Sidney Poitier

American actor and director

• Born: February 20, 1927
• Birthplace: Miami, Florida
• Died: January 6, 2022
• Place of death: Beverly Hills, California

After his long career breaking expectations of what Black actors can and cannot do on film and stage, Sidney Poitier worked to create jobs for people of color in the film industry. He was the first African American to win an Academy Award for best actor, the first African American ranked top film star in the United States, and one of the first successful Black film directors.

Early Life

Sidney Poitier was born in Florida to Bahamian farmers Evelyn and Reginald Poitier, who had been in the United States selling produce at an exchange in Miami. Poitier was born prematurely at seven months and not expected to live, but after just three months, he was allowed to travel with his parents to their home on Cat Island in the Bahamas. The infant Poitier joined his six siblings, who made a living growing tomatoes.

When Poitier was ten years old, the family was forced to move to Nassau because the US government stopped the importation of tomatoes from the Bahamas. Poitier attended school in Nassau until age thirteen, when he quit school to work. His jobs ranged from water boy for pick-and-shovel laborers to wholesale warehouse worker stacking hundred-pound sacks of flour, sugar, and rice. He also worked as a laborer in the construction of a US military base in Nassau.

Along with other restless teenagers, Poitier occasionally got involved in petty theft, shoplifting, and even stealing corn, for which he was caught, found guilty, and jailed for a night. An older brother and Poitier’s best friend had gotten into trouble earlier and ended up in reform school. Poitier’s father did not want that to happen to his last son. So, in 1943, at age fifteen, Poitier was sent to Miami to live with an older brother and his family.

In Miami, Poitier got a job delivering department store packages. On one of his deliveries he encountered a White female customer. Unaware of the repercussions faced by a Black male interacting with a White female in the Deep South, young Poitier was hustled away from his brother’s home and across town to escape the Ku Klux Klan, who had been looking for him. He faced other racial incidents that convinced him to leave Miami. He hopped a freight train for a circuitous journey to New York City. Though he had no relatives or even acquaintances in New York and was only sixteen years old and penniless, he was determined to get to the city.

Poitier tried to join the US Navy but was too young, so he lied about his age and was able to join the army. His main concern was to have shelter and food, especially since the cold New York weather and his minimal work skills and experience made his living conditions desperate. Stationed mostly at a base on Long Island and working as a medical assistant, he stuck it out for about a year before telling the authorities his true age. He was returned to civilian life and to washing dishes in New York City.

One day on a whim, Poitier answered an advertisement in the Amsterdam News, an African American newspaper, that announced a call for actors for a small theater group. Frederick O’Neal, a director with the American Negro Theater, auditioned Poitier and promptly threw him out because, he declared, Poitier knew nothing about acting. Poitier, determined not to spend his life as a dishwasher, set out to prove O’Neal wrong. He worked to eliminate his thick Bahamian accent by listening to and emulating radio announcers. He practiced his reading skills with the help of an elderly Jewish waiter who would correct his pronunciation. Six months later, he went back to the American Negro Theater and got the chance to prove himself an actor.

Life’s Work

Poitier’s acting career began in earnest in 1946 with his Broadway debut as Polydorus in an all-Black production of the Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes. He received good reviews, and when the Lysistrata run was over, he went on the road as an understudy in a production of Anna Lucasta, performing in several East Coast and midwestern cities. In 1949, he auditioned for the Broadway play Lost in the Stars and also for the Twentieth Century Fox film No Way Out (1950). Offered both roles, he chose to do the film, at a salary ten times that of the theater role. He was twenty-two years old.

Poitier’s second film, made in 1951 with English director Zoltan Korda and with African American actor Canada Lee, was Cry, the Beloved Country. This project took him to London, Paris, and South Africa. Another culture shock, somewhat similar to the shock he faced in Miami as a Black youth, faced him in South Africa: apartheid.

Poitier’s film career proceeded favorably. By 1955, when he made the memorable Blackboard Jungle, he also had acted in Red Ball Express (1952) and Go, Man, Go! (1954). In 1958, he received his first Academy Award nomination for his work in The Defiant Ones, a role for which he won the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear Award. His popularity with American audiences, and with audiences around the world, was growing. This was a time when the growing civil rights movement in the United States was gaining widespread attention.

After his roles in Porgy and Bess (1959) and A Raisin in the Sun (1961), Poitier was considered a reliable box-office draw who was popular with all audiences, regardless of race. He became the first African American to win an Academy Award for best actor for his work in Lilies of the Field (1963). By 1967, he starred in the top three box-office hits of the year: In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and To Sir, with Love. With the exception of They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (1970), race was not a key element of his roles in several of his later films, including Duel at Diablo (1965), A Patch of Blue (1965), The Bedford Incident (1965), The Wilby Conspiracy (1975), Sneakers (1992), and The Jackal (1997).

Other African American actors came into prominence during and after the 1960s, and Poitier’s persona became less appealing to Black audiences, who also came to favor more confrontational actors, such as Calvin Lockhart and Richard Roundtree. Lockhart and Roundtree both starred in the so-called blaxploitation films of the early 1970s, which featured exaggerated violence and sexuality. Poitier’s consequent decline in popularity led him to withdraw from acting and to work elsewhere in the film industry. He joined four other Hollywood actors—Dustin Hoffman, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Barbra Streisand—and formed First Artists Production Company, Ltd. Poitier soon began directing films, including Buck and the Preacher (1972), Uptown Saturday Night (1974), and Stir Crazy (1980).

Poitier wrote his first autobiography, This Life, in 1980, and discussed his childhood living in poverty, his romances, and his marriages to Juanita Hardy, with whom he had four daughters, and later to Joanna Shimkus, with whom he had two daughters.

Poitier published his second autobiography, a best seller titled The Measure of a Man, in 2000. He did some television work in the 1990s, portraying US Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African American on the court, in the drama Separate but Equal (1991). In 1996, he followed up his 1967 film hit To Sir, with Love with a television sequel called To Sir, with Love 2. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Poitier starred in several made-for-television movies, including Mandela and De Klerk(1997), David and Lisa (1998), The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn (1999), Free of Eden (1999), andThe Last Brickmaker in America (2001). Although he made a few appearances in biopics after the turn of the twenty-first century, Poitier primarily remained involved with the film industry through his role as president and chief executive officer of Verdon Cedric Productions, a position he had assumed in 1962.

Poitier received many honors, including several honorary doctorates and an appointment as knight commander of the Order of the British Empire (1974). He also served as Bahamian ambassador to Japan (1997) and Bahamian ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In 1999, he received the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor. He is also the subject of a 1999 PBS documentary, Sidney Poitier: One Bright Light.

In addition to his award-winning acting career, Poitier wrote several books. The audiobook version of The Measure of a Man, narrated by Poitier, won 2001's Grammy Award for best spoken word album. In 2008, Poitier published Life beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter, in which he draws on his personal experiences to provide wisdom and guidance to future generations. His debut novel, Montaro Caine, a sci-fi thriller, came out in 2013 to mixed critical reviews. In 2014, he appeared on the Oscars stage once more, this time receiving applause as he helped to present the award for Best Directing.

Poitier's heart ultimately failed, and he died at the age of ninety-four at his home in Beverly Hills, California, on January 6, 2022.

Significance

Noted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his extraordinary performances, unique screen presence, dignity, intelligence, and style, Poitier was awarded the academy’s honorary award for lifetime artistic accomplishment in 2002. Poitier was also recognized with an American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award (1992), a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award (1995), induction into the NAACP Image Award Hall of Fame (2001), the Marian Anderson Award (2006), the French Order of Arts and Letters (2006), the Lincoln Medal from Ford's Theatre (2009), and the United States' highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009). Though not the first significant African American actor, he became something of an icon nonetheless. In 2006, the American Film Institute’s list of One Hundred Most Inspiring Movies named five of his films, an honor matched by no other actor. During his long career breaking expectations of what Black actors can and cannot do on film and stage, he worked to create jobs for other film actors of color and worked to increase the representation of people of color behind the camera. In 2016, the United Kingdom named him a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) fellow in recognition of his life's work. When the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened in Los Angeles in 2021, its large lobby had been named after him.

Bibliography

"The Dignity of Sidney Poitier." Sunday Morning. CBS News, 12 May 2013. Web. 23 Dec. 2013.

Goudsouzian, Aram. Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2004. Print. Examines Poitier’s performances and his personal life. Contains anecdotes on Poitier’s personality, temper, and insecurities. Includes photographs and a bibliography.

Grimes, William. "Sidney Poitier, Who Paved the Way for Black Actors in Film, Dies at 94." The New York Times, 7 Jan. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/movies/sidney-poitier-dead.html. Accessed 25 Feb. 2022.

Kay, Jennifer. "Poitier Debuts as a Novelist with 'Montaro Caine.'" Rev. of Montaro Caine by Sidney Poitier. Associated Press 8 May 2013: n. pag. Web. 24 Dec. 2013.

Poitier, Sidney. The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography. San Francisco.: Harper, 2000. Print. Recaps details of Poitier's youth, exploring his personal values and the moral influence of his parents. An introspective examination.

Poitier, Sidney. This Life. New York: Knopf, 1980. Print. Interesting chronicle of Poitier’s life from early childhood to his second marriage, with many humorous anecdotes and enlightening references to film celebrities and fascinating episodes. Many personal photographs and studio stills.

"Sidney Poitier." Academy of Achievement. American Academy of Achievement, 4 Sept. 2013. Web. 23 Dec. 2013.

Wilson, Craig. "Sidney Poitier Flips a Curious Coin in His First Novel." Rev. of Montaro Caine, by Sidney Poitier. USA Today. Gannett Satellite Information Network, 6 May 2013. Web. 24 Dec. 2013.