Sidney Poitier’s life was a series of difficult days leading to success. The actor is considered the most self-made American of the 20th century with many extraordinary. The first black actor to receive the prestigious Oscar just passed away on Friday (US time), at the age of 94.
Sidney Poitier, who did not finish the fourth grade in the Bahamas, was sent to the United States by his parents at the age of 14 to save him from a life of crime there. He was shot in the leg at the age of 16 during a 1943 Harlem race riot. Poitier, an actor, worked hard all his life doing manual labor and joining the army. He later auditioned for the Negro Ensemble Theater, having stumbled upon a notice there.
He was later fired for his thick accent and poor reading s𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁s. After losing his job, he began his journey to becoming the most important black American pop culture figure of the 20th century.
Sidney Poitier’s journey from laborer to star was fraught with difficulties.
He sat in front of the radio and trained his voice, modifying it until he achieved an indelible baritone singing voice, one could say, his voice became “unique” in the world. He joined a theater troupe and successfully exploited his voice, creating a strong appeal to the public.
Four years later, he had his first leading role in a 1950 film, “No Way Out.” He was 22 years old at the time and played a doctor. Seventeen years later, he starred in “In the Heat of the Night,” the first major feature film to feature a black man and a white woman in a romantic relationship.
Sidney Poitier was the first black actor to have a romantic scene with a female lead in American cinema.
With that film, it became a typical film, a success in Sidney Poitier’s career, in the aspect of representing the pride and dignity of black people, a person who cannot be considered inferior to anyone else.
What made him Hollywood’s first black star was the way he personified the barely contained rage at the everyday injustices of being black in America. It was this issue that made Sidney Poitier haunting, compelling, inspiring, and deeply empathetic.
The characters he portrays do not accept the social circumstances that hold them back. They strive to make a better life for themselves despite the prejudices against them, even as they resent the unfair obstacles placed in their path.
He is an inspirational icon for black people in America.
Sidney Poitier’s refusal to give interviews was revolutionary in his response to America’s racial crisis. In his best film, “In the Heat of the Night,” the actor played a righteous cop working to be part of the solution. In total, he was a cop in three films and an FBI agent in three others.
Poitier wasn’t just Hollywood’s first black superstar actor. He was also the first mainstream black director to achieve significant financial success, with films like “Uptown Saturday Night” and “Stir Crazy” (a film that acts as a comedic twin to his great 1958 melodrama “The Defiant Ones,” in which he and Tony Curtis played escaped convicts shackled together on a lam in the Deep South).
Sidnay Poitier received the first black Oscar and set the stage for later actors.
In 1964, he won an Oscar for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field, becoming the first black person to win this prestigious award.
The remarkable life of Sidney Poitier exemplifies the greatest of all American stories, the story of creativity against all odds.
