Who, in your humble opinion, is the most iconic Hollywood star from the 1950s and 1960s?
Now, you’d be right in thinking that any answer you give would be highly subjective. And you may not be able to pinpoint one specific movie star from the latter part of Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age. But it’s likely you’d be able to reel off a list of the usual suspects - the stars that have become almost synonymous with the big screen in this particular period.
The chances are your answer will be any of the following: James Dean, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Clint Eastwood, Julie Andrews, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Tony Curtis, or Doris Day.
But spare a thought for the late great Sidney Poitier, who, perhaps unlike his peers, had plenty of obstacles to overcome in his bid for success as a leading man on the silver screen.
As far as trailblazers in the film industry go, Poitier is certainly up there. The Bahamian-American actor was perhaps best known for the movies Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, and Lilies of the Field.
So acclaimed were his portrayals on the big screen, that at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in 1963, Poitier would ultimately become the first Black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Lilies of the Field. His win also made him the second Black person to receive an Oscar overall, with Hattie McDaniel having won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Gone with the Wind some decades earlier in 1939.
There’s no denying that Poitier’s iconic movie roles in the 1950s and 1960s paved the way for future generations of Black actors, giving them the opportunity to play characters that didn’t always rely on tired and demeaning stereotypes.
Now, following his passing last month at the age of 94, we’re celebrating the life and career of a true Hollywood great: They call him Mister Poitier!
Poitier was born on February 20, 1927, in Miami. His Bahamian parents, Evelyn (Outten) and Reginald James Poitier, were vacationing in the city, and would raise their son on Cat Island in the Bahamas. He came from a farming background and was by no means well off, with his father also working as a taxi driver in Nassau.
Poitier had only received a basic education, and when he was just 15 years old, his early life came full circle when his family sent him back to Miami to live with his brother in order to nip his rebellious behavior in the bud.
Like other Black people, he experienced racism, discrimination, and segregation in his early years in the US - a very big adjustment for a young boy who was accustomed to living in a majority Black country.
After lying about his age, he enlisted in the army during the Second World War, briefly serving in a medical unit. When he was discharged from the unit, he took on a few menial jobs before applying to New York City’s American Negro Theatre (ANT) but was promptly turned down due to his accent.
Six months later, after working on his American pronunciation by listening intently to radio hosts in the country, he reapplied to the ANT and, this time, was accepted.
He then began training as an actor and appeared in a number of ANT productions. In 1946, he’d already made his Broadway debut in Lysistrata.
Poitier’s first major movie role was in the 1950 movie No Way Out. He played Dr. Luther Brooks, a Black doctor who treats a racist white criminal. The movie was the first in a string of projects that sought to distance himself from characters that perpetuated damaging stereotypes about Black people.
His next role was as a reverend in 1951’s Cry, the Beloved Country, a film adaptation of an Alan Paton novel that centered around a murder in South Africa.
Another role fairly early on in his career was as Gregory Miller, an isolated high school student in the 1955 adaptation of Evan Hunter’s The Blackboard Jungle.
Despite his early successes as a movie star, Poitier continued his stage acting and received widespread praise from the critics following his 1959 starring role in A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway. He went on to star in the 1961 film adaptation of the drama.
In 1957, Poitier impressed viewers and critics alike with his portrayal of a dockworker who forges a friendship with a white colleague (played by John Cassavetes) in Edge of the City.
The theme of racial tensions was also the focus of 1957’s Band of Angels. Set during the American Civil War, the picture featured Poitier as an overseer whose boss (played by Clark Gable) purchases a slave, who happened to be the daughter of a once-wealthy family, learning only after her father’s passing that she was part Black.
In 1958’s The Defiant Ones, Poitier portrays an inmate who manages to escape prison with a white prisoner (played by Tony Curtis).
The movie, at the time, was considered groundbreaking as it advocated racial harmony, and Poitier even received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, becoming the first Black male actor to get recognition in a lead category.
Poitier was also praised for his performance in Porgy and Bess in 1959. He played a disabled man named Porgy, who falls in love with a drug addict named Bess (played Dorothy Dandridge).
His next role in the 1963 movie Lilies of the Field was the most groundbreaking of all.
He played Homer Smith, a former GI, who assists nuns in building a chapel. So acclaimed was his performance that even at a time when African Americans were marching and protesting against discrimination in the US, Poitier managed to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for the role. As such, he became the first Black male actor to be honored in this way.
Following his historic win, he graced the big screen yet again in 1965 with the Academy Award-nominated biblical epic, The Greatest Story Ever Told. The same year saw the release of A Patch of Blue, an intense drama in which Poitier plays a man who becomes friendly with a blind girl who has an abusive mother.
In 1966, Poitier starred in the western, Duel at Diablo, and would continue to be cast in a number of highly lauded movies. In 1967’s To Sir, with Love, he played a teacher who becomes acquainted with a class of rebellious teenage students at a London school.
His next big film was In the Heat of the Night, also released in 1967, which followed Virgin Tibbs, a Black detective who has a difficult partnership with a racist white police chief (played by Rod Steiger). The movie was awarded the Academy Award for best picture, and one particular line by Poitier became so iconic that a 1970 sequel was named after the line: They Call Me Mister Tibbs! He reprised the role for a final time in 1971 with The Organization.
Another smash-hit released in 1967 was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, in which he played a Black man engaged to a white woman (played by Katharine Houghton) who takes him home to meet her parents for the first time.
Having solidified his reputation as a fine actor, Poitier made his directorial debut in 1972 with Buck and the Preacher. The movie is set in the post-Civil War era and sees his character, Buck, guide newly freed slaves to claim settlements out West.
He was also at the helm of the 1973 picture A Warm December, a romantic drama in which Poitier plays a doctor and widow who falls in love with a woman who has sickle cell anemia. Both of these movies, which gave Poitier a rare opportunity to show off his directorial chops, tanked at the box office.
However, a third movie directed by Poitier, Uptown Saturday Night (1974), did phenomenally well due to the chemistry between him and his costars Harry Belafonte and Bill Cosby. He teamed up with Cosby once more in 1975 with Let’s Do It Again and yet again in 1977 with A Piece of the Action.
Poitier made another box office hit in 1980 with Stir Crazy, a comedy starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, who are mistakenly convicted of a crime and sentenced to 125 years behind bars.
Poitier also directed Hanky Panky in 1982, in which Wilder starred alongside his wife, Gilda Radner. Some three years later, another of his directorial efforts - a musical about breakdancers - premiered. The last movie Poitier directed was Ghost Dad, again starring Cosby, however, it paled in comparison with their earlier movies together.
He had taken a more than a decade-long hiatus from his acting career when in 1988, the Oscar winner made an appearance in the thrillers Shoot to Kill and Little Nikita. In the 1990s, he appeared in Sneakers (1992) and The Jackal (1997), however, the majority of his later projects were films made for television. For example, he played Thurgood Marshall in 1991 in Separate but Equal and Nelson Mandela in 1997’s Mandela and de Klerk.
His very last role was in 2001 with The Last Brickmaker in America, a made-for-TV movie about an elderly man coping with the loss of his wife as well as the feeling of being obsolete in his job as a brickmaker in a world with increasingly innovative technology.
In 2001, Poitier was presented with the Academy Honorary Award at the Oscars for his lifetime achievement in film. At the same ceremony, Denzel Washington became the second Black man to win Best Actor for the movie Training Day. Dedicating his win to Poitier, he said:
"I’ll always be chasing you, Sidney. I’ll always be following in your footsteps. There’s nothing I would rather do, sir."
As for his written works, in 1980, Poitier penned a memoir about his childhood in the Bahamas, his transition to Hollywood fame, and his two marriages. A couple of decades later, he released another autobiography, titled The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography. He was also the author of Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter, published in 2008, as well as the suspense novel, Montaro Caine, published in 2013.
Aside from his career in the arts and entertainment, he also served as a diplomat. In 1997, he became the ambassador of the Bahamas to Japan and served until 2007.
From July 8, 2012, after the death of Ernest Borgnine, Poitier became the oldest living Best Actor winner in history. With his own passing on January 6, 2022, Poitier leaves behind an incredible cinematic legacy and one of the most significant firsts Hollywood has ever seen.
