The many faces of Sidney Poitier | Little White Lies

Acting Up

The many faces of Sid­ney Poitier

30 Jan 2025

Words by John Livesey

Three African American men, wearing suits, in a black and white photograph.
Three African American men, wearing suits, in a black and white photograph.
As the BFI cel­e­brates the lega­cy of an act­ing icon, we delve into Poitier’s com­plex legacy.

In May 1968, Sid­ney Poiti­er received an unex­pect­ed guest. The actor was in the midst of film­ing a new roman­tic com­e­dy when he was told that the Black Amer­i­can author James Bald­win would be vis­it­ing him on set. Bald­win had been com­mis­sioned by LOOK mag­a­zine to write a pro­file of Poiti­er; a rare pho­to­graph shows the pair chat­ting in-between takes. They are seat­ed pre­car­i­ous­ly amongst the stu­dio-props and cam­era equip­ment, rapt in con­ver­sa­tion, their gazes intense, thought­ful, and intimate.

The arti­cle this encounter pro­duced offers a com­plex por­trait of Poiti­er, describ­ing a man torn between his per­son­al val­ues and pro­fes­sion­al oblig­a­tions. Bald­win recalls meet­ing the actor for the first time in an air­port: He didn’t know me but I admired him very much, and I told him so.” Their paths would con­tin­ue to cross through­out their lives and, from a dis­tance, Bald­win observed both Poitier’s mete­oric rise and the back­lash it pre­cip­i­tat­ed. Many saw Poiti­er as a com­mer­cial sell-out, embody­ing the fan­tasies of white audi­ences. Bald­win saw things dif­fer­ent­ly, recog­nis­ing an indi­vid­ual caught in the ter­ri­fy­ing posi­tion of being part of a sys­tem that you know you have to change.” As he describes, I trem­bled for Sidney”.

Through­out Jan­u­ary the BFI have also been explor­ing Poitier’s fraught lega­cy with a spe­cial pro­gramme of his films. Its title Sid­ney Poiti­er: His Own Per­son” is tak­en from Baldwin’s pro­file. In many respects, the sea­son marks a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion from the BFI’s land-mark 2016 ret­ro­spec­tive Black Star’, which tracked the his­to­ry of the Black movie star. Poiti­er was with­out doubt the first Black Star” and his fil­mog­ra­phy right­ful­ly demands its own atten­tion: an impor­tant part of the his­to­ry of race on-screen.

Poiti­er was born in 1927, at the end of a decade marked by the flour­ish­ing of Black cre­ativ­i­ty in cities across Amer­i­ca. He was raised in the Bahamas but moved to Mia­mi when he was fif­teen to live with his broth­er. A year lat­er – pro­fes­sion­al­ly dis­sat­is­fied, and scared of the racism that defined the Jim Crow South – he paid $11 for a bus fare to New York City. He set­tled in Harlem and it was here that he audi­tioned for the Amer­i­can Negro The­atre. On his sec­ond attempt, he was invit­ed to join the com­pa­ny. This was some­thing Poiti­er had nev­er expect­ed: he was an actor now.

Poitier’s big break came dur­ing an under­study per­for­mance for Har­ry Bela­fonte. Much to Belafonte’s ire, Poiti­er was scout­ed by a Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­er and from there fol­lowed a slew of roles. His star was in rapid ascen­dan­cy and by 1958, Poiti­er had become the first Black male actor to be nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award. The film for which Poiti­er was nom­i­nat­ed was Stan­ley Kramer’s The Defi­ant Ones. The movie fol­lows the friend­ship of two men who escape the chain-gang but remain cuffed togeth­er. It is a clum­sy and sen­ti­men­tal metaphor for Amer­i­can race rela­tions, and ends with Poitier’s char­ac­ter jump­ing from a train which would take him across state-lines, sur­ren­der­ing him­self to be re-incar­cer­at­ed – all for the sake of his new­found friend.

Whilst easy to dis­miss, The Defi­ant Ones is an impor­tant film for under­stand­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of Poitier’s career. In an attempt to engage with the Civ­il Rights Move­ment – and entice a new audi­ence of racial­ly-con­cerned white lib­er­als – Hol­ly­wood Stu­dios made a num­ber of sim­i­lar race flicks” through­out the 1960s. These films pro­vide the source-code for mod­ern white-sav­iour nar­ra­tives such as The Blind Side, The Help, or Green Book. They depict racism as an eas­i­ly sur­mount­able prob­lem, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the help of well-mean­ing Whites. Often, as in Green Book, even prej­u­diced Whites are shown capa­ble of redemp­tion. In these cas­es, Black char­ac­ters func­tion as ambas­sadors of their race, primed to offer their peers an edu­ca­tion on race. Poiti­er was the poster-boy for this kind of role, embody­ing the straight-laced, sophis­ti­cat­ed, and sex­less Black Man that white Amer­i­ca want­ed most.

Two men, one in a suit and the other in a police uniform, seated on a bench outside a building.

Indeed, by the end of the 1960s, Poiti­er had become the most pro­lif­ic and cel­e­brat­ed Black actor in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. In 1967 – a ban­ner year for the actor – he released his two most famous films, Guess Who’s Com­ing to Din­ner and In The Heat of the Night. In the first he por­trays a cel­e­brat­ed Black doc­tor who meets the par­ents of his White fiancé. In the sec­ond, he plays Vir­gil Tibbs, a Black detec­tive who becomes embroiled in a mur­der case in a small town in Mis­sis­sip­pi. In one of the film’s most mem­o­rable scenes, Poiti­er slaps the actor Lar­ry Gates around the face. This dis­play of self-defence from a Black man was a ground­break­ing moment for depic­tions of race onscreen and was dubbed the slap heard around the world”.

Whilst these films mark the high­point of Poitier’s career, how­ev­er, the end of the 1960s had also ush­ered in a new wave of crit­ics. The assas­si­na­tions of Mar­tin Luther King Jr. and Mal­colm X coin­cid­ed with the rise of Black nation­al­ism. A new and more rad­i­cal race pol­i­tics was in vogue and, in this con­text, younger black audi­ences viewed Poiti­er as a bland con­ser­v­a­tive com­mit­ted to out­dat­ed prin­ci­ples of integration.

This cri­tique was sum­marised by a now-infa­mous arti­cle in the New York Times, enti­tled Why Does White Amer­i­ca Love Sid­ney Poiti­er So?” The author, Clif­ford Mason, dis­miss­es Poitier’s films as mere­ly con­trivances, com­plete­ly lack­ing in artis­tic mer­it’ and accus­es the actor of play­ing essen­tial­ly the same role, the anti­sep­tic, one-dimen­sion­al hero’. For Mason, Poiti­er is sim­ply the Negro movie star that all white Amer­i­ca loves”. In his own mem­oir, the actor recalls the arti­cle as the most dev­as­tat­ing and unfair piece of jour­nal­ism I had ever seen”.

In the wake of such crit­i­cism, Poitier’s career nev­er ful­ly recov­ered. The Vir­gil Tibbs char­ac­ter was res­ur­rect­ed for two fur­ther films that made a nod to Blax­ploita­tion films, but nei­ther achieved the same lev­el of suc­cess as the orig­i­nal. Nor was there much crit­i­cal or com­mer­cial love for The Lost Man, a timid attempt to cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion of Black rad­i­cals, in which Poiti­er stars as a young rev­o­lu­tion­ary. As demand for his appear­ance dwin­dled, Poiti­er carved out space for him­self as a direc­tor, but by the turn of the cen­tu­ry he had most­ly retired from Hol­ly­wood. The Poiti­er brand nev­er regained the appeal it com­mand­ed through­out the 1960s.

Look­ing back at Poitier’s fil­mog­ra­phy in 2024, it is hard to deny many of the crit­i­cisms the actor has sus­tained, and yet, such blan­ket dis­missal seems some­how unfair. There can be no doubt that Poitier’s suc­cess cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for oth­er young Black per­form­ers, and made way for movie-stars we recog­nise today such as Den­zel Wash­ing­ton or, more recent­ly, Daniel Kalu­uya. The film crit­ic Frank Rich has even described Poitier’s vis­i­bil­i­ty as a nec­es­sary pre­cur­sor to that of anoth­er Amer­i­can Icon: Barack Oba­ma. He notes that Poitier’s Fiancé in Guess Who’s Com­ing to Din­ner claims that all their bira­cial chil­dren will be pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States and they’ll all have col­or­ful admin­is­tra­tions.” In ret­ro­spect, it is an uncan­ny moment.

In my mind, it is Bald­win who is best at squar­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of Poitier’s suc­cess with the prob­lem­at­ic char­ac­ters he por­trayed. In his arti­cle for LOOK, he places empha­sis on the actor’s abil­i­ty to escape the frame­work” of the films in which he fea­tures. As he writes, I didn’t think Black­board Jun­gle was much of a movie but I thought Sid­ney was beau­ti­ful, vivid and truth­ful in it…Nor was I over­whelmed by Cry, the Beloved Coun­try, but Sidney’s por­trait, brief as it was, of the young priest was a mov­ing mir­a­cle of indignation.”

It is pos­si­ble, Bald­win argues, to receive the human­i­ty of Poitier’s per­for­mances with­out accept­ing the ide­ol­o­gy they are in ser­vice to. The author is in no doubt about the lim­i­ta­tions of Hol­ly­wood. But he still won­ders whether Poitier’s tal­ent might allow a white view­er – final­ly – to con­sid­er the real­i­ty, the pres­ence, the sim­ple human fact of black peo­ple.” Bald­win knew that Poiti­er was forced to wear many faces but, at his best, the actor spoke for and rep­re­sent­ed the feel­ing of many dis­sat­is­fied with Hol­ly­wood and Amer­i­ca: a mov­ing mir­a­cle of indignation”.

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