You were very close to nature as a child on Cat Island, werent you? So I said, Okay, sure. I want to be one of the group. He received two competitive Golden Globe Awards, a competitive British Academy of Film and Television Arts award (BAFTA), and a Grammy Award . Bergman, Carol. And then well use each bag as a step. I hated it because it was an unfair place. And they said, Okay, he said, Well talk to your agent. And they said, Here, take this script with you and read it when you get home. So I go back to Marty Baum, the agent who sent me there. The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography Sidney Poitier, Oscar-winning actor and Hollywood's first Black movie star, dies at 94 "Racism is painful and we have to be clear-eyed about it, not just victims of it. So they reaped the harvest prematurely. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison. There isnt a person that sits in a movie house, of any maturity, who hasnt been disappointed, who hasnt been exhilarated, who hasnt felt fear, who hasnt felt joy. I said, Ill come back in a couple of days. I went back in a couple three days, and I could tell that she didnt really tell them. Poitier, Sidney. A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. She would take me with her when she did her laundry. And she stopped in and she said to this lady who was there, she said that I just gave birth to a son. And she explained what the circumstances were and stuff like that. My values are not disconnected from the values of the black community, the African American community. Actor Sidney Poitier's presence in film during the 1950s and 1960s I was one of the principal players in the movie. She stays there a while and she comes out with a guy. I was respectful to people. He returned for a time to the Bahamas, where he was a prominent supporter of the independence movement. Thats what they bring in. A murder takes place, and the bad guys were concerned about me, the character. Washington) and Best Actress (Halle Berry) awards. The timing of Poitier's loss poetically and painfully echoes that of another . (1980), as well as several other features. Sidney Poitier was a native of Cat Island, Bahamas, although born, two months prematurely, in Miami during a visit by his parents, Evelyn (Outten) and Reginald James Poitier. And he pops me, and Ill pop him right back. And I said, If you want me to play it, you will put that in writing. As the civil rights struggle intensified, Poitier felt called to balance his need for artistic fulfillment with his sense of responsibility as the most prominent African American in the film industry. That would get the dirt out of it. But her water broke, thats a phrase, I guess, that you would understand. So you had seen yourself in the pond but never in a mirror. Poitiers enormous fame was a double-edged sword. I memorized it best I could. dignified career. I was on the boat with my mother, a sailboat, going into Nassau harbor. I was on my own in New York City at the age of 15. So I cant tell you whats He said, Ah, he said, Well, would you like me to read with you? And I accepted. I said, I read the script, and I cant play it. And he said, Why cant you play it? I said, I cant play it because this is a father, and he has a child, and these guys kill his child to intimidate him. I just learned that later. You have to read. Its a small package. Were it something thats too weighty for her, certainly Ill carry it a mile if thats the case. Poitier's Caribbean accent and poor reading skills. I was clearly intelligent. I stayed at that job, and then I worked as a delivery boy, and then I worked in a warehouse. Theres a meaning. And he called me the n word, the guy in the thing, and he said, Take off that hat. I was wearing a cap. He found a job and he worked very hard. I said, Sure. other races) brother of a man whose life he could not save. He said, I have a show calledAnna Lucasta, and Im sending out a road company. He said, I wonder if youd like to work for me and be an understudy. And I said, Yes, I would like that. And he hired me. another director, a studio official saw footage Poitier had shot and Poitier He had six daughters in total: four daughters with Hardy named Beverly, Pamela, Sherri, and Gina. As the civil rights struggle intensified, Poitier felt called to balance his need for artistic fulfillment with his sense of responsibility as the most prominent African American in the film industry. It was a staggering experience. I had to then look at it and say wait a minute, thats the me that he sees. Buck and the Preacher He is an example. The only thing that is really outstanding is that it was a production of Stanley Kramer. In 1964, he was the first black actor and first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. On January 23, 1976, he married Joanna Shimkus, a former actress from Canada, and they remained married for the remainder of his life. Im working as a dishwasher. One of the preparations I decided was essential to my survival was I had to learn to read. My brother worked there and I got the job through him. If the wind is ever so slight, theres a ripple. One of the few successful dramas of the 1940s to feature black actors, the play toured for years and brought Poitier into a small, close-knit world of African American professional actors. He knew of my family, and I suspect he chose to make an exception, cause he knew what was going on. Sidney Poitier: Yeah, well thats when its done. You cant do that, because the human responses that would be natural in that circumstance, we are suppressing them to serve values of greed on the part of Hollywood, acquiescence on the part of people culturally who would accept that as the proper approach. I said, You cant do it. I said, You certainly wont do it with me.. Was that inLysistrata? I dont know whether he understood it or not. He was in his 50s, I would think, and the wear and tear of all his experiences with farming had weakened his back. This man. first experienced the magic of the movies. A Piece of the Action. (1963). You ready for this? True Confessionsmagazines were for ladies. (19701993). What was that like? Uncommonly sensitive as an actor, lyrical and loquacious as a person, Majors, a profound admirer of Sidney Poitier, is a rare and potent combination of serious thespian, thirsted-after hunk and . So I set my sights there. But seven years later, after turning down several projects he considered demeaning, Poitier got a number of roles that catapulted him into a category rarely if ever achieved by an African-American man of that time, that of leading man. And something caught my eye. Every word has a meaning, and its meaning might simply be used as a connection: is, as, was, then, now, last, first. That he works, and he has always worked, and he gave them the name of the employers and all that, and he said he wanted them to know that. Actor: In the Heat of the Night. Sidney Poitier: Till now as we sit here. The singer's daughter Shari Belafonte told PEOPLE, "Losing Sidney is probably the most difficult thing . Every time I I didnt really see myself in the pond, because you cant see yourself in a pond. So I couldnt make out really what the words were saying, except some of them were names, and you assume that they were names. I really had to learn to read. Sidney Poitier: Oh yeah. And she pulls me down and she said, What did you do today? I said, What did I do? You actually turned down a part that the agent, Marty Baum, recommended you for. Hampton was formally charged with attempted burglary when he was 19, according to the New York Times. And I couldnt understand it. When I read the script I said, Walter, I cant play this., The scene required me to stand there, this guy walks over to me, and he slaps me in the face. I come from Burdines department store. She looked at me in the most amazing way and she said, Get around to the back. And I didnt understand, I really didnt understand it, because shes standing right there. I never took a dime. When box office receipts were tallied at the end of 1968, Poitiers films were the three most successful releases of the year. David Hampton (April 28, 1964 July 18, 2003) was an American con artist and robber who became infamous in the 1980s after he convinced a group of wealthy Manhattanites to give him money, food, and shelter under the pretense that he was the son of Sidney Poitier. A brief stint in the Army as a worker at a veterans' hospital was followed by more menial jobs in Harlem. And I said to myself, I have to rectify that. Although the two despise each other, they must cooperate to achieve their freedom. Poitier went on to direct I spent much of that summer there, all within the same year. I playedAnna Lucastaon and off for years and years and years. Black Bahamians organized to protest the ban, and when the authorities relented, a movement for independence from Britain intensified. Anyway, the lights go down, and a curtain, big curtain thing opened up. Eventually, my shadow became my best friend because it imitated me. Ive been in Miami just a few months. And suddenly, out of nowhere, came letters, big letters, words, on this big, white screen. He was 94. However articulate he might be, he is not only articulate. They had no expectations that I would be born in Florida. I went to the back of the theater, because I didnt understand how all those cows and the people and how did they get the houses in that little building where I was? But so were so many other things, amazing for me, for a long time on Nassau, because there were windows. In To Sir With Love, he played a teacher assigned to a predominantly white inner-city school in London. He is a young man who perceives himself to be African American. His teachers had little faith in him, but when the star of their student production, the young Harry Belafonte, was unable to appear, Poitier was allowed to substitute for him. And if you take him back to a time when he was not quite as revered as he is now, and you looked at him then and say that this guy could be president in five years, you wouldnt get one bet on that. Thank you for talking with us today. And when I did see a car, whoa! Im glad psychiatry wasnt around then. I said to my mother, I said, Whats that? And she said, Thats a car, because she had seen them in Miami and in Nassau before. But anyway, I went through the ritual and I hear this rumbling, and it scared me. Poitiers films of the 1960s systematically eradicated a host of taboos regarding the portrayal of African Americans on film. There were no such things on Cat Island. His roles in To Sir With Love,Guess Whos Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night made him the top-grossing star of the era. As out of place in the army as he had been in Miami, he feigned insanity to win a medical discharge. I knew there were 1,200 people out in the audience waiting for me to walk out on that stage. Therefore, I have to assume the responsibility for either remaining that way or changing it and to change it for what purpose? Is it true that you answered an ad in the paper? I was petrified. Poitier followed his appearance in No Way Out with Cry the Beloved Country, the screen adaptation of an acclaimed novel set in South Africa. Reflecting on the feelings They probably would have put me away. took a part, from the first part, from the first day, I always said to And that is our home. The AFI tribute to Poitier also took place in 1992; 2. I stayed there for a very long time. And Im reading one of the papers. All they do is they bring this panel of human emotions with them. I was not looking for opportunities. Uptown Saturday Night, Let's Do It Again, But I went there, and they told me, Yeah, you can come and have an audition at such-and-such a time. But he has shown us that our survival is totally dependent on us perceiving ourselves as a single family. In 1955, the 27-year-old actor was improbably cast as a high school student in the film Blackboard Jungle. Sidney Poitier:Lysistratawas my first job on Broadway. After studying and graduating from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts with a bachelor's degree in acting, she found her . Although he does not use the title in the United States, he is known in the British Commonwealth as Sir Sidney Poitier. Its not important to them. And I said to him, I said, I cant play that, because I have a father. Sidney L. 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