Hollywood has lost the first black star in its history. Sidney Poitier died at the age of 94, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas announced on Friday (January 7th), the country where the legendary actor grew up.
“We have lost an icon, a hero, a mentor, a fighter, and a national treasure”, writes Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper on his Facebook page regarding the actor from Chain or even In the heat of the Night, without mentioning the cause of his death.
Born prematurely in Miami, Florida, on February 20, 1927, during a trip from his parents from the neighboring Bahamas, Sidney Poitier thus obtained dual American and Bahamian nationality.. He decides very young to go to the United States to learn the profession of actor. He took comedy lessons at the American Negro Theater, in exchange for his services as a stagehand, before beginning his career on the Broadway stage.
He landed his first film role in The door opens (1950) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, a film dealing with the subject of racism. But it was in the 1950s that he met with success: first in Seed of Violence (1955), then in the thriller Chain (1958), for which he is nominated for the Oscar for best actor.
In 1961, he received the Gary Cooper Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his role in A reason in the sun but it was in 1964 that he realized the unthinkable: he won the Oscar for best actor for his interpretation of the character of Homer Smith in Lily of the fields. He is the first black actor to receive such an honor. “It was a long journey to get there”, he said very moved, receiving the golden statuette.
But at 37, when the incandescent actor receives his Oscar, he’s the only star of color in Hollywood. “The film industry was not yet ready to elevate more than one minority personality to star status“, he deciphered in his autobiography This Life.
In his various roles, Sidney Poitier has always sought to express his political commitment. He plays in several films which denounce racism and the exclusion of minorities. In The heat of the night (1967), he plays a character accused of a crime because of his skin color.
Through his roles, audiences were able to conceive that African Americans might be doctors (The door opens, in 1950), engineer, professor (Angels with clenched fists, in 1967), or a police officer (In the heat of the Night in 1967). “At the time, (…) I endorsed the hopes of a whole people. I had no control over the content of the films (…) but I might refuse a role, which I did many times. time”, he explained in his autobiography.
/2022/01/07/php73Sbof.jpg)
In Guess who’s coming to dinner? in 1967, he plays the fiance of a young white bourgeois presenting him to his parents, a couple of intellectuals who believe themselves to be open-minded. The meeting is a shock, and gives a major film on the racism of the time. Black cause activists, however, harshly criticize Sidney Poitier for having accepted this role of internationally renowned doctor, at odds with the discrimination suffered by his peers. He is referred to as the “Negro on duty”, “white fantasy”. His unreal qualities as an ideal son-in-law mask his negritude and racist problems, they say.
In 1972, he added a new string to his bow: he directed his first feature film, Buck and his accomplice. He will make around ten films in total, including Madness on the Trail (1982) or Ghost Dad (1990), without giving up his acting career. In 2002, 40 years later, Sidney Poitier received an honorary Oscar for “his extraordinary performances, his dignity, his style and his intelligence”.
“I accept this award on behalf of all the African-American actors and actresses who came before me (…) and on whose shoulders I was able to lean to envision my future“, replied the actor thanking “the visionary choices of a handful of producers, directors and studio directors”. That same evening, Denzel Washington became the second African-American to receive the Oscar for best actor: “I will never reach your height and I will always follow my steps in yours”.
Married 15 years to the dancer Juanita Hardy with whom he has four daughters, Sidney Poitier married in 1976 the Canadian actress Joanna Shimkus who gave birth to two other daughters. In 2000, he confided to Oprah Winfrey that he had remained faithful to his father’s principles. Despite his great poverty, he had “remained dignified, even though in all his life he never made as much money as I was able to spend in a week”.
In recent years, Sidney Poitier has mainly devoted himself to the fight for human rights and racial inequalities. In 2009, he received from President Barack Obama the highest American civilian honor: the Medal of Freedom.