On that same night, Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win lead actress for “Monster’s Ball.” It would not be until 2002, when Denzel Washington won for “Training Day,” on a night in which Poitier also received an honorary Oscar for his artistic and humanitarian efforts, that another Black man would take home the award. And it's critical that we remember that.” It just set a benchmark that could be pointed to, to say, 'The talent is out there, Hollywood,' that this is possible.
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But none of that would've happened at all if it had not been for that first recognition of him as a bona-fide movie star. “I think that the real lesson of that moment, we've seen it in subsequent waves of attention and recognition of Black actors and across the history of the Academy Awards. And it continued to be a really long journey after him," said Stewart. I think he's talking about the experiences of Black artists in Hollywood much more broadly. And I don't think he's talking just about his own career.
“And I would imagine that this was a source of frustration for him, because he says in his speech, it's been a long journey. He recognized that the award was part of a continuum, though he perhaps had no idea how long it would take for someone else to follow through the door he had just opened. In his acceptance speech,Poitier acknowledged all who had come before him. “We play that moment in the museum and the energy of the applause for him at that ceremony - there are whistles and cheering - it's something that it really seems that the whole industry wanted to see happen at that moment.” “It's certainly a moment in which he is celebrated, and we might say that Hollywood is also celebrating itself, ‘Look, we're turning a corner here,’” said Stewart.
When Poitier received the Oscar for “Lilies in the Field,” it did not represent the pinnacle of his career, only one stop along the way. “To remember him is to remember how beautiful he was onscreen and how he established power and used it.” Very few people have that combination of charisma and talent that makes someone a true movie star, and very few of them are allowed to be Black,” said Maya Cade, creator and curator of the Black Film Archive. (Los Angeles Times)īecause of that, it can be easy to overlook that those accomplishments came for a reason, that he was a fine actor and an outstanding movie star. Sidney Poitier holds his Oscar as he poses with Gregory Peck, and Annabella and Anne Bancroft backstage at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles in 1964. And he understood that not just in terms of an American context, he understood what it meant on a global scale,” she added. “So for me, it's a moment to really look back at the nuances of his performances, to appreciate just the complexity of the decisions that he had to make as a film artist about what projects to take up and which ones to turn down and to really think about what it meant for him to feel such a tremendous responsibility for representing a whole race of people. Which is certainly true,” said Stewart."But at the same time, there was something just so distinctly Black and proud about Sidney Poitier. “For many people, he really exemplified the trajectory of integration in America. Before the museum opened in September, its 10,000-square-foot entry hall was named the Sidney Poitier Grand Lobby in recognition of his humanitarian work and artistic achievements.
“For such a long time, he was understood in terms I think were too narrow,” said Jacqueline Stewart, chief artistic and programming officer at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
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Yet simply listing his accomplishments cannot capture their full meaning. He then became the first Black actor to win the Oscar with 1963’s “Lilies of the Field.” With 1980’s “Stir Crazy,” Poitier was the first Black director to make a film that grossed more than $100 million at the box office. He would become the first Black man to be nominated for the Academy Award for lead actor with 1958’s “The Defiant Ones.” He used his stardom to help bring Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun” to Broadway in 1959, where he originated the role he would play in the 1961 film adaptation. Having already found some success in the theater, Poitier made his screen debut with “No Way Out” in 1950. But it is his career in Hollywood that may have been the most transformative, changing both an industry and a culture. In his long and rich life, Sidney Poitier, who died Jan.6 at age 94, leaves behind many legacies. Sidney Poitier, star of "To Sir, With Love," places his hands in wet concrete at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on June 23, 1967.
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