He may have broken a huge barrier that night, April 13, , but racial discrimination was still widespread. When actress Anne Bancroft gave him a kiss on the cheek after presenting him with the Oscar, conservative audiences were offended.
Often recognized as the forerunner of the wealth of successful black talent today, Poitier was a featured performer or star of 48 films, and he directed six. He also fought for civil rights, marching alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. On Feb. Born three months premature in Miami to Bahamian parents who were there to sell tomatoes, Poitier spent much of his youth in the Bahamas on Cat Island, in a home with no running water or electricity.
Nearly illiterate, he was sent to live with his older brother in Miami at the age of Army β sought work as an actor with the American Negro Theatre. He changed the way he talked by mimicking American newscasters. He returned to the same theater company and nabbed a role in Days of Our Youth. In , Poitier made his film debut by playing a doctor who treated a white bigot in No Way Out.
His big breakthrough, though, came five years later when he played a musical prodigy in Blackboard Jungle. Always, he insisted on playing smart, poised and thoughtful black characters.
Poitier played a black homicide detective who, along with a bigoted white sheriff, was trying to solve the murder of a white businessman. Initially, Poitier was just supposed to take it. But after demanding a rewrite, Poitier slapped back, even harder, stunning both white and black audiences. Privacy Policy. Poitier was also a director. The box-office smash was the third-highest-grossing film of that year. With the civil rights struggle convulsing the nation, he helped shine a light on the issue by attending the March on Washington.
