Stir Crazy, which was released on Dec. 12, 1980, is a mess of a film, but well worth remembering for two reasons. The first is the comedic synchronicity of stars Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, and the second is that it was the highest-grossing film domestically (adjusted for inflation) ever made by a black director until Ryan Coogler's Black Panther in 2018. That director was Sidney Poitier, the so-called Jackie Robinson of the film industry. Raised in poverty in the Bahamas, he served a stint working with psychiatric patients during a teenage Army enrollment in World War Ii. Poitier eventually...