by Conan Simmons – January 7, 2022 – 7:15 pm
Iconic, groundbreaking, Oscar winning actor Sidney Poitier has passed away in Los Angeles, California at the age of 94.
Born February 20, 1927, in Miami, Florida and raised in the Bahamas Sidney Poitier returned to the U.S. and moved to New York becoming an actor on the Broadway stage.
After briefly working as an extra on films Sidney Poitier landed his first credited role in the 1950 film noir ‘No Way Out’. He quickly followed that up with the 1951 drama ‘Cry, the Beloved Country’ and thus began a career of groundbreaking performances opening the door for Black actors to gain more respectable roles shunning the stereotypes that so often were showcased in the early decades of film.
Sidney Poitier appeared in the 1955 juvenile delinquent classic ‘Blackboard Jungle’ and returned to film noir with 1957’s ‘Edge of the City’.
In 1958 Sidney Poitier made an impact with his Academy Award nominated performance in ‘The Defiant Ones’ opposite Tony Curtis as two convicts chained together on the run from the law.
Continuing to defy stereotypes Sidney Poitier starred in more films with respectable roles such as 1959’s ‘Porgy and Bess’, ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ in 1961 and, in that same year, opposite Paul Newman as American jazz musicians in ‘Paris Blues’.
In 1963 Sidney Poitier made history as the first Black actor to win the Oscar for Best Lead Actor with his role in ‘Lillies of the Field’.
Genre films soon followed with roles in the historical Viking saga ‘The Long Ships’ in 1964 and in the Bible epic ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ in 1965. The following year Sidney Poitier made his first mark in the western genre opposite James Garner in ‘Duel at Diablo’.
1967 was the pinnacle of his film career as he starred in three classic films. ‘To Sir, with Love’ as a schoolteacher in England, ‘In the Heat of the Night’ as a detective from Philadelphia working a case in the deep south of Mississippi, the film won the Oscar for Best Picture that year, and as a doctor meeting his fiancée’s parents for the first time in ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’ opposite Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
Sidney Poitier would reprise his role as Detective Tibbs from ‘In the Heat of the Night’ for two sequels in the early 1970’s, ‘They Call Me Mister Tibbs!’ and ‘The Organization’.
In 1972, Sidney Poitier turned to directing beginning with the western comedy ‘Buck and the Preacher’ in which he also starred alongside Harry Belefonte whom Poitier had been an understudy of on Broadway. While he kept acting, directing was more a priority of Poitier’s during the 1970’s as he directed five films during the decade with several more in the 1980’s, including the hit Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder comedy ‘Stir Crazy’ in 1980.
Never slowing down, Sidney Poitier acted in notable action flicks in the late 1980’s including 1988’s ‘Shoot to Kill’ and ‘Little Nikita’, the latter opposite River Phoenix.
Making his last directorial effort with the 1990 Bill Cosby comedy ‘Ghost Dad’, Sidney Poitier would go on acting with roles both on the silver screen and the small screen. In 1992 he appeared in ‘Sneakers’, an early film about computer hackers, and in 1996 on the small screen in a made for tv sequel to his 1967 classic, ‘To Sir, with Love II’ directed by Peter Bogdanovich who coincidentally passed away on the same day as Poitier, January 6.
Sidney Poitier’s final silver screen role was opposite Bruce Willis in the 1997 thriller ‘The Jackal’ and a few years later Poitier would grace the small screen a final time in the made for tv movie ‘The Last Brickmaker in America’ in 2001.
In 2002, Sidney Poitier won an honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement and kept busy as a writer penning the sci-fi novel ‘Montaro Caine’ published in 2013.