unspeakable odds, that we are capable of infinitely more than the culture is yet willing to credit to our account.”
Did the moment foretell better days ahead for blacks in Hollywood movies? One might fast-forward to this revealing fact: it would not be until 2001 that another black male actor—Denzel Washington, for his magnetic and controversial performance as a corrupt detective in Training Day —would be seen holding the Oscar for best actor, almost four decades after Poitier’s history-making win. Blacks, who have long been quite vocal about cinema in America, found it hard to believe the long gap between Poitier and Washington had been just misfortune. The gap summoned up overlooked performances from the past, such as Paul Winfield’s in 1972 in Sounder alongside an equally amazing Cicely Tyson; Ivan Dixon in 1964 in Nothing But a Man ; James Earl Jones in The Great White Hope in 1970. Many in America, especially blacks, seemed to have their fingers crossed especially tight in 1993, hoping Denzel Washington would win for his nominated performance in Malcolm X. There were reasons to be hopeful: there had been a long battle waged by filmmaker Spike Lee to get the movie made, and Washington did win a slew of other industry awards for the performance that season. But not the Oscar.
History, however, seemed to be quite sweet the night of Washington’s best actor win for Training Day: Halle Berry also was named best actress, in a role that was seen as controversial. Portraying a poor southern woman with a husband on death row, she conducts an affair with a white man, and in one scene she strips naked for the camera, a movethat prompted many black actresses to question her decision to play a part they thought demeaning.
Even today, the conversation about a lack of richly drawn characters for the gallery of black acting talent still seems to haunt Hollywood, when studies still show a paltry number of blacks filling leading roles in mainstream films. When it comes to directing, the recognition from the Academy for blacks is paltry indeed. In the history of American cinema, only two black directors have ever been nominated for a best directing Oscar: John Singleton, for Boyz n the Hood, and Lee Daniels, for Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire.
It remains worth noting—to turn the camera back to the 1960s—that Sidney Poitier’s historic achievements in film played out in the full gallop of the civil rights movement. The boulders were rolling through the cities and they could not be turned back. The movie camera kept churning, and it would not lose sight of Poitier, which gave blacks a reason to hope and pray when it came to celluloid imagery.
In 1967 Poitier would appear in two much-talked-about films, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night. Both made vivid allusion—especially in the impressionable minds of many white moviegoers who lived in a segregated nation—to what it was like to be a black man navigating the shifting social terrain in America during the push to integrate. Poitier the actor felt it up close. Art didn’t imitate life. Life reshaped the art.
The plot of In the Heat of the Night has Poitier playing a northern police officer who gets stranded in Mississippi. While there, he is talked into helping solve a local murder. Before filming started—verisimilitude be damned—Poitier let director Norman Jewison know he was not going to film in hostile Mississippi. Civil rights workers had been murdered in that state, after all. So the production filmed in Illinois and Tennessee. While the actors were in Tennessee, however, after hearing some rednecks spew epithets, Poitier let it be known he was sleeping with a gun beneath his pillow.
Poitier’s other film that year was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Romance or marriage across the color line was still quite taboo. Even the hint of interracial sex was considered risky in film. So it cannot be underestimated just
Did the moment foretell better days ahead for blacks in Hollywood movies? One might fast-forward to this revealing fact: it would not be until 2001 that another black male actor—Denzel Washington, for his magnetic and controversial performance as a corrupt detective in Training Day —would be seen holding the Oscar for best actor, almost four decades after Poitier’s history-making win. Blacks, who have long been quite vocal about cinema in America, found it hard to believe the long gap between Poitier and Washington had been just misfortune. The gap summoned up overlooked performances from the past, such as Paul Winfield’s in 1972 in Sounder alongside an equally amazing Cicely Tyson; Ivan Dixon in 1964 in Nothing But a Man ; James Earl Jones in The Great White Hope in 1970. Many in America, especially blacks, seemed to have their fingers crossed especially tight in 1993, hoping Denzel Washington would win for his nominated performance in Malcolm X. There were reasons to be hopeful: there had been a long battle waged by filmmaker Spike Lee to get the movie made, and Washington did win a slew of other industry awards for the performance that season. But not the Oscar.
History, however, seemed to be quite sweet the night of Washington’s best actor win for Training Day: Halle Berry also was named best actress, in a role that was seen as controversial. Portraying a poor southern woman with a husband on death row, she conducts an affair with a white man, and in one scene she strips naked for the camera, a movethat prompted many black actresses to question her decision to play a part they thought demeaning.
Even today, the conversation about a lack of richly drawn characters for the gallery of black acting talent still seems to haunt Hollywood, when studies still show a paltry number of blacks filling leading roles in mainstream films. When it comes to directing, the recognition from the Academy for blacks is paltry indeed. In the history of American cinema, only two black directors have ever been nominated for a best directing Oscar: John Singleton, for Boyz n the Hood, and Lee Daniels, for Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire.
It remains worth noting—to turn the camera back to the 1960s—that Sidney Poitier’s historic achievements in film played out in the full gallop of the civil rights movement. The boulders were rolling through the cities and they could not be turned back. The movie camera kept churning, and it would not lose sight of Poitier, which gave blacks a reason to hope and pray when it came to celluloid imagery.
In 1967 Poitier would appear in two much-talked-about films, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night. Both made vivid allusion—especially in the impressionable minds of many white moviegoers who lived in a segregated nation—to what it was like to be a black man navigating the shifting social terrain in America during the push to integrate. Poitier the actor felt it up close. Art didn’t imitate life. Life reshaped the art.
The plot of In the Heat of the Night has Poitier playing a northern police officer who gets stranded in Mississippi. While there, he is talked into helping solve a local murder. Before filming started—verisimilitude be damned—Poitier let director Norman Jewison know he was not going to film in hostile Mississippi. Civil rights workers had been murdered in that state, after all. So the production filmed in Illinois and Tennessee. While the actors were in Tennessee, however, after hearing some rednecks spew epithets, Poitier let it be known he was sleeping with a gun beneath his pillow.
Poitier’s other film that year was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Romance or marriage across the color line was still quite taboo. Even the hint of interracial sex was considered risky in film. So it cannot be underestimated just
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