. Sidney Poitier strides through
the hotel restaurant with his distinctive, self-assured signature walk. Arriving for a morning interview, one of hundreds he has given in his 50 years in films,
Poitier turns on his 500-watt smile. He has lived for three-quarters of the 20th century, but, except for strands of gray in his close-cropped hair, he doesn't look 75.
As one of the century's pioneering black movie stars, he often pauses before he answers questions, wanting his comments to accurately reflect his views.
Because he was the first black leading man in commercial Hollywood movies and thus paved the way for the Will
Smiths and Denzel Washingtons of today, Poitier has sometimes been called the Jackie Robinson of motion pictures, after the athlete who broke baseball's color barrier. The actor is flattered but not comfortable with the
description.
"Jackie Robinson is a true legend," Poitier said. "He had the strengths that I would like to think that under such
excruciating circumstances I could muster. But I'm not altogether sure. ... To be compared to Jackie Robinson is an enormous compliment, but I don't think it's necessarily deserved.
Mine was an easy ride compared to Jackie Robinson's."
Poitier has encountered the best and the worst of America and of Hollywood. His career
has brought him wealth, the affection of millions, and a carload of accolades, including the Academy Award. He and his wife of 23 years, Canadian-born actress Joanna Shimkus, live
in Beverly Hills and have raised two daughters.
But he also has felt the sting of segregation in 1940s Florida and discrimination in his early
New York and Hollywood years and the continual bigotry that all blacks in America often endure. Yet he speaks of these happenings matter-of-factly, without bitterness.
Poitier was born in Miami on Feb. 20, 1924, where his parents had gone to deliver tomatoes from their farm on tiny Cay Island in the Bahamas. He spent his early years on the
remote island, which had a population of 1,500 and no electricity.
When the United States embargoed tomatoes from the Bahamas, the family moved to
Nassau where young Sidney was astounded by the sight of automobiles and electric signs and the taste of ice cream. He quit school at 121/2 to help support the family.
When he was 15, the boy was sent to live with a brother in Miami; his father was concerned that the street life of Nassau was a bad influence for his son. With $3 in his pocket, Sidney
traveled steerage on a mail-cargo ship
"The smell in that portion of the boat was so horrendous that I spent a goodly part of the crossing heaving over the side," he recalled.
"The next morning we came into the port at Miami. I saw the buildings. For me they were tall, tall buildings; there was nothing like them in Nassau. Retrospectively, I realize they were
actually short buildings. I was just hypnotized by them."
He also was awed when his brother drove him through the sprawl of Miami to his new home in Liberty City.
"I had learned something of Miami from people who had visited there, so I knew what to expect," he commented. "What I didn't expect was its racial configuration. ... I learned quite
quickly that there were places I couldn't go, that I would be questioned if I wandered into various neighborhoods."
As a drugstore delivery boy, he brought a small package to a woman's house one day and
was puzzled when she insisted that he go to the back door. That night the Ku Klux Klan visited his brother's house with a warning. After several such encounters with bigotry, Poitier
decided that he couldn't survive in Florida and he made his way to New York City, where the buildings were much higher and the streets even more crowded.
"But there was room enough for me to exist without the compromise of my values," he said. "There was segregation, yes, but infinitely less than was sanctioned by law. I could go in any
store and buy a pair of shoes."
The only job the unskilled teen-ager could find in New York was "pearl-diving" washing
dishes. Economically, it was ideal: He not only got paid, he was allowed three meals a day.
The young man slept in various flophouses until his money ran out and he tried a bench in
Pennsylvania Station. A cop booked him for vagrancy. Sidney figured another pinch would land him in jail, so he persuaded a nun to give him a bed at a Catholic orphanage in Brooklyn.
Winter struck New York, and the Bahaman teen suffered mightily. The war was on, and he figured the only way he could reach a warmer clime was to join the Army. He cheated by
two years and swore he was 18. Yet his hopes for warm weather were dashed; his entire service was spent on Long Island.
Assigned to a mental hospital, Poitier was appalled at how cruelly the doctors and nurses
treated the soldier patients. In his 1980 autobiography, "This Life," he related how he escaped the Army by feigning insanity. It was probably his first shot at acting.
Back in Harlem, he was looking in the Amsterdam News for a dishwasher job when he noticed an ad seeking actors at the American Negro Theater. He went there and was
handed a script and told to go on the stage and read from it.
Poitier had never seen a play in his life and could barely read. He stumbled through his lines
in a thick Caribbean accent and the director marched him to the door.
"Why don't you get a job as a dishwasher?" he ranted.
"As I walked to the bus, what humiliated me was the suggestion that all he could see in me was a dishwasher. If I submitted to him, I would be aiding him in making that perception a
prophetic one," Poitier recalled.
"I got so pissed, I said, 'I'm going to become an actor _ whatever that is. I don't want to be
an actor, but I've got to become one to go back there and show him that I could be more than a dishwasher.' That became my goal."
The process took months. He bought a radio for $15 and played it whenever he wasn't working to learn American pronunciation. His favorite was the mellifluous announcer
Norman Brokenshire; everything he said was repeated by Poitier.
Six months later, he returned to the American Negro Theater and was again rejected. Then
he made a deal: He would act as janitor for the theater in return for class lessons. When he was released once more, his fellow students urged the teachers to let him be in the class play.
Another recent Caribbean by the name of Harry Belafonte was cast in the lead. When Belafonte couldn't make a preview performance, his understudy, Sidney Poitier, went on.
The audience included a Broadway producer who was impressed and cast him in an all-black version of "Lysistrata." The play lasted four nights, but rave reviews for Poitier won
him an understudy job in "Anna Lucasta," and later he played the lead in the road company.
Poitier became a professional at a time when work for black actors was scarce, and the
roles that were available were not positive portrayals.
"Almost all the job opportunities were reflective of the stereotypical perception of blacks
that had infected the whole consciousness of the country," he recalled.
"I came with an inability to do those things. It just wasn't in me. I had chosen to use my work as a reflection of my values."
Poitier began his film career with "No Way Out" in 1950, playing a hospital doctor who is called upon to treat a wounded criminal who is a rabid racist (Richard Widmark).
Poitier's film work began at a propitious time, when big studios were losing their iron control over movie product.
"There were a few guys like Stanley Kramer ('The Defiant Ones,' 'Guess Who's Coming to
Dinner'), the Mirisch Brothers ('In the Heat of the Night'), Joseph Mankiewicz ('No Way Out'), Ralph Nelson ('Lilies of the Field') and Norman Jewison ('In the Heat of the Night')
who wanted to say something about the times of their lives. They wanted to comment about some of the iniquities, the unfairness that permeated the entertainment world and reflected
society's view of minority people generally."
Poitier was not the first black dramatic actor to pass through Hollywood. Scores struggled
in the industry in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, some appearing only in the all-black films produced and directed by blacks and shown in segregated theaters, but many relegated to
bit parts in mainstream movies as dimwitted janitors, shuffling shoe shine boys or other equally offensive roles. One or two emerged as stars, like Paul Robeson and, in Poitier's day, James Earl Jones.
After Poitier won the 1963 best-actor Oscar for his portrayal of an itinerant worker in "Lilies of the Field," his career blossomed. By 1968, Poitier had become the No. 1
box-office star in the United States. Still, he was not inundated with projects, as were fellow stars Paul Newman, Julie Andrews and John Wayne.
"I was not the kind of a principal player that was so in demand that eight or 10 or 12 scripts came per month," Poitier said. "But I always had the ability to say no. That's how I called my own shots.
"When the Mirisch Co. came to me with 'In the Heat of the Night,' I was close to the peak of my career. I got there because I said no many times before. Since I couldn't actuate the
things that I wanted to do, the only weapon I had was to say no."
Because he objected to elements in the script, Poitier almost declined "In the Heat of the
Night," a 1967 drama about a big-city detective who solves a murder amid the bigotry of a small Southern town. Producer Walter Mirisch agreed to changes.
So what has motivated the actor to say no so readily?
"My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important," Poitier said. "But my dad also was a remarkable man, a good person,
a principled individual, a man of integrity.
"I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life.
That is where I got the 'I will not do this ... I will not do that.' I just said no."
Poitier made a string of movies in the 1960s, including "To Sir With Love," "The Bedford
Incident," "The Slender Thread" and "A Patch of Blue." But by the mid-'70s, he decided he had achieved all he ever wished for as an actor. And so he turned to directing, with films like
"Buck and the Preacher" and "Uptown Saturday Night." But the past few decades have seen little from the actor. He appeared as some sort of law enforcement officer in "Little
Nikita" and "Sneakers," but has largely disappeared from the screen.
During those years, Poitier wrote two books and some screenplays, studied astronomy and
philosophy and grew closer to his six daughters (he has four daughters from his first marriage to Juanita Hardy).
"Mine was not an easy road," he once said. Still, he added, "serendipity was running up and down all those years.
"It was the good graces of a lot of people. ... A good deed here, a good deed there, a good thought here, a good comment there, all added up to my career in one way or another. So
it's been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether."
"I got so pissed, I said, 'I'm going to become an actor _ whatever that is. I don't want to be
an actor, but I've got to become one to go back there and show him that I could be more than a dishwasher.' That became my goal."
The process took months. He bought a radio for dlrs 15 and played it whenever he wasn't working to learn American pronunciation. His favorite was the mellifluous announcer
Norman Brokenshire; everything he said was repeated by Poitier.
Six months later, he returned to the American Negro Theater and was again rejected. Then
he made a deal: He would act as janitor for the theater in return for class lessons. When he was released once more, his fellow students urged the teachers to let him be in the class play.
Another recent Caribbean by the name of Harry Belafonte was cast in the lead. When Belafonte couldn't make a preview performance, his understudy, Sidney Poitier, went on.
The audience included a Broadway producer who was impressed and cast him in an all-black version of "Lysistrata." The play lasted four nights, but rave reviews for Poitier won
him an understudy job in "Anna Lucasta," and later he played the lead in the road company.
Poitier became a professional at a time when work for black actors was scarce, and the
roles that were available were not positive portrayals.
"Almost all the job opportunities were reflective of the stereotypical perception of blacks
that had infected the whole consciousness of the country," he recalled.
"I came with an inability to do those things. It just wasn't in me. I had chosen to use my work as a reflection of my values."
Poitier began his film career with "No Way Out" in 1950, playing a hospital doctor who is called upon to treat a wounded criminal who is a rabid racist (Richard Widmark).
Poitier's film work began at a propitious time, when big studios were losing their iron control over movie product.
"There were a few guys like Stanley Kramer ('The Defiant Ones,' 'Guess Who's Coming to
Dinner'), the Mirisch Brothers ('In the Heat of the Night'), Joseph Mankiewicz ('No Way Out'), Ralph Nelson ('Lilies of the Field') and Norman Jewison ('In the Heat of the Night')
who wanted to say something about the times of their lives. They wanted to comment about some of the iniquities, the unfairness that permeated the entertainment world and reflected
society's view of minority people generally."
Poitier was not the first black dramatic actor to pass through Hollywood. Scores struggled
in the industry in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, some appearing only in the all-black films produced and directed by blacks and shown in segregated theaters, but many relegated to
bit parts in mainstream movies as dimwitted janitors, shuffling shoe shine boys or other equally offensive roles. One or two emerged as stars, like Paul Robeson and, in Poitier's day, James Earl Jones.
After Poitier won the 1963 best-actor Oscar for his portrayal of an itinerant worker in "Lilies of the Field," his career blossomed. By 1968, Poitier had become the No. 1
box-office star in the United States. Still, he was not inundated with projects, as were fellow stars Paul Newman, Julie Andrews and John Wayne.
"I was not the kind of a principal player that was so in demand that eight or 10 or 12 scripts came per month," Poitier said. "But I always had the ability to say no. That's how I called my own shots.
"When the Mirisch Co. came to me with 'In the Heat of the Night,' I was close to the peak of my career. I got there because I said no many times before. Since I couldn't actuate the
things that I wanted to do, the only weapon I had was to say no."
Because he objected to elements in the script, Poitier almost declined "In the Heat of the
Night," a 1967 drama about a big-city detective who solves a murder amid the bigotry of a small Southern town. Producer Walter Mirisch agreed to changes.
So what has motivated the actor to say no so readily?
"My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important," Poitier said. "But my dad also was a remarkable man, a good person,
a principled individual, a man of integrity.
"I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life.
That is where I got the 'I will not do this ... I will not do that.' I just said no."
Poitier made a string of movies in the 1960s, including "To Sir With Love," "The Bedford
Incident," "The Slender Thread" and "A Patch of Blue." But by the mid-'70s, he decided he had achieved all he ever wished for as an actor. And so he turned to directing, with films like
"Buck and the Preacher" and "Uptown Saturday Night." But the past few decades have seen little from the actor. He appeared as some sort of law enforcement officer in "Little
Nikita" and "Sneakers," but has largely disappeared from the screen.
During those years, Poitier wrote two books and some screenplays, studied astronomy and
philosophy and grew closer to his six daughters (he has four daughters from his first marriage to Juanita Hardy).
"Mine was not an easy road," he once said. Still, he added, "serendipity was running up and down all those years.
"It was the good graces of a lot of people. ... A good deed here, a good deed there, a good thought here, a good comment there, all added up to my career in one way or another. So
it's been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether."
