Old Jewish waiter set Sidney Poitier on road to Hollywood
FILM STAR Sidney Poitier, who is being mourned across the world after his death aged 94 last week, owed his start in acting to the kindness of an elderly Jewish waiter.
Poitier, who became the first black winner of the Best Actor Academy Award, revealed in an interview with CBS’s Lesley Stahl in 2013 how the Jewish colleague at a New York restaurant taught him how to read.
He said: “I had a newspaper and he walked over to me, and he said, ‘What’s new in the paper?’ And I looked up at him and I said to him, ‘I can’t tell you what’s in the paper, because I can’t read very well.’
“He said, ‘Let me ask you something, would you like me to read with you?’ I said to him, ‘Yes, if you like.’”
Poitier recalled that the celebrated American Negro Theatre in Harlem had previously rejected him for not being able to read scripts. It was then that he was forced to take a job at the restaurant where he met the waiter. He
His colleague at a New York restaurant taught him how to read
was eventually taken on by the theatre company when he went back to them with his improved reading skills. Defying the endemic racism of the period, he became one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, winning his Oscar in 1964 for Lilies Of The Field. He went on to have a string of box-office hits addressing social and racial issues, including Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, In The Heat Of The Night and To Sir, With Love. He also played a leading role in the civil rights movement. Later in his career he became a successful director, and in 2013 wrote a science-fiction novel called Montaro Caine in 2013, which featured a Jewish protagonist.
He is survived by his widow and partner of 46 years, Joanna Shimkus, a Canadian actress who was born to a Lithuanian Jewish father and Catholic mother of Irish descent in Nova Scotia.
Though born in the US, Poitier was a Bahamian citizen and was therefore eligible for the knighthood bestowed upon him by the Queen in 1974.