Celebrating Sidney Poitier

Arizona State University renamed its film school in 2021 after Hollywood icon, Sidney Poitier, the first Black Man to win an Academy Award for best actor. Poitier embodied the legacy that ASU strives towards: the matching of excellence and drive and passion with social purpose and social outcomes. 

Sidney Poitier was a Bahamian and American actor, film director, and diplomat. In 1964, he was the first Black actor and first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, breaking the color barrier at the time. He received two competitive Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, and a Grammy Award as well as nominations for two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award. His legacy as a pioneer redefined roles for African Americans that were based on stereotypes.

Poitier was born in the Bahamas, but moved to Miami at 15 and then New York City at age 16. He joined the American Negro Theatre and was a founding member of the Center for Negro in the Arts (CNA). Refused a place because of his accent, he practiced American enunciation while listening to the accents of radio voices and reapplied to ANT six months later. This time he was accepted, and he began studying actingwhile appearing in a series of ANT productions. In 1946 he made his Broadway debut in "Lysistrata". Poitier's involvement with CNA led to his blacklisting for several years.

Hollywood Trailblazer

Poitier’s first credited film role was Dr. Luther Brooks, a Black doctor who treats a bigoted white criminal, in "No Way Out" (1950). The movie established a significant pattern both for Poitier himself and for the Black actors who followed him: by refusing roles that played to racial stereotypes, Poitier pushed the restrictive boundaries set by Hollywood and made inroads into the American mainstream. Poitier landed his breakthrough film role as a high school student in the film Blackboard Jungle (1955). In the gripping drama "The Edge of the City" (1957), Poitier starred as a dockworker whose friendship with a white coworker) raises the ire of a racist union boss. "Band of Angels"(1957) also examined racial tensions.

Poitier gained stardom for his leading roles in films such as "The Defiant Ones" (1958) for which he made history becoming the first African American to receive an Academy Award nomination. A precursor of the biracial buddy film, “The Defiant Ones” offered a powerful look at racism, teaming Poitier with Tony Curtis as escaped convicts handcuffed together. Poitier's performance in the "Edge of the City", an American film-noir drama, further pushed Poitier into stardom.

The film was considered unusual for its time because of its portrayal of an interracial friendship, and was praised by representatives of the NAACP, Urban League, American Jewish Committee and Interfaith Council because of its portrayal of racial brotherhood.

1960s: Civil Rights Era

In 1964, the year that Martin Luther King won the Nobel Prize and Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, Poitier won best actor for the 1963 film “Lilies of the Field,” marking another first. “Lilies” was a small film that became a big hit, in which Poitier plays a handyman who helps build a chapel for German-speaking nuns. After appearing in the biblical epic "The Greatest Story Ever Told"  (1965), Poitier portrayed a man who befriends a blind girl in "A Patch of Blue".  "To Sir with Love" (1967), he portrayed a schoolteacher who earns the respect of his students at an inner-city school. Next was In the Heat of the Night (1967), a crime drama that focused on the uneasy partnership that develops between a bigoted white Southern police chief (played by Rod Steiger) and Virgil Tibbs, an intellectual Black Philadelphia detective. The film received the Oscar for best picture, and Poitier later reprised the role in "They Call Me Mister Gibbs!" (1970) and The Organization (1971). Poitier’s other movie from 1967 was "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" in which he portrayed the fiancé of a white woman who takes him home to meet her liberal parents (Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn). The success of the movies made Poitier the top box-office draw of the year.

1970s and 1980s: Directing

Poitier shifted from acting toward directing this period. "In the Heat of the Night" featured his most successful character, Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, detective whose subsequent career was the subject of two sequels:  "They Call me Mister Gibbs!"  (1970) and "The Organization" (1971).^\

In 1972 he made his feature film directorial debut, the Western "Buck and the Preacher"  in which Poitier also starred, alongside Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee. The following year he directed his second feature, the romantic drama "A Warm December". 

Along with Barbara Streisand and Paul Newman, Poitier formed First Artists Production Company, so actors could secure properties and develop movie projects for themselves.^[\Working with First Artists, Poitier directed several financially successful comedy films, including three in which he also starred: "Uptown Saturday Night" (1974) with Bill Cosby and Harry Belafonte. His most successful comedy was "Stir Crazy" (1980) which for many years was the highest-grossing film directed by a person of African descent.

Poitier was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Poitier became one of the best-known and most utilized Black actors during the 1960s. He earned numerous and varied opportunities to demonstrate his acting versatility, which was a feat that many of his male and female counterparts were denied at the time.  Poitier's commanding on-screen presence and inspired performances allowed him to blaze a path of greater inclusion for the many Black actors that have come after him.