1975
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LOS ANGELES — Sidney Poitier, the renowned actor, director and activist, died of a combination of heart failure, Alzheimer’s dementia and prostate cancer, according to his death certificate....
Jan 7, 2022 · Sidney Poitier, the first black man to win a best actor Oscar, has died at 94. The Hollywood star's death was confirmed to the BBC by the office of Fred Mitchell, the Bahamas' minister of foreign...
Jan 7, 2022 · Sidney Poitier, the first black man to win a best actor Oscar, has died at 94. The Hollywood star's death was confirmed to the BBC by the office of Fred Mitchell, the Bahamas' minister of...
Jan 7, 2022 · Sidney Poitier, whose elegant bearing and principled onscreen characters made him Hollywood’s first Black movie star and the first Black man to win the best actor Oscar, has died. He was 94.
- Rise Mirrored A Changing America
- Characters of Almost Divine Goodness
- Stardom Couldn't Shield Racism
- 'I'll Always Be Chasing You, Sidney'
- Early Life of Hardship
- Learning to Act
- The Long Journey to Oscar
Poitier's rise mirrored profound changes in the country in the 1950s and 1960s. As racial attitudes evolved during the civil rights era and segregation laws were challenged and fell, Poitier was the performer to whom a cautious industry turned for stories of progress. He was the escaped Black convict who befriends a racist white prisoner (Tony Curt...
Poitier peaked in 1967 with three of the year's most notable movies: To Sir, With Love, in which he starred as a school teacher who wins over his unruly students at a London secondary school; In the Heat of the Night, as the determined police detective Virgil Tibbs; and in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, as the prominent doctor who wishes to marry a ...
But even in his prime he was criticized for being out of touch. He was called an Uncle Tom and a "million-dollar shoeshine boy." In 1967, The New York Times published Black playwright Clifford Mason's essay, "Why Does White America Love Sidney Poitier So?" Mason dismissed Poitier's films as "a schizophrenic flight from historical fact" and the acto...
His screen career faded in the late 1960s as political movements, Black and white, became more radical and movies more explicit. He acted less often, gave fewer interviews and began directing, his credits including the Richard Pryor-Gene Wilder farceStir Crazy, Buck and the Preacher (co-starring Poitier and Belafonte) and the Bill Cosby comedies Up...
His life ended in adulation, but it began in hardship. Poitier was born prematurely, weighing just three pounds, in Miami, where his parents had gone to deliver tomatoes from their farm on tiny Cat Island in the Bahamas. He spent his early years on the remote island, which had a population of 1,500 and no electricity, and he quit school at 12 and a...
Back in Harlem, he was looking in the Amsterdam News for a dishwasher job when he noticed an ad seeking actors at the American Negro Theater. He went there and was handed a script and told to go on the stage. Poitier had never seen a play in his life and could barely read. He stumbled through his lines in a thick Caribbean accent and the director m...
Key early films includedBlackboard Jungle, featuring Poitier as a tough high school student (the actor was well into his 20s at the time) in a violent school; and The Defiant Ones, which brought Poitier his first best actor nomination, and the first one for any Black male. The theme of cultural differences turned lighthearted inLilies of the Field,...
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- Hillel Italie
Jan 19, 2022 · A death certificate for legendary actor Sidney Poitier, who died on Jan. 6 at age 94, lists heart failure as the cause of his death. The document, obtained by CNN Tuesday, states Poitier died...
Jan 7, 2022 · He was 94. His death was confirmed by Eugene Torchon-Newry, acting director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Bahamas, where Mr. Poitier grew up. No cause was given.
