Sidney Poitier became a major movie star in the 1950s. But by 1967 — when he starred in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” “In the Heat of the Night” and “To Sir With Love” and was the country’s top box-office draw — some members of the African-American film going audience were becoming discontented with him.
“To many he was an anachronistic representation of black masculinity at the time, in the heat of the civil rights movement … many critics felt his screen persona exuded assimilationism, that he was too integrationist,” said Vassar College film professor Mia Mask. “He seemed to want to appease white folks rather than challenge the status quo.”
Decades later, these debates are ancient history. Poitier’s status as one of America’s most important movie stars is secure. But Mask and Ian Strachan, a cultural scholar in Poitier’s homeland the Bahamas, still felt the need to defend the film legend. A few months ago, they published “Poitier Revisited: Reconsidering a Black Icon in the Obama Age” (Bloomsbury Academic, 288 pp.).
Mask and Strachan are coming to Hartford on Thursday, Feb. 19, to talk about Poitier on the opening day of the Wadsworth Atheneum’s weekend-long celebration of Poitier, called “Guess Who’s Coming to the Atheneum?: A Celebration of Sidney Poitier.” The authors will sign copies of their book and give a talk before a screening of “In the Heat of the Night.”
Strachan said Poitier was “battered” by criticism toward the end of the ’60s. “By the ’70s when blaxploitation came along after the assassinations of King and Malcolm X, people were looking for alternative heroes. The Poitier image was still that of ‘Lilies of the Field’,” Strachan said. “The audience had moved on and wanted something else.”
Criticism was especially stinging from black playwright Clifford Mason. Mason’s 1967 New York Times article “Why Does White America Love Sidney Poitier So?” written on the release of “In the Heat of the Night,” complained that the movie suffered from “the same old Sidney Poitier syndrome: a good guy in a totally white world, with no wife, no sweetheart, no woman to love or kiss, helping the white man solve the white man’s problem…. He remains unreal, as he has for nearly two decades, playing essentially the same role, the antiseptic, one-dimensional hero.”
Mask said that ’60s audiences who were looking for a black movie star with a more militant image could turn to former football star Jim Brown, whose sexy man of action persona paved the way for blaxploitation heroes like “Shaft.” She added, however, that Poitier, behind the scenes, was more activist than he may have appeared on screen. She cited one example, a scene in “In the Heat of the Night” in which Poitier’s character, Virgil Tibbs, is slapped by a racist white character, Mr. Endicott, and Tibbs slaps Endicott back.
“Initially in the scene, it was written such that Endicott would strike Mr. Tibbs and he would just take it and be stoic and turn the other cheek and deal.with it and carry on. Sidney Poitier refused to do it. He said changes should be made so he could strike him back,” Mask said. “Initially they [producers] would not capitulate to that so he said ‘I will not make the film.’ Then he had that change made to the script. It was a revolutionary cinematic moment. Think about the ’60s, the ways in which black masculinity still had to be contained in terms of cinematic representation.”
The title of Strachan’s and Mask’s book juxtaposes Poitier’s achievements with those of President Obama because both authors see clear similarities in the men’s successes.
“There are interesting parallels in terms of how they are imagined and by very different constituencies,” Strachan said. “He is an exemplary black man who has such composure, intelligence, a generally very cool and calm manner and style about him, who is very attractive and who wins our respect by virtue.”
Mask added — in a comment that sounds like she could be speaking about Obama — that Poitier benefited from “the historical moment at which he’s making films, and what he could embody at that moment. That’s what made him so appealing. It was a combination of zeitgeist and who he is and what he brought to that moment as a man, as a person, as a performer, as an actor. He had that skill set to be a craftsman and an activist.”
Strachan pointed out that even Republican foes of Obama used Poitier-Obama comparisons when Obama was running for his first term. “Conservatives in America actually were evoking Poitier to undermine Obama’s appeal or to explain Obama’s appeal. There is the implicit critique of the ‘magical negro,’ the whole notion that Obama was another in this installment of exceptional black men who only appear in these narratives to become the moral compass of white people dealing with certain challenges.”
Schedule
The film weekend at the Atheneum, 600 Main St. in Hartford, is co-sponsored by the Amistad Center for Art & Culture.
It begins Feb. 19 at 6:30 p.m. with the talk and book-signing, followed by “In the Heat of the Night,” the 1967 Best Picture Oscar winner about a racist Southern sheriff (Rod Steiger, best actor winner) who accepts help from a black detective (Poitier) to solve a murder.
On Saturday, Feb, 21, four films will be shown. The day begins at 1 p.m. with “The Defiant Ones,” the 1958 action drama about two escaped convicts (Poitier and Tony Curtis) who are chained together. It won Oscars for its screenplay and cinematography. At 2:45 p.m., the film is “A Raisin in the Sun,” the 1961 adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play about a poor family and an insurance payment. At 5:15 p.m. will be Poitier’s best-actor Oscar winning film, “Lilies of the Field,” the 1963 comic drama about a handyman helping nuns build a chapel in the desert. The day ends with a 7 p.m. screening of “A Patch of Blue,” the 1965 drama about a black man befriending a blind white girl and trying to help her escape her abusive home life. Shelley Winters won an Oscar for best supporting actress for the film. Sandwiches will be sold between the films on Saturday.
On Sunday, Feb. 22, at 2 p.m. is “To Sir With Love,” a 1967 drama about an idealistic man teaching high school in a London slum. The series ends with a screening Sunday at 4 p.m. of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” the 1967 drama, starring Spencer Tracy and Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn, about a couple challenged when their daughter brings home a black fiancee.
Admission for all three days, including opening night, is $40, $30 members, $10 Insider Access members. For just opening night, admission is $15, $10 members. Admission to individual films on Saturday and Sunday is $9, seniors and students $8, members $7, Insider Access members free. More information: thewadsworth.org.
