Born on February 20, 1927 in Miami, Poitier grew up in the poorest of circumstances in the Bahamas and was knighted by the British Queen in 1974. In 2009, the then US President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the USA. Above all, Poitier’s greatest achievement was to be successful as an actor at a time when it was anything but common for black people in leading roles. With his long filmography, which includes classics such as “Escape in Chains”, “Guess Who Come to Dinner” and “In the Heat of the Night”, he became a role model for a subsequent generation of dark-skinned actors.
When Poitier accepted an honorary Oscar for his life’s work in 2002, the gala guests gave raging applause for several minutes. At the age of 22 he came to Hollywood to embark on a journey that seemed “almost impossible” at the time, said Poitier in his memorable address. He praised the “courageous and selfless” decisions made by directors and producers, who, despite the color of his skin, would have given him roles and thus a chance.
Poitier pioneered black screen stars like Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Louis Gossett Jr., Halle Berry and Viola Davis. Before him, only Hattie McDaniel had won an Oscar for her supporting role as a housekeeper in the melodrama “Gone With the Wind” as a black woman in 1940. Almost 25 years passed before Poitier was the first black man to be named best actor in 1964 for “Lilien auf dem Felde”. He won over the academy with the portrayal of a black worker on the farm of white nuns.
One of Poitier’s successes is that he was the first black man to kiss a white woman in a Hollywood film. The passionate scene was filmed shamefully through the rear-view mirror of a taxi in 1967, but it belongs to the series of breakthroughs for which civil rights activists celebrated him and for which some activists of the Afro-American movement long denigrated him as a conformist “white black”.
The black-and-white kissing scene comes from the film “Guess who’s coming to dinner”, in which Poitier is presented as the future son-in-law to a wealthy couple, played by Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Katharine Houghton then acted as the fiancé of Poitier’s screen figure.
The role offers for the dazzling-looking actor rolled over, at the end of the 1960s Poitier was considered the highest paid film actor. In addition to “Guess who comes to dinner”, he was seen in two other films in 1967. In the crime thriller “In the Heat of the Night” he shone as a crime expert from the north who has to assert himself against a racist southern sheriff (Rod Steiger).
It was a coincidence that the youngest of seven children of a poor farming family from the Bahamas was born in Florida and thus the USA. Poitier, who grew up on tiny Cat Island, followed an older brother to Florida as a teenager. He made his way as a street vendor, dishwasher and unskilled laborer.
In New York he joined the American Negro Theater. After small Broadway roles, he made his film debut in 1950 in “No Way Out” alongside Richard Widmark in a doctor role. The star from films such as “Escape in Chains”, “Porgy and Bess” and “A Spot in the Sun” made his last feature film in 1997 with the action thriller “The Jackal”.