It's hard to imagine not feeling sad about the passing of Chadwick Boseman, the talented and charismatic actor who has just died of colon cancer at age 43. He had so much living left to do, and so many indelible portrayals to give us. Boseman was, of course, the Marvel Universe's Black Panther, the noble and idealistic ruler of the imaginary African kingdom of Wakanda. This year he was the revered Stormin' Norm Holloway in the flashback sections of Spike Lee's Vietnam film, Da 5 Bloods. And we have yet to see his final performance, in the film version (now in post-production) of one of August Wilson's most dynamic plays, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. With Oscar-winner Viola Davis in the title role, this should be a production worth checking out.
In his film career, which commenced in 2008, Boseman has specialized in playing historic figures, imbuing them with both humanity and flair. In 2013, he was Jackie Robinson in 42, conveying the challenges faced by the first Black man in Major League baseball. Two years later, he took on the mantle of James Brown in Get On Up. In 2017, by now a co-producer as well as a star, he portrayed Thurgood Marshall, in a film focusing on the 1940 case that brought him fame as an NAACP attorney, long before he broke the color barrier on the U.S. Supreme Court. Boseman seemed to fit easily into the role of a hero, but somehow managed to dodge the impressions that his on-screen characters were too good to be true.
Which reminds me of another eminent Black actor who once took on heroic roles. Sidney Poitier, whose film career started around 1950, made the nation's pulse beat faster in 1958 with The Defiant Ones. During the turbulent Sixties, when American audiences first began to confront civil inequality, Poitier enjoyed a long string of starring roles in which he played a sort of national savior. As a wandering handyman helping out some kindly nuns in an uplifting trifle called Lilies of the Field, he won a Best Actor Oscar, the first ever given to a man of color. He also played heroic doctors (No Way Out), heroic teachers (To Sir, With Love), heroic social workers (The Slender Thread), heroic police officers (In the Heat of the Night) all roles designed to emphasize his nobility and compassion. Not for him was there opportunity to be goofy or sexy or particularly human. When his heart was stirred, it was always on behalf of someone down-trodden and WHITE, like the young blind woman who falls for him in that great tear-jerker, A Patch of Blue.
How did Black audiences feel about the elevation of one of their own? Many cheered for Poitier's success, but the more thoughtful among them also felt peeved that the one film that allows him to fall in love makes his sweetheart a rather vapid white woman and hammers home a point about the bravery of interracial marriage. In the New York Times, a young Black playwright named Clifford Mason published a sardonic diatribe under the heading, "Why Does White America Love Sidney Poitier So?" (Cliff, a thoughtful observer of the arts scene, told me years later that he was actually saddened that the era didn't allow Poitier to play to his strengths as a leading man in lightweight romantic comedies.)
.By the time he starting taking on more controversial roles, as when playing a racial militant in 1969's The Lost Man, Poitier was beginning to feel irrelevant. For Chadwick Boseman, we'll never know where his career might have led.
How did Black audiences feel about the elevation of one of their own? Many cheered for Poitier's success, but the more thoughtful among them also felt peeved that the one film that allows him to fall in love makes his sweetheart a rather vapid white woman and hammers home a point about the bravery of interracial marriage. In the New York Times, a young Black playwright named Clifford Mason published a sardonic diatribe under the heading, "Why Does White America Love Sidney Poitier So?" (Cliff, a thoughtful observer of the arts scene, told me years later that he was actually saddened that the era didn't allow Poitier to play to his strengths as a leading man in lightweight romantic comedies.)
ReplyDelete.By the time he starting taking on more controversial roles, as when playing a racial militant in 1969's The Lost Man, Poitier was beginning to feel irrelevant.
Here's the thing about that last part; while on a flight, Poitier met Jim Brown, who was also an actor at the time (and just as big)-both got to talking about themselves, and Brown praised Poitier as being a role model for actors like himself and a pioneer. So, not everybody was dismissive of Poitier in the late '60's (and he did get a role in a romantic comedy. For Love Of Ivy, alongside Abbey Lincoln at the title character, in 1968.)
Right -- he did do For Love of Ivy, and later Uptown Saturday Night, which he also directed. So he certainly wasn't out in the cold. But because of historical timing, he never got to play the full range of comic and dramatic roles that were later available to Denzel Washington, who was able to play bad guys as well as good ones. Washington's Best Actor Oscar, for Training Day (2000), was for a complex character who was mostly despicable. Poitier was never able to have the opportunity -- which actors love -- to play thoroughly bad apples. Many thanks, Lionel, for chiming in here. I hope you'll visit Movieland again, so we can continue debating!
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