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Sidney Poitier’s passing is more than a fading Hollywood century: It’s a reminder of a Hollywood century in which it cost black people so much more than sweat and tears to find a place in the industry and the most important art of the United States and, perhaps, of the twentieth century. Today, it can be hard to believe that a movie like “Guess who’s coming to dinner tonight” (1967) was not only a critical and public success, but, above all, a blow to consciences of the spectators, with its kind drama about that attractive interracial couple, the black Poitier and the very white Katharine Houghton, who shows up for dinner at the home of the parents of the second, traditional marriage of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. But its director, Stanley Kramer, screenwriter William Rose and Poitier himself knew very well what they were doing: just six months earlier, interracial marriage was still a crime in seventeen states. That simple, ingenious but not naive romantic and social comedy, was a gesture of daring without equal, although not the only one starring that handsome black man, who would become an example for several generations.
In fact, Poitier, coming from a wealthy farming family in the Bahamas, who was born in the United States almost by chance, had made his stage debut in 1959 with “A mole in the sun”, by the African-American writer Lorraine Hansberry, who would later be made into a film by Donald Petrie. A drama about a colored family from the South Side of Chicago, who It touched squarely on the problems of poverty, segregation and the struggle for social improvement that constituted (and continue to constitute) America’s black problem. Poitier thus conquered all North Americans and whites for good, and would continue to do so with “Porgy & Bess” (1959), according to Gershwin’s opera; with “One day I’ll return” (Paris Blues, 1961), with “Lthe lilies of the valley” (1963), which was both his first Oscar (he would receive another honorific in 2002) and the first awarded to an actor of color by the Academy, or with “A patch of blue” (1965), not to mention westerns like “Duel in devil” (1966). Yet it was undoubtedly “Guess who’s coming to dinner tonight?” the one that certified its status as a star and as a symbol of equality, integration and the fight for civil rights. Stanley Kramer had already taken him to the gates of the Oscar with his wonderful “Fugitives” (1958), but I knew that it would be this emotional, dramatic and at the same time sympathetic comedy that would destroy barriers, opening hearts and minds, much more than violent, radical or deeply charged stories.
Being handsome, tall and kind, Sidney Poitier earned the sanmbenito of representative in Hollywood of “Uncle Tom syndrome.” The “good” black domesticated by whites, worthy of being invited to dinners, living rooms … and bedrooms. Poitier was no stranger to the danger of “tiotomism”, but given the choice, he wisely chose to remain an actor more than capable of playing all kinds of roles, using the strength of his physique, but opening a gap to future generations, as his heir Denzel Washington recognized when he received the Oscar. Maybe movies like “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Tonight”, “In the Heat of the Night” (1967) or “Buck and the Phony” (1972), directed by Poitier himself – as directed by the hilarious Locos de Auction ( 1980), with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor – offer an ideal, idealized, idealistic version of the American Negro, but it was that the one that was needed, the one necessary to begin to stop and defeat the madness of racism. The liberal Hollywood of the 60s knew it. And Poitier too. It was not Harry Belafonte or Malcolm X, with my respects, who conquered America for their race. It was that Uncle Tom who wasn’t, named Sidney Poitier. The first great black star of the cinema.
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