PHOTOGRAPH SIGNED

Photograph. Ink occasionally light but still very readable. Fine. An 8" x 10" photo of Belafonte with his business manager, Jay Kennedy, and another man, apparently producer Sidney Buchman, Kennedy's partner, at a restaurant table from the early to mid-1950s. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by Belafonte to Kennedy: "Dad! Dad!! Dad!!! On this day we released ourselves to further pursue the course we have chosen for ourselves. To you I'm indebted to Sidney I'm grateful, and perhaps History will thank us all. Your Harry." Also INSCRIBED by Buchman: "To Jay, a gentleman, Sidney." In 1954 Belafonte replaced Jack Rollins with Jay Kennedy as his manager who, with his connections, was able to book Belafonte in more prestigious locations. Despite Belafonte's effusive inscription, he would later come to distrust Kennedy and even considered him malevolent. It was not until a decade later that Belafonte would discover that Dr Janet Alterman Kennedy, the psychotherapist he had been confiding in during the 1950s, was Jay Kennedy's wife.

Belafonte, one of the world's most popular entertainers starring not only in music but in the theater and film as well, was also the first, and for some time the only, black producer in television and the first African American to receive an Emmy award.