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Date of Birth
20 February 1927, Miami, Florida, USA
A native of Cat Island, The Bahamas,<span style="font-size: 20pt"> <span style="font-weight: bold">(though born in Miami during a mainland visit by his parents</span>)</span>, Poitier grew up in poverty as the son of a dirt farmer. He had little formal education and at the age of 15 was sent to Miami to live with his brother, in order to forestall a growing tendency toward delinquency. In the U.S., Poitier first experienced the racial chasm that divides the country, a great shock to a boy coming from a society with an African American majority. A determination to find and create opportunities for African Americans was born in him because of the poor treatment he received on the streets of Miami. At 18, he went to New York, did menial jobs and slept in a bus terminal toilet. A brief stint in the Army as a worker at a veteran's hospital was followed by more menial jobs in Harlem. An impulsive audition at the American Negro Theatre was rejected so forcefully that Poitier dedicated the next six months to overcoming his accent and performance ineptness. On his second try, he was accepted. He was spotted in a rehearsal and given a bit part in a Broadway production of "Lysistrata," for which he got excellent reviews. By the end of 1949, he was having to choose between leading roles on stage and an offer to work for Darryl F. Zanuck in the film No Way Out (1950). Poitier's performance as a doctor treating a white bigot got him plenty of notice and led to more roles, each considerably more interesting and prominent than most African American actors of the time were getting. Nevertheless, the roles were still less interesting and prominent than those white actors routinely obtained. But seven years later, after turning down several projects he considered demeaning, Poitier got a number of roles that catapulted him into a category rarely if ever achieved by an African American man of that time, that of starring leading man.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Dinner of Lifetime</span>
With little education and no job skills, Sidney survived the tough streets of New York City by washing dishes. One day, he answered a job ad for actors, figuring it couldn't be any harder than being a dishwasher or parking cars. Sidney showed up with his thick Bahamian accent and could hardly read. The director threw him out, telling him he'd never be more than a dishwasher. Sidney was shocked that the director not only knew he was not an actor, but that he even sized up what he actually did for a living. He called that assessment "a death sentence for my soul."
Looking back, Sidney says he never would have pursued acting if the director had not shown him the door. "I went back and I decided that I was going to become an actor to show him that he was wrong about me," he says.
Sidney went home, deciding to tackle his thick accent first. At night, Sidney listened to the radio and picked out different voices to emulate. One radio host stood out—Norman Brokenshire. "It was distinctly American but with a very British flavor," Sidney says. "Every word he spoke, every sentence he made, I would repeat it. By the end of six months, I was ready for an audition."
With only two years of formal education in Nassau as a child, Sidney also worked to strengthen his reading skills. On his breaks from washing dishes at a Queens restaurant, Sidney found a quiet booth where he could sound out unfamiliar words from the newspaper. Soon, an older Jewish waiter at the restaurant became his tutor, and they worked on reading every night. To his regret, when Sidney tried to find that man to thank him, he couldn't find him. "I would love to have been able to thank him and explain to him the good services he had rendered to me that was essential to my success."
Education still weighs heavily on Sidney's mind. "That question bothers me a lot, the question of education. We are too rich a country to have inner city education what it is. It is each family, I believe, who has the responsibility to educate their children no matter what their own education is," Sidney says.
Dinner guest Philip volunteer teaches in the inner-city New York schools. "When I introduced the book to them, they said, 'Wow, I didn't know Sidney Poitier could barely read in the beginning,'" Philip says. "And that registered. They could connect with this because they could relate."
Read more: http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/The-...5#ixzz26msNATgY
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