How Sidney Poitier Paved the Way for Black Leading Men in Hollywood
Actress, activist and frequent co-star Ruby Dee likened Sir Sidney Poitier to a "smoldering flame that you don't think will catch fire and burn down the house." The actor, director, producer, writer and humanitarian, who passed away at age 94 on Jan. 6, shot to fame in the 1950s and '60s playing exceptional professionals with a magnetic mix of fortitude, charisma and repressed rage. Veering away from the demeaning cinematic stereotypes of Black life (i.e. subservient maids and buffoons), Poitier hit quieter registers, creating a new visual vocabulary for Black masculinity that echoes to this day. His box office success and industry accolades was seized as an example of a shift in Hollywood, symbolized by his historic 1964 Academy Award for Best Actor. As actor and producer Cedric Scott, a fellow Bahamian who was mentored by Poitier before eventually working with him, summed up during a recent phone call, "He raised the heights that no one ever dreamed of, certainly he didn't."
Tucked within this narrative of triumph are parallel stories that complicate Poitier's legacy as a trailblazer. The New Yorker's Michael Schulman describes Poitier's Hollywood maneuvers as "walking a tightrope." For example, when asked by a reporter about his Oscar win for "Lilies of the Field," (1963) where he played an ex-GI who helps a group of Catholic nuns build a church in the desert, Poitier displayed a guarded hope. Though he'd "like to think it will help someone," he did not see it as a "magic wand." (And indeed, since his win, only three Black actors have joined him and one Black actress.) This tension existed throughout Poitier's career, what Jacqueline Stewart calls his "symbolic presence." As Hollywood's top Black movie star, there was constant pressure to portray perfection, which sometimes warred with his own desire to stretch the possibilities of his craft as an artist.
Without many guides, Poitier molded himself into Hollywood's first mainstream Black leading man, working within a racist system that deemed a career like his to be impossible. Frank Price, former president of Columbia Pictures who worked with Poitier on "Stir Crazy" (1980) recalls that at that time "the idea of a Black leading man was unacceptable. He invented it." And for many years, he remained the only visible Black matinee idol. "Accordingly, I felt very much as if I were representing fifteen, eighteen million people with every move I made," he wrote in his 2000 autobiography, "The Measure of a Man." Poitier's big film break came in 1950 — he was cast as the saintly doctor harassed by Richard Widmark's deranged bigot in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's social issue noir "No Way Out." Critics praised his sensitive portrayal and more screen work began trickling in.
As Mark Harris explains in "Pictures at a Revolution," the movie "established a template for Poitier's roles that was to provide him steady, if creatively constricting, employment for the next fifteen years." That template was the result of circumstance and resolve. Poitier understood that his presence was "instrumental" to white filmmakers like Mankiewicz, Stanley Kramer and Martin Ritt, who felt driven "to address some of the issues of their day." And though he had little say over the script or creative direction, he did have control over what roles to accept, refusing parts that undermined his personal values or depicted Black life negatively. Although Poitier stands by nearly all his roles, he does admit to the tight bind he was in. For example, he was forced to take the lead part in "Porgy and Bess" (1959) — a role turned down by lifelong friend and sometime competitor Harry Belafonte —after studio executive Samuel Goldwyn threatened to curtail his career. And he was painfully aware of the limits of Black characters written by white men, however well-meaning.
"The Defiant Ones" (1958), a pivotal role, typified Poitier's complicated tightrope act. While white critics praised the film as a gritty paean to racial harmony (Poitier and Tony Curtis play escaped convicts who are shackled together), Black audiences found the ending, where Poitier's character abandons his chance at freedom to save Curtis, ridiculous. As James Baldwin wryly observed in his 1968 Look magazine profile on the actor, "[W]hen Black people saw him jump off the train, they yelled, "Get back on the train, you fool!" That didn't mean that they hated Sidney: They just weren't going for the okey-doke." Reflecting on the criticism, Poitier understood that some in his community weren't "ready for oneness" that elided accountability for systematic racism and white supremacy. He is coy about what he would do if that were him, instead asserting his fealty to his craft, before adding, "The movie's point-of-view was Stanley Kramer's."
Caught between Old Hollywood and New, segregation and integration, gradualism and revolution, Poitier had to juggle the expectations of a white film industry that did not know what to do with his talent while gaining the trust of an audience fed up with the dishonest portrayals of Black life. Moreover, his rise was attended by the civil rights movement, layering another meaning and expectation to his presence (Although Poitier donated to various civil rights causes, he did not wade too deeply into leftist activism like Belafonte or their mentor, Paul Robeson). And as the Black Power movement gained more popularity, Poitier's screen image became an easy target to deride.
By 1967, a watershed year in Poitier's career, the complaints began to take a sour tenor. Just as he released three films that made him the biggest box-office star in the US — "To Sir with Love," "In the Heat of the Night" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" — he was accused of being retrograde, an Uncle Tom, a racial fantasy of Black passivity that placated white liberal audiences. The backlash wounded Poitier. Privately, he had been fed up with the types of roles he'd been given. He knew he didn't have as much leeway as Paul Newman or Marlon Brando. But he tried to inject every role he chose with some sense of aliveness, what Baldwin describes as "smuggling in reality."
In the face of changing attitudes, Poitier began to retreat. He turned to directing and producing, adamant that Hollywood can only progress if the people behind the scenes change too. And he continued to mentor a new crop of actors coming up in the 1980s and '90s. Blair Underwood recounts one particular dinner he had with Poitier in 1994, where he was agonizing over whether to accept a villain role. Poitier encouraged him to do it. "I didn't have the luxury when I was coming along. I did that so you didn't have to. So you play that role and you play it well." Poitier made so much possible but his career also provides important reminders about the fickleness of Hollywood. Though the cinematic landscape has vastly improved — there is a direct link from Poitier to the success of actors and directors like Denzel Washington (who was recently nominated for his portrayal of the classic antihero Macbeth), Halle Berry, Jordan Peele and Issa Rae — the work is not done. Still, one cannot ignore Poitier's impact. Price sums it up well: "He revolutionized the film business."
