• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Let there be snark.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Biden: Oh no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

It’s a new day. Light all those Biden polls of young people on fire and throw away the ashes.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

T R E 4 5 O N

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The willow is too close to the house.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Mobile Menu

  • Four Directions Montana
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2024 Elections
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Absent Friends / Saturday Night Movies Open Thread: Appreciations of Sidney Poitier

Saturday Night Movies Open Thread: Appreciations of Sidney Poitier

by Anne Laurie|  February 19, 202210:35 pm| 35 Comments

This post is in: Absent Friends, Excellent Links, Movies

FacebookTweetEmail

A reminder, from Deadline:

Sunday, February 20

TCM: Good-bye, My Lady (1956), 6:15 a.m. [a dog story!]

TCM: Edge of the City (1957), 8:15 a.m.

TCM: No Way Out (1950), 10 a.m.

TCM: Blackboard Jungle (1955), noon

TCM: To Sir, With Love (1967), 2 p.m.

TCM: Lilies of the Field (1963), 4 p.m.

TCM: A Patch of Blue (1965), 6 p.m

"He was truly my brother and partner in trying to make this world a little better. He certainly made mine a whole lot better." Harry Belafonte is among a host of actors, statesmen and celebrities honoring Oscar winner Sidney Poitier, who has died at 94. https://t.co/IsIWxAewOY

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 8, 2022

Sidney Poitier was an icon of racial reassurance. But his genius lay in his rage. https://t.co/HnPb2Rx2uj

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 9, 2022

My introduction to Poitier came during a parochial school field trip to the Grand Concourse movie house to see Lilies of the Field. (We were also taken to see To Sir, With Love in due course.) So this felt correct to me:

“They call me Mister Tibbs!”

Those five words electrified audiences in 1967, when, in the crime procedural “In the Heat of the Night,” Sidney Poitier’s Philadelphia detective Virgil Tibbs schooled a Mississippi police chief, played by Rod Steiger, who had just casually called him by a racial epithet…

Throughout that decade, Poitier, who died Thursday at 94, cultivated a persona of quiet, self-confident authority and classic style. He became the first Black man to win an Oscar for best actor, for his portrayal of an easygoing handyman who befriends a group of nuns in 1963’s “Lilies of the Field”; months later, Martin Luther King Jr. would accept the Nobel Peace Prize, making them twin symbols of Black excellence…

Something else is going on in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” which animates Poitier’s genius in all of his best work: a ripple of tension, a “Call me Mister Tibbs” anger that can be detected just under the surface of even his most benign encounters. It’s there when he’s being called “the problem” by a benevolent Catholic priest or when he’s being condescended to by his future father-in-law. Decades before we had words and phrases such as “microaggression,” “unconscious bias” and “White fragility,” Poitier was eloquently conveying the psychic toll on Black people, not just from the most visible and egregious structures of racism, but also from constantly having to manage White anxieties, expectations and self-protecting ignorance.

He expressed that reality — the frustration, the anger, the bone-deep weariness — not just by way of subtle facial reactions, but also through a tightly coiled physicality suggesting that, no matter how tactfully his characters were navigating a racist society, its depredations were not going unnoticed. They were being registered, one by one, on a body that moved with a dancer’s grace and a boxer’s defensive skill…

Sidney Poitier was a giant on and off the screen. Here he is with Harry Belafonte in 1966 after bailing John Lewis, Jim Forman, and other SNCC members out of jail. They had been arrested protesting apartheid at the South African consulate in NYC. pic.twitter.com/Svo2SdNQos

— Andrew Aydin (@andrewaydin) January 7, 2022

the best Sidney Poitier story is the time he and Harry Belafonte flew down to the Delta to bring $70K to keep Freedom Summer going. They got in a high speed chase with police who tried to stop them from delivering the money and they made it there anyway.

— David Dennis Jr. (@DavidDTSS) January 7, 2022

The legendary Sidney Poitier has reportedly passed away at 94. A true icon.

Here is a powerful interview from him back in 1968 – he was addressing how he was being treated by the press.

Rest in power. pic.twitter.com/WtjmN2sU27

— Clay 'Critical Thinking Theory' Cane (@claycane) January 7, 2022

The actor, who came to the United States from the Bahamas at 15, lived on the streets and in an orphanage, was brutalized by racist police, and endured a demoralizing stint in the Army – all before he turned 18. https://t.co/wHDEjwgada

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 8, 2022

WATCH: Sidney Poitier, who passed away this weekend at age 94, chokes up as he tells Lesley Stahl about the elderly Jewish waiter who taught him to read, enabling his acting career to take off pic.twitter.com/MPkDynlFYU

— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) January 9, 2022

"I felt very much as if I were representing 15, 18 million people with every move I made." Oscar-winning actor Sidney Poitier has died at 94. Here are excepts of Poitier in his own words through the years. https://t.co/nz6riikPYJ

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 7, 2022

Poitier's many honors included a special Academy Award in 2002, when Black performers won both best acting awards. “I’ll always be following in your footsteps," said one of the winners, Denzel Washington. "There’s nothing I would rather do, sir." https://t.co/LIMns39FCt

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 7, 2022

Through his groundbreaking roles and singular talent, Sidney Poitier epitomized dignity and grace, revealing the power of movies to bring us closer together. He also opened doors for a generation of actors. Michelle and I send our love to his family and legion of fans. pic.twitter.com/zkYKFSxfKA

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 7, 2022

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Foreign FAFO Affairs Open Thread: The Canadian ‘Trucker’ Protests
Next Post: COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Saturday / Sunday, Feb. 19-20 »

Reader Interactions

35Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike in NC

    February 19, 2022 at 10:42 pm

    Favorite Poitier movie will always be “The Bedford Incident” with Richard Widmark and Donald Southerland.

  2. 2.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    February 19, 2022 at 10:48 pm

    @Mike in NC: 

    Favorite Poitier movie will always be “The Bedford Incident” “Moby Dick” with Richard Widmark and Donald Southerland James MacArthur.

  3. 3.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    February 19, 2022 at 10:49 pm

    In Poitier’s lifetime (photo)

  4. 4.

    mvr

    February 19, 2022 at 10:57 pm

    Remember seeing Guess Who is Coming to Dinner as a 10 or so year old with my folks on its first run  at the Coranado Theater in  Rockford Illinois.  A de facto segragated city North of Chicago. My school was all white at the time.

    I feel like America is a time machine and we are back there.

  5. 5.

    Chetan Murthy

    February 19, 2022 at 11:43 pm

    The …. controlled rage in Mr. Poitier’s face and diction in that speech to the press …. wow.  I don’t know that I could do that without breaking into tears or screaming epithets.

  6. 6.

    Ruckus

    February 19, 2022 at 11:48 pm

    A great actor and a great human being.

    Rest well sir, you made it a far better 94 years on this planet

    Mr. Tibbs indeed

  7. 7.

    Chetan Murthy

    February 19, 2022 at 11:50 pm

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Can you imagine how each of them must have felt, facing the other?  It makes me well up a little, just thinking about it.

  8. 8.

    Helen

    February 19, 2022 at 11:53 pm

    My parochial school made a field trip to see ‘In the Heat of the Night.’ I would guess it was a revelation to many of us white working class kids from the upper midwest. I doubt many of us would have gone on our own.  As for our parents, they weren’t Interested in seeing it, but if ‘Sister’ said it was okay, then it was okay.

  9. 9.

    HumboldtBlue

    February 19, 2022 at 11:56 pm

    He expressed that reality — the frustration, the anger, the bone-deep weariness — not just by way of subtle facial reactions, but also through a tightly coiled physicality suggesting that, no matter how tactfully his characters were navigating a racist society, its depredations were not going unnoticed. They were being registered, one by one, on a body that moved with a dancer’s grace and a boxer’s defensive skill…

    What writing.

  10. 10.

    Steeplejack

    February 20, 2022 at 12:07 am

    The Poitier retrospective on TCM has already started. A Warm December (1973) is starting now, followed by Cry, the Beloved Country (1952) at 2:00 a.m. EST and Something of Value (1957) at 4:00 a.m. EST.

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    February 20, 2022 at 12:15 am

    @Steeplejack

    Full listing of the titles being shown provided here Wednesday morning, in case anyone wants to view any of them through an On Demand option later on.

  12. 12.

    Alison Rose

    February 20, 2022 at 12:42 am

    I remember watching Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with my parents when I was in my early teens (in the early 90s) and being so baffled as to how anyone could have an issue with their daughter dating this handsome, smart, genial man. I wasn’t so naive as to not know racism existed, but I think it was that movie which helped me understand just how ludicrous it was.

  13. 13.

    HumboldtBlue

    February 20, 2022 at 12:53 am

    The Finns are leading the Russians 2-1 early in the third period in the Men’s hockey gold medal game!

    Let the Mannerheim Line prevail!

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    February 20, 2022 at 1:02 am

    @Alison Rose

    Without Tracy and Hepburn signing on, bringing their combined box office boffoness with them, I doubt Guess would ever have been given a green light at the time, Poitier or no Poitier.

    This is not to in any way denigrate Sidney, it’s a sign of Hollywood skittishness with the subject matter (tamely as it ended up being portrayed) in 1967.

  15. 15.

    prostratedragon

    February 20, 2022 at 1:18 am

    @NotMax:  Dead right, I think it was generally understood that way at the time.

    I have Poitier’s A Raisin in the Sun ready to go. I watch it occasionally and have seen it recently on TCM, though it’s not part of this weekend’s retrospective. But I had a chat recently that was kind of interesting, among fellow transit riders on the day after Mr. Poitier’s death was announced. A couple of the young/middle-aged people said that they didn’t like his portrayal of Walter Lee, because they thought he seemed nonchalant about the loss of his mother’s inheritance money. That’s not at all how I saw it, and I find myself wondering how big the differences in the way people read other people might be. I’m going to have another look.

  16. 16.

    SiubhanDuinne

    February 20, 2022 at 1:20 am

    Just this minute twigged to the fact that the TCM marathon is taking place on what would have been Poitier’s 95th birthday.

    And only because I started solving a trivia quiz which always includes a “This Day in History” feature.

  17. 17.

    HumboldtBlue

    February 20, 2022 at 1:25 am

    @HumboldtBlue:

    The Finns prevailed!

  18. 18.

    SiubhanDuinne

    February 20, 2022 at 1:53 am

    @HumboldtBlue:

    “Nothin’ could be Finner

    Than to be a hockey winner

    Over Ruh-huh-huh-ssia!”

  19. 19.

    NotMax

    February 20, 2022 at 2:04 am

    @SiubhanDuinne

    “For it was an honest puck.”

    :)

  20. 20.

    sab

    February 20, 2022 at 2:21 am

    @Alison Rose: When I first saw it, my main thought was what does this accomplished man see in this girl?

    ETA  I bet them going home to his parents was a whole different movie.

  21. 21.

    sab

    February 20, 2022 at 2:41 am

    My birthday present from my recent birthday is that I get to control the remote for a day. Yay me, and hurrah Poitier. Perfect timing.

  22. 22.

    SiubhanDuinne

    February 20, 2022 at 2:46 am

    @NotMax:

    :-)

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    February 20, 2022 at 2:47 am

    @sab

    The logical assumption is that he sees something in her which reminds him of the his dead first wife.

  24. 24.

    sab

    February 20, 2022 at 2:49 am

    Sidney Poitier was an anchor baby! Had he not been born in Miami to Bahamian parents, he probably would never have been allowed to have his American film career.

  25. 25.

    sab

    February 20, 2022 at 2:50 am

    @NotMax: Makes sense to me.

  26. 26.

    rikyrah

    February 20, 2022 at 2:59 am

    My mother’s favorite movie was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

    I fell in love with A Warm December about 20 years ago.

    It’s so hard to explain how revolutionary his characters were. What a cultural touchstone he was to Black people like my parents, both born and raised in the Jim Crow South.

  27. 27.

    sab

    February 20, 2022 at 3:07 am

    Just went down to the tv and set to tape everything from now until 2pm EST.

    Missed half of Cry the Beloved Country.

    I cannot think of a book that had a greater impact on my young mind. Except maybe Too Late the Phalarope.

  28. 28.

    sab

    February 20, 2022 at 3:31 am

    Also too, youngest grand-daughter turns eight today!  She is autistic. Six years ago they told us she would probably never speak and would need to be institutionalized. Today she is is in regular public school and thriving.

    Thank you all the therapists who worked with her. Speech and occupational. Lots of us wonder if our life’s work was worth it. Those guys should have no doubts.

  29. 29.

    prostratedragon

    February 20, 2022 at 4:58 am

    A small note on the great George Takei: early in his career, in 1959, he had a feature role in the Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Blushing Pearls.” A pearl merchant shows Mason some of his more precious wares, including pearls from the Sulu Sea. The episode was directed by Richard Whorf.

  30. 30.

    pajaro

    February 20, 2022 at 8:10 am

    @prostratedragon:

    I saw a Raisin in the Sun when it came out.  I was in high school at the time.  I remember Poitier’s role as very different than most of his iconic roles.  He is gutted by what he did, at least that’s how I remember it.  The ending–when he recovers his dignity–moved me to tears.  I may have only seen the movie once or twice since the first time, but I remember it vividly.

  31. 31.

    zhena gogolia

    February 20, 2022 at 9:03 am

    Shoot, sorry I missed this thread by having the temerity to sleep at night. I’ll read later.

  32. 32.

    dnfree

    February 20, 2022 at 12:11 pm

    @mvr: I grew up in Loves Park in the 1950s.  We spoke matter-of-factly of the two Rockford high schools as East ( where the Swedes went) and West (where the Negroes and Italians went).  As a child I had no awareness of what this meant or what segregation was.  The civil rights movement was a pivotal event in my life.

    ETA the time period.

  33. 33.

    dnfree

    February 20, 2022 at 12:14 pm

    @sab: I am so glad someone else remembers those books.

  34. 34.

    Gary K

    February 20, 2022 at 2:36 pm

    @sab: I put the title of this book on a list of things to read in my teen years, but never got around to it until a couple of years ago. What a powerful story, and to read it so many years later, after apartheid an after the miracle of Mandela, enriched it even further. Paton occasionally speaks of the natural biblical span of life: “Who can enjoy the lovely land, who can enjoy the seventy years…?” As someone of that exact age, I felt the author was speaking personally to me. Perhaps I should regard the two years since as a gift.

    Until today I had no idea that it had been made into a movie.

  35. 35.

    mvr

    February 20, 2022 at 4:11 pm

    @dnfree: I was born in Rockford in the late 50s, moved to NJ in 1963 and back in 1967 by which time it had a few more high schools but was still highly segregated. My folks were pretty involved w various sorts of civil rights organizing so I was hugely aware of the racial aspect of the town even while I benefited from the racist way it ran by going to the white schools subsidized by the way schools were run to benefit white schools.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Comments

  • Betty Cracker on Cold, Cruel Grey Dawn Open Thread: #DonSnoreleone (Apr 16, 2024 @ 5:16am)
  • Jay on Cold, Cruel Grey Dawn Open Thread: #DonSnoreleone (Apr 16, 2024 @ 5:10am)
  • Baud on Cold, Cruel Grey Dawn Open Thread: #DonSnoreleone (Apr 16, 2024 @ 5:08am)
  • Baud on Cold, Cruel Grey Dawn Open Thread: #DonSnoreleone (Apr 16, 2024 @ 5:04am)
  • Martin on Cold, Cruel Grey Dawn Open Thread: #DonSnoreleone (Apr 16, 2024 @ 4:58am)

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Balloon Juice Meetups!

All Meetups
Talk of Meetups – Meetup Planning
Proposed BJ meetups list from frosty

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8
Virginia House Races
Four Directions – Montana
Worker Power AZ
Four Directions – Arizona
Four Directions – Nevada

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
Positive Climate News
War in Ukraine
Cole’s “Stories from the Road”
Classified Documents Primer

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Political Action 2024

Postcard Writing Information

Balloon Juice for Four Directions AZ

Donate

Balloon Juice for Four Directions NV

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2024 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!