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On the death of Sidney Poitier: The Titan

2022-01-07T18:20:42.468Z


"I wanted to be valuable, on my own terms": The brilliant actor Sidney Poitier became the first black Hollywood star with films like "Porgy and Bess" - he remained the only one for a long time.


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Poitier 1963: The color of his skin remained political

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images

When Sidney Poitier, who has now died at the age of 94, received his first Oscar in 1964 for "Lilies in the Field", the honor was not the scandal. As an actor he had long earned it with his roles in "Porgy and Bess", "Escape in Chains" or "The Seed of Violence", and Hollywood had long recognized the commercial importance of a black audience. The real scandal in much of the United States was the fleeting kiss on the cheek with which Anne Bancroft presented him with the statuette. A white woman kisses a black man? Unthinkable.

When Sidney Poitier received his second Oscar in 2002, this time for his life's work, Denzel Washington summed up this life's work as a laudator: “Before Sidney, African-American actors could only take on supporting roles in major film productions that were easy to cut out for certain parts of the country.

But you can't cut Sidney Poitier out of a Sidney Poitier film. "

He was the first African American film star.

The first, whose name was mentioned above the title.

The first to whose personality the films were tailored.

Sidney Poitier was the first Denzel Washington, Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson.

If these are the gods of "black cinema", Sidney Poitier was their titan.

Poitier wasn't even American.

Born in Miami in 1927 when his parents were visiting relatives there, he grew up in the Bahamas, a British crown colony.

In a family of nine tomato growers.

In poverty.

At the age of 10 he saw an automobile for the first time in Nassau, at 15 he was sent to relatives in Florida.

At the age of 16 he worked as a dishwasher in New York.

"I wanted to be acceptable to myself."

Sidney Poitier

There he got to know the theater, more precisely: the "American Negro Theater", founded by blacks to promote both black talents and their "dignity and honor," as the statutes say. He failed the entrance examination because of his strong Caribbean accent. He practiced his tongue in front of the radio, taught himself to read with newspapers and books - and was finally accepted.

In 1946 he made his theater debut with "Lysistrata", and less than four years later he was called to Hollywood. There a window gradually began to open to African American performers. Poitier rejected all too stereotypical roles: “Survival,” he said later, “has always been a question of my inner self for me. That is more important than the outer self. I wanted to be valuable on my own terms. I wanted to be acceptable to myself. "

In the 1950s, Poitier played the traveling craftsman, the clever student, the conscientious teacher and the cool detective.

Never the lover.

The first film kiss between a white woman and a black man was only seen in 1967 in "Guess Who's Over for Dinner" (with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in his last role) - and only in the rearview mirror of a taxi.

Poitier had successfully introduced himself as an elegant and cultivated alternative to screen heroes like Rex Harrison, Albert Finney, Richard Harris or Paul Newman - all of whom he prevailed against at the 1964 Oscars.

But his skin color remained political, and Poitier knew it. If he had forgotten it, he was reminded of it on trips south - when he, the famous Hollywood star, was only served behind a screen in a restaurant. He was one of the artists who got involved in the civil rights movement and took part in the "March on Washington" alongside Martin Luther King Jr. He supported a foundation that supported Africans with scholarships to study in the USA - one of them was the father of the future President Barack Obama.

Poitier was never more popular than in the late 1960s.

And his loneliness never became clearer to him.

He was still "the only one" far and wide, and the weight of responsibility weighed heavily on him.

Poitier was not only the only black person in the business, he had to play for everyone: "I had to serve the action fans, the lovers of romance, the intellectual fans."

The mood turned against Poitier for exactly the reasons that had made it possible for him to enter the industry in the first place.

Sections of the Afro-American movement - for which he himself had only given leeway through his sheer presence - accused him of selling himself as a conformist, in a certain way "white" black man.

An accusation that Will Smith would also be confronted with decades later.

Poitier took the criticism seriously, he recognized the dilemma and withdrew - with a few exceptions - from acting at the beginning of the 1970s.

Instead, he now fought for what he was missing before: artistic sovereignty over the subjects and roles and themes of the films that he was now making as a director.

His own films were no longer diligent social thrillers that basically told of his own rise.

But comedies.

The jail clothes "Two Insanely Strong Guys" (with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder) grossed more than 100 million dollars in 1980 as the first film by an Afro-American director.

When his comedy "Ghost Dad" (with Bill Cosby) flopped in 1990, Poitier withdrew - again with a few exceptions - completely from the business.

From 1997 to 2007 he played the role of "elder statesman" and represented the Bahamas as ambassador to Japan and later to Unesco.

He lived in seclusion in Beverly Hills and only appeared when he had to receive another honor - such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented by Barack Obama.

He never bore the title "Sir" with which the Queen ennobled him in 1974.

In an interview on his ninetieth birthday, Poitier stated, "If I am remembered for doing some good things, and my work has sparked some good energies, then that is a great deal."

Source: spiegel

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