Sidney Poitier, legendary actor and first black Hollywood star, has died at the age of 94, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas, where the actor grew up, announced on Friday (January 7th). “We have lost an icon, a hero, a mentor, a fighter, and a national treasure,” writes Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper on his Facebook page about the actor from Chain or even In the heat of the Night, without mentioning the cause of his death.
Born prematurely in Miami, Florida, on February 20, 1927, when his parents moved from the neighboring Bahamas, Sidney Poitier thus obtained dual American and Bahamian nationality. In 1964, he was the first African American to win the Oscar for Best Actor for The lily of the fields. “The journey was long to get there,” he said very moved, receiving the golden statuette.
READ ALSOCinema – The Hollywood Black Guard
Oscar at 37
Through his roles, audiences were able to conceive that African Americans could be doctors (The door opens, 1950), engineer, professor (Angels with Clenched Fists, 1967), or a police officer (In the heat of the Night, 1967). But at 37, when the incandescent actor received his Oscar, he was the only star of color in Hollywood. “The film industry was not yet ready to raise more than one personality from minorities to the rank of star”, he deciphered in his autobiography This Life. “At the time, […] I endorsed the hopes of a whole people. I had no control over the content of the films […], but I could refuse a role, which I did many times. “
In Guess who’s coming to dinner … in 1967, he plays the fiance of a young white bourgeois presenting him to his parents, a couple of intellectuals who believe themselves to be open-minded. The meeting is a shock, and gives a major film on the racism of the time. Black cause activists, however, harshly criticize Sidney Poitier for having accepted this role of internationally renowned doctor, at odds with the discrimination suffered by his peers. He is referred to as the “Negro on duty”, “White’s fantasy”. His unreal qualities as an ideal son-in-law mask his negritude and racist problems, they say. In 2002, Sidney Poitier received an honorary Oscar for “his extraordinary performances, his dignity, his style and his intelligence”.