Posted on 01/08/2022 11:40:01 AM PST by Rummyfan
Unschooled beyond fourth grade in the Bahamas, sent to America by his parents at 14 to save him from a life of crime, shot in the leg at 16 during a 1943 race riot in Harlem, Poitier worked hard jobs as a menial laborer and an Army hospital orderly before he happened to spot an audition notice for the Negro Ensemble Theater.
He was dismissed by the NET due to a thick accent and halting reading skills — and thereupon began the process of willing himself into becoming the most important American black pop culture figure of the 20th century.
Poitier sat before a radio and trained his own voice, remaking it until he achieved the indelible sing-song baritone that — a little like Cary Grant’s — sounded like no one else’s on Earth. He got into the theater troupe and made conscious use of a charisma that emanated from him like a pheromone.
Four years later he had his first starring role in a movie — 1950’s “No Way Out.” He was all of 22. And he was playing a doctor. He would do so again, 17 years later, in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” the first major motion picture to feature a black man and a white woman in a romance.
That film was the representative work of one aspect of his career — the aspect in which he served as the representation of black pride and dignity, a person it would be impossible to consider in any way inferior to anyone else.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
His insistence on not being defined by his race would make him anathema to the modern Left.
I never heard him complain or play the victim, and since there was no affirmative action when he started in show business, I think we can assume he succeeded on his own merit. Something that many believe can’t be done. Liberals must hate people like him.
He was a Communist fellow-traveler. I won’t mourn.
Sort of the same difference.
How did a Liberace or Rock Hudson exist.. and even thrive.. in such a non woke America?
Liberace was a good friend of the Reagans.
The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn is a good one; one of my favorites, anyway.
Are you confusing him with Harry Belafonte?
‘’During my lifetime, America was under different leaderships, but I have never seen someone to lead this nation with passion like Donald Trump...It’s simple, he loves his nation, he loves each one of you ... This man might be the greatest of all time, we have to give him all the support we have.”
Sidney Poitier
That’s actually a fabricated quote.
Since when did being stupid stop anyone from becoming an actor?
So what’s the truth? Was Sidney Poitier liberal?
Did you all know he directed Stir Crazy With Wilder and Pryor
There was another thread where several chimed in that SP was another angry racist.
So who shot him? One of the fellow rioters?
Great find...thanks for posting.
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