#sidney poitier

blueiskewl:

In the Heat of the Night 1967

“The famous slap, where Tibbs retaliates against a racist landowner, wasn’t improvised, though, as has been suggested. I kept telling [Sidney] Poitier that Tibbs was a sophisticated detective, not used to being pushed around. I showed him how to do the slap. ‘Don’t hit him on the ear,’ I said. ‘I want you to really give him a crack on the fatty side of his cheek.’ I told him to practise on me. A black man had never slapped a white man back in an American film. We broke that taboo.

”Young black people in northern cities responded to the film in a much more visceral way than the whites did. This was the first time a black actor was wearing the fancy suit and being looked up to.”

-Director of In the Heat of the Night (1967), Norman Jewison on The Slap Heard Round The World.

twixnmix:

Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier publicity photos for the film “Porgy and Bess” (1959).

Photos by Mark Shaw

Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier and Juanita Hardy relaxing. New York City, NY(1959)

bellecs:

_{Sidney Poitier, 1960s}

covergirlsanddancingcavaliers:

Sidney Poitier, c.1950s

misplaced-childhood:

Sidney Poitier was the first African-American to win the Best Actor Oscar in 1963 but maybe more importantly in 1967 he became the first black actor to be the top box office draw for the year with his three hit films In The Heat of the Night, To Sir With Love andGuess Who’s Coming To Dinner.

RIP 1927 - 2022 … Always remember you on In The Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner

poster by artist Paul Crifo for the film “In The Heat of the Night” (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)

Sidney PoitierandTony Curtis on the set of The Defiant Ones(1958)

Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward,  Diahann Carroll, Sidney Poitier Paris Blues    1961

Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field (1963, directed by Ralph Nelson)

sparklejamesysparkle:

Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton in the groundbreaking  Columbia Pictures/Stanley Kramer comedy drama Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which premiered in theaters on December 12th, 1967. Acclaimedfor its progressive and positive depiction of interracial marriage during the Civil Rights era, the film went on earn ten Academy Award nominations, winning two—Best Story and Screenplay for writer William Rose, and Best Actress for Katharine Hepburn, who also happened to be Katharine Houghton’s aunt. Houghton was cast at Hepburn’s suggestion, who later explained: “There was a lovely part for Kathy, my niece. She would play Spencer Tracy’s and my daughter. I loved that. She’s beautiful and she definitely had a family resemblance. It was my idea.” When production of the film started on location in San Francisco, Columbia Pictures tried to cancel the project, claiming there were problems with insurance regarding Spencer Tracy’s poor health (Tracy died at the age of 67, seventeen days after production wrapped). Stanley Kramer, the movie’s producer and director, explained that this roadblock was solved when “Kate (Hepburn) and I put up our own salaries to compensate for the lack of an insurance company for Spence. And we were allowed to proceed.” The stars of the film remained dubious about Columbia’s reasons, however, believing the film’s then-controversial subject matter was the actual catalyst for the studio’s nervousness, which Katharine Houghton later confirmed during a 2017 interview with the Associated Press. “When they found out what the film was about, they didn’t want to do it,” she stated. “And they did everything they could to stop filming. They kept saying, ‘Nobody’s going to ever come and see this film. We’re going to lose millions of dollars on this film.’” Made for $4,000,000,Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner banked an impressive $56.7 million at the box office and later became the most watched show of 1971 when it made its television debut on CBS, earning a 26.8 rating and an audience share of 44%, numbers which very few television broadcasts achieve today.

allaboutjulie:

21/23 JULIE ANDREWS: LIFE AND CAREER

Julie Andrews and Sidney Poitier Attend the 1968 Oscars

By the time of the 40th Annual Academy Awards ceremony in April 1968, Andrews and Poitier are two of the biggest box office draws of the 1960s. That night, Andrews presents Best Picture to Poitier’s drama ”In the Heat of the Night.” - LIFE