man Belafonte was and why the era\u2019s biggest names were happy to be summoned to a shared stage for a single week just to spend time with him. When Dr. King enters the stage for his <\/span>Tonight Show<\/span><\/i> appearance, he greets Belafonte with the standard guest-host handshake but the two friends also share a kiss on the cheek. This kiss between two of the most well-known Black men in America at the time is a symbol of their closeness and fraternity that immediately adds a level of intimacy to the staid late-night format and sets the tone for what the show would be under Belafonte.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Belafonte\u2019s guest list for the week was a who\u2019s who of the most prominent, powerful, and divisive Black performers and activists in America: Dr. King<\/span>, Bill Cosby, Aretha Franklin, Nipsey Russell, and Sidney Poitier, whose two contemporary movie releases, In The Heat of The Night <\/i>and Guess Who\u2019s Coming To Dinner<\/i>, were causing a stir in the late \u201860s. When Paul Newman, an icon of American cinema and to white men and women everywhere, appeared on the show opposite Dr. King, Leon Bibb, and Nipsey Russell, he was the racial minority. In fact, fifteen of Belafonte\u2019s twenty-five guests that week were Black. As Goldberg notes in the film, \u201cHarry had an agenda.\u201d <\/span>Belafonte\u2019s agenda was to <\/span>make his activism digestible to a national audience by couching it in music and entertainment.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the subject of the legacy of that week, the documentary\u2019s talking heads are rightfully upset. There wasn\u2019t another Black late night host until Arsenio Hall\u2019s program debuted in 1989. That gap speaks volumes about the discomfort Belafonte\u2019s programming stint caused network executives despite the high ratings that that week\u2019s programming brought in \u2014 Walsh notes they were \u201c<\/span>higher than Carson\u2019s usual numbers<\/span>.\u201d As if to demonstrate what Belafonte was up against during his February 5th through 9th takeover, Richen tactfully disperses pre-Belafonte <\/span>Tonight Show<\/span><\/i> footage throughout the documentary that illustrates the unending whiteness of the popular program \u2014 a white audience, a white band, white guests, a white announcer voice, and of course, a white host.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After his historic week, Belafonte took out a full-page ad in <\/span>Variety<\/span><\/i> to thank the guests and the staff of the show \u201cfor making this \u201csit-in\u201d so enjoyable.\u201d That moniker, in addition to giving the documentary its name, was also representative of Belafonte\u2019s big intentions with his hosting gig. <\/span>\u201cHollywood reflects the mood of the nation,\u201d Belafonte explains, \u201cand it lies a lot about who we are.\u201d His words could refer to the segregated television programming of the \u201860s when fantasy programs like <\/span>Bewitched<\/span><\/i> could imagine the supernatural but somehow failed to fantasize a racially integrated world. But also to the power of the medium of television. <\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, nearly every household in America had a television, and Belafonte used his platform to upend segregated media and project forth images of Black Americans discussing racial and economic inequality but also simply living their lives. In the documentary, Belafonte explains that he made the decision to share home movies<\/a> of his family on air because he wanted America to see Black people living their ordinary lives and not just when they are performing for them. Richen\u2019s film makes the case that every choice Belafonte made as a late-night host, from inviting controversial Black and white guests like Dr. King and the Smothers Brothers to showcasing Black and indigenous folk singers like activist Buffy Sainte-Marie, forced Carson\u2019s audience to see and hear things they would\u2019ve never had access to or interest in had he not decided to share them. His legacy is that very decision to give a platform to minority perspectives. It was a quiet revolution.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In her article, Walsh reprints a segment of Belafonte\u2019s memoir, <\/span>My Song<\/span><\/i>, in which he recalls how he signed off to his audience when his week was up: \u201c<\/span>I am fully aware of how many of you have been offended by the politics aired on this show this week. None of it was meant to offend. But all of this was consciously arranged by me to give you all a taste of what\u2019s being said in rooms that many of you may not know or enter. Thank you for listening.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite being nearly completely lost to history, Belafonte\u2019s takeover fundamentally changed Carson\u2019s show and set new possibilities for late-night programming. As one of the documentary\u2019s talking heads notes, Belafonte\u2019s mix of politics and entertainment was a precursor to the work Stephen Colbert is now celebrated for. <\/span><\/p>\n

Carson tapping in Belafonte was also a historic precedent for today\u2019s late-night programming where white male hosts have similarly ceded their seats of power to give minorities a chance to speak. On his NBC late-night show, Seth Meyers has a fan-favorite segment entitled \u201cJokes Seth Can\u2019t Tell.\u201d It has catapulted the career of one of his late-night writers, Black comedian Amber Ruffin, who <\/span>recently announced<\/span> she\u2019s landed a late-night show of her own. Over on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel regularly has celebrity friends sub-in for his hosting duties. Among those who have been given the opportunity are Tracee Ellis Ross, Kerry Washington, and Lena Waithe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With <\/span>Sit-In<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Richen positions Belafonte as the trailblazer that he is, but it is important to contextualize his legendary week in February 1968 as part of a larger historic year for Black television. Many other Black Americans were making great strides in their fight for greater control over their public image in the white-dominated television industry and to have a seat at the table to contribute to national dialogue about the political, economic, and social issues that concerned all Americans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Black Journal<\/em><\/span>, according to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, was \u201cthe first nationally televised public affairs program produced for, about, and (eventually) by African-Americans.\u201d<\/span> The hour-long program premiered on National Educational Television on June 12th of that year with programming in line with Belafonte\u2019s, where politics and Black art were both discussion topics and the guest list included cultural figures who were controversial in white America but important to the Black community, like Angela Davis and Huey Newton, who was interviewed from jail. The Black Journal<\/em> series is a time capsule of a turbulent cultural moment. In her<\/span> piece for <\/span>The New Yorker<\/span><\/i> writer Doreen St. F\u00e9lix notes the show \u201copens with footage of Coretta Scott King as she addresses the Harvard class of \u201968, a new widow urging young people to protect their future.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

On September 12th of the same year, PBS debuted the variety program <\/span>Soul!<\/span><\/i>, which was hosted by openly gay theater producer Ellis Haizlip that showcased Black art and music and facilitated the television debuts of Toni Morrison and Earth, Wind, & Fire. \u201cThough the show had many white viewers, it never catered to the white gaze,\u201d writes Jim Farber in<\/span> his New York Times<\/em> review <\/span>of another new documentary about that program.<\/span> The film, titled <\/span>Mr. Soul!<\/i><\/strong>, is directed by his niece, Melissa Haizlip, who <\/span>explained to KCRW<\/span> that her uncle\u2019s groundbreaking program came about because \u201csome folks thought it would be a good idea to make \u2018the Black Tonight Show\u2019\u2026I think the idea really was to change the public perception of Black america.\u201d Her words further prove that the week Belafonte hosted, when the real <\/span>Tonight Show<\/span><\/i> was Black, was not only historic but also a turning point.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn a time when a nation is really struggling for its soul,\u201d Belafonte says in <\/span>The Sit-In<\/span><\/i>, \u201cI believe all of us have a responsibility to do everything we can to salvage the best that\u2019s in America.\u201d His words are almost an echo of the final words of the late US congressman John Lewis<\/strong> \u2014 briefly seen in the documentary via a photo of him being arrested at a civil rights protest \u2014 in <\/span>his posthumously published piece<\/span> for <\/span>The<\/span><\/i> New York Times.<\/span><\/i> \u201cOrdinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America,\u201d Lewis wrote, \u201cby getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.\u201d <\/span>The Sit-In <\/span><\/i>is an ode to the good trouble that Harry Belafonte got into and is proof-of-concept for Lewis\u2019s words.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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“#When Harry Belafonte Hosted \u2018The Tonight Show\u2019 and Changed Television Forever” In television, \u201clate night\u201d is a time slot monopolized by white male comedians. It\u2019s been that way since the format was invented and continues to be true today when the top late-night talk shows and their top earners all consist of straight, white, male…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[65799,23260,65800,5378,1361,1372,65798],"class_list":["post-62092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-documentaries","tag-essays","tag-harry-belafonte","tag-history","tag-movies","tag-streaming","tag-when-harry-belafonte-hosted-the-tonight-show-and-changed-television-forever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}