Sidney Poitier

Sidney Poitier (born in Miami on February 20, 1927, from Bahamian parents, died January 7, 2022)  played a high school student in Blackboard Jungle (1955) by Richard Brooks with Glenn Ford, co-starred with Tony Curtis in The Defiant Ones (1958) by Stanley Kramer. He starred in Porgy and Bess (1959) directed by Otto Preminger from the musical by George Gershwin, in the film version of the play A Raisin in the Sun (1961), in Paris Blues (1961) by Martin Ritt with Paul Newman, Lilies in the Field (1963) and A Patch of Blue (1964). He co-starred with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) by Stanley Kramer, with Rod Steiger in In The Heat of the Night (1967) by Norman Jewison. Poitier directed movies like Stir Crazy (1980) with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor and Ghost Dad (1990) with Bill Cosby.

Read Ready for My deMille: Profiles in Excellence -Sidney Poitier, 1982 by Philip Berk