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[Poitier] I was not expected to live.
I was born two months premature.
When it was determined that I would not survive…
my father came back to the house…
with a shoebox.
They were prepared to tuck me away.
I believe that my life has had
more than a few wonderful, indescribable turns.
[Poitier] The world I knew was quite simple.
I didn't know there was such a thing as electricity.
I didn't know that there was such a thing as
having water come into the house through a pipe.
I learned by observation what the world was like.
I saw creatures. I saw birds.
And I had to figure out for myself what they were.
[birds calling]
I was the youngest of all the children.
And, uh, I caught the most hell, of course, from them.
But I was-- I was, uh, the youngest
and, um, who was very often left at home,
uh, when my folks went to the fields.
My folks were tomato farmers.
There was very little schooling. Very little.
Everything I knew in terms of values, in terms of right and wrong,
in terms of who I was, value-wise, had to come from my parents.
I was always watching them.
Their treatment of each other. How they cared for each other.
How they behaved with their friends.
How they behaved with other people in the village.
And I would behave as close to that as I could
because I would see the results of their behavior.
The Florida government put an embargo
on tomatoes coming from the Bahamas.
My father's business fell apart.
So he sent my mother, and she took me, to Nassau
to find a place that we could afford.
As we're heading into the harbor, I saw something moving.
And it looked like a beetle coming down the street.
And I asked my mother, "What is that?"
And she said, "That's a car."
I said, "What is a car?"
And she described it to me. I was fascinated.
As we walked the streets, I saw glass windows
with all kinds of wonderful things behind the glass.
But then I saw a woman.
But she is standing opposite another woman who looks exactly like her.
And whatever the woman is doing, the other one is doing.
Obviously, there was a mirror.
But I hadn't-- I didn't know there were such things as mirrors.
Do you hear me? I didn't know what a mirror was.
I never thought about what I looked like.
I would only see what I saw.
There was one white person on Cat Island.
When I got to Nassau, I saw other white people,
but they were in the minority.
Black people were 90% of the population.
I ran with a group of guys who were pretty much my age.
Within a matter of months,
three or four of those guys wound up in a reform school.
And my dad decided
that I was probably heading for some kind of trouble.
I was sent to Miami, Florida.
I left the Bahamas at 15 with this sense of myself.
I had ten and a half years of it on Cat Island.
Then I had four and a half years of it in Nassau.
So I arrived in Miami, Florida, with a sense of myself.
And from the time I got off the boat, Florida began to say to me,
"You're not who you think you are."
When you grew up in a community on Cat Island,
where everybody's Black,
everything you know and see around you is powerful
and good and nurturing,
and it's Black.
But there's no concept of, really, race.
Because that was his worldview and his personal view,
he moved through the entire world space that way.
He just always thought that he was who he was.
And, you know, there were times when that got him into trouble.
I was sent to live with my-my brother, the only relative we had there.
He got me a job at a place called the Burdines department store
in Miami, Florida, to make deliveries.
And, uh, I was told the lady's name and-- [stammers]
So I got on the bike, and I went to Miami Beach.
And I got to the address, and I walked up to the front door,
and I rang the bell.
[doorbell rings]
Then the lady of the house came out, and she said,
"What are you doing at the front door?"
And I said… [chuckling] …"I'm here to deliver this package."
She said, "Get around to the back door."
And she slammed the door in my face.
Well, I'm new to this whole experience of race in the US.
I just couldn't understand it.
Why would I have to go to the back door, and she's standing right here?
But she slammed the door in my face, and I don't know what to do.
And my decision was, I put it right there on the doorstep.
After the evening was done, I went home to my brother's house.
I got there. It's dark.
I'm approaching the house. There's no lights.
And I wondered why there was no lights, but I walked up to the front door.
His wife opened the door and grabbed me
and pulled me in, to the floor,
and slammed the door.
[inhales sharply]
And I-- She said, "What did you do? What did you do today?"
And I said, "I-I didn't do anything. What-- What did I do?"
She said, "The Klan was here. What did you do today?"
I decided I had to get out of town. I wanted to get out of town.
[inhales deeply]
I had put a few pieces of clothing
into the dry cleaner.
I went to this place. It's in a totally white community.
On the way back, I go to what would be the bus stop,
and the buses have stopped running.
A car stopped and pulled right up to me,
and it's loaded down with cops.
[tires screech]
And they asked me, "What are you doing?"
I said I was just trying to hitch a ride back to town.
"What are you doing here?" And I explained everything.
He pulls out his pistol,
and he leans it outside the window of the car.
And he put it right up against my head.
There.
And he said to his compatriots,
"What should we do with this person?"
They didn't use the word "person."
He said, "If we let you go,
you think you could walk all the way back to where you came from,
uh, without looking back? You think you can do that?"
And I said, "Yeah, I can do that."
He said, "If you look back once, we're gonna shoot you."
[car engine starts]
For the next 50 or more blocks,
every time I passed a window, I would shift my eyes only,
and I would pick up that police car at the back of me.
And they stayed there…
all the way back to the little street
where my relatives were living.
And at that point, they just simply drove on.
Within a matter of a few months,
I had to kind of switch my whole view of life.
I began to learn who had the power.
And I would witness the, uh, application of that power.
I knew by then I had to get out of town.
I knew I had to get out.
I didn't know that I would ever find
a place different from Florida.
I heard from some guys that there was a place
where we had a different set of opportunities.
New York.
I got to New York at the Greyhound bus station
at 50th Street and 8th Avenue.
And I walked out on the street,
and I'm just amazed at this place.
And an African American guy walked up to me.
He says, "How are you doing?" And I said, "Fine."
He says, "Where are you going?"
I said, "Could you tell me how I can get to Harlem?"
He said, "Oh, yes."
He says, "You go down there, and you take the A train."
I'm very skeptical now because he said, "Go down there.
There's some steps going down into the ground."
So I said, "Okay." [laughing]
I-- I very gingerly kind of went down the steps.
Then I heard this rumbling, rumbling up.
And in no time, this train came-- [imitates whooshing sound]
["Take the 'A' Train" playing]
Uh, it got to 116th Street, and I got off.
And I followed people who were getting off,
and I walked up the steps.
And there I was in Harlem.
Whoa!
[song continues]
Everywhere I looked there were some Black people.
I would say, "Hello." They would say hello to me.
I was just thrilled.
[song continues]
Black artists were just very present in Harlem.
And you were just aware of the greatness that was around.
You know, Ellington.
Lena Horne. Billie Holiday.
You know, I mean, superstars were walking the land.
You knew what the measure of an artist was then.
It was right there in front of you, like, no filter.
So, this is the way in which this era
was waiting for Sidney Poitier.
[interviewer] You were here in search of fame and fortune.
-I was here in-- in-- in search. -[interviewer] In search.
[Poitier] I must say that my search was fruitless for quite a long time.
At 49th Street and Broadway,
there was a-- a bar and grill.
In the window, it said, "Dishwasher wanted."
I walked in. He said, "When can you start?"
I said, "I can start right now." [chuckles]
And he hired me.
Not only did they put me to work, they were paying four bucks a night.
And I could eat.
When I finished the first night's work,
I went to the bus station.
I went to sleep in the toilet.
There used to be pay toilets in them, and it cost a nickel.
So I put a nickel in. [mumbles] And I got in.
I put down the seat. I sat there, put my feet up against the door,
and I would sleep.
[chuckling] Uncomfortably, needless to say.
On one particular evening,
I'm sitting right next to the kitchen,
and I'm reading a paper.
And one of the waiters looked over and saw me sitting there.
I said, "I'm trying to learn to read better than I can read."
And he said, "Would you like it if I read with you?"
Every night,
that man, that Jewish waiter
came over to where I would read the paper
and sit there with me until I really began learning to read.
This was like the beginning of a journey for me.
If you stop struggling, people are gonna walk past you.
But if they see you working at it,
somebody's gonna grab you by the hand
and just give you that little lift up that you need to keep going.
It's always gonna happen.
[Poitier] I was on 125th Street in Harlem,
and I bought a newspaper called the Amsterdam News--
it was a Black newspaper-- because it had a want ad page.
On the want ad page were places that I had gotten jobs from.
Dishwashing jobs, porter jobs,
all kinds of other jobs that I could do.
On the opposite page, it says, "Actors wanted."
And I said to myself, "My God. They want actors?
What would I be doing as an actor?"
So I went to this address. I knocked on the door.
And after a while, a guy came.
He was a mountainous guy. Huge. Frederick O'Neal was the guy.
I went in. I walked on the stage, and I turned to page so-and-so.
And he opened another script. He was sitting in-in the audience.
And he turned the page. He says, "Now read the part of John."
And I looked, and I saw "John," and I said, "Okay."
[slowly] "He said, 'Where are you going?'" [chuckles]
And he-- He was quite upset and angry,
and he tossed me out of there and stuff.
He said, "Why don't you just stop wasting people's time
and go get yourself a job as a dishwasher or something?"
That's the moment I became an actor, you see.
I said, "I am going to become an actor.
And when I do, I'm going to come back and show that man."
[Dick Cavett] You had an accent problem
when you first started to work in New York, I've read.
Can you show us what your speech was originally like?
-A line like, uh, "I'm going home." -Mm-hmm.
Uh, when I was a child, we would say, "I gwine 'ome."
I was told I had to get rid of it if I wanted to be an actor.
So I got rid of it myself.
Uh, I bought a radio for $14.
And I would look for a man named Norman Brokenshire.
Norman Brokenshire was a newsreader.
And he had a magnificent voice.
How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? How do you do?
This is Norman Brokenshire.
I would listen to his-- And after a while, I would repeat.
You know, I've been in front of microphones for over 25 years,
and I can tell you this is a tense business.
And I lost my accent almost completely.
I went out, and I s-- bought books,
and I learned to struggle through lines and stuff.
And I went back, and I took an audition.
And I was accepted.
So I used the theater, I used acting and acting classes, as a therapy.
I would go there after working in the Garment District
or any other of the 14, 18 places I did work.
I would go to class at night,
and I would sit and study and do scenes.
At the time, when I was 17, 18 years old,
acting offered me an area where I could be an exhibitionist,
where I could give vent to some of my frustrations,
where I could pour out some of my confusion and other ills
into a fictitious character.
I felt this is something that gives me a badge of distinction.
I can be many things here,
and the areas of life, socially and otherwise,
that were then restricted to me--
I had ways of retaliating in this kind of illusion.
-[bell tolling] -Tyrant, show thy face.
What is thy name?
[bangs]
[Nelson George] I think one of the things that's been lost is the Black theater.
[laughs] My name's Macbeth.
[George] From probably after the war all the way into the '80s,
Black theater was the voice of Black art.
American Negro Theatre was a precursor
to the Negro Ensemble Company and other great theater groups.
And it was a place where young talent could get on stage
and get their chops up.
Everybody came through Black theater.
It wasn't probably till the '90s when you could cast a Black actor
who had not been in the Black theater somewhere.
[Harry Belafonte] I went down there for an audition.
When I got there,
I saw this rather surly Black man across the room from me.
And he didn't look too happy to see me.
I looked at him, and I knew
that I would have to be competing with this guy
for the rest of my days.
I have decided that I must hitch my wagon to, uh, Sidney's star…
[audience laughs]
…and be led to great celestial experiences.
-[audience laughing] -And I--
-[Cavett] You could cut it with a knife. -[both laughing]
My dad and Harry have such a bromance. It's crazy.
They've been together
since these early years at the American Negro Theatre company.
And they were the best of friends,
and then they had falling-outs, periodic falling-outs, you know?
They were like a married couple. You know, like--
They separate. They have a divorce. They get married again.
-We disagree on occasion. -[Cavett] Yeah.
And I don't mean that funny. We do disagree on occasion,
uh, on various subjects.
But we exchange on these subjects, you see.
I've learned a great deal from this man in 26 years.
I suspect he has learned some things from me.
Uh, we are artists. I have an ego. He has an ego.
-[Belafonte] Tell 'em, honey. -[chuckles]
[audience laughing]
-[all laughing] -So…
[Quincy Jones] I was 18 years old coming out of Birdland,
and I saw Sidney, Harry Belafonte and Marlon Brando.
Oh, man, come on. That was like history. History.
We were wild. Everybody was wild back then.
They used to love, and they used to fight. [laughing]
They got close. They stayed close.
And worked close.
And they kept playing that stink eye.
[chuckling] And they still do.
[Belafonte] We were doing a play called Days of Our Youth.
And Sidney Poitier was my understudy.
We worked for nothing, of course.
And I had a job.
And I was a janitor's assistant.
They were having a performance one night.
And Harry Belafonte was the lead. He was supposed to go on.
He was also a garbageman at the time.
And he got called in on a shift that he had to take.
And so my dad, being the understudy, took his place.
And there happened to be a Broadway producer
in the audience that night
casting, I believe, Lysistrata.
And cast my dad.
I think Harry was probably pretty pissed about that one. [chuckles]
[Belafonte] 20th Century Fox had flown scouts to the East
to hunt for an actor.
They saw Sidney Poitier.
They flew him to California,
gave him his screen test, and the rest is history.
Every time he gets out a line I remind him, to humble him,
that, uh, his career was made on garbage.
Now, that could make a man bitter if he hadn't done reasonably well,
as you have since.
No, I've done reasonably well, and I am bitter.
-[both chuckle] -[audience laughs]
[siren wailing]
-Hi, Lefty. -Hey, Luth.
What do you know? I've been looking for you.
[Poitier] The beginning of my career
was with a man named Joe Mankiewicz.
-Hello, Brooks. -Good evening, Doctor.
[Poitier] He wanted to make a movie about Black people in America.
And it was a very interesting movie. The first of its kind.
I played a young Black doctor at a Los Angeles hospital.
I'm Dr. Brooks.
Yeah, they said you'd be up.
It was really explosive stuff.
I don't want him. I want a white doctor.
We'll turn the lights out. You won't know the difference.
-Haven't I got any rights? -No!
[Poitier] There were people in the industry
who didn't have the courage
to make a film like that about Black people.
There was a habit pattern
of utilizing Blacks in the most disrespectful way.
I know I can eat my mashed potatoes without a knife and--
-Stop this foolishness! -I…
[Freeman] We're talking about the '40s,
when if you're gonna work in the movies, you better be funny.
Stepin Fetchit. [sighs]
Mantan Moreland.
Oh, Mr. Bill, does I has to? Can I stay up here with you?
No. You understand that it might set a bad example for the other servants.
Well, certainly.
Those were the stars-- Black stars of their time.
If you ain't funny, you ain't working.
[Poitier] Mantan Moreland, Stepin Fetchit and Hattie McDaniel.
I knew when I came on the scene how painful it had to have been
for them to say some of those words and behave in some of those ways.
Aw, Jeff, you're the laziest man I ever saw.
Oh, Mr. Frank, I ain't lazy. I is just relackatin'.
[Poitier] Hollywood was a really insensitive place
when it came to Black people.
[Jeff] Wait. Don't leave me here.
[Pamela Poitier] Hattie McDaniel was nominated in 1939,
and she won in 1939.
I knew that she was not allowed in the hotels and all of that.
And I knew that, of course, playing a maid,
brilliantly as she did,
w-- was about all they really wanted out of people like her.
May I say thank you…
I don't think Sidney ever played a "subservient" part.
Never bugged his eyes.
Never ducked his head.
Never said anything funny.
You're watching a man in a world
where he really doesn't have a whole lot to say.
And turns out, yes, he does.
Every time anybody dies in a county hospital, somebody yells murder.
But it's not the same when they yell it at me.
It's got to be. You're a doctor.
They're not yelling at the doctor. They're yelling at the nigger.
The movies changed the day he hits the screen.
You know what I mean?
Like, never-- never seen a brother like this before.
He-- Yeah. I mean,
he carved out something that was just without precedent.
I had things driving me.
Um, I came from a very poor family. Very, very poor family.
And I came from a poor, uneducated family in the Caribbean.
And my poor, uneducated family in the Caribbean looked on America
as a place where there is gold in the streets.
And once you've gathered some of it, you certainly should send some home.
And because I couldn't send gold back home,
I developed a terrible, neurotic attitude towards home.
I-- I cut home off.
I didn't write because I-- I couldn't put anything in the envelope.
He has this really deep love and respect for his parents,
and I think that's always, like, weighed on him a little bit,
that he spent eight years away.
[Poitier] I saw my mother and father for the first time in eight years.
The family was able to gather in a theater in Nassau
to see the first picture I ever made, No Way Out.
Yes, it's very important.
[Poitier] For my parents,
it was the first time they had ever seen a movie.
It must have been something like a fantasy for them. A dream.
I'm not entirely sure how much they grasped of the concept.
They were absolutely enthralled.
Letting go with "That's my kid!" and all that kind of stuff.
After that initial burst of success, I was back in Harlem washing dishes.
Despite the setback,
I still had faith in myself and faith in the future.
Enough of each to marry a beautiful young girl named Juanita,
and try to get on with my life.
Soon our first child was born,
and then another was on the way.
[Pamela] I think that my mother was a total optimist,
and my father was a bit of a pessimist.
But her optimism overwhelmed him.
And I think that her being able to read people,
he was fascinated by that.
And the fact that she just-- she loved people unconditionally
captivated his imagination.
I was the only girl and the only Black person
in my class at Columbia University.
I had two strikes against me, so… [chuckles]
I had written an essay
about the Black and white situation in the United States.
They said, "Well, where did you get these ideas from?"
I said, "From the people who lived it."
When I met Sidney, he had only been to the third grade.
He was always out there to learn.
He needed to know
everything he could get his mind on.
And I-- I was trying to feed him all the time
the things that I felt that he didn't know
that it would help him if he knew.
Then he could start feeling and reacting
to the movies that he was offered.
I said, "Everything is not about money."
He got offered a role in a film. I think it was by Marty Baum.
And he turned it down.
And Marty Baum was like, "I'm sorry. I don't understand.
Like, this is gonna pay you more money than you make in a year."
My second daughter was about to be born.
My second child.
And I didn't have the money.
The part called for me as a janitor,
which is-- nothing wrong with playing janitors.
But in this particular script, a murder took place.
And the murderers, or the people who knew about the mur--
or who were associated with the murderers,
felt that I, the janitor, had witnessed it.
In the narrative, the janitor's daughter is murdered,
and the janitor has no recourse to speak about how he feels
about his daughter's body being thrown upon the lawn.
They're not gonna change the script
to give him some kind of reaction to that.
And he said,
"Reginald Poitier would never allow
a child of his to be thrown upon the lawn
and not have something to say about it."
He wanted to make sure that whatever he did in life,
reflected well on his father.
He said that when he looked up
and saw his name on the screen or on the marquee,
it was not his name. It was his father's name.
I cannot play that
if I'm the son of the man I believe I am.
I could not play that
if my mother is the mother that I think she was.
And so he turns it down.
He turns it down and goes out and takes a-- and takes a loan
so that he can pay for his baby in the hospital.
He did what he had to do
because not so much of what people expected out of him
but what he expected out of himself.
My faithfulness to my values belongs to my mom.
And to my dad.
[emergency video narrator] First you duck, and then you cover.
[George] The Cold War after World War II produced
a kind of paranoia in America about communism
that impacted every aspect of American life.
The communist underground directed its agents, in effect,
to infiltrate Hollywood
and to do everything possible to poison the screen.
They are enemies! They are not Americans.
-They're homosexuals. -That's right!
-They're communists! -They are!
They're communists!
Even if there were only one communist in the State Department
that would still be one communist too many.
[Andrew Young] I remember that period 'cause I was just getting to college
at Howard University.
I saw the McCarthy hearings
on the first television set I'd seen,
which was in the dormitory lounge.
It was really scary.
[newsreel narrator] The requirement of a loyalty oath
becomes increasingly widespread in the government
and throughout the nation.
There were lists made of possible communists or communist sympathizers.
So many people didn't make it through that, Paul Robeson being one.
[interviewer] Have you come back from Moscow still a convinced communist?
I don't see how you can ask me that. How do you know I'm a communist?
-Nobody else knows. -Are you?
-So I resent the question. -I beg your pardon.
Will you rephrase it, please? Yes.
[singing spiritual song]
[Aram Goudsouzian] Paul Robeson was as significant
an African American cultural figure in the 1930s as existed.
He stood atop of this world of Black entertainment
that people like Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte
were becoming a part of.
And they very much admired Paul Robeson.
-[gunshot] -[character laughs]
[Freeman] Well, he had America on his butt
because he was supportive of the proletariat.
"Yeah, but they're communists." So?
Robeson becomes an interesting dual template
for Poitier and Belafonte
you know, as to which side of the line are you going to--to fight on.
Robeson was blackballed, and not only was he blackballed,
but when he could've gone to Europe to work,
the American government took his passport away.
We have seen that people will so fight for their freedom
that if it is not given to them, they will take it.
[Spike Lee] So for Sidney, he saw how Paul Robeson was disrespected
and, uh, the abuse he took.
And when you see something like that…
it's like a-- can be a road map.
Yeah, well, just try and pay attention, Santini.
-I pay attention. -[school bell rings]
Hey, Miller. Come here. I want to talk to you a minute, Miller.
[Studs Terkel] What film was it, Blackboard Jungle?
You were asked to sign a loyalty oath.
-[Poitier] Several times. -[Terkel] Why was that?
[Poitier] Well, I think mainly because I knew Paul Robeson,
and my admiration was not a well-kept secret.
That seemed to have been enough to make me suspect.
Now, don't-- don't be modest with me, Miller.
You know you're a little brighter,
a little smarter than the rest of those guys.
-Me? -Yeah.
And every class needs a leader.
[Goudsouzian] Poitier appeared on the pages of Counterattack,
which was this conservative watchdog publication
that looked to investigate the various leftist associations
of various figures in American public life.
Clearly someone had been keeping tabs on Poitier throughout the 1950s.
[Poitier] At that time, there was the politics of filmmaking
that required that, if you wanted to work,
you had to be on very good terms
with whatever forces were putting people on blacklists.
[Terkel] You said no.
Let's go, bright boy.
Hey, wait. He means me.
[Terkel] You're gonna jeopardize your career and everything.
[Poitier] Yeah, well, there are some things that you have to say no to.
My integrity was more important than to play politics.
It's brave. I mean, when everything was on the line--
He could've easily been blackballed.
I could only imagine in those days what-- what it was like to speak out.
[Poitier] Of all my father's teachings,
the most enduring was the one about the true measure of a man.
That true measure was how well he provided for his children.
And it stuck with me as if it were etched in my brain.
I didn't know where I was going next,
but I knew that failure wasn't an option.
That's when I got the call from Richard Brooks
to make Something of Value in Kenya.
And from there, my career really took off.
Did I say to myself, "This country is waking up
and beginning to recognize that certain changes are inevitable"?
No, I did not.
The moment a Negro child walks into the school,
every decent, self-respecting, loving parent
should take his white child out of that broken school.
[audience applauding]
[Poitier] This was still 1950 America,
an America in which
a career like this had never even been dreamed of.
It had never happened before in the history of the movie business.
A Black leading man.
[singing]
You heard what the man said, nigger. Now shut up.
You call me nigger again, Joker, and I'm gonna kill you.
Make your move.
-[train whistle blowing] -Look out!
[Barbra Streisand] I've always thought there was a great connection
to Jews and Blacks.
When I saw The Defiant Ones, Tony Curtis, the Jew,
and Sidney Poitier, who was Black--
And it just had this chemistry about, almost, people in chains.
We know about that in our DNA.
[Halle Berry] The Defiant Ones. That was the first one I ever saw.
And, man, it was impactful.
To this day, I still remember him saying to Tony Curtis,
"I got a needle sticking in me. Don't call me 'boy.'"
Yeah. And I got a needle sticking in me right now.
Look, Joker, don't call me "boy."
It was the first time I had really seen
a Black man assert his power and command respect
from a white man on film.
That moment in the film where Sidney makes the decision…
to sacrifice his possible freedom…
Come on!
I can't make it! I can't make it!
…to save his white friend…
[train whistle blows]
…is something that Black people still don't like and still don't believe.
It's a magic Negro moment,
which was basically a trope that happened--
The Defiant Ones is one of the most prime examples
of a Black character sacrificing their well-being
or risking something
or going out of their way
to help a white character in a moment of distress.
And that was a huge trope in Hollywood storytelling for years.
And it was a way, to them,
of showing the humanity and the empathy of Black people
even in the face of their struggles.
But to Black people, it seemed like, "Yo, these people are punks."
I questioned it just a little bit.
"What would I have done?" You know?
Probably would've jumped off too.
We've been through all of this chained together.
I'm not gonna let you go by yourself.
[Terkel] James Baldwin was on the program.
And he says, "Defiant Ones? Oh, middle-class whites loved it,
but in Uptown, in the Black community,
they hollered, 'Get back on that train, you fool!'"
-[Poitier chuckles] -What's your reaction to that?
[Poitier] I have no reaction to that.
Listen, the picture then was a revolutionary film.
-[Terkel] It was. -[Poitier] You know?
It stands today as a revolutionary film.
We're doing all right, Joker.
Yeah.
[Goudsouzian] Defiant Ones was the movie
that would help to define Sidney Poitier as we know him, right,
as this incredibly powerful actor.
Alongside Tony Curtis, their names appeared above the name of the film,
which was the symbol of becoming a genuine Hollywood leading man.
My dad and Tony Curtis were both nominated for Oscars.
It was the first time a Black person had been nominated for an Oscar
since Hattie McDaniel.
The fact that my dad came home with this plaque
that said he was nominated, that he could put up on the wall,
was a big deal for him.
[Goudsouzian] The amount of media attention,
the profiles, magazine covers…
He's on the cover of Ebony magazine. He's clearly emerged as a star.
[Streisand] He was beautiful in many ways.
First of all, what smile is like that?
Maybe only Brando's. Come on.
["Just Kissed My Baby" playing]
[Tate] I mean, part of Sidney's beauty
is he's like a walking Yoruba mask.
You know what I mean? Like Benin bronze.
He's so sculptural.
[Berry] He was, like, this gorgeous creature.
I-- I wanted to marry Sidney Poitier. You know what I mean?
He was definitely my idea of what a perfect Black man would be.
[Lee] Sidney had conviction.
And he understood what imagery is about, the power of imagery.
[Sydney] I have seen people cry.
I have seen women swoon.
I've seen their husbands swoon.
I've seen everybody sort of melt in his presence.
[Streisand] He was so elegant, so statuesque.
He was, like, "wow." Movie stars should be "wow."
I did Raisin in the Sun in 1959. So I got to know Sidney pretty well.
We got to know one another very well.
["Compared to What" playing]
Every Black person had read Raisin in the Sun
because that was one of those plays you read
when they started letting us read Black stuff at school.
[song continues]
Sidney had bought me a mink coat or something.
And I said, "I don't need a mink coat. [chuckles]
I just want to…"
So I took it back to the store, and I got the money
and invested it in Raisin in the Sun.
And I was the largest investor
in the play that he was doing on Broadway.
I had done Broadway before.
Didn't know whether it was gonna be good or bad.
It felt good.
The first act intermission, when the curtain went down,
you could hear a pin drop.
[chuckling] We thought it was a failure.
By the time we got to the second intermission,
that audience was so involved with us that by the time the play was over,
there was a-- [gasps]
A breath of fresh air, a scream, a "Bravo!"
It was amazing.
[Poitier] I knew for certain that I was meant to be an actor
when the curtain came down on opening night in New York.
After all the doubts that had accumulated
since that serendipitous meeting
between myself and that gentleman at the American Negro Theatre,
when he threw me out and slammed the door,
that night I knew for certain
that I had just been formally introduced to my true calling.
I was an actor.
I got me some plans, man.
I got me some plans that'll turn this city upside down.
You know what I mean?
[Goudsouzian] There's the film made the next year
that brings the play to a much wider audience.
It is arguably Poitier's most electric performance.
And it's no accident that it is a role written by an African American
in the tumult of the early Civil Rights Movement,
unlike so many of his roles,
which are written by white, male, liberal screenwriters.
Lorraine Hansberry is able to tap into
a certain authenticity of the Black experience
that none of those other Hollywood screenwriters could.
-I know you are a busy little boy. -Walter, please.
I know ain't nothing in the world as busy as you colored college boys
with your fraternity pins and your white shoes.
Oh, Wally.
I see you all the time with your books tucked under your arm,
going to your classes.
What are you learning down there? What are they filling your head with?
The kind of ceiling on the possibilities that-- that Black people had,
and especially sort of aggressive young Black men had at that time--
It's right there. And you-- He really embodies that.
So, there's not a huge difference from Sidney in Raisin in the Sun
to see, you know, the kids in Boyz n the Hood.
You know, man, you are all wacked up with bitterness.
How about you? Ain't you bitter, man?
Don't you see no stars gleaming that you can't reach out and grab, huh?
I'm talking--
Bitter?
I'm a volcano. I'm a giant, and I'm surrounded by ants.
Ants who don't even know what I'm talking about. How's that?
It's an art of making a moment and knowing what you're gonna do
and knowing where the camera's going to be
and learning all those moves.
He had it all figured out.
Very difficult not to copy that man.
[Lenny Kravitz] The first time I would've met Sidney,
I would've been quite young,
because he and my aunt Diahann were together.
So I would have been five.
I really learned about that relationship
when I read Sidney's book when I was much older,
because Aunt Diahann didn't really talk about that at that point.
As I got older, uh, there were conversations that were had,
uh, where it was appropriate now.
I was surprised 'cause I didn't know it was like that.
There were a lot of feelings involved.
[kisses]
-You're beautiful. -Yeah?
-[laughs] Yes. -[chuckles]
You make me feel beautiful.
I don't feel average when I'm with you.
I feel very, very special.
It's a very sexy movie.
The black and white is gorgeous.
Paris, the city, is gorgeous.
You're in these caves-- in these jazz caves, you know?
You've got Paul Newman.
And you've got my aunt Diahann,
who is the most stunning woman you've ever seen in that film.
He and Diahann Carroll are one of the most beautiful couples
in cinema history.
They have these trench coats,
and they're walking at night through Paris.
And they're bantering about the Civil Rights Movement and love.
You stick around Paris for a while and stretch a bit.
Sit down for lunch somewhere without getting clubbed for it.
And you'll wake up one day, look across the ocean,
and you'll say, "Who needs it?"
[Goudsouzian] As Poitier is becoming this symbol to the entire country,
he's also undergoing this personal crisis.
On the one hand,
he feels an intense connection and a love with Diahann Carroll
that he feels is missing from his marriage.
On the other hand, he's a father.
And he has the lessons of Reginald Poitier, his father,
that say the measure of a man is how you provide for your family.
Is he abandoning those values by engaging in this affair?
I can't let you go.
Then come with me.
[Goudsouzian] By the end of the filming of Paris Blues,
they were still both in flux.
Unsure about the next steps in their lives.
Unsure about whether they were gonna stay together.
Unsure about what to do about their larger family situations.
[Hardy] He was busy. He said he had to go.
He couldn't stay out at the… [stammers] …the house
because he needed to get an apartment so he could, uh, write.
He was writing now and so forth.
And, of course, it turned out
it was, uh, something else
and not what he said.
[announcer] Freedom Now Movement, hear me.
We are requesting all citizens to move into Washington.
To go by plane, car, bus.
Any way that you can get there.
["For What It's Worth" playing]
Negroes want the same things that white citizens possess.
All of their rights.
[protesters chanting] Freedom! Freedom!
[song continues]
[reporter] The whole purpose of this march is to demonstrate support
for President Kennedy's Civil Rights Bill.
We were really a Southern Black movement
until 1963 in August.
It was not only Dr. King relating the dreams
of African Americans in the South,
but it was the presence of the stars of Hollywood.
[no audible dialogue]
Harry and Sidney Poitier made this a global event.
And that was before Martin Luther King said a word.
[chuckles]
Dr. King did not know Marlon Brando.
He did not know Paul Newman.
Hollywood stars who marched with Dr. King movements.
And it was Sidney and Harry. That's the connection.
I noticed today, all day long,
in all of the speeches, on all of the placards,
I saw the word or heard the word "now, now, now," repeatedly.
-Insistently. -[chanting] Now!
The urgency that was evident today has been bubbling in me, personally,
for most of these years.
At least, most of the years I came into adulthood.
I became interested in the Civil Rights struggle
out of a necessity to survive.
And I think my interest started, uh, many years ago,
never as intensely, however, as it exists today.
Gentlemen, I think that it's about time…
In terms of Sidney's activism, I was not only impressed,
but I was inspired by it,
'cause I thought, "Well, I can do that too. In my own way.
I'll have to find my own way, but I can do that, you know?
I have a voice. I can use it."
He was up against tremendous odds.
You knew he was gonna get accused by people saying,
"Who are you to speak out?"
Just not fair.
He had a voice. He had every right to use it.
He had earned that voice.
And just being an actor doesn't mean you can't speak out.
Through the eyes of the average American, unfortunately,
it was impossible for them to see me.
Sometimes I would be pissed about it,
meaning that I would be unable to change
the way Black people were used, treated.
[George] Hollywood was not ready, at that point,
for even more than one Black star.
There's one Black star. Now, there's other Black actors.
But for the most part, it was a very conservative industry
that had to be dragged into the present,
and it took them a long time.
Nobody's grooming, necessarily,
the next Sidney Poitier, you know what I mean?
Sidney's like a-- He's like a complex.
There's a Sidney Poitier complex. It's like a matrix.
And in the way that racism works,
it's like it really is, like, a Highlander thing.
We got Sidney.
Like, what do we need other Negroes for?
He was a race soldier who's leading the army for everybody else
but who really, fully got that he was not defined by his color.
And he wasn't saying it as resistance or as explanation.
It just was a fact.
There's so much about us and around us
that has been instrumental in some of the turns I have made,
some of the choices I have made.
And some of those choices were not
just me looking at the scoreboard of life and saying,
"This is what I should do. This is what I intend to do."
No. [stammers] You live according
to the values that drives you.
[Goudsouzian] Lilies of the Field is this low-budget production,
sort of this modest story about a Black handyman
who arrives in the American Southwest at a nunnery, or a group of nuns,
and he helps to build them a church.
God is good. He has sent me a big, strong man.
He didn't say anything to me about sending me anyplace.
I was just passing by.
[Lee] '63, I was, uh, six years old.
I'm like, "Sidney, leave. Why you messing around with them?"
[chuckles]
"Get in your car." And-- And I was--
I mean, this is what I thought at six years old.
He said, "They can't pay me enough. They are not offering anything."
I said, "Sidney, you know what you can do?
Do the movie not for a salary,
but do the film as part of ownership."
He said, "I never thought of that." I said, "Think and know it."
[Goudsouzian] The role is first offered to Harry Belafonte.
He turns it down. He says,
"This man doesn't have any connection to a larger world."
[Belafonte] Terrible movie. Terrible.
The most awful movie I'd ever read.
And I turned it down with a great flair.
And Sidney Poitier took the part.
He was wonderful in that picture.
Harry was singing too. He had another career.
Harry was doing all right. [stammers]
Harry could afford to turn stuff down.
You could turn stuff down when-- you know, when the house is paid for.
Not knocking Harry, but Harry was, you know, Day-O'ing.
[singing "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)"]
Okay?
[singing continues]
[Freeman] When we were doing Hello, Dolly!
I was on Broadway with Pearl Bailey.
And whenever anybody who was anybody came to the show,
she would invite 'em up on stage.
And they would do…
[sings]
So she asked Sidney up when he came.
And she said, "Come on, Sidney. Let's-- Let's do it."
And he said, "I can't sing!" [laughs]
Okay. Now here we go. [clears throat]
[singing "Amen"]
[Freeman] She said, "What are you talking about?
I saw you hollering in Lilies of the Field."
He said, "That was somebody else!" [laughing]
[singing continues]
Now, come on.
[singing continues]
[Goudsouzian] This tiny, low-budget film builds an audience over time.
It plugs into a certain mood in the country.
And then in particular
there's an appreciation for Poitier's character, Homer Smith,
and for Poitier's performance.
This very sweet, endearing style that he brings to the movie.
And it just captures the right mood.
[Poitier] I think the kind of part it was,
I think it was a lovable, wonderful, uplifting character,
the reflection of whom is to be found
in the better part of all human beings.
[reporter] Hollywood's big night.
For the 36th time, the world's amusement capital
recognizes the year's top artists and achievements
with the bestowal of the coveted Oscars.
[Oprah] I was just a ten-year-old kid in Milwaukee.
I'm watching this thing called the Academy Awards,
and you're seeing people pulling up in limousines and the whole thing.
And any time a Black person was on television,
I remember literally getting on the phone going,
"Colored people on, colored people. Colored people on!
Colored people. Turn on now."
And I'd end up missing whatever it was.
The nominees for the best performance by an actor
are Albert Finney in Tom Jones,
Richard Harris in This Sporting Life,
Rex Harrison in Cleopatra,
Paul Newman in Hud,
Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field.
[audience applauds]
The winner is Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field.
[audience cheering]
[Poitier] When my name was called,
I jumped up saying,
"I won! I won! I won!"
Well, I couldn't help that.
It was an expression of self,
but it was also an expression
that belonged to an awful lot of people.
Can you imagine?
This was before we had a Civil Rights Act.
Can you imagine the shock in that room?
Can you imagine just the sheer joy, magic,
and something utterly divine happening in that moment
that surpassed everything else that was happening in the culture.
[reporter] Mr. Poitier is the first Negro to win such a high award,
and the announcement is received warmly by the audience.
[applauding continues]
[Poitier] It was a turning point,
truly a turning point
in a Hollywood that had chosen
to articulate us, Black people,
as entirely different than we were.
Because it is a long journey to this moment,
I am naturally indebted
to countless numbers of people.
He was the great Black hope for me.
In that moment, he became the great Black hope for me.
I remember distinctly feeling
that if this could happen to a colored man,
I wonder what could happen to me.
All I can say is a very special thank you.
[audience applauding]
["We're a Winner" playing]
[people cheering]
[song continues]
[Washington] He made it for a lot of people,
not just those of us that came after him,
but Sidney's parents and grandparents
and going all the way back to slavery.
Imagine what they felt like when "he made it."
[crowd cheering]
To be the first Black man, Bahamian man,
to win Best Actor
in a time where that was virtually impossible,
you had to be a hundred times better than everybody else.
[song continues]
[Poitier] It was extraordinary for the time,
not so much because I was that good and I was that pure.
I was not that good or that pure.
But there was something in me that I was carrying forth
that was in my mom,
what she did as a mother for my survival.
I was not expected to live, no.
I was not expected to live when I was born.
I was born two months premature.
My father left the house the following morning
when it was determined by everyone present,
including the midwife, that I would not survive.
He came back to the house with a shoebox.
And…
they were prepared to tuck me away.
Well… [clears throat] …my mother wouldn't hear of it.
She said, "No, you can't do that."
And she left the house,
and she went everywhere she thought she would find some support.
And she passed the home of a soothsayer.
My mother said, "I have a child that was just born.
He was a very early birth,
and I want you to tell me about my son."
The soothsayer closed her eyes, and her face began to twitch.
And her eyes were rolling back and forth behind her lids.
And all at once, the soothsayer's eyes flew open
and she said, "Don't worry about your son.
He will survive.
He will travel to most of the corners of the earth.
He will be rich and famous."
That I would carry her name all over the world.
And of all the things she said…
I have lived them.
[announcer] NBC News presents Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner.
A special report on the three workers for civil rights
still missing in Mississippi.
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner
went to Mississippi to help register Negroes as voters.
I had just gotten into the movement then.
And I just got off a C truck.
I knew all of them except for Goodman.
And they were teachers.
They taught-- You know, was teaching people what a vote is,
how it got to be a vote because we didn't know.
For what I can see, they were teaching the American Dream.
Vote, and the choice is yours.
Don't vote, and the choice is theirs.
Remember to vote, and the choice is yours.
One time there was a kind of frightening thing happened to you,
uh, when you were down south.
And I've heard vague details of it, but could you--
I've never heard you tell the story of that.
Sidney and I have been friends for 26 years.
Uh, I don't think any single experience has passed between us
which, uh, gave us a greater bond than that moment.
[Poitier] My good friend, Harry Belafonte, called to say,
"I want you to go with me to Mississippi.
We have to take some money down to the Civil Rights Movement."
The group in that particular area
was desperately short of funds and needed the relief.
We will treat anyone with great respect here in Mississippi,
anyone who comes here, as long as they do not ob--
disobey our laws.
Phone calls and threats was coming in by the day, by the night.
They wanted to assassinate Belafonte and Poitier. [chuckles]
The words they used,
"We gonna kill them niggers that come to Greenwood."
I had assumed that, uh--
with my association with Bobby Kennedy
that a phone call to the Justice Department
telling them that I would be going and my whereabouts, uh--
We would be able to get federal protection.
When we got there, uh--
Absolutely no evidence of federal marshals or protection.
We got into a car-- We were met by two cars,
one that we would ride in, and the other that was a backup car.
Nobody wanted to drive the car.
I said I'd drive it.
And after the handshakes and hellos and introductions,
the baggage went into my car.
And Poitier and Belafonte
was in the lead car.
[Poitier] As we were getting into the car,
somebody said, "There they are."
[car engines start]
Headlights went up. We saw that they were Ku Klux Klaners.
[Poitier] We moved out.
And as the trucks tried to catch us,
the third car would move over to block any attempt to pass.
[imitates crash] They ran into the back of the car.
And my first thought, "Do not let them pass."
[tires squeal]
And they constantly rammed the car behind us
to move them or to throw them off the highway to get to us.
Whatever happens, don't let 'em by.
If they shoot you from the rear, that's the way I have to die.
[tires squeal]
We played bump-and-run for a couple of miles.
They couldn't get by me. They broke it off.
And a pile of students got into the available automobiles
and all showed up on the highway
and, uh, brought us into Greenwood with the money.
And we arrived safely.
It was like something out of the Bible.
People were up trees. [chuckles]
And for that whole block, people were just jammed everywhere.
And it b-- bring me to tears.
The people that was up the trees and in the rafters,
that was magic.
And when they saw Poitier,
they just start singing that song from Lilies of the Field,
"Amen."
[Poitier as Homer Smith singing "Amen"]
It-- It was something special.
[Homer, nuns continue singing]
And, you know, every year, about March and April,
the newspapers start writing about the long, hot summer ahead.
[gunshots]
Looting, murder, and arson have nothing to do with civil rights.
[Charles Evers] We're sick, and we're tired.
We're not gonna be pushed no further by no white folks from no place.
And we mean it.
What I remember vividly is when I was about, uh, ten years old,
it was 1967, and it was kind of the summer of Sidney.
And my mother took me to see To Sir, with Love,
In the Heat of the Night, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
We'd had Black stars in movies,
but Sidney's probably the first Hollywood--
truly Hollywood Black movie star.
People come to the theater to see Sidney Poitier movies.
That just hadn't happened.
And white people came to the theater to see Sidney Poitier movies,
more importantly, at a time
when the Civil Rights Movement is happening
and he becomes an exemplar of that.
[Oprah] Biggest box office draw, Black man, 1967 to '68.
And the whole country is spiraling around him.
On your feet, boy.
I mean now!
[Tate] I just remember being impressed
by this dude's unassailable dignity.
The film is really playing with your expectations.
He's just not gonna take it.
But you wonder how long he's gonna take it… [chuckles]
…before he explodes.
Well, you're pretty sure of yourself, ain't you, Virgil?
"Virgil," that's a funny name for a nigger boy
that comes from Philadelphia. What do they call you up there?
They call me Mr. Tibbs.
"They call me Mr. Tibbs."
I loved it 'cause I talked back to the screen.
And the audience was mainly Black.
They burst out into applause and they-- they're just very alive.
[George] The famous scene in the hothouse
when the white plantation owner slaps him,
and Sidney slaps him back--
In a theater in 1967, the impact was profound.
Was Mr. Colbert ever in this greenhouse,
say last night about midnight?
[Gossett Jr.] Oh, you could hear a pin drop.
That's the loudest silence I've ever seen in a theater.
You hear some… [gasps] You know?
Then people looked at each other and stuff.
Black folks went crazy 'cause they-- they never seen that before.
[chuckles]
-Whop! -Bam! [laughs]
That had never happened on the screen before.
He was just something else, man.
What are you gonna do about it?
I don't know.
You know what we all did?
"Yeah!" [laughs]
[Poitier] In the original script, I looked at him with great disdain
and, wrapped in my strong ideals, walked out.
That could've happened with another actor playing that part,
but it couldn't happen with me.
I could too easily remember that Miami night
with a gun pointed at my forehead.
I told the director that the script needed to be changed.
I bet you only Sidney would pull that off.
He was a star. Bar none.
I mean, no-- no doubt about it by then.
He's running through life elbowing shit.
"Out of my way." [chuckles]
[Poitier] And it indeed did turn out to be
a highlight moment in that film.
But it-- it also spoke of our time.
It spoke of the time in America when, in films at least,
we could step up to certain realities.
It's like everybody says,
it's the slap that was heard around the world. Unprecedented.
It kinda rockets him into the moment.
So you've got this interesting kind of alignment
between Sidney in that moment
and then what's happening on the front lines.
[chattering]
[hands clap together]
To see this Black man
be a teacher and a mentor to these children…
You know, it was always a white guy, generally, who was the hero,
and the Black people were, you know, being saved or the troublemakers.
And this just, like, flipped the narrative on its head.
Sit down.
[Sherri] To Sir, with Love, that was my favorite, really,
because I watched Dad
react the way he does with us.
Not only did he teach his kids, but he taught everybody.
I-- I saw him.
Everyone saw the actor.
I saw the father.
We are all going to observe certain courtesies in this classroom.
You will call me "Sir" or "Mr. Thackeray."
The young ladies will be addressed as "Miss,"
the boys by their surnames.
I always say I've got angels on my shoulders,
because I am extremely lucky.
I was an artist. I was a musician.
I was a singer. I had never done any acting.
Yeah.
My manager was very smart.
When they asked me to be in the movie,
she said, "Yes. And she must sing the title song."
[singing "To Sir With Love"]
I mean…
[singing "To Sir With Love"]
[Lulu] For me to be connected to that message,
that was a very powerful message.
It was all about the love.
It was about Black Lives Matter.
He is as important as all you little white kids at the school.
He is more important, in fact, in the life of that school
than anybody that they would ever come across in their whole lives.
I had had a lot of hit records,
and I have had hit records after that too.
But that stands alone
because it wasn't just about a song.
It was about Sidney Poitier and the message that that film had.
[cheering]
Speech! Speech!
[Tate] It's important to say
these movies were not made for Black people.
Like, they were made
with him being very conscious of the story he was telling
with an awareness of what was happening with the movement,
with Dr. King's movement in particular.
But he's kind of a forerunner in terms of mass media,
of, uh, kinda proving that Black people were human.
Any time you can humanize Blackness,
humanize and normalize it
for a world that didn't think we were even all human,
it helps the cause,
because that's what it's all about,
is allowing people to see the humanity of us.
John Wade Prentice.
Isn't that a lovely name?
John Wade-- [gasps]
Joanna Prentice I'll be.
["Funky President (People It's Bad)" playing]
This is John.
I'm so pleased to meet you.
I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Drayton.
Mrs. Drayton, I'm medically qualified,
so I hope you wouldn't think it presumptuous
if I say you ought to sit down before you fall down, I mean.
He thinks you're gonna faint because he's a Negro.
I was 22 years old, and Sidney was just sweet,
and I was very naive.
So, when that scene was shot, the kiss scene,
I didn't think there was any big deal about it.
The camera said, "Okay, okay. We're ready to go."
And then I looked around out there in the-- in the studio,
and I-- I saw all these very grim faces.
I didn't know what was happening.
And it wasn't until afterward
when I went to have my makeup taken off,
I-- I asked the makeup woman.
I said, "What was going on in that room?"
And she just said, "Oh, you're so naive.
You don't know?"
And I said, "No, I don't know. What was going on?"
An awful lot of people are gonna think
we're a very shocking pair.
Isn't that right, Mrs. Drayton?
I-I know what you mean.
[Poitier] I think it's all too easy
for anyone not a participant in the cultural clashes of that era
to unfairly dismiss films such as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,
forgetting just how revolutionary they were
in the context of their times.
Now, this affair here, it all happened too fast.
You said so yourself.
Have you thought what people would say about you?
Why, in 16 or 17 states, you'd be breaking the law.
You'd be criminals.
That scene in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
where he says, "You think of yourself as a colored man
and I think of myself as a man."
That defined Sidney Poitier.
You're my father.
I'm your son. I love you.
I always have, and I always will.
But you think of yourself as a colored man.
I think of myself as a man.
That wasn't even an acting line for him
'cause that is who he is.
He thought of himself as a man.
[George] Those three movies all were financially successful.
He wore a white shirt and a tie in all three.
That's when he becomes Sir Sidney.
He already had made a mark with Lilies of the Field in '63.
But suddenly he's not only honorable,
he's commercially viable.
And that just was unprecedented
at that point in history of American cinema.
I asked him, "Do you have a film you're going to do after this?"
And he said, "No."
He said, "I probably-- This will be the last film I'll ever make."
And I said, "Why?"
And he said, "Because the Black people,
my people, think that I'm an Uncle Tom."
[protesters chanting]
[Poitier] Given the quickly changing social currents,
there was more than a little dissatisfaction rising up against me
in certain corners of the Black community.
A cultural wave that would crest
when The New York Times published an article
titled, "Why Do White Folks Love Sidney Poitier So?"
[Poitier] According to a certain taste,
I was an Uncle Tom, even a house Negro,
for playing roles that were non-threatening to white audiences,
for playing the noble Negro who fulfills white liberal fantasies.
I am artist, man, American, contemporary.
I am an awful lot of things,
so I wish you would, uh… [sucks teeth]
…pay me the respect due.
[Lee] It's not easy being the first.
When you are an individual
that has to represent the entire race,
that's some Jackie Robinson shit.
You're taking the slings and arrows for the entire race.
Sidney had to take a lot of slings and arrows
that Denzel didn't have to take.
When you pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too.
You know, he-- he had-- he had big shoulders.
He was given big shoulders, but he had to carry a lot of weight.
[Jones] There's a lot of pressure to do everything right.
It's hard to know how to judge it.
But Sidney always had my two favorite things,
and that is humility with his creativity and grace with his success.
[interviewer] Did you feel that pressure?
[Poitier] You can't help but feel it.
You know it's there all the time.
You know that there is a community of people watching
to see if you carry a banner that they feel is close to their hearts,
and to determine whether you are representative
of their imagery of you,
whether you should be welcomed or not.
-[interviewer] Was it lonely? -[scoffs] "Was it lonely?"
Of course it was lonely.
It was lonely, yeah.
[crickets chirping]
-[gunshot] -[crowd shouting]
[officials speak indistinctly]
[Robert F. Kennedy] Do they know about Martin Luther King?
[official speaks indistinctly] We have--
Some very sad news for all of you.
And I think, uh, sad news for all of our fellow citizens
and people who love peace all over the world.
And that is that Martin Luther King
was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
[crowd screams]
[announcer] NBC interrupts its regular program schedule
to bring you the following special report.
Martin Luther King Jr. was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee,
shot in the face as he stood alone on the balcony of his hotel room.
He died in a hospital an hour later.
I remember coming home on the bus in Pleasantville.
My dad met the bus
at the end of the driveway at the mailbox.
And he got on the bus,
and he could barely stand up because he's so tall.
And he looks at all the children.
And he said something universal to them,
something about, "A great man has been…
taken from us." And he put it that way.
"We should honor his great words
of treating everyone with respect and dignity."
And the kids were, like, in awe.
They were just, like, kinda looking up at him.
And then Daddy says, "Okay, girls, let's go.
Let's go. Let's go home."
Ashes to ashes,
and dust to dust.
We thank God for giving us a leader
who was willing to die, but not willing to kill.
It was '65 that Malcolm X was assassinated
in a mosque in Harlem.
It was '68 when Martin Luther King was assassinated.
We have a more fragile democracy
in Judeo-Christian society than we think.
We're hanging together by a few cultural threads.
And Sidney Poitier is one of those cultural threads.
[Goudsouzian] The assassination of Martin Luther King, in a lot of ways,
initiates a new era in Poitier's professional life
and also with-- with significant personal dimensions as well.
The personal dimension is not just, you know,
being set adrift like so many African Americans
by the assassination of Martin Luther King,
but also a rift with his best friend, Harry Belafonte.
Both of them, in the immediate aftermath of King's assassination,
participate in the discussions about how best to memorialize King.
Belafonte wants to hold a big rally in Atlanta after King's funeral.
Poitier advises against it,
saying that it would detract attention from King.
This leads to sort of a zapping, a certain tension between the two,
and they stopped speaking for quite some time.
Two very opinionated people.
I mean, can I say that again? Two very opinionated people.
And they didn't hold back, you know, how they felt.
Harry wanted to do something and really allow his community, I guess,
to, you know, show their grieving and mourning in-- in celebration.
And, you know, Poitier, I think,
rightly thought it would be a distraction.
It's a kind of testament
to how much thinking folks had to do on their feet
in the-- in the wake of just unforeseen, brutal circumstances, you know?
I mean, just the, you know-- just the trauma.
You know, for Poitier and Belafonte, there had to be a reset moment there.
[Goudsouzian] So he is losing his best friend in this--
in the same era when so much else seems adrift.
He's obtained a divorce from his wife.
He tries to pursue his relationship with Diahann Carroll.
[Poitier] As I have mentioned, a large part of my father's legacy
is the lessons he taught his sons.
That teaching weighed heavily on me when my first wife and I separated.
That breakup was a long, painful, scarring period for all concerned.
It was really not fun for my mom,
and I think I felt more of that than anything…
'cause I didn't see what my dad was going through,
but I saw what she was going through.
Friends decided whose side they were going on,
so that was kind of, to me, painful. Right?
'Cause my dad got the majority of 'em.
No more aunt-- No more "uncle" this or "aunt" that,
or godparents here or there.
That could bring tears to my eyes,
but, you know, people who supported her
I was grateful for.
[Poitier] Of course, too, I was in love with another woman,
and the guilt of that was something
that 11 years of psychotherapy couldn't cure.
"My wife doesn't understand me enough,"
I would say in cliché fashion.
And then I would say that the other woman had her own agenda.
Each separation, within a short period of time,
we were pursuing the relationship again.
And… [stammers] …I think we recognized,
long before the relationship was over,
that it was not a healthy relationship,
that it was not the kind of relationship
that could develop into even, really, a good friendship.
It's interesting to see how quickly pop culture can shift.
From '63, Lilies of the Field, through '68 probably,
he's the guy, and he's setting the tone
for what a Black image looks like.
Two things are happening.
Black Power is happening.
["Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved" playing]
[protesters shouting]
We're talking about "Say it loud, I'm Black and proud."
And we were feeling ourselves as a people.
Afros, Soul Train.
And you have blaxploitation.
-[tires screech] -Up yours! Get out of the way.
[speaks indistinctly]
[George] So now, the thing that made him so revolutionary
in '67 and '68,
now he's passé because now there's another generation
who are having sex with white women on-screen,
who not just aren't slapping white men but they're shooting 'em.
I mean, those Black exploitation films,
you know, it was all about kicking whitey's ass.
[chuckles] You know, that's what it was about.
And it's unfortunate that they were a Black audience
that felt that Sidney, you know, was not hip.
And I don't agree with that,
but if you just look at the Black audience,
they went to these Black exploitation films in droves-- in droves.
Quincy Jones had a 42nd birthday party for me at his house,
and Sidney Poitier was there.
And I remember going downstairs, turning a corner,
and he was just standing there.
And I froze because here's my hero.
He just said, "How are you, my dear?
I have longed to meet you, my dear."
Oh!
And, um, I think-- Of course, I teared up.
And I-I-I was just like,
"You don't even understand what this moment means to me."
And at the time, I was getting a lot of flak from the Black community
for not being Black enough, not doing enough Black shows.
And he sat me down in a corner at that party, at my 42nd birthday,
and he said,
"It's difficult when you're carrying other people's dreams,
and so you have to hold on to the dream that's inside yourself.
And know that if you are true to that,
that's really all that matters."
And that was life changing for me in that moment.
He was telling me about what had happened to him, you know,
"Is Sidney Poitier Black enough?
Is he good enough? Is he really representing what we want?"
and how that had made him feel inside,
that it took him down for a while.
He's just trying to make the best decision, movie after movie,
based upon being Reginald and Evelyn Poitier's son.
And then to be literally attacked that way
is an attack on your character,
on your being, on your value,
on your worth as a man and as a Black man.
[Poitier] When I prepared to start shooting a film called The Lost Man,
nothing in my instincts led me to suspect
that the love of my life was waiting in the wings.
My sister and I saw The Lost Man for the first time
when we were in our 20s.
Nobody could get a copy of it before then. Don't ask me why.
My mom, she was Canadian,
but she was living in Paris and was doing French movies,
so they thought she was a French actress.
[speaking French]
[Poitier] When she was first approached by Universal Pictures,
her initial question was, "Who else will be starring in it?"
And when she was told, "Sidney Poitier,"
her response was, "Who's that?"
They said, "Oh, but this is Sidney Poitier.
He's, like, the most famous actor ever."
And, um, I said, "Well, I've never seen a movie of his."
So, I happened to be in London,
and a movie was playing, A Patch of Blue.
I thought, "Oh, he's awfully cute. He's really cute."
I happened to be on the cover of Vogue in America at that time
and also in a movie that was playing in one of the art houses.
And then I went to LA, and I met Sidney.
And he was very nice.
You know, we had lunch and that was it.
I was engaged to be married to somebody else at the time,
but, um…
The way you bite your lips…
[Poitier] It didn't take us long
once we started working on the movie together
to wonder if, perhaps, forces greater than ourselves
had brought us together.
This time, I was ready to live the love story
that I had seen in my parents' marriage
at the start of my life.
The idea that they did a movie together
was couched within the story of how they met.
So, really, it was the story of how they met is what I remember.
[Anika] My parents didn't get married
until my sister and I were two and four.
My mom had taken us to the pediatrician.
They assumed she was the nanny.
She went home that day and was like, "This is it."
"You're gonna marry me, and you're gonna marry me this week.
And that's it." And they got married that week.
[Joanna] It happened at our house.
We're in the middle of the ceremony
and little Sydney, who was two and a half, comes up and tugs on Sidney's coat.
"Daddy, Daddy, what are you doing?"
And somebody said, "Your daddy is marrying your mommy, honey."
[laughs] And she said, "Oh, okay."
And that was it. We got married.
Growing up, a lot of the families around us
and a lot of our friends were biracial.
[Sydney] My parents had the foresight
to surround us with other interracial families.
And so there was a little group of us that knew each other very well,
and all of the kids played so that we could feel like it was normal.
Quincy and Peggy. Kidada and Rashida.
Those were our-- our main hangs.
Those were like our-- our godsisters, godparents, god families.
I think they did a good job of protecting us
from the wider world's ideas about that.
My dad did not separate us. They-- He did not, like--
"Okay, this is one family. This is the other family."
It was like, "No, this is my family."
And he made sure that we understood that we were all one.
[Poitier-Henderson] As a father, he measures up pretty damn well.
There are six of us, and, you know, we're all--
We were all taken care of.
It also helped that he married two very fantastic women.
And they're very, very much alike.
Joanna and my mother are very much alike
as far as being bighearted, you know?
Just bighearted and all about family.
His mother always told him,
"You take care of your children. You take care of your family."
And to this day,
he has done just that.
He has instilled that in all of us, to do that,
so we will protect each other.
In the early 1970s, uh, an opportunity arises for Poitier
that will change his life in a number of ways.
He gets a call from Harry Belafonte, who he hasn't spoken to
since the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968.
How'd you find me?
I asked your horse.
Harry Belafonte called Sidney saying, "I got a project for you."
I don't even know if he needed to say anything more than that.
The sixth sense just went off, and…
"Well, yeah. Okay, where? When? I'm there."
First of all, it was Sidney's first directorial job.
When we originally set out to do the film,
Sidney was not the director.
He acquired this responsibility
just about a week after we started shooting.
[Cavett] What happened to the original director?
Uh…
[intruder shouts]
[items clattering]
After the first week of shooting, Harry said to me,
"You know, I think we're going to have to bring another director on."
He didn't get the texture of the material.
The texture of the material
intertwined American Indian culture with African American culture.
There was never a movie I made
during which I didn't watch the director very closely.
After doing such for many, many, many years,
I had learned from what I saw.
I took the reins of the director, and I directed for a week.
Columbia looked at the week's work that I had done,
and they sent me a message.
They said, "We want you to continue directing the movie,
and, uh, it's-- it's-- what we see is okay by us."
-[Poitier] Action. -[Belafonte] Blessings in his name.
I am the Reverend Willis Oaks Rutherford
of the High and Low Order of the Holiness Persuasion Church.
Well, where are you from, Reverend?
Sunflower County, Mississippi mostly.
-[Poitier] Cut! -[crew member] Jesus Christ.
[Poitier] Thank you. Brilliant.
-Okay, pick up. -[crew member 2] Run it, please.
-You wanna go from the top? -Yeah.
Okay, from the top.
That was a scene from Buck and the Preacher,
which you should be seeing soon at your local theaters.
How did you find it directing Harry?
Was he a star? Did he have that star ego going?
[chuckles] I'm so glad you asked that question.
[audience laughs]
The chemistry between Sidney and Harry in the film was really great.
You can see that they really like each other,
that there's a warmth there.
[Poitier] It will come as a surprise to a great number of people
that he was the most cooperative actor
I have ever worked with.
And, uh, before hopefully ten million people,
-I wanna say thank you, old B. -[Belafonte chuckles]
[kisses]
[audience applauds]
As the most powerful actor-- Black actor in Hollywood,
and one of the most powerful actors in Hollywood at that point,
him taking the reins was a great thing.
And then the kind of film he did,
because the film ends up dealing with Blacks in the West,
which was a new topic
which pop culture hadn't dealt with at all, really,
and only in dismissive ways.
[Poitier] We made it as an entertainment with a statement.
We thought that Black people played an important part
in the building of the West.
We want Black children to see that.
We can't forget about what Sidney did as a filmmaker.
All the films he got the opportunity-- films that would--
We wouldn't have had that particular slant--
that story wouldn't have been told that way if it wasn't for Sidney.
"I'm Buck."
[imitates gunshot]
I'm Buck.
[Goudsouzian] We'll never again see him become the towering actor
that he was in the 1960s.
He'll never again be that same type of megastar.
On the other hand, he comes to play a leadership role
in Black Hollywood in the 1970s
in ways that create so many more opportunities
for those who come in his wake.
If there were equality of opportunity in this business,
there'd be 15 Sidney Poitiers and ten or 12 Belafontes, but there is not.
Or maybe the other way around. Fifteen Belafontes and ten--
Watch it. Watch it. [laughs]
[Streisand] In 1969, we became business partners
along with Paul Newman.
It was a company called First Artists,
which was innovative because the artists had creative control,
complete creative control of the movies we made.
We got no money up front,
and we only made money if the movie was a success.
I didn't care about the salary.
All I cared about was the creative control.
I felt very honored being the only woman,
and I'm very proud of my association with Sidney.
It was a hugely audacious move to start a production company
being a Black man in Hollywood.
I think the feeling was,
he should just be happy with what he had.
"You-- You're getting a lot of roles. You're fine.
You don't need to then put yourself in this position of power
where now you are creating the work."
It was just another proactive move to sort of get his message out there.
[Poitier] What we all really wanted
was to be able to make movies of our choice.
Make them ourselves, choose the material.
I made Uptown Saturday Night,
Let's Do It Again, A Piece of the Action.
They were all excellent films.
I thought it was the coolest damn thing.
Okay? I thought it was the coolest damn thing
when Daddy became a director.
He had an understanding of the industry
and what needed to be done and what could be done.
He was very much aware that there weren't any at one point
and then a lot of African Americans on set.
Anywhere. I mean, anywhere.
And he made his business to correct that.
We should underscore the fact
that you really put to work a lot of Black people behind the scenes.
It's not just that we've got an enormously talented Black cast--
Mm-hmm, yeah. We have 1,300 Black people
working, uh, on-- on the film.
Atmosphere people, technicians and all that.
1,276 are my relatives.
-Hmm! Good for them. -[chuckles]
Well, Sidney was a race man,
so, how could he be directing this film,
everybody in front of the camera's Black,
everybody behind the camera's white? He's not gonna do that.
That's not even a question. Sidney ain't doing that.
Sidney's gonna make sure that he's gonna put Black people positioned
where they can have a career, behind the camera.
You have longer careers behind the camera
than in front of the camera.
[George] What's interesting about Poitier as an actor now
is that he's passing the ball.
It's not always about him being the guy.
I look forward to working as a director.
I look forward to making decisions in that area.
I look forward to dealing with scripts and dealing with actors,
and cultivating a mood.
I look forward to painting a picture.
I don't, uh-- I don't have any such visions as an actor.
I think I've climbed all the mountains I intended to
as an actor.
[Poitier] On 3rd Avenue in New York City,
I walked in one night.
The picture was playing. It was called Let's Do It Again.
I walked in, and I stood in the back.
It was a packed house, so I stood in the back watching the reaction.
There were Black women.
They are sitting there laughing their heads off.
I mean, they were so overjoyed with seeing these characters
because we drew characters that they could embrace.
Well, with that response,
I decided I have to find something else in that vein.
The comedies that I made, we tried to design them
so that the people who are going to sit there
are going to see themselves
in an embracing way.
So, Sidney Poitier is now a comedy director.
I mean, you talk about an unlikely turn of events.
He's a big comedy director, and he does this movie
with the most volatile, charismatic Black comedy talent, perhaps ever.
I hereby sentence you to serve 125 years
in the custody of the commissioner
-of the Department of Corrections. -Wha-- Wha--
When you look at-- When you watch Poitier's films as a director,
he's not a great visual stylist.
But what he is, is a great director of performance.
And he's able to leave a space where Gene Wilder can be funny as hell,
Richard Pryor can be funny as hell.
We didn't-- I didn't.
-Our lawyer told us to come up-- -I know I didn't.
-I-- -[chuckles] No, he's joking.
-[scoffs] I told him-- -He means, we didn't do it.
-We didn't do it. [chuckles] -Have you got the right case?
[George] You'd never have guessed
his biggest success as a director would be a comedy.
The guy who leads us to Denzel and to Wesley,
he's also the guy who leads us to Robert Townsend
and Keenen Ivory Wayans
because he's the first big Hollywood comedy director.
-[child] He's strange. -[Poitier] Okay.
-Say hi to Daddy. -Hi, Daddy.
[Poitier] Stay there, Anika.
I see you, Sydney.
[giggling]
-What do you see? -[child] You. [chuckles]
-Well, that's where the money is… -[child chuckling]
…as we say on the set.
Give me a smile. Okay.
Sydney P.?
[Sydney] One thing I really admire about him
is, you know, a lot of times
when an actor's career is starting to wane,
they will grasp at whatever is coming their way, you know,
because their drive is to stay relevant
and to keep working as an actor.
And my dad, he doesn't have any of that.
[Poitier] I chose to step away.
You know, in life one ought not to wind up in one's last moments
and be faced with the fact
that maybe one has spent one's entire life
in a narrow corridor.
And my career had been wonderful for a great number of years.
Uh, I don't say that it would've continued at the pace it was going.
But if it had, it would've robbed me of the chance
to be a fuller person, you know?
Uh, success has a way of insulating us.
I didn't want to do that.
I wanted to know what it would be like to direct a film,
so I directed five or six of them.
I wanted to know what it would be like to produce a film,
and I produced a few.
I was born with a curiosity
that got me into an awful lot of trouble when I was a kid,
but it certainly stood me in good stead
when I became an adult.
Um… I hope, though, that that curiosity
stays with me all my life.
[audience applauds]
[announcer] The recipient of the 1992 Life Achievement Award,
Sidney Poitier.
[Freeman] I always think of Sidney as this big-ass lighthouse
sitting on a promontory somewhere in the dark.
Bright light.
I told him that all my formative years
I was focusing on that light that he projected to me.
[sighs] Had no other beacon as bright as that,
as sure as that,
that I believed in as strongly as that one.
Forty-eight years ago, the winter of 1945,
Sidney Poitier walked into a small theater in Harlem.
This was the American Negro Theatre.
Sidney broke the molds in so many different ways.
Sidney brought his A game, and so we could bring our A game.
I think he's truly a very fine man.
He's a great example of what manhood should look like and feel like.
He'd done so much in his career.
He'd been through so much
to get to that place where he could say,
"Hey, I've done it all. I've done everything I could do.
Now I just wanna look back and think to myself,
'I did the right thing, from a moral standpoint.'"
And he sure did.
[Belafonte] We've been friends for many, many years.
I've shared more with Sidney than with any other man.
And I'm very, very proud of what he has achieved
as an artist and a citizen.
And I'm very, very fortunate to have you as my friend.
And I love you.
[audience applauds]
[Julia Roberts] The Oscar goes to Denzel Washington.
[audience cheering, applauding]
[Russell Crowe] And the Oscar goes to Halle Berry in Monster's Ball.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
[Berry] For me, that night was so huge.
It was so monumental,
not just with my win, but with Denzel winning
and Sidney having the honorary Oscar.
I knew that this moment would inspire so many people.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all.
Forty years I've been chasing Sidney, they finally give it to me.
What they do? They give it to him the same night.
[audience laughs, applauds]
I remember he stood up.
And, uh, we were sort of, from a distance,
I guess it was passing the baton, I guess you'd say.
[Washington] I'll always be following in your footsteps.
There's nothing I would rather do, sir.
Nothing I would rather do. God bless you.
There's just nobody like him. Never will be again.
[Barack Obama] It's been said that Sidney Poitier does not make movies.
He makes milestones. Milestones of America's progress.
Poitier once called his driving purpose
to make himself a better person.
He did, and he made us all a little bit better along the way.
[audience cheering, applauding]
He's one of those people that came to this earth
to move it, to change it, to shake it,
to give people what they need
so they can move forward and create change in their own lives.
Sidney Poitier is an extremely powerful force.
And the wonderful thing about energy,
as my grandfather taught me, you can't kill energy.
Energy never stops.
Everything that Sidney has created is always here,
and it will always continue to grow.
And… what a beautiful life.
[Poitier] Congratulations, Oprah, from all of us
for those past 20 years,
and for the light you've brought that shines so gently
on those who need it most.
[audience cheering, applauding]
[Oprah] I'm a great part of his legacy,
and so is every other life that he touched.
Every person who felt something move or open in them
by watching him in To Sir, with Love,
or seeing him in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,
or that moment of him rolling out of the train
and continuing to stand with Tony Curtis,
and thinking, "Huh. A Negro would do that?"
[smacks lips] That's the summary of him.
It's every life that he's touched.
That's all I got.
[crying]
[voice cracks] I love him so much. I just love him so much.
[normal voice] It's really true.
My life would not have been the same without him.
[Poitier] I have come a long way.
I really have come a very, very long way.
And I'm proud of that.
I am here to be…
the best husband, the best grandfather,
the best father, the best great-grandfather.
I try to extend to them all that might be considered good in me.
I truly, truly try
to be better tomorrow
than I was today.
A better human being.
Not a better actor, but just a better human being.
And when I die, I will not be afraid of having lived.