A Tribute to the Legendary Actor
Sidney Poitier.
Sidney Poitier was a Bahamian-American actor, film director, and
diplomat. Sidney Poitier was born on February 20, 1927, in Miami, Florida. He
was the youngest of seven children born to Evelyn and Reginald James Poitier,
Afro-Bahamian farmers who owned a farm on Cat island. The family would travel
to Miami to sell tomatoes and other produce to wholesalers. His father also
worked as a driver for Nassau. Poitier was unexpectedly born in Miami while his
parents were in business; His birth was three months early and he was not
expected to survive, but his parents stayed in Miami for three months to nurse
him back to health. Poitier grew up in the Bahamas, a British crown colony at
the time. He was born in the United States and was granted American
citizenship.
Sidney Poitier lived on Cat Island with his family until he was
ten years old when they moved to Nassau. There he saw his first automobile and
was exposed to the modern world of electricity, plumbing, refrigeration, and
motion pictures. He was raised Catholic but later became an agnostic with views
close to theism.
At fifteen, Poitier was sent to Miami to live with his brother's
family but found himself adjusting to racism in Jim Crow-era Florida. At the
age of sixteen, he moved to New York City, hoping to become an actor, while
continuing to work as a dishwasher. After he failed his first audition at the
American Negro Theater due to his inability to read the script well, an elderly
Jewish waiter sat with him every night for weeks, using the newspaper to help
him improve his reading. During World War II, in November 1943, he lied about
his age and joined the army. He was assigned to a senior management hospital in
Northport, New York, and trained to work with psychiatric patients. Poitier was
upset with how the hospital treated patients and feigned mental illness to get
a discharge. Poitier admitted to a psychiatrist that his condition was fake,
but the doctor sympathized and allowed him to be discharged in December 1944.
After leaving the army, he worked as a dishwasher until a
successful audition offered him a role in an American Negro theater production,
the same company where he failed his first audition. He joined the American
Negro Theater and had his breakthrough film role as a high school student in
Blackboard Jungle (1955). In 1958, Poitier played chained criminals alongside
Tony Curtis in The Defiant Ones, which received nine Academy Award nominations;
Both actors received Best Actor nominations, Poitier's first for a black actor.
Both received Best Actor nominations for the BAFTAs, with Poitier winning.
Additionally, Poitier won the Silver Bear for Best Actor for his performance in
this film. In 1964, he won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best
Actor for Lilies of the Field (1963), in which he played a craftsman who helps
a group of German-speaking nuns build a church.
Poitier was also praised for his powerful portrayals of
legendary African American male characters in Porgy and Bess (1959), A Raisin
in the Sun (1961), and A Patch of Blue (1965). He tackled issues of race and
race relations in three successful 1967 films: To Sir, With Love; Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, the latter of which won the
Academy Award for Best Picture that year. He received Golden Globe and BAFTA
nominations for his performance in the latter film and was voted America's top
box office star in a poll the following year. Beginning in the 1970s, Poitier
also directed various comedies, including Stir Crazy (1980), starring Richard
Pryor and Gene Wilder. After a decade away from acting, he returned to
television and film, starring in Shoot to Kill (1988) and Sneakers (1992).
Poitier was granted a knighthood by Queen
Elizabeth second in 1974. In 1982, he received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille
award. In 1995, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. He was the Bahamian
Ambassador to Japan from 1997 to 2007. In 1999, he was ranked 22nd among male
actors on the American Film Institute's "100 Years... 100 Stars" list
and received a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2002, he
received an Honorary Academy Award for his remarkable achievements as an artist
and as a human being". In 2009, President Barack Obama awarded him the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. In 2016, he
received a BAFTA Fellowship for outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Film.
From 1995 to 2003, Poitier served as a member of the Board of
Directors of The Walt Disney Company. He was the Bahama’s Ambassador to UNESCO
from 2002 to 2007.
Poitier was first married to Juanita Hardy from April 29, 1950,
to 1965. Although living in Mount Vernon, Westchester County, New York in 1956,
they raised their family in Stuyvesant, New York in a house on the Hudson
River. In 1959, Poitier began a nine-year relationship with actress Diahann
Carroll. On January 23, 1969, he married Canadian actress Joanna Shimkus, who
co-starred with Poitier in The Last Man, and they remained married until his
death. He had four daughters with his first wife, Beverly, Pamela, Sherry, and
Geena, and two daughters with his second wife, Anika and Sydney Tamiya. In
addition to his six daughters, Poitier had eight grandchildren and three
great-grandchildren. When Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas in September 2019,
Poitier's family had 23 missing relatives.
Poitier died on January 6, 2022, at the age of 94 at his home in
Beverly Hills, California. Cardiopulmonary failure, Alzheimer's disease, and
prostate cancer were listed as the underlying causes of death. After Poitier's
death, many people, including President Joe Biden, issued statements honoring him,
writing in part: "With his unique warmth, depth and stature on screen –
Sydney helped open the hearts of millions and changed the way America saw
itself." Former President Barack Obama paid tribute to Poitier, calling
him a "unique genius who exemplified dignity and grace." Michelle
Obama, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton also made statements.
Several people in the entertainment industry have paid tribute
to Poitier. Broadway pays homage when theaters dim the lights on January 19,
2022, at 7:45 p.m. The Ebertfest Film Festival has announced that the 2022
event will be dedicated to the memory of Sydney Poitier.
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