Sidney Poitier, Academy Class of 2014, Full Interview

[Music] I was not looking to be an actor I was not looking for opportunities that was not I had absolutely no interest at all in being an actor I was a dishwasher I was at that point content to be a dishwasher because I felt and understood and embraced the fact that I did not have the wherewithal to do much else that I wanted to do more not only that I want to do more I was preparing myself to do more one of the preparations I decided was essential to my survival was I had to learn to read I really had to learn to read I could read third grade level fourth grade level as I told you I left school at the age of twelve and a half I then decided that I have to learn to read well and I went about that process and just that I knew was my goal the reason was I realized that in New York there were many streets some were numbered but not all some were named and three syllables I had great problems with pronouncing three syllables and every word that had three four syllables in it I staggered me I mean it just looked just defeated me so I decided that I had to learn to read better because all of the information necessary for my survival came to me would come to me in words and if I don't understand the words I wouldn't know the message and if I don't know the message I will no one would have time for me so that's what I did I tried to learn to read but anyway the the acting came up totally as an accident I was looking for a dishwashing job and I could find a dishwashing job in a paper it's an african-american paper called the Amsterdam news and I would go to the water pages there and it would list porters wanted dishwashers what it maids one or whatever and on this particular day when I needed a job and I looked into this paper I there was nothing there concerning in dishwashing so what I did was I was about to fold it up and put it into the street bin you know the trash bin in on the streets and something caught my eye and what caught my eye was a phrase he said actors wanted well on on the water at page it's at dishwashers wanted it this wanted and then Porter's wanted and I figured well I can even manage some of those jobs but what is this actor's job that doesn't sound like it's too bad so and they were inviting me because they say actors wanted so I decided and there was an address there in the article so I I went and I was just ten blocks away so I walked with what is this and I went in and no I walked on knocking on the door and I came through the door opened it it was the basement of a library I didn't know that at the point and a guy opened the door he's a massive massive guy I mean huge guy big and you know and he said - he said yes I said I I came to see about actors Warren he said you're not Terrace I said yeah he said come on in I went in and he said where have you acted before I said Florida and he said yeah he said you acted in Florida I said yeah anyway he said okay here is this script turn to page 28 read this scene it's a page and a half go over in a couple of times and then let me know when you're ready and we'll read it together I read the other part you read John I said okay and I looked over it I could hardly make out what it seemed that anyway she says you ready I said yeah and I stepped up on a little staged but so big it was maybe 12 feet 15 feet wide and 9 feet deep or something you know and he said you and I said yes this is okay I mean are you on page 38 day 28 I said yes he said okay he said you start I said okay I started the line my line and now I'm reading like I read when I was in school I am very slow and I am very particular in trying to pronounce these three syllable words and force of the words as a result I'm saying when are you going to be at well he came upon a stage and he snatched that book out of my hand and he said he spun me around he grabbed me here and here and he's marching me to the door and he's saying he's saying get out of here and stop wasting people's time he said you can't read you can't you can hardly talk I had this accent and he says why don't you just go out and he's marching me to the door he's got my collar back here and my belt back here and he it just and he's really pissed he's marching me to the door and he said he said just get out of here and stop wasting people's time he opened the door pushed me out he said why don't you go out and get yourself a job as a dishwasher now I'm walking down the street to go get a bus go down Manhattan toward the end actually where there were loads of employment agencies and I suspected I would be able to get a job because I bet gotten the money for halfway in the block between Lenox Avenue and 7th and Penn 7th Avenue is where I'm catcher the bar SOG get the subway I stopped dead in the middle of the street between the two and I said to myself how did he know that I was a dishwasher he's suspected I said I didn't tell him I didn't say anything about dishwashing that was a one thing I wouldn't not and I realized then and there that what he said was his perception of my worth he perceived me to be of no value beyond something that I could do with my hand and while he was correct in his Penge to characterize me that way I was offended I was offended deeply and I said to myself I have to rectify I have to show him that he was wrong about me I decided then and there that I was like this is a wild decision I mean of course but I did decide them at that moment on that street that I am going to be an actor just to show him that he was wrong about me and then I would give up the acting because I have I'm not what do I want to be an actor for I committed myself to that that goes to show you that I was a rather peculiar kid luckily it wasn't around psychiatrists and all that kind of stuff because they probably would have marked me as a guy who was a little off his rocker he told me among the things he said to me he said you can't talk you can't speak you can't read no one ever said that to me before and I always dreaded that someone would say that to me because I really couldn't read what and I really didn't speak terrifically certainly my accent was Caribbean so his complaints were dead-on but I had to now not push that aside I had to then look at it and say wait a minute that's the me that he sees therefore I have to assume the responsibility for either remaining that way or changing it and to change it for what purpose I have to change it because I felt in myself that if I don't change it I would be less the person that I perceived myself to be considered working as a dishwasher and I I learned that there were no other theatrical groups in Harlem at that time of the same caliber as was the American Negro theater and I decided that I wanted to you know I knew I learned that they had a school system where they taught acting and stuff and stuff so I wanted to get in there I also learned that there were some very prestigious black actors and actresses who were affiliated with this so I set my sights there and I learned that they had auditions every three six months or so so I decided that I would go there and take an audition and I went in and asked if I could come in for an audition I didn't see this huge massive guy there fearful that he would remember me and discount me but I went there and they told me yeah you you can come and have an audition at such-and-such a time you know well I did but I didn't know where I would get a scene from I didn't know that there were places you can go and buy a little books of plays and you can take a scene and study that and then show it use it as an audition so what I did was I bought a true confessions magazine true confessions magazines were for ladies but listen I all I needed was to so I selected the two paragraphs out of us such a story I memorized it best I could and I was going to use it as I think the words that I didn't quite understand I would learn about them I would ask certain people that I got to know so I understood what the words were mind you my accent is still pretty poor long story short I went in and I auditioned for them and they said thank you they said we'll let you know and they did indeed let me know and the note came that I wasn't selected I was crestfallen so I couldn't give it up so I went back to them I walked in and there was a lady if the kind of like the desk and I said I took an audition the other day and I wasn't accepted I said however I am here today to ask if this is a possibility and this is what I said I noticed that you don't have a janitor and I said I will do the janitor work for you because it's not a big deal you know you have a fairly small place here and stuff I will do the janitor work for you in exchange for letting me study here and she looked at me in a peculiar way she said you would do that I said yes I would do that and she said well I'll talk to them about it I went but I said I'll come back in a couple of days I went back in a couple of three days and I could tell that she didn't really tell them I said she said oh yeah she said well she said excuse me a minute she goes into the back with the office I suppose and then she comes she stays there when she comes out with a guy and she says what is this you do he didn't know me from the other thing this is you know I'm just he see me for the first time and I said yes he said you would you you would do that I said yes I will do that he said why would you do that I said because I want to learn I want to learn and he said I see he says where you from when I told any experience no well they let me in they let me in and I started studying then they kicked me out because I wasn't didn't show much prop possibilities and then they I was rescued by my fellow students in classes that I was in because they got to like me they thought I was a little crazy guy but they kept to like me and when they told me when the authorities said to me that you will be coming back because you didn't show any possibilities my friends on their own accord not mine I had nothing to do with it but they kind of liked me and he committee of them like three of them went to see the head person and they said that we understand that Sydney is not gonna be coming back and so we just wondered we know that you're going to be doing a student production and we figure that since he worked so hard to try to be acceptable we wondered if maybe you could give him a walk-on maybe can't just walk across the stage once and the person said well I'll and and she was a she said to the friends in my class because she recognized that they were doing it out of kind of they had developed some kind of feeling for me and she said I think about and when they went back to her she said well I tell you what I'll make him an understudy for someone and she said to me so she said to me I'll let you understudy the guy who's gonna play the part now she had no intentions of me ever ever playing that part so I I took it I didn't know she had no intentions I just learned that later the guy that she had chosen to write to do the part was Harry Belafonte a very handsome well-known good actor anyway long story short I studied that part and I was on top of it as best I could have been the evening of the performance Harry Belafonte unfortunately could not come because it was his father was a janitor at a building and he had to help his dad take the ashes from the furnace that heated that place they were eight ten twelve big big baskets of lashes had to be taken up for the dump trucks to take away and he had to do it on that particular evening so she was stuck with me and she set me on I went on I played the part I knew all the words I had I was I had my accident you know and I and I did the best I could there was a guy in the audience who had directed that play before and had been invited by the lady who was who directed it us at the theater and she had asked him to come and take a look at it to see what she had done with it and the guy game but it's a she came at a night when Harry Belafonte the star wasn't gonna be there so she put me on Liz Estrada was my first job on Broadway very very first job on Broadway that guy that same guy who came and looked he was doing he said to me said would you come to my office on Monday and I says I'm doing a play called Lysistrata actually it was yeah a Greek comedy it was and I went and he had me read and he offered me a job my first job for first job professionally I was petrified I was petrified I knew there were 1,200 people out in the audience waiting for me to walk out on that stage and I only had a very small part and I was in the very beginning of the month of the Uni and on my way to this to the stage they said places which means everybody get in ready curtains gonna go up but I had seen everybody in this play but not her most of the guys in the play going to a little peephole and looking out in the direction of the audience and I was so interested in what they were looking at I went and I took a leak and I saw 1,200 people sitting looking at the stage which the curtain hasn't gone up and I got so petrified then the curtain winner and play open with me running out on the stage and saying so and so and so and so and so and so and so when they asked me well whatever I say but all right I got idea I couldn't remember one word I got a very good review because I I got us know I got several splendid reviews because I got out there and I mixed up the dialogue I was so frightened I was so petrified that my I was - I started it but instead of starting with my first line I started with my seventh or eighth line and the guy who was supposed to answer me his eyes weren't buying and he said and he takes his line goes back and pulls up the response to this line and it had got all but the audience is laughing because they don't those who didn't know the play thought that that was the play and they said well I messed up the scene but they the the other actors because I didn't come back on the stage anymore walked out the other actors kind of righted the boat for the men and they went on well the critics said several of them said who was this kid who walked out there and open this way so remember he was he was full of humor and so on so and so and so answer truth is I left the theater after I came off saying to myself that's it I tried I am NOT gonna be an actor I don't have the gift and it's it's silly for me to be this okay I did it I've stuck to it and I don't have it so I left and I went walking about in New York City and on my way home about 11:30 12:00 o'clock that day I'm on my way to my room where I had my residents hired room from somebody who owned I decided to pick up the newspapers and I picked up I guess the daily news and they were believe it or not there were 13 major newspapers in New York City at the time anyway in three or four of them I was mentioned very favorably well my dear being well being being being I changed my mind I wasn't gonna quit the business so quickly their last performance because the show closed in three days they didn't get good reviews for itself a Broadway producer who had on Broadway at that moment of show called Anna lucasta he came to see the show that night the last night he came backstage and he said to me he said let me ask you now by the way I'm reading my lines better because he said I have a show called I don't know castor and I'm sending out a road company see he said I wonder if you'd like to work for me and be an understudy and I said yes I would like that and he hired me and I that was my start I I prayed animal cast it on and off for years and years and years it was a bump here and about there and difficult times in between well anyway marty baram this guy who didn't know me but he had heard of me and he asked me to come to his office the ages and he sent me next door to hotel or that his office was Jason too and he said that these guys are doing this movie it's a movie about a place that's a place called Phoenix City and it's a good part and so on he says I said he said would you wanna go I said yes and he sent me over and I want to learn there was a director and a writer and a producer and they explained to me what the thing was and they gave me a small scene out of but they didn't give me the the book they gave me the small scene and said that would you read this for us and I said yes and I read it for them and they liked it and they said okay he said that we'll talk to your agent and they said here take the script with you and read it when you get home so I go back to Marty bomb I the the guy who's the agent who set me there and he said I told him what had happened and he said well go on take it with you and you read it and you'll come back a piece and he feels that they want me to do it he said and let me know what you think about the script I said fine I went home I read it and I hated it I really hated it it was a story in which there was a janitor I have no and had then no objections of a a janitor but this guy in this movie worked for a gambling casino he was a janitor as a janitor in this gambling casino a murder takes place and the bad guys were concerned about me the character because they didn't if if I had seen anything that would be trouble for them so what they did to seal my lips I had a child as the character and a child a little girl they killed the girl and threw her body on the lawn of his house and I'm playing this guy and I I went to Mari and I said body bar only agent who put me onto it I said I read the script and I can't play and he said why can't you play I said I can't play it because this is a father and he has a child and these guys kill her child to intimidate him and the script permits that intimidation so the writers feel that that's just for them a plotline you know it's not important to them and I said to him I said I can't play that because I have a father and I know that my father would never be like that he would never under any circumstances be like I said as a father I would never be able to not attack those guys do something just to show how I am to articulate me as a human being and he says that's right that's why that's why he says you need money and I did my second daughter was about to be born and I needed the money I really needed the money with seven hundred and fifty dollars for playing this puzzle which was a lot of bucks anyway I couldn't do it now that speaks of who I was it still speaks who I was and it speaks of who I am but who I am is my father's son that's who I am and I spent I spent my life with him until I left him at the age of 15 and I've seen him behave with my mother and their siblings and their children and I've seen him with my mother how he treats her I grew up on that I know how to be a decent human being so I couldn't play it and I didn't play I left Marty's office and I went to 57th Street as 57th Street and end Broadway there was a loan office there called something something finance that you could go in and borrow money on your furniture on your car or whatever I needed $75 to pay Beth Israel Hospital for my birth of my child and I had to put up my furniture such as it was and they loaned me that money and I I paid Beth Israel Hospital and my baby was born some months later martin bombed the agent called me up and he said what are you doing I said I'm working in this restaurant with he said what do you do I says I'm washing dishes but I had a little bit of an investment and he said could you come down and talk to me for I'm gonna ask you a couple questions I said sure I went down I walked in he's there alone i sat down with him and he said I am never been able to understand why you turn down that job it was 700 eventually I would tell him why and he I don't know whether he understood it or not but I think before I told him he said to me I have decided that anyone as crazy as you are he said I want to be their agent till now as we sit here Lloyd Richards was the director of son and he was more than a director he was a theater master master of theater african-american extremely gifted he and a man named Paul man there were teachers they had a teaching a drama school actually and after I did a picture called Blackboard Jungle he asked me know I have to do it but you Blackboard Jungle I went to see them because I knew I wasn't working at the level I should be working here it was a successful film and I did fairly well but I wasn't I wasn't the part was not fulfilled as much as I could have fulfilled it so I went there and I I asked him if I could come and take some classes and they said yes it invited me in and I stayed there for a very long time and they taught me I learned so much they taught me but I learned from them that behind words a meanings every word has a meaning and its meaning might very well simply be used as a connection is as was then now last first there's a meaning now if we don't express when we put words together if we don't express what the meaning is behind this particular bunch of words as actors if we cannot articulate what is behind this bunch of words which would be maybe just one paragraph behind it maybe one point of view or it may be a combination of points of views the audience hearing these would expect to see them exemplified in the behavior of the actor and they taught me how to do that it was a is well a wonderful experience for me because it was produced and directed by a great filmmaker named Stanley Kramer and I had a chance to work with Tony Curtis and we got along wonderfully well the the the only thing that is really outstanding is that it was a production of Stanley Kramer he was one of Hollywood's most liberal most courageous men in the business particularly doing a delicate time in America working for him was pleasure was a wasn't a total pleasure I love the roll it was it was pretty much how I am and what it meant to me to receive the award for it I think it meant a great deal to me was the first time for an african-american I thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed the experience because what he was doing the character mind you what he was doing was exhibiting a vast sense of of himself and the wonders of being alive and the wonders of being a human being and the responsibilities of a human being and here he is vortexing with some of the most lovable characters it was and for that I got an award I embraced the award it was it was wonderful that movie that the man who wanted so badly to make that movie did in fact direct it I've made movies for him in my career several times three times is my friend Ralph Nelson was a very very very humane person he hired me for three fantastic roles I will always be indebted to Roth Nelson because he was he was a real humanitarian the producers were all white I was the one of the principal players in the movie I know what my values were my values are not disconnected from the values some of the values of the black community african-american community so I go in front of a camera with a responsibility to be at least respectful of certain values for this guy who was a very wealthy very well-positioned person in this community in in the south and I am a detective out of Philadelphia who is I'm not in the south I'm on my way home after having visited my mother my mother anyway he slaps me for and when I read the script I said to the producers and the director I said actually the producers first who happens to be a very close friend of mine yeah I said Walter I can't play this the scene required me to stand there this guy walks over to me and he slaps me in the face and I look at him fiercely and walk away and I said to order you I said you can't do that I said let me tell you a little bit about America and the texture of American culture as it stands I said that is dumb it is not very bright I said we're in the 60s this is 1960 807 you can't do that I said the black community will look at that and say that is egregious it's you can't do that because the human responses that would be natural in that circumstances we are suppressing them to serve values of greed on the part of Hollywood acquiescence on the part of people culturally who would accept that as the proper approach I said you can't do it I said you certainly won't do it with me and I got a like you know I talked to him about I said therefore if you want me to do this not only would I not do it but I will insist that I respond to this man precisely as a human being would ordinarily respond to this man and he pops me and I'll pop him right back and I said if you want me to play it you will put that in writing and in writing you will also say that if this picture plays the South that that scene is never ever removed and water being the kind of guy that he was he said yeah he says like I promise you that and I'll give it to you in writing I automatically didn't take it in writing I just took a handshake because he's the kind of a guy his handshake and his signature is one of the same and that made the movie without it the movie would not have done as well as it did my birth was quite unusual and that I was premature and I wasn't expected to live I was delivered by a midwife in Miami Florida in the african-american section of that City and there were no available hospitals for for people of African descent and so certainly my mother knew didn't know of one and so I was born in a small house that was not ours it was a house that my parents would live in because my parents were not Americans my parents were Bohemians which is a group of islands off the coast of Florida many many many islands they run into the hundreds some of them were just that big but but many of them were large enough for four populations two together and my parents were tomato farmers they found tomatoes and they sold their tomatoes in Miami Florida they went to sometimes three times per year they were harvest and they had to harvest at a given time because there were no motor boats that would take their stuff across so they had to go by sailboat so they they they root they reaped the harvest prematurely they had to in order for it to ripen on the way so that when they got to Florida they would have the fruit would be ready full of for sale and on one such trip my mother was pregnant by some six seven months they had no expectations that I would be born in Florida but how water broke that's a phrase I guess that you would understand but the water broke meaning that of course something happened in our internal structure that the baby was gonna come whether it was nine months or not so it was so it was that I was born in Florida unexpectedly and I they had to keep me there for some three months because I was so under prepared for birth that it took three months for me to hit a point at which they could take me on a sailboat which would take several days back to the Bahamas and their their tomato field but during the period when I was really really close to not being here everyone gave up on me then the the the Midwife gave up on me my father also gave up on me because they had had many children I was the last of the lot and my dad felt that having experienced births before in his family he had no confidence in my surviving because what appeared to him was that this child was too fragile to to survive and my mother had a different point of view my mother would not accept that she did not accept it as a matter of fact the evening I was born the very next morning everyone present but meaning the local people's who were friendly with my parents and people who were not they saw the child me and they said nah no chance my mother had a different point of view he left the house the following morning and he went for stroll and that stroll ended up at the local Undertaker's parlor in a discussion centered around preparations for my burial and he came back to the house with this little shoebox it was in fact a shoebox and he came into the house with it and my mother who was naturally prone in bed she was so arranged that she got up and she dressed herself against there the everyone gathered there and she left the house she went out into the world I suppose figuratively speaking and she stay a support because she had she did not want to give up on me and she was determined not to anyway long story short she went out and she spent the whole day I suppose going to local churches and going to various wherever she could find she would find it and help she would go and she did but that they ended and there was nothing so she's on her way home and she decided to stop in and visit a soothsayer you know what they are they are fortune tellers in a peculiar sort of way and she stopped in and she said to this lady was there she said that I just gave birth to a son and and she explained what the circumstances were and stuff like that and she said I want you to tell me about my son and they sat down and this lady began first she went into I hate to say it but it was a the way I get the story she went into a kinda she closed her eyes and the soothsayer closed her eyes and she began to talk in strange in a strange language no language at all I guess was gibberish to anyone listening but my mother was hearing her and then suddenly the soothsayers eyes flew open and she looked at my mother and she said don't worry about your son he will survive and he will not be a sickly child you must not worry about that child my mother came back to the house cost of fifty cents in those days there was a lot of bucks she went back to the house and she told my dad to remove the shoebox from the house there'll be no need for it that then I would travel to all the corners of the earth I will walk with Kings I will be rich and famous I don't know about that but she said so and everything that she said to my mom it's amazing everything came true I have never to this point in my life and I'm 82 years old become next come this Friday I could never find because I have a sense of practicality you know and I I believe in logic and reason things that I to tools that I can apply to a circumstance that I don't quite understand and I can somehow figure it out using those two elements but I could really never figure it out I have not to this day figured it out and it's not that I am stubborn I am in some areas of my life but it wasn't that I was stubborn but I just felt there was something about that circumstance that if I look at it a certain way or if I apply logically and then put into it all kinds of other elements like my mother's faith for instance and all kinds of other things then I could come to a point where I could at least accept it as a part of of the unfolding of this life of mine so I've spent my life not looking for answers but trying to understand it not in terms of its component elements the whole occurrence but in terms of those forces that I have grown to respect those forces in nature that have influences on our lives they are referred to by many people they refer to as they perceive it and many people perceive it as strange unusual miraculous in all kinds of ways me I still don't have a fix on it but I do believe that there are forces in nature that we don't understand and probably never will that have influences on our lives that defies understanding we didn't have any Electra we had no no roads we had rose but they were pathways in a way there was we had very little I mean we had to we ate from the sea food from the sea and and what they grew in their subsistence farming in a particular way their main crop had to be tomatoes because that's how they made their living and that's what then that that money was spent in Florida some of it some of it in the capital on the capital island which was Nassau and and they would bring certain hard groceries with them from mostly from Nassau and hard groceries I mean canned goods there would be canned milk that would be shipped into Bahamas from England and there would be salt pork and salt beef and lard we did a lot of lard there was no such thing as olive oil and and all the good stuff you know we used lard to cook with and we ate from the land and the sea I didn't see a car until I was 10 and a half years old and when I did see a car ha ha ha but I did see a car I was on the book on the boat with my mother sailboat going into Nassau Harbor this is the first time I'm leaving the caravan which is where we lived into stuff because the tomato fields when Kapler because my parents this state of florida was him was encouraged that's the proper word I think was encouraged by tomato farmers in Florida to stop importing Tomatoes from the Bahamas and I suspect from other areas in the Caribbean and it happened it fell like that whoever whatever body was making the determination and my father's business just went there was no place else to sell the tomatoes and that's all he'd ever done in his life so he had to go to have to take the family to a Nassau which was a tourist island and he would have to find a way to support his family by working there doing whatever he could find because he didn't have very much money he barely had enough to move the family to Nassau where he would serve look for a job and that's that's where we were I'm coming in on a boat and I'm just just wild hi about I see the island coming up and there's nothing it looks like a regular island you know but it's the first island I'm seeing other than the one I grew up on so I'm looking at this place and then I saw what appeared to me to be a Beatle but it was massive it was huge and I was I was fascinated looking at this thing we are still quite a distance from Nassau but they were these obviously these filled things and I said to my mother I said what's that and she said that's a car because she had seen them in Miami and in Essos and I said a car I said what what is that what does that do and she tried her best to explain it to me until of course we got to the docks and I got off and I saw this thing up close you know and I was fascinated I wondered how how does it move how does it get artists what is making it move and it was just amazing about this so were so many other things amazing for me for a long time on NASA because there windows there were pay froze never seen a paid birth there were windows along the streets on the main thoroughfare which was Renee of the docks and there wasn't there was glass but you it was glass you could look through like you can look through glass by hourglass spiral and there were many things in the window they were goods and stuff and in the window and I couldn't understand it I didn't know what glass was but I hadn't seen me in a mirror of course not there were not such things up on Karen I anyway I decided that I was going to see myself in a mirror I had seen myself in in the pond reflection because my mother used to go to wash our clothing and rest of the family's clothing to a part in the woods let's call it the forest but it wasn't really a forest because the trees were never that tall but they were six seven eight feet tall and much taller than I was and I would go with her she would take me with her when she did her laundry and she would go and she would take the clothing and she would she would add a little octagons soap to it to a garment and then she would beat the garment on a stone I would get the dirt out of it you know that's actually did a washing but I didn't see myself in a pond because you can't see yourself in the pond she what she's washing her clothing in the pond what every movement with the water whatever wherever she touches it it it ripples if the wind is ever so slight there's a ripple and you can't make out anything so I didn't know what a shadow was you ready for this I saw my own shadow and I didn't understand it mind you I'm a kid I'm eventually my shadow became my best friend because it imitated me every time I do that every time I do that I could see my shadow doing the same thing so my shadow became my friend I used to race my shadow down the beaches and depending on where the Sun was I would win sometimes oh my god on Cat Island there was a schoolhouse the schoolhouse was a multiple meaning that there was one room and the children I don't think there were more than grade one two three maybe four and I went on some days other days I went to the farm I was going to the farm to work at five years old not every day certain days I went to the farm when there were available days for the school I went to the schoolhouse when I saw my first movie we had moved to now so by then and we left Kerala when I was ten and I have so when as soon as we got to Nassau Nassau was like a kid coming out of the center of the United States from the smallest tiniest farming area and suddenly is put into New York City that's the kind of impact experience going into this whole new culture thing about in in Nassau and I made some friends quite quickly because right there in a place where my folks were able to to rent a small house again with no electricity and no running water and all life stuff anyway this little house had to accommodate us all and there were five boys and two girls and a family and I don't think that all of them I think the elder of the of the group had already separated and out on their own when we got to Nassau so they could start working and make it and assuming there are responsibilities for themselves over and above the farm that we were but anyway I met these new kids who were in this particular neighborhood and they sort of embraced me and they said to me oh I guess some weeks after who we were we had moved they they said that they were going to a matinee where I liked and I didn't want them to know I didn't know what the word matinee meant so I said okay sure all right you know I want to be one of a group so they went to this theater and this place had a facade they had pictures of people white people on the outside of the thing which ultimately I came to understand word the advertisement letting the audience know what the movie is about but I didn't know I was going to see a movie I had no idea so they bought a ticket for me and we went in and he sat and then in this place there were many seats and they would look the whole place was seized and we took a row there and we're sitting there and I am making sure that I don't slip up and ask the wrong question or something because I know that I would make a fool of myself so I just behaved as best I could as one of the guys anyway the lights go down and a curtain big curtain thing opened up and there was this big white frame and suddenly I don't know where I came letters big letters words on this big white screen I can barely read I really am not really a reader I am I read terribly so I couldn't make out really what the words were saying except some of them were names and you assumed that they were name so I just kind of waited to see what's gonna happen with this lit up screen I didn't know there was a word name the core screen but then I saw people and it shocks me how did they get there then I saw cows and I saw wagons and I saw brown people wearing skins and feathers I had no idea I would learn later that they were Indians and they were white people settlers and in certain parts of it that was my first movie I was twelve and a half I was tall I I figured I could get a job because it was really big wearing my dad out so I quit school and went to work first I went to work as a a water boy working on construction thing I would go around with a dipper and a bucket and these guys were all working in the Sun you know and that part of the world Sun is fierce so I walked up and down the line where these guys were working and I have this bucket on this Dipper and they would take a drink and so and that was my job but it didn't pay very much and my folks really were in need so I decided that I was tall enough to hike my age and maybe he had a job as an adult and the guy that I went to he was like Foreman or assistant to the foreman he knew of my family and I suspect he chose to make an exception and he said okay cuz he knew what was going on and he moved me gave me a pick and a shovel and I was among the big guys and I was using a pickaxe and shoveling dirt up out of this ditch up onto the region up above it and because I got the pay was much much better in the aggregate or the brother the difference was such that it was very helpful to for food and all that stuff I was making today's equivalent of maybe two dollars three dollars a week but in those days the $3.00 went quite a ways high stayed at that job and then I worked as a delivery boy and then I worked in a warehouse where I had to stack myself and others because I was tall they just assumed I was eligible I would have to take a 98 pound bag of rice or sugar or flour and stack them to the ceiling of this warehouse in town we would lay the first foundation for it every every bag of whatever would be put here until it covers the whole floor and then we'll use that each bag as a step and then we'll do another and then another step so that toward the end I would have a 98 pounds on my shoulder walking up these steps to the ceiling I hit a bad spot wherein I couldn't find a job another job and my father became concerned he thought that I was going to get involved well I had a friend his name was your over very close my very best friend at that time and we were like that who used to buy raw peanuts if we had a couple of pennies we would buy raw peanuts we would roast them put them in little teeny bags and go to the stand in front of the theater and sell them the people going in but we were doing that just to make enough money to for us to buy a ticket ourselves and go in and see the movies anyway he was without me one day we were that close all the time and for what reasons I don't know but he on that day I was not with him and he stole a bicycle and he was caught and he was sent to reform school for four years and that worried my dad and because he knew I was very close with this guy and he knew his own life was in the process of deterioration he was in his fifties I would think and the wear and tear of all his experiences with farming had weakened his back and finding jobs were difficult so he is not a young man anymore anyway he began to be concerned about me I was leaving the house one day and he stopped me he was sitting at the door of this house that we lived in and as I stepped out of the door on my way out I looked at him and he looked at me and he said to me he said he felt my arm and he said you have not been eating regularly have you son and I said to him oh I'm okay I'm fine I said I'm fine I knew the weight that brought that out of him anyway my oldest brother had stowed away on a motor boat that ran between the Bahamas between NASA and Florida and he was the oldest of the boys and my dad oh he had stowed away and he went to Florida and he got away with it and he found a job and he worked very hard tremendous guy this guy was Searle was his name he met a girl fell in love with her and she with him and they got married and he went down to the police station in the scent of Miami and he told them that he was a stowaway and that he has been here such-and-such a time and he explained to them what he did that he works he and he has always worked and he gave him the name of the employers and all that and he said he wanted them to know that and he said I have a children I have children anyway they allowed him to stay I don't know what the circumstances were but they allowed him to stay I was the delivery boy I worked for place called Burdines department store and I'm I job my brother worked there and he I got the job through him and I I yes I hated Florida I hated for it I hated in Miami I didn't know Florida I suspect that I would have hated Florida if I had traveled about in Florida because Miami was no different from the rest of Florida but I did hate it I hated it because it was a an unfair place I was told to deliver a package on to Miami Beach this is from Miami itself and you go across the causeway which he just walk across or you take the bicycle they had a bicycle thank you for the delivery boys and they gave me the address and they explained to me how to get there and I went and I I found it and I went to the place I saw the address and I matched it with the thing they had written for me and I went up to the door and I either not or pushed the button and a lady came to the door a white lady and she said yes and I said ma'am this is your package I come from Burdines department store and she said she looked at me in the most amazing way and she said get around to the back and I didn't understand I really didn't understand it because she's standing right there she obviously is the mistress of the house and I'm standing within 3 feet of her and this is a bigger house and I said to her why do I have to take it around the back it's a small package where it's something that too weighty for her i sir we all carry it a mile that's the case but I wasn't aware of the depth of racism I had been experiencing it every day there but the impact of it in such a coarse way she slammed the door in my face and I took the package and I sat it right down on the step in front the house and I left I go back to where dance department store and I did whatever my duties were and I went when a day was done I went to Liberty City which is where I lived my brother lived a I was living with him and I had a few pennies and I decided to go to a movie so and I went to a movie and I dad sat there and watched a movie and at the end of the movie now I'm going home to my brother's house and I approach the house and there's no there are no lights on well I killed the lock I mean anything they don't know it's nothing and then the door suddenly opens and it's my sister-in-law my brother's wife and she grabs me and pulls me into the house slams the door and on the floor she's lying with her children and she pulls me down and she said what did you do today I said what do you mean she explained to me that the clan had come to them to the house looking for me because I had misbehaved I guess I wasn't as frightened as one might assume if I knew that the clan would be there I would have been if not frightened I would have been at least on my guard well I didn't know but at that age no I mind you I am I am 15 going on going at 16 now this is just after I'm in Miami just a few months I went to Miami from Nassau and I went to Nassau from Karen and between Carolyn and NASA my perception of myself had already taken hold so I was not I didn't spend the first 15 years of my life cringing in the presence of white people the overwhelming and we'll get to this as well the overwhelming majority of people in the armors were black people so I grew up those 15 years with the exception of the three months when I was a baby in Florida I spent them in cann island and Nassau and spending them in Canada or NASA I was within the circumference of the black community constantly so that I saw people how they behaved with each other I saw respect for each other I saw laughter I saw an embrace I saw it was an environment that nurtured me in ways that I wasn't even aware of so that I got to 15 not afraid of white people but that strong sense of self-worth came in came in the Bahamas itself out of my family out of the families I knew out of the the society such as it was semi permitted as it in fact was but they treated each other respectfully they raised their children to be respectful of alders if if my mother was unable to work in the fields of friends would come by and bring food I mean it was a wonderful community so that when we got to Nassau Nassau was somewhat different but still we have in Nassau add in Nassau at that time 90 percent of the people in Nassau were black the cops were back all the policemen were black except possibly the head of the police department and his lieutenants mind you I'm talking about a colonial country but because it is a colonial country and luckily for us the colonial country being Great Britain they could not they could not manage a colonial empire because there were so few people the British were very few do you know that is literally speaking a very small number of Britons ruled India hmm they ruled most of the Caribbean and they could not there was no way for them to cultivate the necessary personnel they would need to administer to their colonial possessions so what they had to do they had to educate the local people so that there were policemen all of the policemen with the exception of the few guys who ran the police force were black so as a kid I didn't run around being fearful that I was going to be mistreated okay that gives you an idea of what I came out of and the values I came out of the Bahamas with when I went to Miami so that when I went when I walked into the police station me to get permission to go across the street which was a vital statistics department of the government I was going over there to gain a birth certificate because I had misplaced my birth certificate which I had gotten from the embassy the US Embassy in the bottom and I walked into the police station and I said to the gentleman that the I said sir and I called everybody sir because my father taught me that and my mom pop-pop power you say sir to you elders anyway and I was respectful I walked into the police station to get permission to go across the street so and so and he called me the n-word the dial-in a thing and he and he said take off that hat and I was wearing a cap I looked at this guy Syria but kind of a thing at the desk and I said what you call me my kid I'm 15 I said and I just lost it I just said I am Reggie what that's my father's name that's my dad and his name is Reginald and my mother's name is so-and-so and they named me Sidney that's my name well the cops they were several in the place and they looked at me Oh God now had I been born and raised in Florida I would have a different approach exactly I would have been cultivated to respond in a different way especially if I had spent those first 15 years of my life in I went to New York I got to New York by hopping freight trains and all kinds of different interesting ways I wound up in Georgia I didn't get to New York I want up in Georgia in the mountains working as a dishwasher in a summer resort I spent much of that summer same here all within the same year and when I was done there I had saved $38 30 30 39 dollars and I came down from the mountains bus station because that's how I got to the mountains I went took a bus from Florida where the job was offered to me because whatever I accepted the job as a dishwasher in Georgia they gave me a bus ticket and I went to Atlanta they transferred me to another bus that went to another place close to the foot of the mountains and someone met me there and took me up the mountain and I spent my time washing dishes and I saved all of my money I never took it done and when I left there at 13 I know by the time I got to New York someone had rifled my little bag and taken my money and I got into New York with very few dollars in my pocket New York was an experience it was a staggering experience it was massive it was huge they were incredibly tall buildings it was and I got there in the afternoon and the place I wanted to go to was Harlem to see Harlem I'd heard a great deal about Harlem and I asked a chap at the at the doorway of the bus station I said how do I get to harm I had a very little small bag with a couple of three pairs of pants some shirt and that's about the size of it maybe one jacket but not for winter I'll get to that so I he said will you go right down those steps and you uh you'll just go go 216 Street and I said okay so I go down the steps and I said what do I do when I got down there and I watched people they would come and they would put something in a little thing for the turnstile and like I had to upstairs that said to me then you take the Train and I said to myself wait a min trained under the ground that doesn't make any sense a trade you know but anyway I went through the ritual and I hear this rumbling and it scared me and along comes this train and I saw people putting a nickel those days was a nickel or something in and they go through the turnstile when I was always courageous is way some ways and I and I go through the turnstile and I got as he told me 116th Street so I got on in the Train and every time it stopped I would but I was amazed how could it be running under the ground makes no sense to me but I'm alert and I'm sitting there and I see the station comes up 116th Street and I jumped off and I walked and followed people going up the steps and I walked out at 116th Street at eighth Avenue and a high was a Harlem I did learn early that everything I want to do in life requires that I accumulate understanding knowledge know-how what is the what is the quickest most dimensional way to make that kind of accumulation you have to read you have to read ah I've always felt that I know I didn't know so much and yet everything pretty much that I didn't know is available somewhere and I the first place I went to was to newspapers I had an experience with a Jewish waiter I was a dishwasher and he was a waiter in Queens New York and I used to buy the local newspapers in sometimes the journal Americans sometimes the New York Times Daily News at the end of the evening when the waiters are done and the place is closed just about closing the waiters would sit at a table and they would have tea coffee or a late snack which was permissible by the owner I would sit in the dining room next door to the kitchen and I would sit there because everything else is done all the dishes done except those that the waiters are using for their snack City so I sit there and I'm reading one of the papers and there was a Jewish way to sitting at the table elderly man and he saw me there he got up and he walked over and he stood by the table that's next to the kitchen and he said hi and I looked up and I said hi he said what's new in the papers and I said to him I can't tell you what's new in the papers because I don't read very well I didn't have very much of an education so I can't tell you but he said huh he said well would you like me to read with you and I accepted I said assured like that every night after that he would come over and sit with me and he will teach me about what a comma is and why it exists what periods are what colons are what dashes he would teach me that there are syllables and how to differentiate them in a single word and consequently learn how to pronounce them every night one of my great regrets in life is that I went on to be a very successful actor and one day I tried to find him but it was too late and I I regret that I never had the opportunity to to really thank him I hit the age of 15 not being afraid I was on my own in New York City at the age of 15 I II was respectful to people I said as my father explained to me to elders you say sir if it is a man to elders you say ma'am if it is a woman you respect older people I learned from him a certain way of behavior but what I learned is was not in terms of something I got out of a book what I learned was an internal connectedness to life in the family in the small community where we lived how people treated each other particularly how my father treated his friends and my mother you see so I came at 15 to Miami Florida with a sense of that humanity that is why I am sitting in this chair now all of what I feel about life I had to find a way in my work to be faithful to it to be respectful of it I couldn't and still can't play a scene I cannot play a scene that I don't find the texture of humanity in the material I can't I don't know how fine an actor or director I am or have been but every person who goes into a theater and I know and anyone who watches this video who is interested in theater or the creative arts anyone interested in theater arts they enter a movie house or they enter a theater with the stage they sit there with other people it's a darkened room their attention is on what's going on up there they have five senses that are the tools they bring into the theater they know feel touch they know what they see objectively they know what they hear so their five senses are working and they have been working pretty much since they were tots so everything that happens on that stage everything that happens on that screen they can pass a judgement subconsciously as to whether we are hitting the marks or not because there isn't a person that sits in a movie house of any maturity who hasn't been disappointed who hasn't been exhilarated who hasn't felt fear who hasn't felt joy every one of the emotions that human beings experience even the most terrifying ones they have been akin to all of them at one time or another in the either in their daily lives their weekly lives their monthly lives their yearly lives so that when they sit in that theater they are that's all they bring in that's the scoreboard they bring in and they sit there and they watch actors playing at fear embarrassment at love at hate at all of the emotions in life that's what they bring in so when they sit there and they're looking at actors doing that they cotton to those actors that makes that connection makes that connection with them and that's the actors job that's nice not their job all they do is they bring this panel of human emotions with them and these emotions are in neutral they are absolutely in neutral as they sit there and one by one the this really fine actress or actor begins to do things that somewhere in the consciousness of the that audience they're saying oh yeah I know about that I've seen that Wow that's where the admiration comes from because they can also tell when that actor or that actress is not reaching home I was overjoyed for obvious reasons it is it was an evening that I never thought would come in my lifetime I'm glad it did because I could use that as a peg around which I can articulate my appreciation of my country that he became the man that he is as a result of his experiences in this culture he was an unknown young student with a point of view with an integrity with a vision with an understanding far deeper and far wider than his objective imagery would imply objective meaning is color he is a young man perceives himself to be african-american he is however articulate he might be he is not only articulate he however visionary he might be he is not only articulate and visionary you can go down the line and he kept expressing that showing that to us not intentionally but we just couldn't help but see it we saw and if you take him back to a time when he was not quite as revered as he is now and you looked at him then and say that this guy could be President in five years you wouldn't get one bet on that you know but he but he has shown us that our survival is totally dependent on us perceiving ourselves as a single family we are six billion 500 million in our family we have one home it's a planet it's a planet that has not grown one single inch since its creation what is there is what we have and that is our home it will be our home until we either self-destruct or until nature decides that it was or she wishes to alter it until then it is entirely up to us to effectuate our survival in humane ways we have to find a way to articulate the carrying capacity of our home we don't have a clue as to how many of us can be accommodated on this piece of Earth we really don't there aren't but so much resources to sustain if we are six billion five hundred million now before you know it we're going to be 13 billion what we need is men and women who can't think on our behalf in the period of their existence he is an example he has tried to surround himself with people who like minded and who will tend to and nurture the place we call home who will attend to and nurture different cultures we we will protect different faiths provided of course there is a mutual understanding that the principle has always got to be us as a family it is not very good that we have really not made a a stronger sustained effort to speak to our children the black ones the white ones the brown ones about this man this man it is because of this man thinking that we have a President Obama because the values of Abraham Lincoln were ignited in President Obama and President Obama ignited some of Lincoln's values in his fellow Americans and if you were to take a listing of the American population two years four years five years ago the possibility of him being what he is today wouldn't have crossed very many minds would not as a result here's a guy who says I am this and I am imperfect but I yes and I screwed up here and I did this there and I'll tell you about it and if you can tell me where I can improve I will listen to you my responsibility is to represent you well I find him absolutely glorious this guy tremendous integrity great great humanity and and I wish him well I wish him well I think the world I don't know the extent to which it will happen but I think the world will be the better for him having come this way

Channel: Academy of Achievement

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Id: _nKcrKoX7Is

Length: 107min 30sec (6450 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2016