Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

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

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

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

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

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

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

You are here: Home / Absent Friends / Saturday Night Movies Open Thread: Appreciations of Sidney Poitier

Saturday Night Movies Open Thread: Appreciations of Sidney Poitier

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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

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…

Reader Interactions

35Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike in NC

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

  2. 2.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @Mike in NC: 

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

  4. 4.

    mvr

    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

    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

    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

  8. 8.

    Helen

    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

    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

    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.

  12. 12.

    Alison Rose

    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

    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

    @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

    @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

    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.

  20. 20.

    sab

    @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

    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.

  24. 24.

    sab

    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.

  26. 26.

    rikyrah

    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

    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

    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

    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

    @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

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

  32. 32.

    dnfree

    @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.

  34. 34.

    Gary K

    @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

    @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.

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