Sidney Poitier (1927-2022)

There are stars that are such trailblazers, such icons, that it's hard to sort of grasp who they were or are, legends that feel so legendary you don't know where to begin.  So I'm going to start in an unusual place for Sidney Poitier, who passed away this past week, with a film from arguably the twilight of his career, Sneakers.  If you weren't alive in 1992 (I was, but definitely was not old enough to see it in theaters), Sneakers was a pretty solid hit for Universal Studios that almost no one talks about today, despite an all-star cast including Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, & River Phoenix.  It also featured, in a small but crucial supporting part, film icon & legend Sidney Poitier.  Poitier's filmography is filled with a lot of iconic work, but with the potential exceptions of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, both well-regarded but neither of which are name-checked when you start listing the films of the 1960's off-hand, none of his movies are ones that are universally your first introduction to Poitier as an actor.  There's no "Judy as Dorothy" or "Orson Welles as Citizen Kane"...so as a result, my first introduction to Sidney Poitier came with a mild hit crime thriller from 1992 where he gets sixth billing.

But Poitier was a true movie star, even in his old age, and there's a charisma in a movie star that never really dims.  You see that in his very-good work in Sneakers, getting wry comic timing out of the word "Tahiti" and playing excellently off of both Redford & leading actress Mary McDonnell.  Poitier was a consummate actor, someone who always was in service to his film, shining with a grand dignity & determination to bring his very best to the screen.

Of course, that's because there was a long history before Poitier brought Sneakers to a young, enthralled lad from Minnesota.  Poitier's unlikely stardom was so strange because it'd simply never been done before...had there not been a Sidney Poitier, we would've had to invent him.  Quickly striking out in early films like Blackboard Jungle and No Way Out, Poitier was not the first Black movie star nor the first Black Oscar winner, but he became the true first Black superstar on the big-screen.  He was Oscar nominated for The Defiant Ones, and five years later became the first African-American man to win Best Actor.  He would have the grandest moment of his career a few years later as Virgil Tibbs, marvelously playing off of Rod Steiger in the underrated Best Picture winner In the Heat of the Night.  Poitier would lead countless other films, become a pioneering figure in the Civil Rights movement, and in the last years of his career, serve as an Ambassador from the Bahamas.  But if you'll indulge me, I'll always remember him first for the way he wowed me in Sneakers, one of the earliest films I learned to love not just as a classic but as one of "my own,"...proof that the best movie stars can leave their mark no matter where you look for it.