(actor; born February 20, 1927, Miami, Florida)
In an age of Spike Lee retrospectives, Denzel Washington blockbusters,
and Magic Johnson multiplexes, it is perhaps easy to forget the pioneering
impact Sidney Poitier's career has had on American culture. For 20 years,
beginning in the early '50s, he was the top and virtually sole African-American
film star--the first black actor to become a hero to both black and white
audiences. Poitier was also the first black actor to win a prestigious
international film award (Venice Film Festival, Something of Value,
1957), the first to be nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award (The
Defiant Ones, 1958), the first to star as a romantic lead (Paris
Blues, 1961), the first to win the Oscar (Lilies of the Fields,
1963), the first to become the number one box office star in the country
(1968), and the first to insist on a film crew that was at least 50 percent
African-American (The Lost Man, 1969). Poitier also starred in
the first mainstream movies to condone interracial marriages and permit
a mixed couple to hug and kiss (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,
1967) and to attack apartheid (The Wilby Conspiracy, 1975). The
New York Times' Vincent Canby once pointed out: "Poitier does not
make movies, he makes milestones."
His parents were poor tomato farmers in the Bahamas. He was their seventh
and last child. The family's struggles hammered home a lesson he would
always live by: Survival requires everybody to carry a load. In fact,
by the age of 13, he was working full-time to support the family.
At 16, he arrived in New York City, totally alone, with three dollars
in his pocket. In order to escape the cold, he lied about his age and
joined the army. It was a short stint that lasted less than a year. Back
in New York he got a job as a dishwasher and stumbled into acting. While
looking for a second job to make ends meet, he came across an ad calling
for actors. Without any experience or training, and barely able to read,
he auditioned for the American Negro Theatre. He was humiliated off the
stage, but six months later, better prepared, he auditioned again. His
first production, Days of Our Youth, led to nearly 10 more with
the company, a national tour of Anna Lucasta in 1944 and, two
years later at 22, his first film--No Way Out. Directed by Joseph
L. Mankiewicz, it launched the career that, in the words of his good friend
Harry Belafonte, "put the cinema and millions of people in the world in
touch with a truth about who we are. A truth that could have for a longer
time eluded us had it not been for him and the choices he made."
In such landmark films as Cry the Beloved Country (1952); Blackboard
Jungle (1955); A Raisin in the Sun (1961); which he was
instrumental in bringing to the stage and film; The Bedford Incident
(1965); A Patch of Blue (1965); The Slender Thread (1965);
To Sir, With Love (1967); and In the Heat of the Night (1967),
in which he confronts a condescending Southern sheriff with the line heard
round the world, "They call me MISTER Tibbs," Sidney Poitier's characters
are men of control, men who tame volcanic rage with reason and intellect.
Men who know that there are bridges to build, doors to open.
At the peak of his career in front of the camera, Poitier decided to
direct as well. His first film, Buck and Preacher (1972), starred
two good friends from his American Negro Theatre days--Belafonte and Ruby
Dee. With Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, and Steve McQueen, he formed
the independent First Artist Production Company. Its first release was
A Warm December, directed by Poitier. Uptown Saturday Night
(1974) was the first of several box office comedy hits helmed by Poitier
and featuring largely black casts. Let's Do It Again (1975) and
A Piece of the Action, which garnered Poitier an NAACP Image
Award, followed. In 1980, he directed the year's biggest financial success--Stir
Crazy--with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. In 1991, shortly after
ending a decade-long hiatus from acting, Poitier returned to television
for the first time in 35 years to portray Supreme Court Justice Thurgood
Marshall in the Emmy Award-winning miniseries directed by George Stevens,
Jr., Separate but Equal.
With his unique career, a career he forged without any precedent or
model, Sidney Poitier helped change many stubborn racial attitudes that
had persisted in this country for centuries. He has built the bridges
and opened the doors for countless artists in succeeding generations.
He is an actor who stood for hope, for excellence, and who has given happiness
to millions of people around the world.
Paying tribute to Sidney Poitier in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
said, "He is a man of great depth, a man of great social concern, a man
who is dedicated to human rights and freedom. Here is a man who, in the
words we so often hear now, is a soul brother."