Biography

Harry Smith was born on May 29, 1923 in Portland, Oregon, USA. He was a director and writer, known for Mahagonny (1980), Number 20: Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (1980) and Number 8 (1954). He died on November 26, 1991 in New York City, New York, USA.

Once owned the world's largest collection of paper airplanes, which he donated to the Smithsonian Air-Space Museum

Compiled six-album set "The Anthology of American Folk Music" for Folkways Records, drawing largely on his own record collection, most of which he later sold to the New York Public Library.

Was never sure whether his father was his mother's husband or if it was Aleister Crowley, the famous satanist, whom his mother had been seeing.