Nature & Respite

I’ve done my best to stay away from streaming services — hardly even watch Netflix, where we’re still happily paying for the DVD shipped to us — but I’ll admit this is really tempting me. The Washington Post TV critic liked it:

… Belafonte — a superstar singer, actor and civil rights activist — took the opportunity to bring on an extraordinary range of Black artists and newsmakers and their White allies, from Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. The guest list for that week, from Feb. 5 to 9, goes on: Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll, Nipsey Russell, Bill Cosby, Indigenous folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, ventriloquist Aaron Williams and singer Freda Payne, among others.

Richen’s film is executive produced by MSNBC anchor Joy Reid and co-produced by Nation journalist Joan Walsh, who wrote a 2017 story for the Nation about the shows. The documentary interviews Belafonte, now 93, and several of the entertainers who appeared on the “Tonight Show” with him that week (Warwick confesses that she can’t remember what happened to her yesterday, much less in 1968, but seems delighted to hear she was a part of it), as well as present-day celebrities and culture writers about the impact Belafonte’s week had on American TV…

Fifteen of that week’s 25 guests were Black, according to Walsh’s story. Besides Kennedy, other White guests included Paul Newman, Petula Clark and the Smothers Brothers.

Belafonte was given a lot of freedom in booking guests, but when he got King (who so rarely was given access to network TV shows), NBC executives nervously asked if the show would get too serious. Belafonte largely ignored their worries. “It was a silly question,” he recalls. “We’ve got [King] here, what do you want him to do, sing a song?”…

There’s an… illuminating anecdote with this YouTube clip: