Tomorrow (Feb. 20) would have been the 95th birthday of actor Sidney Poitier, who died last month. I don't recall the original TCM schedule, although I wouldn't be surprised if there had been a couple of Poitier's movies already on the Sunday afternoon schedule. In any case, TCM preempted a fair portion of the schedule in order to create a 24-hour salute to Poitier. That salute kicks off this evening at 8:00 and will feature 12 of Poitier's movies:
In the Heat of the Night, with Poitier playing a Philadelphia police detective pressed into service in the South to solve murder case, starts the salute at 8:00 PM.
Poitier spends a good portion of The Defiant Ones (10:00 PM) handcuffed to Tony Curtis as both of them play chain gang criminals on the run.
At midnight, there's A Warm December, directed by Poitier, about an American who meets and falls in love with an African dignitary suffering from sickle-cell anemia;
Cry the Beloved Country at 2:00 AM is set in the early days of apartheid-era South Africa;
Something of Value at 4:00 AM has Poitier playing a Kenyan during the Mau Mau uprising against Britain;
Goodbye, My Lady at 6:15 AM is one I actually haven't seen;
Edge of the City at 8:15 AM sees Poitier as a longshoreman who gets helped by John Cassavetes against a spurious criminal accusation.
Poitier made his debut in No Way Out at 10:00 AM playing a doctor in a hospital prison ward who has a white patient die on him and the dead guy's criminal brother (Richard Widmark) is a seething racist who vows revenge. Daring for 1950, although some viewers today might take a different opinion.
In The Blackboard Jungle at noon, Poitier is one of many actors too old to be teenagers playing students in Glenn Ford's high school classroom;
Poitier would go on to play the teacher in To Sir, With Love at 2:00 PM, in an inner-city London high school;
Poitier would win the Oscar for Lilies of the Field (4:00 PM), playing a handyman who stops in Arizona and finds himself at a convent where the nuns impress upon him the need to build a chapel for them.
Finally, at 6:00 PM, there's A Patch of Blue, in which Poitier finds poor exploited blind girl Elizabeth Hartman, who falls in love with him, only to have to deal with her terribly racist mom (Shelley Winters, who picked up her second Oscar).
1 comment:
If I had TCM, I would have recorded all of these. I remember No Way Out and want to see that one again, as well as In the Heat of the Night. RIP.
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