Sir, we loved you: Sidney Poitier dies at 94

Poitier was the first Black actor to win a Best Actor Oscar, for 1963's Lilies of the Field. His good looks and smooth, commanding presence made him an icon to generations of moviegoers.

Transcript

A MARTINEZ, HOST:

Sidney Poitier, groundbreaking star of American movies, has died. The office of the prime minister of the Bahamas announced his death. He was 94 years old. Poitier the first man to win an Oscar - first Black man to win an Oscar for best actor.

NPR's Walter Ray Watson has this remembrance.

WALTER RAY WATSON, BYLINE: Sidney Poitier - mention his name for people of a certain age, and his smooth, commanding presence, his dark skin, his searing good looks, bemused eye rolls and memorable physicality all come into view. They symbolized and offered a challenge to the way Black men were represented in movies and how they might be seen in the real world.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A RAISIN IN THE SUN")

SIDNEY POITIER: (As Walter Lee Younger) I drive a man around in his limousine, and I say, yes, sir and no, sir and shall I take the drive, sir? Mama, that ain't no kind of job. That ain't nothing at all.

WATSON: In "A Raisin In The Sun," Lorraine Hansberry's landmark work about the dreams and disappointments for a Black family in 1950s America, Poitier plays Walter Lee Younger. Walter aspires to open his own business, but his family frustrates him and his plans.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A RAISIN IN THE SUN")

POITIER: (As Walter Lee Younger) Man say to his woman, I got me a dream. She says, eat your eggs. They gettin' cold. Man say to his woman, help me now to take a hold in this world somehow. And she says, eat your eggs and go to work. I tell you I got to change my life because I'm choking to death, and all you say to me is eat these eggs.

WATSON: Poitier first played Walter Lee on stage.

GLYNN TURMAN: We were in Chicago, and it was cold - I mean, just freezing.

WATSON: Glynn Turman play Poitier's son Travis in the stage production.

TURMAN: And I remember watching him take the time to stand there in this cold and sign all of these autographs. And I just said, well, doesn't he feel the cold, (laughter) you know? Doesn't he know that it is freezing out here? - because the time he took with each person to sign these autographs just made him, in my view, grow bigger and taller and stronger. And I just said, man, who is this guy?

WATSON: Sidney Poitier was well aware of his own symbolism. His life began far more humbly than the fame he would later negotiate. His first years were spent on Cat Island in the Bahamas as the youngest of nine. His parents, Evelyn and Reggie, were tomato farmers. The Poitiers brought their harvest to market in Miami by boat. Sidney was born prematurely on one such trip. He was so small that he wasn't expected to survive, but survive he did.

Speaking with NPR in 2009, Poitier recalled his family's move to Nassau when he was 10. He was so unsophisticated that he had never seen his face in the mirror before then.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

POITIER: I saw my teeth, and they were quite acceptable. They looked pretty (laughter) OK, you know? - and my eyes and my hair and me. I was looking at myself.

WATSON: His life in the Bahamas could hardly prepare him for becoming the most familiar of all Black men seen in Hollywood movies. His everyday workers and professional businessmen were elegant, flawless, dignified. They never were villains.

In the 1958 movie "The Defiant Ones," Sidney Poitier shared top billing with Tony Curtis. Even as a fugitive, he was hard to dislike.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE DEFIANT ONES")

POITIER: (As Noah Cullen) Man come on my land 'cause I didn't pay the note. I gave him an argument, and he pull a gun on me. I took it away from him.

TONY CURTIS: (As John "Joker" Jackson) They put you in jail for that?

POITIER: (As Noah Cullen) I whipped his head good.

WATSON: His name above the title marked a turning point for his career. He was becoming more widely accepted by moviegoers. Sidney Poitier's rise in popularity seemed linked with the hopes of the civil rights movement.

Five years later, in "Lilies Of The Field," Poitier played Homer Smith, a handyman reluctant to help a group of German nuns lacking bricks or money for a new chapel.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "LILIES OF THE FIELD")

POITIER: (As Homer Smith) You know, you are very large on religion and all the rest of it, but you don't even know how to accept a gift from somebody without making them feel small.

LILIA SKALA: (As Mother Maria) Poor man - his feelings is hurt.

POITIER: (As Homer Smith) I'm not twisting your arm for any big thank-yous, but I'm through feeling small.

WATSON: Poitier made history with "Lilies Of The Field." In 1964, the same year as the passage of the Civil Rights Act, he became the first Black male ever to win an Oscar for best actor. In 1967, Poitier became the top box office draw with three popular movies out the same year - "To Sir, With Love," "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" and "In The Heat Of The Night."

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT")

LARRY GATES: (As Endicott) Let me understand this. You two came here to question me?

WATSON: Sidney Poitier plays big-city detective Virgil Tibbs. He questions a murder suspect, a wealthy plantation owner.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT")

POITIER: (As Virgil Tibbs) Was Mr. Colbert ever in this greenhouse, say, last night about midnight?

(SOUNDBITE OF SLAPPING NOISE)

WATSON: The plantation owner slaps Tibbs, and the detective immediately slaps him back.

(SOUNDBITE OF SLAPPING NOISE)

WATSON: The white man is taken by surprise, and so were many moviegoing audiences.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT")

GATES: (As Endicott) There was a time when I could have had you shot.

WATSON: That scene became an icon of American movies.

Sidney Poitier told WHYY's Fresh Air back in 2000 that the script had called for Tibbs to be slapped and then leave. Poitier says he refused to turn the other cheek. To him, it was an opportunity to show real anger at a white man for his mistreatment. It held meaning far beyond the movie houses of 1967.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

POITIER: That kind of a scene, which would be electrifying on the screen - and I insisted that if they wished my participation in the film, that they would have to rewrite it to exemplify that.

ELVIS MITCHELL: There was a time in movies where there was just, for audiences - Black audiences - the enormous amount of pride that we took in just seeing a Black face on screen who wasn't bringing a tray into a room. And that was something that Sidney Poitier got to represent for a long time.

WATSON: Film critic Elvis Mitchell is the host of The Treatment on member station KCRW. Mitchell says dissatisfaction with the civil rights movement and Poitier's mostly non-threatening roles made him an easy target.

MITCHELL: He suddenly went from being the lone representation of his race to being unfairly castigated as the man who apologized for being Black. And he was just working. He wasn't in control of the movie business. He didn't choose to make the movies. He chose to be in them because he just wanted to work.

WATSON: Against the hot wind of criticism, Sidney Poitier set a new course. He claimed new territory for African American performers. He starred in and directed comedies with large Black casts. The best known are "Uptown Saturday Night" and "Let's Do It Again." There was a romance, "For The Love Of Ivy" (ph), in which he played opposite the late singer and actress Abbey Lincoln. His debut as a director was "Buck And The Preacher," a Western with comic touches about Black homesteaders out West. As he moved further away from acting, he directed Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor in "Stir Crazy" in 1980. It was his biggest commercial success as a director.

(SOUNDBITE OF 74TH ACADEMY AWARDS)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Sidney Poitier.

(APPLAUSE)

WATSON: In 2002, nearly 75 years old, Sidney Poitier received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement.

(SOUNDBITE OF 74TH ACADEMY AWARDS)

POITIER: I accept this award in memory of all of the African American actors and actresses who went before me in the difficult years, on whose shoulders I was privileged to stand to see where I might go.

(APPLAUSE)

WATSON: There is a standing ovation for Sidney Poitier. Halle Berry and Denzel Washington won best actress and best actor that night, marking a new first at the Oscars. In 2009, President Barack Obama awarded Sidney Poitier the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

Walter Ray Watson, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF TIMOTHY VALLIER'S "A RAISIN IN THE SUN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.