Spotlights Remembering: Harry Belafonte: Buck and The Preacher

Throughout the 96 years of his remarkable life, the singer, actor, and activist Harry Belafonte (1927–2023) broke countless barriers. Belafonte was the first solo artist to sell over a million records with his widely acclaimed album Calypso (1956). He experienced two robust periods in Hollywood: first with studio pictures like Carmen Jones (1954) and The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959); and again, in the 1970s, when he notably teamed with longtime friend Sidney Poitier to support his debut directorial effort with Buck and the Preacher (1972) and its smash-hit follow-up, Uptown Saturday Night (1974). Citing Hollywood’s disinterest in socially conscious filmmaking as the reason behind his decade-long hiatus, Belafonte spent his time away from the silver screen investing in his lifelong passion for civil rights, befriending Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and participating in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. To honor his life and legacy, the Academy Museum presents a screening of Buck and the Preacher, which features Belafonte’s fascinating character turn as the deceptive Preacher opposite Poitier’s forthright Buck for the duo’s first-ever onscreen collaboration.