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2022-01-08 -Obits-

Celebrities remember Sidney Poitier following his death: 'One of the greats'

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Posted by Skidmark 2022-01-08 00:00|| || Front Page|| [7 views ] Top

#1 An admirable man. I love this, too, from John Podhoretz in the NY Post:

Unschooled beyond fourth grade in the Bahamas, sent to America by his parents at 14 to save him from a life of crime, shot in the leg at 16 during a 1943 race riot in Harlem, Poitier worked hard jobs as a menial laborer and an Army hospital orderly before he happened to spot an audition notice for the Negro Ensemble Theater.

He was dismissed by the NET due to a thick accent and halting reading skills — and thereupon began the process of willing himself into becoming the most important American black pop culture figure of the 20th century.

Poitier sat before a radio and trained his own voice, remaking it until he achieved the indelible sing-song baritone that — a little like Cary Grant’s — sounded like no one else’s on Earth. He got into the theater troupe and made conscious use of a charisma that emanated from him like a pheromone.

Four years later he had his first starring role in a movie — 1950’s “No Way Out.” He was all of 22. And he was playing a doctor. He would do so again, 17 years later, in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” the first major motion picture to feature a black man and a white woman in a romance.

That film was the representative work of one aspect of his career — the aspect in which he served as the representation of black pride and dignity, a person it would be impossible to consider in any way inferior to anyone else.

Posted by trailing wife 2022-01-08 21:56|| 2022-01-08 21:56|| Front Page Top

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