Not long after the announcement of the passing of Peter Bogdanovich, news came out that Sidney Poitier had also died on Thursday. Poitier was 94.
Poitier's career started very auspiciously, with a role in the daring (at least by the standards of 1950) No Way Out. In the movie, Poitier plays a doctor at the county hospital who has to treat criminal Richad Widmark and Widmark's brother. The brother was shot in the leg, but Poitier determines that he's suffering something more serious in the form of a brain tumor. Unfortunately, while checking out that possibility, the brother dies, and Widmark unsurprisingly assumes malpractice -- why check someone's spine when they've been shot in the leg? The fact that Poitier is the first black doctor in the hospital, and Widmark is virulently racist, thoroughly complicates matters.
For better or worse, Poitier spent most of the next 15 years in Hollywood playing one role after another in which he was the black guy who had to deal with the racism of the white people around him. It's a bit of a shame because when he got the chance to do other things, first to an extent with his Oscar-winning role in Lilies of the Field and then much more with The Bedford Incident, he was such a good actor regardless of the role. But any time Hollywood wanted to make social commentary on race, there was Poitier, making a great movie anyway, as with Tony Curtis above in The Defiant Ones.
Another of Poitier's movies that I really like is A Patch of Blue, in which he comes to the aid of blind woman Elizabeth Hartmann who, being blind, doesn't see that he's black. Her mother (Shelley Winters), however, certainly sees it, as does Poitier's brother, and that causes all sorts of complications.
Poitier would go on to become a director as well, directing himself in movies like Buck and the Preacher and A Warm December, and other actors like the pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor in Stir Crazy.
As with Peter Bogdanovich, I haven't seen anything yet saying when they'll be running a tribute to him. Unsurprisingly, TCM is running a whole bunch of films dealing with race on Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 17, but only one of those stars Poitier, The Defiant Ones at 11:00 AM. And frankly, the other movies seem interesting enough that I'd rather TCM preempt something else for their Poitier tribute.
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