SIR SID

A MOVIE MEMORY FROM 1967 OF SIDNEY POITIER

From my book 1994 book Blackface: Reflections on African-Americans and the Movies I recall encountering Sidney Poiter with my mother at a Saturday afternoon matinee. The chapter is titled SIR SID. I was nine years old and I have never gotten it and never will.

“‘In the Heat of the Night’ was the film that really made me fall for Sidney. Even in the wilting southern heat the second button on his suit always stayed closed. Anger flashed across hisface when he slapped a racist southern patriarch and shouted at Steiger’s sheriff, “I’m a police officer!” But flash is all it did. He never seemed consumned by it or,more important, let white folks know how deeply his anger burned. For Virgil Tibbs competence was his weapon. His quiet class expressed his contemplt for the slovenly white world that he moved in and that distrusted him… its Sidney’s basic deceny that awakens all the white folks around him to their own moral failures. Surely, outside Dr. King, no other Negroes walked the earth with Sidney’s forbearance and wisdom.

“As inhumanly unrealistic as Tibbs was Sidney made him work. And by breathing life into such a creature, Sidney breathed Tibbs into me. James Bond might conquer the women. The charismatic young politician Julian Bond sparkled on my TV. Willie Mays was still roaming the San Francisco outfield. But Sidney’s heroic bearing made him the man I wanted to be. Today I know I’ve failed inmy efforts to replicate Sir Sid. In 1967, however it all seemed possible. If he existed, so could I.”

RIP Sidney Poitier 1927–2022.