CHICAGO – With the passing of actor Sidney Poitier at the age of 94 on January 6th, 2022, another lion of the cinema – who represented succinctly an era of the movies – has left the mortal coil. HollywoodChicago.com presents the following appreciation through three film essays in retrospect by Patrick McDonald, Spike Walters and Jon Lennon Espino.
Although Poitier represented American blacks in his early career, often cast as the dignified presence among the bigotry floating around him, his early life was in the Bahamas. He moved to Miami at age 15 (he was born in Miami while his Bahamian parents sold produce there) and after serving in the Army during World War II, he joined the American Negro Theater in New York City.
After working in theater, he made his major film debut in 1950 with the incendiary “No Way Out.” He further broke out with “Blackboard Jungle” in 1955, which skyrocketed an almost symbolic career as the person of color who rose above the surroundings of the stories he was a part of, including “The Defiant Ones,” “A Raisin in the Sun” (reprising his stage role), “Lilies of the Field” (Best Actor Oscar Winner), “A Patch of Blue,” “To Sir with Love,” “In the Heat of the Night” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”
He curtailed his acting in films after 1970, and began directing films such as “Uptown Saturday Night,” “Stir Crazy” and infamously “Ghost Dad,” but continued as a admired representative of his era and actor emeritus. His final roles in a feature film was in “The Jackal” (1997), but he also did a TV movie called “The Last Brickmaker in America” in 2001. Besides his Best Actor Oscar for “Lilies of the Field,” he was nominated for “The Defiant Ones,” won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for “The Measure of a Man” and was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, among many other honors over the years. He passed away in Los Angeles at his home.
Patrick McDonald, Spike Walters and Jon Lennon Espino of HollywoodChicago.com have their favorite Sidney Poitier films, and pay tribute to the legacy of the man who with his presence represented both a culture and a generation.
IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967) by Patrick McDonald
The film “In the Heat of the Night” is a deceptively simple. A Philadelphia police detective named Virgil Tibbs (Poitier) is arrested because of his color in an American Southern town, a town that is dealing with a murder of a white industrialist. When Tibbs identifies himself to Police Chief Gillespie (Rod Steiger), the two team up to solve the murder after Tibb’s boss in Philly suggests it. However, as the case unfolds, the town’s reaction to Tibbs and the ingrained racism of the era makes the case bigger than the pair.
As I mentioned above, Sidney Poitier was often tasked with “representing” American blacks in the stories of the systemic racism and segregation in his acting era of the 1950s through the 1970s. The character of Virgil Tibbs is a proud and superior detective – wanting just to solve the case – and the folks in the Southern town have trouble even believing that through him that circumstance can occur. In the scene that audiences of the era talked about the most, a white plantation owner slaps Tibbs in the face, reacting to a line of questioning. Tibbs slapped him back. Many American blacks of the time reported cheering in the theater … finally “the man” got his comeuppance. Behind the scenes, it was Poitier that suggested the reciprocal slap, and put in his contract that the scene could not be edited out when the film was distributed. He knew its impact.
“In the Heat of the Night” – Oscar Best Picture, 1967 – can be summed up with the memorable delivery of its most famous line of dialogue. What made it memorable was the performance of who delivered it, actor Sidney Poitier.
Chief Gillespie: ‘Virgil’? That’s a funny name for a n***er boy to come from Philadelphia. What do they call you up there?
Virgil: They call me MISTER TIBBS!
AVAILABLE through Video On Demand, Cinemax or HBO Max.
SNEAKERS (1992) by Spike Walters
Sidney Poitier’s career in front of the camera was defined by dignified roles in serious dramas. His career as director behind the camera, by contrast, was defined by screwball comedies like the Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder vehicle “Stir Crazy.” He synthesized these two halves of his career persona beautifully in the underrated spy movie “Sneakers.” Poitier is just one member of an impressively stacked ensemble cast that includes Robert Redford, River Phoenix, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley and many others. He gets to channel his energy into the role of a family man who once worked for the CIA, but has now joined a ragtag group of tech experts out to recover a code breaking box. But the relatively light material also allowed him to let loose a little too … he garners knowing chuckles by slyly playing off his image with a well timed smile here or a quip there, and he even gets to unleash his inner badass too.
It’s not part of his 1960’s glory days, but “Sneakers” is likely the first exposure some younger audiences may have had to this giant of the silver screen. It holds up remarkably well, and shows that there was very little he couldn’t accomplish with grace and dignity.
AVAILABLE through Video On Demand.
GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (1967) by Jon Lennon Espino
It is undeniable that every role Sidney Poitier has taken on has elevated the project in some way. His early career began with a role that reflected the racial tensions of the time, "No Way Out” (1950), and while he would be cast in similar roles spanning his career, he always improved them with his mere presence. The film that I still find myself thinking about to this day is "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" where the star power involved (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy) creates a memorable experience even when the story comes apart at the seams at times. Poitier's character is an African-American doctor who becomes engaged with a color-blind white woman (Katherine Houghton), and they must both now tell his fiancee’s parents (Hepburn and Tracy) about the wedding. As you can imagine, this doesn't go well on either side, but aside from the racial commentary at the time, there are other topics that are better explored within it.
One of the themes that are touched on includes how you don't inherently owe your parents anything. What I mean by that is that in many families, the idea of "respect" is something that the older generations feel entitled to because of age and life experience. What Poitier's character experienced with his father shows how that notion is not only outdated but toxic and it breeds other toxic views. In this scene, Poitier reminds his father that everything that his father did for him was out of fulfilling the responsibility that he took as a father by having children, and not something that his father should expect to get paid back for in the future. His father's view of "respect" being guaranteed and not earned is something that has stuck with me when it comes to dealing with family members who feel the same, so they don't put in the effort to become better people. It also touches on the idea that you can choose your family, whether it means picking people outside of your blood relations to create a family with, or even something as small as cutting out toxic people from your life who still hold on to racist or prejudice ideals that they expect you to respect because they are your "elders."
AVAILABLE through Video On Demand or the STARZ channel.
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