To Sir With Love

From a humble beginning he rose to take his place among the stars.

Today, Guardian Lifestyles takes a brief look at the life and times of Sir Sidney Poitier on his 79th birthday.

On February 20, 1927 in a little wooden house in Miami, Florida, a Bahamian couple - a tomato farmer from Cat Island and his wife - got an unexpected surprise. On a visit to the city, the wife prematurely went into labour.

There was much uncertainty the fragile new born would survive past the first few days. And, as the story goes, the father even brought home a shoe box to serve as the tiny boy's casket.

That child was Sidney Poitier, who would grow up to become a Hollywood icon, and a symbol of pride for the black community.

Sir Sidney spent much of his early childhood on Cat Island where times were hard; the family was poor and they were forced to moved to Nassau when Poitier was 11 years old.

He was educated at Western Secondary School and Government high school.

He had a brush with the law during his teens, worrying his parents that he would eventually land in jail. At 15, they sent him to Miami to live with his older brother, Cyril. There he encountered racism, and angered after many incidents with prejudiced whites, he soon found his way to New York where he enlisted in the army at age 17, serving with the 126-7th medical detachment as a physiotherapist.

Back in New York, after World War II, he worked at a number of jobs available to aspiring actors. He joined the American Negro Theatre and worked back stage in exchange for acting lessons.

He soon learned he needed to remove his thick accent to help him win parts, eventually landing his first role as "Polydorus, A Messenger" in an all-black Broadway production of Lysistrata. Critics considered what was a nervous performance on opening night, "a triumph of comic acting." That performance was enough to land him a role in the A.N.T.'s touring production of Anna Lucasta, and he later accepted his first movie role in No Way Out (1950).

On Broadway, he initiated the role of Walter Lee Younger in "A Raisin in the Sun".

His other Broadway credits include a directorial assignment for "Carry Me Back To Morning Sie Heights."

In the early 1950s, Sir Sidney was one of the first black actors to speak publicly about discrimination in Hollywood, venting his frustration about trying to find good roles. As he stated then, "Hollywood as a rule still doesn't want to portray us as anything but butlers, chauffeurs, gardeners or maids." He would later steer away from the victim-like roles he felt Hollywood kept offering him and which he despised, and more toward playing leading men in charge.

The 1960s proved to be Sir Sidney's golden age where it seemed cinematically he could do no wrong. In what is, arguably, one of the best films of all-time about African-American family life, he gave a searing performance as Walter Younger in A Raisin in the Sun. He made history two years later by becoming the first black man to win the Academy Award for Best Actor in Lilies of the Fields. He also was Hollywood's number one box-office draw for two years (1967 and 1968).

Sir Sidney tackled race head on in this decade with such thought- provoking films such as Patch of Blue with Shirley Winters, To Sir With Love with Lulu, In the Heat of the Night with Rod Steiger, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy and the romantic comedy, For the Love of Ivy.

During his career, this Academy Award-winning actor, director, best- selling author, husband, father, and grandfather, has received many awards, including the knighthood, K.B.E., for his contribution in the performing arts through which he enhanced the image of The Bahamas.

In 1969, he joined forces with Paul Newman, Barbara Streisand, Steve McQueen, and Dustin Hoffman to form the first Artists Productions, Ltd.

Poitier, who says he switched to directing when his career was reaching its peak, made his debut with the film, Buck and the Preacher, co-starring his friend, Harry Belafonte. He also directed A Warm December, and a trio of films with Bill Cosby including Uptown Saturday Night, Let's Do It Again and A Piece of the Action. "Directing," says Poitier, "bought me an additional 15 years of life as an artist in film-making."

He made history again in 1980 when he directed the first and only film by an African-American to gross over $100 million at the box-office when he teamed Richard Pryor with Gene Wilder in Stir Crazy.

His list of films also include To Sir With Love, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and A Patch of Blue.

Among his many awards: Three honourary doctorate degrees; an American Film Institute life time achievement award; five NAACP Image awards; two Golden Bear awards from the Berlin Film festival; and an Emmy nomination.

In 1997, after decades of film-making and directing, Sir Sidney took his departure from Hollywood to become a full-time Bahamian-appointed diplomat, making history once again, as the first Ambassador of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas to Japan.

In March of 2002, he received an honourary Oscar at the 74th Annual Academy Awards.

As one writer puts it, "Poitier, whose career spans a half-century, defined for his generation and subsequent ones, the idea of strong, defiant black men on-screen."

In all, Sir Sidney has starred in 54 films, directed nine and written three books.

Monique Forbes contributed to the story

Caption: Sidney Poitier

Posted: Friday February 20, 2004