We Call him MISTER Poitier

On January 15, the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s birth, it was good to turn on the Golden Globes and see Morgan Freeman receive the Cecil B. DeMille award from none other than Sidney Poitier. Poitier, now 84, has been reclusive in recent years. But back in the Sixties, Poitier was far more than merely an actor. By appearing in the sort of leading-man roles previously reserved for whites, Poitier became the Holllywood face of the American civil rights movement. As a bona fide star, he taught Americans (as well as people around the globe) that a man can have dark skin and still be a hero. Morgan Freeman would never have had the chance to play both the President of the United States (in Deep Impact) and God (in Bruce Almighty) if Sidney Poitier had not paved the way.

Poitier’s career began in 1950 with No Way Out, which cast him as a doctor confronting racism in an urban hospital. This was the first of many times he’d play a well-educated black man (a doctor, a social worker, a cop) facing off against white bigots less upstanding and intelligent than he. But he really captured the public’s attention in The Defiant Ones, Stanley Kramer’s earnest drama about two escaped convicts, chained together, who learn mutual respect while making their way through the segregated South. Both Poitier and Tony Curtis, who played his ethnic opposite, were nominated for Best Actor Oscars. But Poitier didn’t win an Oscar until 1963, for his role as a drifter who helps some nuns build a chapel. The film was Lilies of the Field, and Poitier’s victory as the first African-American Best Actor recipient made headlines around the world. (Some blacks to whom I’ve spoken, though, were slightly miffed, feeling this modest, light-hearted film was “the least of his body of work that should have been recognized.”)

Cut to 1967, when Poitier was America’s biggest box-office draw. In To Sir, With Love he played a conscientious teacher who tames some bad-ass high school students. In the Heat of the Night, which went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, cast him as a shrewd Philadelphia police detective who reluctantly joins forces with a small-town Southern sheriff (Rod Steiger) to catch a killer. His final film of 1967, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, raised hackles because he played a brilliant and philanthropic surgeon who dared to fall in love with the daughter of a white newspaper publisher. Though the film, which also starred screen legends Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy (in the last role of his life), inspired controversy, it turned out to be a box-office bonanza. Soon Columbia Pictures was offering Poitier a major production deal.

Poitier’s unique status in Hollywood had its downside. Rod Steiger later revealed how his friend chafed against it: “They put this image on him, for chrissake. He couldn’t yell, couldn’t swear, couldn’t do anything, ‘cause he was the Prince of the Black Race.” This awkward label made Poitier jealously guard his private hours, and contributed to his hypersensitivity about his reputation with the moviegoing public.

I’m embarrassed to admit that when I was a lunch guest at Hillcrest Country Club, a posh venue once frequented by the likes of George Burns and Groucho Marx, I spotted across the large room a dark-skinned man standing at the buffet table. He was wearing black pants and a white shirt, and I casually assumed he was a waiter tidying up. That, it turns out, was my one glimpse of Sidney Poitier in the flesh. Ooops.