Sidney Poiter

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Sidney Poitier wasn’t the first great African-American actor, nor was he the first black actor to be nominated for an Academy Award. What he did do was break the color barrier and gain widespread acceptance by audiences of all races because of his acting abilities and on screen presence.

Sidney Poitier was born in Miami in 1927 to Bahamian parents but was raised on Cat Island in the Bahamas. As a newborn, he weighed only three pounds. His father had a shoebox waiting to bury him in. he, of course, survived. His birth served as a fitting representation for a lifetime of shattering the odds against him. As the youngest of eight children, he grew up in poverty and had little formal education. At the age of thirteen, he dropped out of school to help support his family. At fifteen, he was sent to Miami to live with his brother. After living in Miami for a year, Poitier went to New York. In his first few months in New York, he was so poor that he slept in the washroom of a bus station. With no money (only three dollars in his pocket) and nowhere to live, he lied about his age and enlisted in the army and served as a medical assistant in World War II for a year.

After returning from the war, Poitier auditioned for the American Negro Theatre. Because of his accent, he was laughed at by the producers. He spent the next six months working on his elocution and enunciation skills and returned once again to audition. This time, he was accepted.

Poitier made his Broadway debut in Lysistrata. Four years later, he made his film debut in No Way Out. Throughout the 1950’s, he made some of the most important and controversial movies of the time. In 1951, he addressed the issues of racial inequality overseas in Cry, The Bel...

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...him as "His Excellency Sir Sidney Poitier".

It is impossible to overstate the influence that Sidney Poitier had on African Americans and white Americans in the 1950's and 1960's, as both a role model and image maker. With an integrity that never failed, Poitier broke the color barrier, and forever changed the racial perceptions held by both motion picture audiences and executives in an industry dominated on both sides of the Atlantic by whites.

Bibliography

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/13/newsid_2524000/2524235.stm

Goudsouzian, A. (2004). Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books.

Keyser, L. J. & Ruszkowski, A. H. (1980). The cinema of Sidney Poitier: the black man’s changing role on the American screen. San Diego, CA: A. S. Barnes.

Poitier, S. (1980). This Life. Toronto: Random House of Canada

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