FILE -
President
Barack
Obama
presents
the 2009
Presidential
Medal of
Freedom
to
Sidney
Poitier
during
ceremonies
in the
East
Room at
the
White
House in
Washington
on, Aug.
12,
2009.
Poitier,
the
groundbreaking
actor
and
enduring
inspiration
who
transformed
how
Black
people
were
portrayed
on
screen,
became
the
first
Black
actor to
win an
Academy
Award
for best
lead
performance
and the
first to
be a top
box-office
draw,
died
Thursday,
Jan. 6,
2022. He
was 94.
(AP
Photo/J.
Scott
Applewhite,
File) |
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FILE -
Actor
Sidney
Poitier
poses
with his
Oscar
for best
actor
for "Lillies
of the
Field"
at the
36th
Annual
Academy
Awards
in Santa
Monica,
Calif.
on April
13,
1964.
Poitier,
the
groundbreaking
actor
and
enduring
inspiration
who
transformed
how
Black
people
were
portrayed
on
screen,
became
the
first
Black
actor to
win an
Academy
Award
for best
lead
performance
and the
first to
be a top
box-office
draw,
died
Thursday,
Jan. 6,
2022. He
was 94.
(AP
Photo,
File) |
|
Oscar
winner,
groundbreaking
actor
and
Civil
Rights
advocate
Sidney
Poitier
dies
By
HILLEL
ITALIE
apnews.com
NEW YORK
- Sidney
Poitier,
the
groundbreaking
actor
and
enduring
inspiration
who
transformed
how
Black
people
were
portrayed
on
screen,
and
became
the
first
Black
actor to
win an
Academy
Award
for best
lead
performance
and the
first to
be a top
box-office
draw,
has
died. He
was 94.
Poitier,
winner
of the
best
actor
Oscar in
1964 for
“Lilies
of the
Field,”
died
Thursday
at his
home in
Los
Angeles,
according
to
Latrae
Rahming,
the
director
of
communications
for the
Prime
Minister
of
Bahamas.
His
close
friend
and
great
contemporary
Harry
Belafonte
issued a
statement
Friday,
remembering
their
extraordinary
times
together.
“For
over 80
years,
Sidney
and I
laughed,
cried
and made
as much
mischief
as we
could,”
he
wrote.
“He was
truly my
brother
and
partner
in
trying
to make
this
world a
little
better.
He
certainly
made
mine a
whole
lot
better.”
Few
movie
stars,
Black or
white,
had such
an
influence
both on
and off
the
screen.
Before
Poitier,
the son
of
Bahamian
tomato
farmers,
no Black
actor
had a
sustained
career
as a
lead
performer
or could
get a
film
produced
based on
his own
star
power.
Before
Poitier,
few
Black
actors
were
permitted
a break
from the
stereotypes
of
bug-eyed
servants
and
grinning
entertainers.
Before
Poitier,
Hollywood
filmmakers
rarely
even
attempted
to tell
a Black
person’s
story.
Messages
honoring
and
mourning
Poitier
flooded
social
media,
with
Oscar
winner
Morgan
Freeman
calling
him “my
inspiration,
my
guiding
light,
my
friend”
and
Oprah
Winfrey
praising
him as a
“Friend.
Brother.
Confidant.
Wisdom
teacher.”
Former
President
Barack
Obama
cited
his
achievements
and how
he
revealed
“the
power of
movies
to bring
us
closer
together.”
Poitier’s
rise
mirrored
profound
changes
in the
country
in the
1950s
and
1960s.
As
racial
attitudes
evolved
during
the
civil
rights
era and
segregation
laws
were
challenged
and
fell,
Poitier
was the
performer
to whom
a
cautious
industry
turned
for
stories
of
progress.
He was
the
escaped
Black
convict
who
befriends
a racist
white
prisoner
(Tony
Curtis)
in “The
Defiant
Ones.”
He was
the
courtly
office
worker
who
falls in
love
with a
blind
white
girl in
“A Patch
of
Blue.”
He was
the
handyman
in
“Lilies
of the
Field”
who
builds a
church
for a
group of
nuns. In
one of
the
great
roles of
the
stage
and
screen,
he was
the
ambitious
young
father
whose
dreams
clashed
with
those of
other
family
members
in
Lorraine
Hansberry’s
“A
Raisin
in the
Sun.”
Debates
about
diversity
in
Hollywood
inevitably
turn to
the
story of
Poitier.
With his
handsome,
flawless
face;
intense
stare
and
disciplined
style,
he was
for
years
not just
the most
popular
Black
movie
star,
but the
only
one.
“I made
films
when the
only
other
Black on
the lot
was the
shoeshine
boy,” he
recalled
in a
1988
Newsweek
interview.
“I was
kind of
the lone
guy in
town.”
Poitier
peaked
in 1967
with
three of
the
year’s
most
notable
movies:
“To Sir,
With
Love,”
in which
he
starred
as a
school
teacher
who wins
over his
unruly
students
at a
London
secondary
school;
“In the
Heat of
the
Night,”
as the
determined
police
detective
Virgil
Tibbs;
and in
“Guess
Who’s
Coming
to
Dinner,”
as the
prominent
doctor
who
wishes
to marry
a young
white
woman he
only
recently
met, her
parents
played
by
Spencer
Tracy
and
Katharine
Hepburn
in their
final
film
together.
Theater
owners
named
Poitier
the No.
1 star
of 1967,
the
first
time a
Black
actor
topped
the
list. In
2009
President
Barack
Obama,
whose
own
steady
bearing
was
sometimes
compared
to
Poitier’s,
awarded
him the
Presidential
Medal of
Freedom,
saying
that the
actor
“not
only
entertained
but
enlightened...
revealing
the
power of
the
silver
screen
to bring
us
closer
together.”
His
appeal
brought
him
burdens
not
unlike
such
other
historical
figures
as
Jackie
Robinson
and the
Rev.
Martin
Luther
King Jr.
He was
subjected
to
bigotry
from
whites
and
accusations
of
compromise
from the
Black
community.
Poitier
was
held,
and held
himself,
to
standards
well
above
his
white
peers.
He
refused
to play
cowards
and took
on
characters,
especially
in
“Guess
Who’s
Coming
to
Dinner,”
of
almost
divine
goodness.
He
developed
a
steady,
but
resolved
and
occasionally
humorous
persona
crystallized
in his
most
famous
line —
“They
call me
Mr.
Tibbs!”
— from
“In the
Heat of
the
Night.”
“All
those
who see
unworthiness
when
they
look at
me and
are
given
thereby
to
denying
me value
— to you
I say,
‘I’m not
talking
about
being as
good as
you. I
hereby
declare
myself
better
than
you,’”
he wrote
in his
memoir,
“The
Measure
of a
Man,”
published
in 2000.
But even
in his
prime he
was
criticized
for
being
out of
touch.
He was
called
an Uncle
Tom and
a
“million-dollar
shoeshine
boy.” In
1967,
The New
York
Times
published
Black
playwright
Clifford
Mason’s
essay,
“Why
Does
White
America
Love
Sidney
Poitier
So?”
Mason
dismissed
Poitier’s
films as
“a
schizophrenic
flight
from
historical
fact”
and the
actor as
a pawn
for the
“white
man’s
sense of
what’s
wrong
with the
world.”
Stardom
didn’t
shield
Poitier
from
racism
and
condescension.
He had a
hard
time
finding
housing
in Los
Angeles
and was
followed
by the
Ku Klux
Klan
when he
visited
Mississippi
in 1964,
not long
after
three
civil
rights
workers
had been
murdered
there.
In
interviews,
journalists
often
ignored
his work
and
asked
him
instead
about
race and
current
events.
“I am an
artist,
man,
American,
contemporary,”
he
snapped
during a
1967
press
conference.
“I am an
awful
lot of
things,
so I
wish you
would
pay me
the
respect
due.”
Poitier
was not
as
engaged
politically
as
Belafonte,
leading
to
occasional
conflicts
between
them.
But he
was
active
in the
1963
March on
Washington
and
other
civil
rights
events,
and as
an actor
defended
himself
and
risked
his
career.
He
refused
to sign
loyalty
oaths
during
the
1950s,
when
Hollywood
was
barring
suspected
Communists,
and
turned
down
roles he
found
offensive.
“Almost
all the
job
opportunities
were
reflective
of the
stereotypical
perception
of
Blacks
that had
infected
the
whole
consciousness
of the
country,”
he
recalled.
“I came
with an
inability
to do
those
things.
It just
wasn’t
in me. I
had
chosen
to use
my work
as a
reflection
of my
values.”
Poitier’s
films
were
usually
about
personal
triumphs
rather
than
broad
political
themes,
but the
classic
Poitier
role,
from “In
the Heat
of the
Night”
to
“Guess
Who’s
Coming
to
Dinner,”
was as a
Black
man of
such
decency
and
composure
—
Poitier
became
synonymous
with the
word
“dignified”
— that
he wins
over the
whites
opposed
to him.
“Sidney
Poitier
epitomized
dignity
and
grace,”
Obama
tweeted
Friday.
His
screen
career
faded in
the late
1960s as
political
movements,
Black
and
white,
became
more
radical
and
movies
more
explicit.
He acted
less
often,
gave
fewer
interviews
and
began
directing,
his
credits
including
the
Richard
Pryor-Gene
Wilder
farce
“Stir
Crazy,”
“Buck
and the
Preacher”
(co-starring
Poitier
and
Belafonte)
and the
Bill
Cosby
comedies
“Uptown
Saturday
Night”
and
“Let’s
Do It
Again.”
In the
1980s
and
’90s, he
appeared
in the
feature
films
“Sneakers”
and “The
Jackal”
and
several
television
movies,
receiving
an Emmy
and
Golden
Globe
nomination
as
future
Supreme
Court
Justice
Thurgood
Marshall
in
“Separate
But
Equal”
and an
Emmy
nomination
for his
portrayal
of
Nelson
Mandela
in
“Mandela
and De
Klerk.”
Theatergoers
were
reminded
of the
actor
through
an
acclaimed
play
that
featured
him in
name
only:
John
Guare’s
“Six
Degrees
of
Separation,”
about a
con
artist
claiming
to be
Poitier’s
son.
In
recent
years, a
new
generation
learned
of him
through
Oprah
Winfrey,
who
chose
“The
Measure
of a
Man” for
her book
club.
Meanwhile,
he
welcomed
the rise
of such
Black
stars as
Denzel
Washington,
Will
Smith
and
Danny
Glover:
“It’s
like the
cavalry
coming
to
relieve
the
troops!
You have
no idea
how
pleased
I am,”
he said.
Poitier
received
numerous
honorary
prizes,
including
a
lifetime
achievement
award
from the
American
Film
Institute
and a
special
Academy
Award in
2002, on
the same
night
that
Black
performers
won both
best
acting
awards,
Washington
for
“Training
Day” and
Halle
Berry
for
“Monster’s
Ball.”
“I’ll
always
be
chasing
you,
Sidney,”
Washington,
who had
earlier
presented
the
honorary
award to
Poitier,
said
during
his
acceptance
speech.
“I’ll
always
be
following
in your
footsteps.
There’s
nothing
I would
rather
do, sir,
nothing
I would
rather
do.”
Poitier
had four
daughters
with his
first
wife,
Juanita
Hardy,
and two
with his
second
wife,
actress
Joanna
Shimkus,
who
starred
with him
in his
1969
film
“The
Lost
Man.”
Daughter
Sydney
Tamaii
Poitier
appeared
on such
television
series
as
“Veronica
Mars”
and “Mr.
Knight.”
Daughter
Gina
Poitier-Gouraige
died in
2018.
“He is
our
guiding
light
who lit
up our
lives
with
infinite
love and
wonder.
His
smile
was
healing,
his hugs
the
warmest
refuge,
and his
laughter
was
infectious.
We could
always
turn to
him for
wisdom
and
solace
and his
absence
feels
like a
giant
hole in
our
family
and our
hearts,”
his
family
said in
a
statement.
“Although
he is no
longer
here
with us
in this
realm,
his
beautiful
soul
will
continue
to guide
and
inspire
us.”
His life
ended in
adulation,
but it
began in
hardship.
Poitier
was born
prematurely,
weighing
just 3
pounds,
in
Miami,
where
his
parents
had gone
to
deliver
tomatoes
from
their
farm on
tiny Cat
Island
in the
Bahamas.
He spent
his
early
years on
the
remote
island,
which
had a
population
of 1,500
and no
electricity,
and he
quit
school
at 12
1/2 to
help
support
the
family.
Three
years
later,
he was
sent to
live
with a
brother
in
Miami;
his
father
was
concerned
that the
street
life of
Nassau
was a
bad
influence.
With $3
in his
pocket,
Sidney
traveled
steerage
on a
mail-cargo
ship.
“The
smell in
that
portion
of the
boat was
so
horrendous
that I
spent a
goodly
part of
the
crossing
heaving
over the
side,”
he told
The
Associated
Press in
1999,
adding
that
Miami
soon
educated
him
about
racism.
“I
learned
quite
quickly
that
there
were
places I
couldn’t
go, that
I would
be
questioned
if I
wandered
into
various
neighborhoods.”
Poitier
moved to
Harlem
and was
so
overwhelmed
by his
first
winter
there he
enlisted
in the
Army,
cheating
on his
age and
swearing
he was
18 when
he had
yet to
turn 17.
Assigned
to a
mental
hospital
on Long
Island,
Poitier
was
appalled
at how
cruelly
the
doctors
and
nurses
treated
the
soldier
patients.
In his
1980
autobiography,
“This
Life,”
he
related
how he
escaped
the Army
by
feigning
insanity.
Back in
Harlem,
he was
looking
in the
Amsterdam
News for
a
dishwasher
job when
he
noticed
an ad
seeking
actors
at the
American
Negro
Theater.
He went
there
and was
handed a
script
and told
to go on
the
stage.
Poitier
had
never
seen a
play in
his life
and
could
barely
read. He
stumbled
through
his
lines in
a thick
Caribbean
accent
and the
director
marched
him to
the
door.
“As I
walked
to the
bus,
what
humiliated
me was
the
suggestion
that all
he could
see in
me was a
dishwasher.
If I
submitted
to him,
I would
be
aiding
him in
making
that
perception
a
prophetic
one,”
Poitier
later
told the
AP.
“I got
so
pissed,
I said,
‘I’m
going to
become
an actor
—
whatever
that is.
I don’t
want to
be an
actor,
but I’ve
got to
become
one to
go back
there
and show
him that
I could
be more
than a
dishwasher.’
That
became
my
goal.”
The
process
took
months
as he
sounded
out
words
from the
newspaper.
Poitier
returned
to the
American
Negro
Theater
and was
again
rejected.
Then he
made a
deal: He
would
act as
janitor
for the
theater
in
return
for
acting
lessons.
When he
was
released
again,
his
fellow
students
urged
the
teachers
to let
him be
in the
class
play.
Another
Caribbean,
Belafonte,
was cast
in the
lead.
When
Belafonte
couldn’t
make a
preview
performance
because
it
conflicted
with his
own
janitorial
duties,
his
understudy,
Poitier,
went on.
The
audience
included
a
Broadway
producer
who cast
him in
an
all-Black
version
of “Lysistrata.”
The play
lasted
four
nights,
but rave
reviews
for
Poitier
won him
an
understudy
job in
“Anna
Lucasta,”
and
later he
played
the lead
in the
road
company.
In 1950,
he broke
through
on
screen
in “No
Way
Out,”
playing
a doctor
whose
patient,
a white
man,
dies and
is then
harassed
by the
patient’s
bigoted
brother,
played
by
Richard
Widmark.
Key
early
films
included
“Blackboard
Jungle,”
featuring
Poitier
as a
tough
high
school
student
(the
actor
was well
into his
20s at
the
time) in
a
violent
school;
and “The
Defiant
Ones,”
which
brought
Poitier
his
first
best
actor
nomination,
and the
first
one for
any
Black
male.
The
theme of
cultural
differences
turned
lighthearted
in
“Lilies
of the
Field,”
in which
Poitier
played a
Baptist
handyman
who
builds a
chapel
for a
group of
Roman
Catholic
nuns,
refugees
from
Germany.
In one
memorable
scene,
he gives
them an
English
lesson.
The only
Black
actor
before
Poitier
to win a
competitive
Oscar
was
Hattie
McDaniel,
the 1939
best
supporting
actress
for
“Gone
With the
Wind.”
No one,
including
Poitier,
thought
“Lilies
of the
Field”
his best
film,
but the
times
were
right
(Congress
would
soon
pass the
Civil
Rights
Act of
1964,
for
which
Poitier
had
lobbied)
and the
actor
was
favored
even
against
such
competitors
as Paul
Newman
for “Hud”
and
Albert
Finney
for “Tom
Jones.”
Newman
was
among
those
rooting
for
Poitier.
When
presenter
Anne
Bancroft
announced
his
victory,
the
audience
cheered
for so
long
that
Poitier
momentarily
forgot
his
speech.
“It has
been a
long
journey
to this
moment,”
he
declared.
Poitier
never
pretended
that his
Oscar
was “a
magic
wand”
for
Black
performers,
as he
observed
after
his
victory,
and he
shared
his
critics’
frustration
with
some of
the
roles he
took on,
confiding
that his
characters
were
sometimes
so
unsexual
they
became
kind of
“neuter.”
But he
also
believed
himself
fortunate
and
encouraged
those
who
followed
him.
“To the
young
African
American
filmmakers
who have
arrived
on the
playing
field, I
am
filled
with
pride
you are
here. I
am sure,
like me,
you have
discovered
it was
never
impossible,
it was
just
harder,”
he said
in 1992
as he
received
a
lifetime
achievement
award
from the
American
Film
Institute.
“
“Welcome,
young
Blacks.
Those of
us who
go
before
you
glance
back
with
satisfaction
and
leave
you with
a simple
trust:
Be true
to
yourselves
and be
useful
to the
journey.”
___
AP
writer
Robert
Gillies
in
Toronto
and AP
Film
Writer
Jake
Coyle
and
former
Associated
Press
Writer
Polly
Anderson
in New
York
contributed
to this
report.
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