46 Fun Facts About Sidney Poitier

In which US city was Sidney Poitier born in 1927?

Poitier was born in Miami on 20 February 1927, arriving two months premature while his Bahamian parents were in Florida to sell tomatoes; the accident of birthplace gave him United States citizenship.

Where in the Bahamas did Poitier grow up until the age of ten?

Cat Island, where his family farmed tomatoes, was home until he was about ten; he saw his first car, electric light and film only after the family moved to Nassau.

For which 1963 film did Poitier become the first Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor?

Lilies of the Field, shot in Arizona in under two weeks on a tiny budget, brought Poitier the Best Actor Oscar at the April 1964 ceremony, presented to him by Anne Bancroft.

What is the name of Poitier's Oscar-winning character, a handyman who builds a chapel for nuns?

Homer Smith is an itinerant handyman who stops for water at a farm run by East German nuns; their Mother Superior decides God sent him, and he builds their chapel largely alone.

Which hymn do the nuns learn from Poitier's handyman in his Oscar-winning film?

'Amen', written for the film by composer Jester Hairston, is taught to the nuns by the handyman and echoes over the closing scene as he drives off into the night.

Poitier's breakthrough film role was as a high-school student in which 1955 film?

Blackboard Jungle cast the 28-year-old Poitier as Gregory Miller, a gifted but rebellious student in a tough New York vocational school, opposite Glenn Ford as the new teacher Richard Dadier.

Poitier's 1955 breakthrough film is remembered as the first major Hollywood film to feature what?

Rock and roll music entered mainstream cinema with its opening credits, which run over Bill Haley and His Comets' 'Rock Around the Clock'; the song then topped the US charts and teenage audiences rioted at some screenings.

What was Poitier's film debut, a 1950 noir in which he played a doctor treating a racist criminal?

No Way Out cast Poitier as Dr. Luther Brooks, a young hospital doctor treating the wounded bigot Ray Biddle, played by Richard Widmark; Joseph L. Mankiewicz directed, and Widmark became a lifelong friend.

In The Defiant Ones (1958), Poitier and Tony Curtis play escaped convicts who are what?

Chained together at the wrist, Poitier's Noah Cullen and Tony Curtis's John Jackson must cooperate to flee a Southern chain gang; the film brought Poitier the first Best Actor Oscar nomination for a Black performer.

Who directed The Defiant Ones and, nine years later, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Stanley Kramer, known for socially conscious 'message pictures' such as Judgment at Nuremberg and Inherit the Wind, directed both films and also produced them through his own company.

What award did Poitier win at the 1958 Berlin Film Festival for The Defiant Ones?

The Silver Bear for Best Actor went to Poitier at the 1958 Berlin festival for The Defiant Ones; he also won the BAFTA for Best Foreign Actor for the same performance, while the Golden Bear went to Wild Strawberries.

Poitier starred in the 1959 Broadway premiere of which Lorraine Hansberry play?

A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in March 1959 with Poitier as Walter Lee Younger, earning him a Tony nomination; he repeated the role in the 1961 film with most of the original cast.

Who supplied Poitier's singing voice as Porgy in the 1959 film of Porgy and Bess?

Robert McFerrin, the first Black man to sing at the Metropolitan Opera and father of Bobby McFerrin, dubbed Porgy's songs uncredited; Adele Addison likewise sang for Dorothy Dandridge's Bess.

What is the name of Poitier's Philadelphia detective in In the Heat of the Night?

Virgil Tibbs is a Philadelphia homicide detective passing through Sparta, Mississippi, who is arrested at the railway station on suspicion of murder and then asked to help solve it.

Who played the prejudiced Mississippi police chief opposite Poitier in In the Heat of the Night?

Rod Steiger won the Best Actor Oscar for his gum-chewing Chief Bill Gillespie; the film took Best Picture and five Academy Awards in all, while Poitier was not even nominated.

In which state was In the Heat of the Night mostly filmed, despite being set in Mississippi?

The town of Sparta, Illinois lent its name and its storefronts to the fictional Sparta, Mississippi.

What does Tibbs do when the plantation owner Endicott strikes him across the face?

He slaps him back at once, a response Poitier said he had written into his contract so the scene could not be cut; the exchange stunned 1967 audiences.

Who performed the title song of In the Heat of the Night, over a score by Quincy Jones?

Ray Charles sang the title song, written by Quincy Jones with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman; Jones's blues-flavoured score was one of the first major Hollywood scores by a Black composer.

In Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Poitier is engaged to the daughter of which screen couple?

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn played the Draytons, parents of Katharine Houghton's Joey, in their ninth and final film together; Tracy died just over two weeks after finishing his scenes, and Hepburn won the Best Actress Oscar.

In To Sir, with Love, Poitier plays a teacher in which part of London?

The East End setting came from E. R. Braithwaite's autobiographical novel about teaching in a tough secondary school there; James Clavell directed Poitier as Mark Thackeray, the engineer turned teacher.

Which singer debuted in To Sir, with Love and sang its title song, a five-week US number one?

Lulu, then a teenager, made her film debut as pupil Barbara Pegg and sang 'To Sir with Love', which spent five weeks at number one and was Billboard's top single of 1967 in America.

How was Poitier paid for To Sir, with Love, in one of the shrewdest deals in film history?

A percentage of the gross box office was his price: Poitier took a modest fee plus 10 percent of the gross, and the film's runaway success forced Columbia to renegotiate the schedule of his payments.

In A Patch of Blue (1965), Poitier befriends a white teenager who is what?

Blind since a childhood injury, Elizabeth Hartman's Selina D'Arcey does not know that Poitier's Gordon Ralfe is Black; their kissing scene was cut when the film played in the Southern United States.

What was Poitier's directorial debut in 1972?

Buck and the Preacher, a Western about freed slaves heading west after the Civil War, became Poitier's directing debut when he took over from Joseph Sargent a few days into shooting; Ruby Dee co-starred.

Which two comedians star in Stir Crazy (1980), long the top-grossing film by a Black director?

Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor play Skip and Harry, New Yorkers framed for a bank robbery in Arizona and sentenced to 125 years; the comedy grossed over $100 million in North America on a $10 million budget.

With which comedian did Poitier make Uptown Saturday Night, Let's Do It Again and A Piece of the Action?

Bill Cosby co-starred in all three comedies, which Poitier also directed; in Uptown Saturday Night they play a factory worker and a cab driver chasing a stolen winning lottery ticket.

Poitier co-founded First Artists Production Company with Paul Newman and which other star?

Barbra Streisand joined Paul Newman and Poitier in founding First Artists in 1969, with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman added later; the stars took no salary in exchange for creative control and a share of profits.

Which company rejected Poitier at his first audition because he could not read the script fluently?

The American Negro Theatre in Harlem turned him away after a stumbling first reading in 1945; an elderly Jewish waiter then spent months teaching him to read from the newspaper, and he was accepted on his return.

How did Poitier get out of the US Army in 1944?

He faked mental illness and confessed to a sympathetic psychiatrist, who arranged his discharge in 1944; Poitier had lied about his age to enlist at 16 and was posted to a veterans' psychiatric hospital in Northport, New York.

Whose radio voice did Poitier model his famous speech pattern on, to shed his Bahamian accent?

Norman Brokenshire, a veteran radio announcer, was the voice Poitier copied for six months from a cheap radio, repeating phrases to flatten his Bahamian lilt before returning to audition.

Which lifelong friend did Poitier meet at the Harlem theatre company where he trained?

Harry Belafonte met Poitier at the Harlem theatre school in the mid-1940s, when the two broke actors famously bought one theatre ticket and swapped seats at the interval; they stayed friends for more than seventy years.

Which honour did Queen Elizabeth II grant Poitier in 1974?

As a US citizen the knighthood was honorary, though he was also a Bahamian.

Which country did Poitier serve as ambassador to for the Bahamas from 1997 to 2007?

Japan was his posting as the Bahamas' non-resident ambassador from 1997 to 2007, a largely ceremonial role he held while continuing to live in Beverly Hills.

Which US president awarded Poitier the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009?

Barack Obama presented the medal at the White House on 12 August 2009, in a group of honourees that also included Stephen Hawking, Desmond Tutu and Sandra Day O'Connor.

Who became the second Black actor to win Best Actor on the night Poitier got his Honorary Oscar in 2002?

Denzel Washington won for Training Day at the March 2002 ceremony, the same night Halle Berry became the first Black Best Actress; from the stage he told Poitier, 'I'll always be chasing you, Sidney.'

Poitier sat on the board of directors of which entertainment giant from 1995 to 2003?

In 2021 the Academy Museum named its main lobby the Sidney Poitier Grand Lobby.

Which actress, his co-star in The Lost Man, did Poitier marry in 1976?

Joanna Shimkus, a Canadian actress, played opposite Poitier in the 1969 thriller The Lost Man and married him on 23 January 1976; the couple had two daughters, Anika and Sydney Tamiia.

In 1964 Poitier recorded a spoken-word album with Fred Katz reciting which philosopher?

It was called Poitier Meets Plato; he won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album decades later, in 2001.

Which 1992 caper film saw Poitier star alongside Robert Redford and Dan Aykroyd?

Sneakers cast Poitier as Donald Crease, an ex-CIA man on Robert Redford's team of security testers, alongside Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix and David Strathairn; it was his first film in four years.

Where was Poitier ranked in the American Film Institute's 1999 list of the greatest male screen legends?

Poitier placed 22nd among the 25 male legends on the AFI's 1999 list, just behind Buster Keaton and ahead of Robert Mitchum; Humphrey Bogart topped it.

Which Poitier book was chosen for Oprah's Book Club in 2007?

The Measure of a Man, his 2000 spiritual autobiography, was Oprah Winfrey's Book Club selection in January 2007; Poitier's own audiobook reading of it had won the 2001 Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album.

Virgil Tibbs returned in They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970) and which 1971 sequel?

The Organization, released in 1971, sent Tibbs after a drug ring with a band of young activists in San Francisco; both sequels moved him to that city and away from the original's Southern setting.

With which actress did Poitier begin a nine-year affair in 1959, while married to Juanita Hardy?

Diahann Carroll met Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess in 1958 and their affair ran from 1959 until 1968; the two also co-starred in Paris Blues (1961) with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

Poitier's 1980 memoir This Life won which literary honour the following year?

The Coretta Scott King Award, given by the American Library Association for works by African American authors, went to This Life in 1981; the memoir covers his Bahamian childhood through his Hollywood rise.

Besides Japan, Poitier served from 2002 to 2007 as the Bahamas' ambassador to which body?

He held the UNESCO post concurrently with the Tokyo ambassadorship he had taken up in 1997.

Which 1991 TV film about the Brown v. Board of Education case earned Poitier an Emmy nomination?

He played Thurgood Marshall; Mandela and de Klerk in 1997 brought him another Emmy nomination.