Better perspective
Sidney Poitier’s Hollywood breakthrough was 50 years ago
It may come as a shock to those who grew up watching his movies, but Sidney Poitier — who redefined the role of African Americans in cinema — is 90.
Fifty years after his commercial peak, it’s easy to forget he even exists.
He hasn’t had a screen credit since 2001, his health is reportedly frail and the last time he was seen in public was a brief appearance at the 2014 Academy Awards, where he co-presented the best director Oscar to Alfonso Cuaron for “Gravity.”
Even then, at 87, he had his usual poise and dignity, praising the industry that allowed him to push the envelope at a time when such things mattered before ceding the stage, with his usual modesty, to those who followed in his wake.
A majestic old lion passing the torch.
But back in 1967, Sidney Poitier was It: The Man, the dividing line — in racial terms — between then and now, between court jesters and mammies and the kind of nuanced African American performances we see in films like “Moonlight,” “Fences,” “Hidden Figures” and “Selma.”
As has oft been noted, without Poitier — a Bahamian immigrant who didn’t know that in America black people were expected to be subservient (and therefore wasn’t) — none of this would have happened, at least not in the same way.
And the focal point, ground zero, was a six-month period in 1967 — June to December — where the then 40-year-old provocateur appeared in three racially charged films that captured a moment and made him, against all odds, the year’s top box-office star.
First up, in June, was “To Sir With Love,” in which Poitier teaches a class of working class delinquents at a London high school the values of dignity and respect, leading by example.
“It is your duty to change the world, if you can,” he instructs his rebellious charges. “Not by violence — peacefully, individually. Not as a mob.”
In August came the Oscarwinning “In The Heat of the Night,” which cast Poitier as a big city cop paired with a redneck sheriff (Rod Steiger) for a murder investigation in the Deep South.
“Virgil”? That’s a funny name for a n***er boy that comes from Philadelphia,” snaps the buttonpushing racist who later develops a grudging respect. “What do they call you up there?
Snaps Poitier: “They call me MISTER TIBBS!”
When he responds in kind to a racist factory owner who slaps him across the face, it became “the slap heard round the world,” the cinematic equivalent of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated Alabama bus.
Finally, in December, came “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner,” in which Poitier — as a black doctor engaged to a white woman — is the fulcrum for a pointed conversation about interracial marriage among liberal-minded hypocrites on both sides of the racial divide.
“I love you — I always have and I always will,” he tells his dad, who advises his son to stick to his own kind. “But you think of yourself as a coloured man. I think of myself as a ‘man’.”
All three films may seem dated, although you could argue that with its crackling racial tensions, “In The Heat of the Night” hasn’t aged a day.
But two years after the assassination of Malcolm X, at a time when America was embroiled in racial strife and the Black Panthers were moving the needle from nonviolence to direct confrontation, they presented a vision of America that was neither cynical nor corrupt, where the colour of one’s skin was secondary to the purity of one’s heart.
With a feisty determination as jarring as it was inspirational, Poitier embodied this vision with a steadfast resilience that busted down barriers and broke open doors.
He wasn’t just the cinematic embodiment of the perfect African-American.
He was the cinematic embodiment of the perfect American, period.
“I was the most successful black actor in the history of the country,” he told Oprah Winfrey in 2000, contextualizing his ascendance up the cultural pantheon.
“I was not in control of the kinds of films I would be offered, but I was totally in control of the kinds of films I would do. So I came to the mix with that power — the power to say, ‘No, I will not do that.’ I did that from the beginning.
“It’s been an enormous responsibility. And I accepted it,” he said. “And I lived in a way that showed how I respected that. I had to. In order for others to come behind me, there were certain things I had to do. So much was riding on me as one of the first blacks out there.”
Those impatient with the glacial pace of social change three years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 begged to disagree.
They complained that Poitier was a pacifier, an “Uncle Tom,” an “antiseptic, one-dimensional hero” whose sole function was to appease white audiences.
“In all these films he has been a showcase n***er who is given a clean suit and a complete purity of motivation so that, like a mistreated puppy, he has all the sympathy on his side,” African American playwright Clifford Mason wrote in a famous ’67 essay.
“The crucial need is for a break with the concept that the world is only white, and that the Negro exists only in the white man’s view of him.”
“But if you watch Poitier’s movies today, untethered from period politics, what comes through is not appeasement but a blend of quiet charisma, simmering intensity and an undercurrent of “Don’t f--- with me!” defiance that made him a man for all races.”
“What the name-callers missed was that the films I did were designed not just for blacks but for the mainstream,” he told Oprah Winfrey.
“I was in concert with maybe a half-dozen filmmakers, and they were all white. And they chose to make films that would make a statement to a mainstream audience about the awful nature of racism.
“Back then, Hollywood was a place in which there had never been a ‘To Sir, With Love’, ‘The Defiant Ones’, ‘In the Heat of the Night’ or ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’ Nothing like it.”
Had “Heat,” it has been suggested, not been directed by a Canadian (Norman Jewison) with a dispassionate outsider’s point of view, had it not starred a Bahamian native reared on self-respect, the result could have been far different: less nuanced social commentary, more corn-pone folksiness.
Think “Gomer Pyle” and “The Andy Griffith Show.” That slap would have turned to slapstick before you could say “gall-lee”.
“It’s been a real revelation to see this movie in a theatre with an audience,” notes Cameron Bailey, artistic director of the Toronto International Film Festival, screening the film as part of its African American film retrospective, “Black Star” (www.tiff.net/blackstar).
“It’s still relevant. America is still divided.
“When Poitier slaps the racist factory owner, there’s still a gasp in the audience. There are still some things that have the power to shock.”
Bailey — who draws a link between Poitier and current actors Denzel Washington, John Boyega and Chadwick Boseman — understands why the backlash befell Poitier when the optics of race relations shifted radically in the late ’60s.
“He wears a suit, he’s clean-cut and he speaks with authority. Even at the time it was seen as an outmoded 1950s square persona.”
But 50 years later, we have more perspective.
“Poitier was a different kind of persona,” says Bailey, noting that until then black actors were cast mostly as “deferential, comedic musical performers” like amiable, perpetually grinning trumpeter Louis Armstrong.
“It was a necessary step, revolutionary in its own way.
“The main thing is dignity. I think there’s real value in what he did.”