Sidney Poitier Documentary (1996)

with just a second grade education and three dollars in his pocket sydney poitier came to the big apple for his slice he worked as a dishwasher slept on a roof and in the bus station on a whim he tried acting he stunk as the director told him but he didn't agree so he studied hard with determination intelligence and guts sidney poitier forged a path for himself as a black leading man it's a path that opened doors for other black talent to follow his father was a tomato farmer from cat island who would take his produce to florida by sailboat he was on such a trip that sydney poitier was born in miami on february 20th 1927 the seventh and last child of evelyn and reginald poitier was two months premature not expecting the baby to survive reginald built a shoebox casket my father was a very interesting man he was the poorest man in the village in the caribbean where i grew up my mom she was an angel she was the principal influence in my life in the midst of the depression sydney and his family left their hard scrabble life on cat island for the bahamas capital city i am 10 and a half years old coming into the harbor of nassau where i saw what looked to me like beetles running up and down the shore and i said what are those to my mom and she said those are cars i said cars i said wow young men and women coming from the west indies had a whole different sense of the world in which they lived i think there's a difference when you live in a country where there's a majority black community where you get a sense that someday you will be independent someday you will be in control of your life your sense of being has another place in which to to look for a future in america where you're the minority there is always this sense of enormous futility with only a year and a half of schooling sydney with his three best friends got in the petty thievery to discipline him reginald sent his 15 year old son to miami to live with his older brother cyril [Music] i've taken your gun and this lady with me in nassau sydney loved going to the western shoot-'em-ups starring his hero bob steele in miami he encountered the real gun play of police who put a pistol to his head for laughs when he wandered into a white neighborhood at night i was not reared to accept that kind of behavior from anybody and when it started coming to me in florida and i started saying hey who the hell are you talking to shocked a lot of people i'm afraid poche already had self-confidence what he didn't have was a future in miami with the equivalent of a second grade education and three dollars in his pocket he boarded a greyhound bus to new york city i asked a guy at the bus station where is harlem and he said if you go outside there is a a stairway down in the ground and underneath the ground you're going to find a train and i said to myself yeah sure i'll find a train under the ground right party got a job washing dishes in the times square coffee shop unknown to him then only a few blocks away paul robeson the actors singer and left-wing political activist was starring in shakespeare's othello i slept in the toilet at the bus station then i switched from there to the rooftop of the brill building moved to harlem where he was inadvertently caught up in a race ride he was shot through the leg and treated the wound himself to escape new york's brutal winter he lied about his age and enlisted in the army miserable with military regulation he feigned craziness and then told his psychiatrist the truth in exchange for participating in a research project after a little more than a year just before his 18th birthday sydney was honorably discharged he wrote to president roosevelt for a 100 loan to pay his way back home to the bahamas he received no reply and moved back to new york city one day i'm looking in the amsterdam news for a dishwashing job and the opposite page was the theatrical page and on the theatrical page there was this streamer that said actors wanted hey i figured i tried one might as well give the other a go he auditioned at the famed american negro theater with co-founder frederick o'neill he said to me he said why don't you stop wasting people's time and go out and get yourself a job as a dishwasher or something and i decided on that moment that i was going to be an actor and i was going to prove to that man that i could be other than a dishwasher and commensurately prove it to myself and now the curtain rises on the third act of dodie smith's gay comedy success call it a day pontiac spent hours each day mimicking the announcers on the radio slowly losing his thick west indian accent your city was uh hugely inarticulate at the beginning but we thought it might have been through some psychological you know consequence in fact it was that he just could not command the english language six months later in his one good suit sydney reading from true confessions magazine was accepted for a three-month tryout but only because 40 women and no men had passed the audition no hint of the tremendous power he had as an actor or that he would make it to hollywood and make it to the top poitier was cast as the understudy to a new student also from the west indies he was tall good looking and he he was very bright and naturally i looked at this guy as an a threat and let me tell you belafonte saw poitiers the same way we were looking at one another wondering each of us wondering what the other was doing there filling in one night for belafonte poitier was spotted by a broadway director for an all-black adaptation of a greek classic cast as a meek athenian courier he had 12 lines the curtain goes up and i'm in the first scene and i froze but the audience starts laughing so i i get more nervous and i keep giving the wrong lines so at the end of my little thing i got off the stage and i said well i'm you know this acting thing is not for me it's i'm finished it's over and i'm gonna get out of here and go back to dishwashing but the reviewers believing his nervousness to be an act loved him so began the acting career of young sidney poitier in one of his earliest plays he worked with ruby dee who with her husband aussie davis would become among poitiers closest friends he also met juanita hardy a college graduate and a model she was a warm witty a beautiful girl and supportive of sydney she had plans and she had a sense of business and getting ahead and and that kind of thing in 1949 poitiers star was on the rise he had one offer to appear in an anti-apartheid play on broadway and another from director joseph mankowitz to star in the racial drama no way out he chose hollywood what is it this man is still in the scalpel he's got it hidden on him i want him searched hand it over i ain't kind of stuck are you sure there's one missing i checked out three dr horton we've only found two he's had every opportunity to take it with blake and i had our backstory most of the time the scalpers were lying right here on the instrument table and all he had to do was i was a racist bigot i just met him and we embarked on a scene where i had to call him everything under the sun and i i it was just terrible so after every expletive i'd run up to him and say sid it's not me it's it's it's just the character you understand and his eyes would blaze you know when i was doing the scene but afterward he was very understanding having landed his first movie role poitier felt secure enough to marry juanita he also felt successful enough to revisit his family in nassau his parents hadn't heard from him in eight years i looked in south africa some years ago i made a film there i worked there for 16 weeks and i found south africa on a racial a political or social level the worst place i've ever been in 1952 his next film took poitier to south africa for the first time in cry of the beloved country playing opposite the outspoken stage in screen actor canada lee sydney signed papers making him the director's indentured slave so that he could legally work in the country three years and two forgettable films would pass before poitiers would get another formidable role are you a member of the communist party or have you ever been are you a member of the communist party with mccarthyism at its height and because of his friendships with canada lee and paul robson poitier would later claim he had been blacklisted paul's advice was you know don't follow me when it becomes dangerous for your own career you know go as far as you think you can but when the time comes to uh back off that's what you'll have to do uh sydney certainly was faced with this i saw the evidence of the blacklist that he was on his crime being that he was a roommate of canada lee a man that i admired greatly and that he had buyed greatly to make ends meet duache went back to washing dishes and construction work later he became a partner in a money pit of a restaurant called ribs in the rough advertising his secret caribbean sauce which a friend compared to spicy glue he and juanita moved to an attic apartment in astoria long island they had two daughters beverly and pamela he would write in his autobiography the word daddy held some magical connotations for me finally in 1955 director richard brooks cast the 28 year old poitier as a juvenile delinquent in blackboard jungle the film created a sensation and sydney was sensational in the role his performance in blackboard jungle should have made him a star but once again sidney poitier found himself out of work [Music] stay tuned as our celebration of black culture continues on bio channel the reviews foitier received for blackboard jungle should have guaranteed him steady work but the year was 1956. that was so heartbreaking to do part as good as blackboard chuckle and have no offers for anything there weren't that many parts to black actors in those days agent martin baum had seen poitiers in blackboard jungle and approached him about another film his role a vengeful janitor he said mr bell someday black people are going to play something more than men's room attendance and pullman car porters and i want to be there when that happens and i don't want to play this i need it desperately but i i can't do it i said uh i respect your your integrity and i respect your point of view i'd like to sign you to an exclusive contract charlie he's nothing i mean he can't hurt you he can't hurt you like in my life charlie ain't that much quache's first job represented by baum was in the television drama called a man is ten feet tall he would reprise his role as a good-hearted dock worker in the film version re-titled edge of the city co-starring newcomer john cassavetes the thing is the man's got to make a choice you know what i mean there are the men and then there are the lower falls and a guy's got to make a choice you go with the men and you're 10 feet tall you go with the lower form and you are down in the slime well what happens if you don't want to go with anybody then you are alone man and that's the worst in 1947 maverick producer stanley kramer featured james edwards in one of the few hollywood movies to star a black actor in a serious role a decade later for the defiant ones he cast sydney poitier as an escaped southern convict chained to a white racist don't tell me all that big talk about charlie potatoes when the chain's off and nobody's chasing you come on you can't can you you can't because you're nothing you're not even a man you're monkey on a stick that crack them up back there they pull the string and you jump it was the first film that allowed a black actor and a white actor to reciprocate to co-exist to share top billing if you've looked at a person through a camera lens as often as i've looked at sidney poitier you know no matter what the role no matter how we play this when i looked through that lens i saw the man he dominated that lens the film's final scene in which sydney sacrifices his freedom trying to rescue the white man he has come to befriend provoked a caustic response from noted black writer james baldwin who remarked that in the white movie theaters audiences cheered in black theaters they shouted at sydney to get back on the train for their performances poitier and curtis both received academy award nominations for best actor that was a token nomination believe me when i tell you for both of us a black guy and a jew guy i mean i rest my case who wins it uh was it uh david living for separate tables poiche may never have received this 100 loan from fdr but for the defiant ones former first lady eleanor roosevelt presented him with the berlin film festival's award for best actor achievements would not be just professional juanita and sydney had a third daughter sherry and moved into a 14-room house in the integrated new york suburb of mount vernon we were neighbors we were friends and women deep in high communion with each other for his next film poitier was cast as porgy and gershwin's racial folk opera porgy and bess the role had originally been turned down by harry belafonte the naacp pressured him to withdraw from what it perceived to be an idealized minstrel show poitier asked producer sam goldwyn for script approval his reply no one looks at my movies before they are made but me goldwyn told him he could destroy his career and sidney poitier who had walked out on porgy and bess walk back in the image of a black man on his knees you know you don't have to say anymore it really is one of the things that you know really gets our goat so here comes our boy sitting on his knees and uh he has to pay a certain price for that it's unfortunate but that's the way it is stung by the criticism over porgy and bess poitier attempted to publicly downplay his image as the black actor's standard bearer the roles that he did depended upon of being african-american and he was aware of that but nonetheless he had a there was a joy a joyousness in the work what he returned to the stage as the beleaguered walter lee younger in lorraine hansberry's a raisin in the sun directed by fellow american negro theater alumnus lloyd richards and once again featuring ruby dee as his wife i've never seen him work so hard i remember feeling that sydney was going at it for the first time i thought it was so wonderful to watch him work in that two years after the play began its initial run he appeared in the movie version one of his most powerful scenes comes as he beseeches his god-fearing mother played by claudia mcneill to use her husband's life insurance check to finance his own business a liquor store but mommy you haven't even looked at it you haven't even looked you haven't even looked at it and you don't even have to speak on it again well you tell that to my boy tonight when you put him to sleep on the living room couch and you tell it to him in the morning when his mother goes out of here to take care of somebody else's kids i tell it to me when we want some curtains or some drapes and you sneak out of here and go work in somebody's kitchen all i want is to make a future for this family all i wanted to be able to stand in front of my boy like my father never was able to do to me and tell him that he would be somebody in this world besides a servant and a chauffeur huh you tell me that huh actress and singer diane carroll first met sidney poitier as a bit player in porgy and bess in her autobiography she described her first impression of him the door opened he stepped inside my life changed sydney was the kind of man that when he married he didn't want in our understanding somebody who was also a performer who's also with a different independent career of their own but poitiers was infatuated with diane carroll and two years later they starred as lovers opposite paul newman and joanne woodward in paris blues i love you i love you after several attempts to save their marriage sydney obtained a mexican divorce from juanita he announced his engagement to diane carroll but they never did cross the altar pressured by demands of a major career his marriage over quache flew to miami beach to talk to harry belafonte we were ripped apart on a lot of levels emotionally and politically and socially and artistically and i took to analysis psychoanalysis i saw in him that he was in exactly the same place i was and that perhaps if he would try this scientific approach this uh to to it might cause him to find some relief and some truth and some strength and wish to go on in 1961 poitiers began intensive psychotherapy that lasted more than a decade that same year his parents evelyn and reginald poitier died just months apart and every time i took apart from the first part from the first day i always said to myself this must reflect well on his name lilies of the field was filmed in just two weeks at a cost of two hundred forty seven thousand dollars it was the story of an itinerant handyman who helps a group of german nuns it's still a shuttle very nice what's a shuffle and a client kiss you yes a shuffle lots of luck mother i ain't building no chapel yeah you not only am i ain't building no chapel i'm taking off i ain't no contractor that is for the beginning no with this performance the poitier name would become hollywood gold it had been a long journey and though in the past it had been my pleasure to walk side by side with him and you know to be one of the boys but now we'd come to the river and he had to get cross and in order to get across he had to swim and i didn't know how to swim i didn't know how to help him i think i proved correct in that because he moved into territories where i could give him no advice based on my experiences whatsoever hollywood's big night in 1964 sidney poitier became the first of his race to receive an academy award as best actor it is a long journey to this moment i am naturally indebted to countless numbers of people for all of them [Music] very special thank you you're extraordinarily excited austin i went when sydney won the oscar uh we saw it on television and we it was just we couldn't we couldn't get over it poitier returned to nassau for a hometown heroes welcome he also made a point of visiting the three unmarked graves of his childhood friends all dead of alcoholism back in the states sydney's breakthrough did not significantly deepen hollywood's racial complexion the joke going around the studios was if you can't get poitiers rewrite it for a white actor post oscar even sydney's parts were none too stellar i brought you a present take it put them on it's glasses not quite there's sunglasses there just as i thought what now you're a very pretty girl oh you pulled my leg no i mean it mcallister said you wanted to kill me i'd rather get it over with nah the thought's still in your mind played out his childhood fantasy making his first western he looked good in a cigar he was announced for projects that never materialized as he read from the classics i think for instance that if there is anything beautiful other than absolute beauty it can be beautiful only in so far as it partakes of absolute beauty he deepened his commitment to civil rights realizing his celebrity could prove useful to the cause then i also want to thank my friend sidney poitier certainly one of the great performing artists of the world sidney poitier comes to all of us bearing great gifts his appearance on the world stage was significant because at the time [Music] the eyes of the entire world were on the civil rights movement in america but parties still fought his standard-bearer image i think anybody who becomes celebrity uh who comes from the black community is required to have a position on where the race is going and where we go as a people when you do that often enough you begin to wonder especially as life begins to move on when do i get a chance to be something other than a spokesperson for race i remember um [Music] watching television one evening and uh it was a news interview and he was on his way someplace and it was during the 60s in the middle of the civil rights era and something i don't recall exactly what it was um had had happened just that day and he was questioned about it it was the first time i ever saw him snap you know it seems to me that at this moment this day you could ask me many questions about many positive and wonderful things that are happening in this country but we gather here to pay court to sensationalism we gather here to pay court to negativism you guys have a job to do uh i'm a relatively intelligent man there are many aspects to my personality that you can explore i think uh very uh constructively but you sit here and ask me such one-dimensional questions about a very tiny area of our lives you ask me questions that fall continually within the negroness of my life you ask me questions that pertain to the narrow scope of the summer riots i am artist man american contemporary i am an awful lot of things so i wish you would uh pay me the respect do and not simply ask me about those things it was 1967 thurgood marshall was named to the supreme court the 58-year-old negro thus becomes the first of his race to serve on the land's highest court i know that the vast majority of negroes in white are shocked and are outraged by them america was torn apart by race riots and sidney poitier would appear in three landmark films becoming the most popular motion picture star in the world there is in this carnaby street as hard as the streets of london sidney poitier in a row worthy of his academy award-winning talents as the teacher who joins battle with the wildest set of rebels london ever produced what is the matter those kids are devil's incarnate huh they did it because they felt the picture was an uplifting look at the way kids could be taught and there's a positive statement about kids from all colors and ethnic backgrounds working and living together you're pretty sure yourself ain't your virgil a virgil that's a funny name for [ __ ] boy to come from philadelphia what do they call you up there they call me mr tibbs mr tits well mr wood tape mr tibbs take him down to the depot and i mean boy like now it was in the heat of the night which confronted a racial problem in the country in such a focused way that that the relationship between he and rod steiger and in that film uh had tremendous impact we were just trying to clarify some of the evidence was mr colbert ever in this greenhouse say last night about midnight some old guy smacks him in the face and he smacks him back i mean he's like that was that was brave stuff i haven't even told you his name mommy it's john wade apprentice isn't that a lovely name john wayne joanna prentice zombie stanley kramer's guess who's coming to dinner confronted the issue of interracial marriage the couple's single on-screen kiss and interracial movie first was shown in a rear-view mirror even then i took a terrible beating because everybody said that's paty you pick the best looking guy the most personable of all the blacks in 1969 three of the most powerful actors in hollywood formed the independent production company first artists allowing them to control the financing and distribution of their films poitier made the lost man and there met his future wife joanna shimkas the lost man in which poitiers plays a revolutionary was his response to the increasing militancy in the american civil rights movement it was not a success the black militancy of the late 1960s brought its own backlash the sunday new york times printed an article by playwright clifford mason challenging poitiers appeal you come along you're a big star you win the oscars i mean everything is fantastic and have you criticized the system as an actor as a writer as a director have you pointed a finger at anybody huh no so you know so what does that what does that say i mean that has to leave a sour taste in the mouth of blacks the mob wanted all them back they got shagged okay turn it loose so he goes come on in front of me in the era of black exploitation films sidney poitier's elegance was being held against him he was a cary grant and we wanted a humphrey bogart or gary cooper and the fact matter is cary grant was only half the hero that we needed cary grant grew up in poverty in england and like poitiers went alone to new york city a penniless teenager worked hard to remove his thick accent his elegance like sydney's was hard won some of the white men have taken our land poitiers had other precursors besides cary grant actors like juano hernandez canada lee paul robson and lee whipper who all brought passion and dignity to their characterizations of black americans but when you are where sydney is and all of a sudden somebody says you must get into this kind of a silly hollywood rhythm of action films and violence and and and caricature of black life under the banner of new black voices being heard and and then and militancy because none of it was militant there was no militancy in it at all black exploitation films were designed to exploit black anger and rage and what you got from those films was nothing of value his choices were basically image conscious if he felt the image of the person he was playing was detrimental to his race he wouldn't play it what he did and the way he did it um is amazing it absolutely is and yet at the same time i to him a black man there were points when i would have to say sydney hey man you give you're giving away too much you know you let them off the hook or you're kissing their behinds or whatever but he did it and he did it to some degree because he had to i guess part of what we wanted sydney to do was to bring us the whole way and i guess it was asking for too much poitier built a mansion in nassau and spent more and more time away from hollywood [Music] he also began his career as a director after stepping in for the director fired from buck and the preacher a film about former slaves homesteading in the wild west we thought that black people played an important part in the building of the west we want black children to see that we couldn't spend an hour and a half showing black children uh what black people did in the west unless we made it entertaining that same year joanna and sydney had their first child anika a year later yet another daughter sydney was born he continued to direct sidney poitier his love esther anderson her december a warm december beginning in 1974 poitiers directed a series of extremely profitable comedies that were intended to provide black audiences with wholesome laughs instead of over-the-top violence by day they're two average family men enjoying a well-earned vacation with their wives in new orleans but by night their dynamite operation sydney is a very interesting person you know on one hand as there's pontificating articulate person you would think he's an english professor but if you look in his eyes there's that little kid out of wherever he came out of you know struggling to be free if you will a part of the canard about black folks is that they're always laughing and singing and dancing so in order to impress the world that we're serious people you know we have to wipe the smile off our faces from some time and i suppose sydney wipe it off and let it stay off but behind it all sydney is a man who can laugh and does i can say something that's really sad in retrospect and that is the film that i criticized before had more artistic value than the ones that he was doing to to answer to answer the criticism so there's an irony for you the black backlash against poitiers continued the playwright imamu amari baraka penned the vicious attack against sydney called sydney poet heroical that was staged eight times in new york after two children and five years together boitie married joanna shimkas his appearance the following year in a piece of the action was his last piece of acting for ten years he continued to direct stir crazy released in 1980 became columbia studios most popular comedy that same year this intensely private man published his autobiography i think what happened was that there was just ten years when nobody wanted to write any longer to the kind of movie sydney was known for uh there was a whole other rhythm in in in the culture and uh he just could not find scripts and rather than do anything he did nothing let me put it this way my self-definition is very much a part of the work i do and i am not about to be untrue to that i will be able to to live with myself [Music] celebrate black culture with us on bio channel in 1987 at the age of 60 sidney poitier resumed his acting career the decade he sat out coincided with hollywood's reliance on blockbuster sci-fi and teen movies in the new york times he explained it became more difficult to go back because the kind of material hollywood was offering even to gifted actors redford newman hoffman was not becoming to their stature but actors like redford newman and hoffman did take on major roles in that period for a black actor in his 60s the reality might have been different poitiers played an fbi agent in shoot to kill an action role that required him to sprint and scramble in little nikita he was once again an fbi agent in a supporting role to river phoenix the part was originally written for a white actor it would be almost four years before he would act in another feature film meanwhile he continued to direct a hit broadway show was spun off the real life of a black con artist pretending to be the son of sidney poitier in order to entice his way into the homes of rich white new york liberals he named the greatest black star in movies no names no names we're trying to keep this abstract plus liable the play became a film with donald sutherland stockard channing and will smith never mentioned you know what are they supposed to say we've become friends with the son of sidney poitier barrier breaker of the 50s and 60s [Music] your father means a great deal in south africa well i'm glad of that dad and i went to russia once to a film festival he was truly amazed how much his presence meant oh no tell us stories of movie stars tying up their children being cruel made no public statement but he was displeased with both the play and the real life incident that inspired it [Applause] the honors and the lifetime achievement awards rolled in [Music] to the young african-american filmmakers who have arrived on the playing field i am filled with pride that you are here i am sure you have like me discovered it was never impossible it was just harder in 1991 he acted in a television show for the first time in 30 years playing supreme court justice thurgood marshall two years later he was diagnosed and successfully treated for prostate cancer i mean he went off and got prostate cancer and i have to go get it you know i have a daughter named gina he has a daughter named gina i have a daughter named sherry he has a daughter named sherry he gets an award for the best actor i get an award for television or whatever and when he got prostate cancer i said to myself oh my god [Applause] [Music] there are days when i haven't the slightest idea who the child is i sent you a daughter you are sending me a person who not only talks back but also tells me where i went wrong and goes on to suggest how i can redeem those ill-spent portions of my questionable life [Music] and in 1996 poitiers returned to south africa where four decades before he had allowed himself to become an indentured slave in order to appear and cry the beloved country now he was playing nelson mandela i have started a process the end of which cannot be predicted i cannot say what tactics the regime will employ against me i have to be constantly vigilant and he's working more he's working as he's a different person a different actor now and that's exciting to contemplate [Music] it's impossible to imagine the kind of pressure that the man must have been under knowing that he was the singular black male in film doing significant work um if you think about the variety of african-american actors today who are making strides and who are doing lots of great work myself mr washington mr snipes mr jackson mr dutton mr glover mr freeman that's eight people he had to do all of that by himself every single african-american actor and every actor of decency owes mr partier ten thousand thanks a hundred thousand thanks a million thanks [Music] an icon goes out playing icons some days somebody will play sydney 48. [Music] coming next how a black man brought attention in this country to an underrated sport [Applause] [Music] oh [Music]

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Length: 43min 37sec (2617 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 10 2022