R.I.P. Sidney Poitier

[Greg]

Well, I’m pretty sure we now know who will show up last in the In Memoriam segment at the Oscars this year.

Not to jinx things, but, there is still a little bit of time before the Oscars.

[danfrank]

Well, I’m pretty sure we now know who will show up last in the In Memoriam segment at the Oscars this year. While it’s certainly legitimate to talk about him as a pioneering Black actor, the Jackie Robinson of movies as Tee says, there was a charisma he had that transcended race. I remember watching some of his movies as a pretty young kid and feeling like he just shone on the screen. There was something about him that drew you in and made you hang on his every word. In other words he was a rare movie star. That star definitely faded after his golden period, though of course his legacy did not.

[Big Magilla]

I can't find our Best Actor 1958 or 1963 poll. Did he ever win from us?

My recollection is his one-time (Paris Blues) co-star Paul Newman beat him both times. I voted for him in '58.

Newman ran away with both.

1958 is here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=999

1963 is here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1006

Totals are here:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8689

[Big Magilla]

He was great in supporting roles from 1950's No Way Out through 1955's Rebel Without a Cause

I'm relieved to see I'm not the only who suffers brain cramps around here.

I meant Blackboard Jungle of course.

[Mister Tee]

I can't find our Best Actor 1958 or 1963 poll. Did he ever win from us?

My recollection is his one-time (Paris Blues) co-star Paul Newman beat him both times. I voted for him in '58.

[Sabin]

I forgot to mention, Sidney Poitier did have one major moment of importance for me during my filmgoing years: he presented Best Picture the first ceremony I watched... to Braveheart.

I can't find our Best Actor 1958 or 1963 poll. Did he ever win from us?

[Mister Tee]

He was great in supporting roles from 1950's No Way Out through 1955's Rebel Without a Cause

I'm relieved to see I'm not the only who suffers brain cramps around here.

This is one of those where there's so much to say, it feels almost unnecessary to say anything.

When I watched No Way Out, sometime in the late 90s, I remember having a momentary thought that maybe the movie would not be about a racial conflict between Poitier and Widmark -- then instantaneously realizing that, of course it would; that, in 1950, Poitier would never have been cast unless the role demanded a black actor. That tells you the gestalt of the era in which Poitier emerged. Today, some people moan about black actors showing up (as in period pieces) where it's anachronistic...but let's remember, there was a time in living memory when their participation was limited to roles that only they could play.

There had always been black actors, even in Hollywood movies, but they'd mostly been relegated to maid, butler and blues musician roles. It was Poitier's fate to be the actor so good, so charismatic, and so synched to the emerging civil right revolution, that he broke through that mold -- playing students, teachers, detectives, whatever came along. (By the time he did Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, the criticism was his character was too much of an achiever, to the point it stacked the film's debate thesis.) He became the first true black star with that series of powerful performances Magilla runs down. That he was an excellent actor is hard to argue, based on The Defiant Ones, A Raisin in the Sun, even the sometimes-maligned-because-Oscar Lilies of the Field.

But I think it's also difficult to deny that he became a less interesting actor the higher his star rose -- that his position as "credit to his race" stymied him after a while. He still managed an excellent performance in In the Heat of the Night, but, in his other two vehicles in that Number One at the Box-office year, To Sir With Love and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, he ventured into plaster saint territory, which is never the most interesting place for an actor to go. Jackie Robinson -- who almost has to be invoked when discussing Poitier -- was famously told to sit on his anger for his first season with the Dodgers. For Poitier, who only became Robinson in the 60s when he hit his peak of stardom, the stay-nice requirement became a career-long one from there on. That's why I believe his career stumbled; why he found directing a more satisfying outlet (though none of his directing achievements approached his acting triumphs). There's a cost to being Jackie Robinson (though at least Poitier was spared the early death that befell Robinson): you undoubtedly open the door for many more to follow, for which we're all grateful...but you also deprive yourself (and the world) of the more interesting performances you might have given were you just yourself and not an icon.

Regardless, the man deserves a truly major salute -- possibly more from those of us who were there at the time; who remember the thrill when Anne Bancroft read off his name at the Oscars. Like so many of the people who've died in these past few weeks, he takes a piece pf 20th century history along with him. He won't soon be forgotten.

[Big Magilla]

Poitier was one of the greatest actors working between 1957 and 1967 bar none.

He was great in supporting roles from 1950's No Way Out through 1955's Blackboard Jungle, but he really came into his own with 1957's Edge of the City for which he received the first of his seven BAFTA nominations opposite John Cassavetes in one of the first racially mixed buddy films, a stark On the Waterfront style melodrama, directed by the under-rated Martin Ritt. He was the steady one to Cassavetes' wobbly one, establishing an indelible screen persona from which he rarely stirred.

The following year, he received his second BAFTA nomination, first of six Golden Globe nominations of the era, and the first of a shocking only two Oscar nominations for The Defiant Ones in which he played a runaway prisoner chained to his nemesis, fellow nominee Tony Curtis.

BAFTA and the Globes nominated him again for 1961's A Raisin in the Sun in which he reprised his Broadway role as the troubled son of the film's matriarch played by Claudia McNeill alongside Ruby Dee as his wife and Diana Sands as his sister.

The two awards bodies were there for him again for 1963's Lilies of the Field, a hugely popular comedy in which he plays a handyman helping a group of nuns, for which he won his Oscar. They were with him again two years later for A Patch of Blue for which Oscar overlooked him but gave the Supporting Actress Oscar to Shelley Winters for the second time for playing the film's basically one-note villain.

He was a box-office titan in 1967 with three major hits, To Sir, with Love, In the Heat of the Night, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. BAFTA and the Globes nominated him again, but not Oscar which awarded his Night and Dinner co-stars, Rod Steiger and Katharine Hepburn, respectively and gave In the Heat of the Night the Best Picture win. Poitier, though, never looked happier on or off the screen than when opening the envelope for Best Actress and reading Hepburn's name.

Having reached the pinnacle, it was inevitable I suppose that his career would go downhill from there, but it was truly shocking how quickly it happened with one lame role after another. He recovered in later years with his TV work in such made-for-television movies as Separate but Equal in which he played Thurgood Marshall and Mandela and DeKlerk in which he played Mandela, but his screen career never again achieved the heights of his glory years.

[Sabin]

Sidney Poitier was more or less retired by the time I reached my moviegoing years, existing only on TCM and the occasional TNT film, so I won't feign personal connection. I'll leave that to others on this board.

[HarryGoldfarb]

This is very sad news. Not only a great and iconic in his own right actor but he seemed to be a most nice person.

Guess Gene Hackman, who is about to turn 92 by the end of this month, is now the eldest living actor to ever been nominated for Best Leading Actor. And Don Murray, at 92, is now the eldest nominee among actors in both categories.

[Big Magilla]

Oh, no! Not another major one so soon!

[anonymous1980]

Story.

Another major one. R.I.P. What a career.