Sidney Poitier paved the path for black actors in Hollywood

Today as we admire a galaxy of black actors such as Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Laurence Fishburne, Forest Whitaker, Chadwick Boseman, Eddie Murphy, Jamiee Fox, Michael B Jordan, Idris Elba, we need to pause, mourn and tip a hat to the one who paved the way for an inclusive Hollywood.

Sidney Poitier, the first black actor who won an Academy Award for Best Actor, came at a time when the doors of Hollywood did not open automatically for talent, especially if you were not a white. Even Poitier, though number five in popularity charts behind Richard Burton, Paul Newman, Lee Marvin and John Wayne, was not cast as a romantic hero. However, in Stanley Kramer’s social drama Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, one of the first films on inter-racial marriage, he did play a man in a relationship with a white woman.

Many a laurel came to him. Before he won the best actor award in 1964 for his performance as Homer Smith in the low-budget Lilies of the Field, he won an Oscar nomination for The Defiant Ones (1958). In his career spanning five decades he received two Academy Award nominations, ten Golden Globes nominations, two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations, six BAFTA nominations, eight Laurel nominations, and one Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG) nomination.

In popular imagination world over he would perhaps be best remembered for To Sir, with Love a sentimental film where he played a concerned teacher but a string of his successful films including To Sir, with Love were Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night.

On his shoulders he often felt the weight of representation of millions of his race. This fact led to him being typecast as infallible character rather than a flawed one and was criticised for playing this over-idealised African-American sans sexuality or personality faults such as his character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

Born on February 20, 1927, in Miami and having spent earlier part of his life in the Bahamas, he later moved to Miami and then New York. After doing odd jobs in New York, he landed a role in the film No Way Out (1950) playing a doctor treating a Caucasian bigot. More roles followed and he became America’s first black Matinee idol and later went on to direct a few successful films, including Stir Crazy.

Film trajectory

• No Way Out (1950) was the first film that got him noticed where Sidney played a doctor treating a white bigot.
• The Defiant Ones (1958) earned him first Academy Award nomination in the Best Actor category which he converted into a win five years later with Lilies of the Field (1963).
• To Sir, with Love, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, released in 1967 were some of his films that helped break some social barriers.
• The Bedford Incident (1965) was the first film by the actor where his character’s race was not a concern in the story.
• Out of four Oscar Best Picture nominees — The Defiant Ones (1958), Lilies of the Field (1963), In the Heat of the Night (1967) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) that he starred in In the Heat of the Night won.
• Stir Crazy (1980) was the highest grossing film directed by a black filmmaker until Scary Movie (2000), directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans broke the record.

In year 2002 when Denzel Washington won the award for Best Actor for Training Day, becoming the second black actor to win the award. It was also the year when Poitier received the 2001 Honorary Academy Award for his overall contribution to American cinema. Washington’s victory speech and his words “I’ll always be chasing you, Sidney. I’ll always be following in your footsteps,” is proof enough how he was a role model for many of his race. The ‘Sir’ of To Sir With Love, earned much respect in real life and the honorific Sir when knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1974. Seen in nineties as lead in ABC drama Separate but Equal, and in 1997 as Nelson Mandela in Mandela and de Klerk and The Measure of a Man, is how his memoirs might have been titled. Yet, here was a man whose achievements are immeasurable and as US President Joe Biden put it, “Sidney helped open the hearts of millions and changed the way America saw itself.”

(Compiled by Nonika Singh & Sheetal)