Legendary actor Sidney Poitier, the first Black man to win Best Actor Oscar, dies aged 94

[DudleySmith]

Roland Martin writes:

Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier made some of the funnest movies in the 70s, Let's Do It Again and Uptown Saturday Night, which Poitier both directed. Cosby released this statement through his publicist, Andrew Wyatt: "“He was honored by AFI. And, along with many stars of stage and screen politics and higher education who came out to speak, I brought with me the paperback of his autobiography and I said of all groundbreaking movies that Sidney starred in this book is the real story of this man and his journey. I am honored to have been close enough to him and work and work on serious matters."

Those comedies were great. 'lol@ the 'Biggy Small' character.

I think his best role was in that movie was as a school teacher in Britain somewhere, 'To Sir With Love'. I also liked LuLu's theme song for the movie. The movie where he gets suckered into building a nunnery in the middle of nowhere was also pretty good.

Rod Steiger stole the movie 'In The Heat Of The Night'; Poitier was kind of cartoonish and over-acted.

RIP; he wasn't really bad in anything, despite terrible writing and bland stories.

 

[Ringtone]

Sidney Poitier - IMDb​

Sidney Poitier, Actor: In the Heat of the Night. A native of Cat Island, the Bahamas (although born, two months prematurely, in Miami during a visit by his parents), Poitier grew up in poverty as the son of farmers Evelyn (nee Outten) and Reginald James Poitier, who also drove a cab. He had...

www.imdb.com

His best films:

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
John Prentice
1967

In the Heat of the Night
Virgil Tibbs
1967

To Sir, with Love
Mark Thackeray
1966

Duel at Diablo
Toller
1965

A Patch of Blue
Gordon Ralfe
1965

The Slender Thread
Alan Newell
1965

The Bedford Incident
Ben Munceford
1965

Lilies of the Field
Homer Smith
1962

 

[ClaireH]

RIP Sidney.

He is one of my favorite actors of all time - so compelling. He brought dignity to every roll he played.

"A Warm December" is one of my favorites of his movies - it's so lovely. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend:

A Warm December (1973) ⭐ 6.1 | Drama, Romance

1h 39m | PG

www.imdb.com

Thanks for the heads up Boedicca, I’ll look for it. Two favorites- Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and To Sir with Love, both incredibly moving performances.

 

[Ringtone]

I met him once. A class act for sure. His book entitled "The measure of a man" is worth a read.

My great-grandpa, who started out writing ads for radio programs, met him in New York via a mutual friend.

 

[Ringtone]

RIP Sidney.

He is one of my favorite actors of all time - so compelling. He brought dignity to every roll he played.

"A Warm December" is one of my favorites of his movies - it's so lovely. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend:

A Warm December (1973) ⭐ 6.1 | Drama, Romance

1h 39m | PG

www.imdb.com

Yep! Forgot about that one.

 

[basquebromance]

"if your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough" - SP

 

[skye]

Another great movie with Sidney Poitier, also Diahann Carroll, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward from 1961 is ....."Paris Blues" -

This movie is not only a favorite movie with S. Poitier, but one of my favorite movies ever! Ever!

If like me...you like Black and White film, if you like Jazz, if you like Louis Armstrong, if you like Paris in 1961 ....wow....if you like all that .. then you might like this.


Trailer of the movie

 

[basquebromance]

excerpts from a Washington Post op-ed from Wil Haygood, a visiting scholar at Miami University in Ohio:

There are watery caves off Cat Island in the Bahamas and it was into those shark-filled waters that a young Sidney Poitier loved diving, fearless and reckless, a kid being a kid. “There was a very narrow tunnel in the rocks that would fill up with water with every wave,” he would recall. “It was a death trap, but I kept on swimming through that tunnel for hours with no one else around.”

Sidney Poitier, who died Thursday at the age of 94, would need that persistence to conquer the apartheid system in America’s most enduring land of denial and make-believe, otherwise known as Hollywood.

Sidney was first-name cool. The Black mamas and grandmas of America — especially in the late 1950s through the 1980s — just loved them some Sidney. He had to represent a whole race of people; no other Black man was prominent on the big or little screen before he showed up. He had to tutor White America with every movement of body and utterance from his lips. He moved with astonishing grace and had mellifluous diction.

That’s what he threw back in the face of Rod Steiger’s small town police chief in “In the Heat of the Night.” Poitier played Detective Virgil Tibbs of Philadelphia, speaking in blood-soaked Mississippi for every Black man in America whose mom had been disrespected at the Woolworth’s. Yes, it was a movie, and it was make-believe, but it was mighty real in Black America. They call me Mr. Tibbs!

Consider what he was up against: America’s first blockbuster was D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation.” A fictional and revisionist film about Reconstruction, it portrayed Blacks as savages and rapists, and Klansmen as heroes saving White womanhood. The racist film — which had a special showing inside President Woodrow Wilson’s White House — played in theaters for four straight years. Blacks went to court to prevent it from playing in certain cities. There were pickets and NAACP protests. Black people were jailed. The fistfights in front of theaters went on and on.

 

[basquebromance]

“You are my father. I am your son. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself… as a man.”
—Sidney Poitier, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” 1967

 

[Resnic]

What's the point of poiting out he was the first black man to win a Oscar? Do we make it a point to say who the first white person was to win one?

 

[DudleySmith]

Another great movie with Sidney Poitier, also Diahann Carroll, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward from 1961 is ....."Paris Blues" -

This movie is not only a favorite movie with S. Poitier, but one of my favorite movies ever! Ever!

If like me...you like Black and White film, if you like Jazz, if you like Louis Armstrong, if you like Paris in 1961 ....wow....if you like all that .. then you might like this.


Trailer of the movie

They've been running that one here for a month now, just went off. They're back to rerunning a lot of those crappy stupid gangbanger and hood rat movies now.

 

[MizMolly]

RIP Mr. Poitier

 

[basquebromance]

Liberal white audiences applauded when Sidney, at the end of The Defiant Ones, jumped off the train in order not to abandon his white buddy. The Harlem audience was outraged and yelled, Get back on the train you fool!