The great American actor Sir Sidney Poitier passed away at the age of 94. The actor was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1963 film Lillies of the Field.
He was the first African-American actor who received this honor, 24 years after the victory of Hattie McDaniel who had won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1939.
The actor’s success continued into the 1960s and in 1967 he had three successful films at the American Box-Office.[3]: A Story of a Crime (In the Heat of the Night), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and To Sir, with Love, which dealt with his subject racism. The actor was also known for his roles in the films: The Blackboard Jungle (1955), I Broke My Bonds (Edge of the City, 1957), When We Broke the Chains (The Defiant Ones, 1958), A Grape in the Sun (A Raisin in the Sun, 1960) and Blind Angel (A Patch of Blue). In 1972 he made his directorial debut with the film Buck and the Preacher. The American Film Institute has ranked him 22nd on the list of the 25 greatest stars of all time.
In 2002 the actor was awarded an Honorary Award Oscar from the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for his achievements as an artist, but also as a man and in 2009 he was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the President of the USA. Barack Obama. Since 1997 he has been ambassador for the Bahamas (where he came from and spent his childhood), from which he hails from Japan.
Who was Sidney Poitier?
According to wikipedia, Sidney Poitier was born in Miami, Florida, where his Bahamian parents were visiting. Poitier grew up on the Caribbean island of Kat and then moved to Miami, where his parents, Reginald James Poitier and Evelyn Auden, traveled to sell tomatoes and other farm produce to Katie Island two months ago. The baby’s survival rate was minimal, which is why his parents stayed in the US for three months. to take care of him. Thus the actor automatically received American citizenship. At the age of 10 his parents moved to Nassau in the Bahamas and at the age of 15 his parents sent him to Miami to live with his brother. At the age of 17 he moved to New York where he worked as a washerman. With the help of a Jewish waiter who sat with him every night, he learned to read a newspaper. He later decided to enlist in the US Army and when he was fired he underwent a successful audition, through which he got a job at the American Negro Theater.
His career as an actor
Poitier began his performances at the American Theater of Negroes, but the audience disapproved of him. Most black actors of the time were eloquent, but Poitier did not have a musical ear, which made him incapable of singing.[14]. Determined to improve his acting skills and get rid of the accent that suggested he was originally from the Bahamas, he spent six months studying to be successful in the theater. His second attempt at the theater was successful and led him to the leading role in the play Lysistrata (based on the comedy of the same name by Aristophanes) on Broadway, which gave him good reviews. There he was spotted by 20th Century Fox director Daryl F. Zanuk, who hired him to star in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film No Way Out (1949) as a doctor threatened by a white man. played by Richard Windmark. His performance led him to more roles, most of which were notable, than those offered to other African-American actors of the period. He established himself with his role in the film Blackboard Jungle (1955), where he appeared as a student of an incompetent class alongside Glenn Ford.
Poitier was the first African-American actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his 1958 film The Defiant Ones. He was also the first actor to win the award (for the film Lillies of the Field (1963). It was preceded by the Hattie McDaniel Awards, which won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Gone With the Wind (1939), and the James Basketball Academy Award, which won an Academy Award for his performance in The T South (Song of the South)). Despite his victory, Poitier feared that the film industry would award him the prize only to impress the crowds and prevent him from making bigger and more important demands in the future.[15]. The year after his victory, he worked hard and remained the only African-American actor in Hollywood to be successful, but the roles offered to him were indifferent.
In 1959 the actor appeared on Broadway in the play A Grape in the Sun, a play which was then successfully transferred to the big screen starring himself. In 1965 he gave memorable performances in the films Sink U-128 (The Bedford Incident) and Blind Angel (A Patch of Blue) alongside Elizabeth Hartmann and Shelley Winters. 1967 proved to be his most commercial year with three of his most popular films of the year: In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Our Lord with Love ( To Sir, with Love). In the movie The Story of a Crime he got one of his most popular roles, as a police officer Virgil Timps. The character of Thibbs appeared in two other films starring Poitier, They Call Me MISTER Tibbs !, 1970, and The Organization (1971), which did not have the success of the original. In 1968 he wrote the screenplay for For Love of Ivy, where he also starred.
The press began to accuse Poitier of being standardized in idealized African-American roles, which were not allowed to have sexual or personal passions and flaws, as was the case with the character he played in the movie Guess Who Will Come Tonight. Poitier had realized what was happening, but he was hesitant about it: he wanted more variety of roles on the one hand, and he wanted to shake off the stereotype of the black film industry on the other. That was one of the reasons he rejected the role of Othello in the eponymous television adaptation of Shakespeare’s play on NBC. In 2002 Poitier received an Honorary Oscar for his contribution to the 7th art. After the death of Ernest Borgnain in 2012, he is the oldest living Oscar winner for Best Actor.
His career as a director
Poitier directed several films. He made his directorial debut in 1972 with Buck and the Preacher, co-starring with Harry Belafonte. The most commercial film he directed was Now… Nothing Stops Us (Stir Crazy, 1980) which for many years was considered the greatest commercial success by an African-American director. It starred Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. In 1974 he re-directed Harry Belafonte with his friend Bill Cosby in Uptown Saturday Night. In 1975 he directed Bill Cosby again in Let`s Do It Again. The 1977 film A Piece of Action marked the beginning of his abstinence from acting in order to devote himself to directing. He returned to acting in 1988 with his role in the film Shoot to Kill.
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