TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to our series, Classic Films and Movie Icons, with the interview I recorded with Sidney Poitier in 2000 after the publication of his memoir. Poitier said he always believed that his work should convey his personal values. When he started making movies in 1949, it was hard for Black actors to get significant film roles, much harder than today. It was even difficult to get small parts that weren't stereotyped. But in the '50s and '60s, Poitier starred in a string of films that addressed the racial tensions of the time - films like "The Defiant Ones," "In The Heat Of The Night," "Lilies Of The Field" and "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner." In 1963, he became the first Black actor to win an Oscar for best actor. He remained the only Black actor to win in that category until 2001, when Denzel Washington won for "Training Day." In the '70s, Poitier directed such films as "Buck And The Preacher," "Uptown Saturday Night," "Let's Do It Again," and "Stir Crazy." Poitier grew up in the Bahamas on Cat Island and Nassau. His family was poor. He was born in 1924 and arrived prematurely, weighing only three pounds. His father prepared for his baby's imminent death by buying a little casket. His mother went to a fortune teller. Poitier died two years ago at the age of 94.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: Your first audition was as a result of a classified ad that you'd read for the American Negro Theatre, which was looking for performers. You say when you got to your audition, you had trouble just reading the script. You certainly hadn't been in an audition before. You had no training, but you didn't have much schooling either.
SIDNEY POITIER: No, I didn't. So when I went into to this place, I could read, for instance, the want ad pages, and I could recognize words like janitor and dishwasher and stuff like that. Just across the page from the want ad page was the theatrical page, and there was this sign that said actors wanted. And I went to this address. I said, maybe I can - I tried dishwashing and janitors and all that stuff. Maybe I'll try this. And I went there, and there was a gentleman there, and he asked me - he said, are you an actor? And I said, yes, I am. And he said, OK. He gave me a script and set me up on this little stage. And he said, turn to page 28. And I did. And on 28 I saw that there was a name, John. And underneath the name John was an awful lot of writing. And these - I suppose these were the words that John would be saying, and then was another part named something else, and he was going to read those parts, he said. So he told me to look it over and take a second, look it over. And when I was ready to let him know. So I read the page and then the following page, and I said, OK, I'm ready. And he said, OK, you start. I said, all right. And I started reading.
Well, of course I had never read for anyone in my life, except maybe in the in the elementary area in my first year in school in Nassau. So I started out, I said, so where are you going tomorrow? So the chap, I guess his eyes flew open and he looked up on the stage and it all came to him, you know, that I was a fake. So he came running up onto the stage, and he snatched the script out of my hand, and he grabbed me - I was a kid, you know, and he spun me around, and he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and my belt in the back, and he marched me to the door. And on the way he said - these were his words, as I remember. He said, get out of here and stop wasting people's time. He said, why don't you go out and get yourself a job you can handle? And as he opened the door and as he chucked me out, his last line to me was, get yourself a job as a dishwasher or something.
GROSS: What did you do to try to improve your auditioning skills before going back to prove that this guy was wrong and that you could do it?
POITIER: Well, my first job was to - because I had this Caribbean accent, as you are, I'm sure you're acquainted with...
GROSS: Well, let me just stop you there and say I can hear the accent much more in this interview than I hear it in movies.
POITIER: Oh, yeah. Well, I had it very intensely, and - so much so that he made a remark about it. And I knew that from what he had said, that I had to do something about that first and foremost. So I saved up enough money to buy a radio. And I thought that the best way to correct it would to - to listen to a radio here in America and try to learn the sounds, the pronunciations and stuff from people I heard on the radio. And I did that, and I listened to the radio between dishwashing in terms of - in other words, when I'd get home, wherever I was sleeping, I would plug in this little radio and I would listen until I fell asleep and whatever was said on the radio, I would repeat it.
GROSS: So you went back to the American Negro Theatre Company (ph) and auditioned a second time?
POITIER: Yeah, I certainly did. That was my aim. I went back six months later and had to audition, but I was really - not really prepared because I didn't have a scene or a monologue from a play. I didn't know that one could buy such things in certain bookstores, so I bought what I thought would be appropriate for an audition. I bought a True Confessions magazine.
(LAUGHTER)
POITIER: And I memorized two or three paragraphs of this - of one of the stories in this thing. (Laughter) I didn't know any better. So I got up on the stage, and I'm reading this thing. And I was hardly through the first paragraph when they stopped me. Oh, my God - just thinking about it.
GROSS: So it's amazing, really, that you were able to actually get a part after all of this. What - just tell me - what was the thing that you did that you think convinced the right people at the theater company to give you a shot?
POITIER: They didn't give me a shot. They rejected me after the - they saw my audition. And I made some observations myself while I was there. I noticed that they did not have a janitor there. And I proposed that I would do the cleaning-up stuff if they would let me come and study. And the people to whom I was speaking, they were the administrators of the American Negro Theatre at that time. And they were somehow impressed with my determination, and they said, if you want to study that bad - that badly, you - OK, you can come in. And so they got - they took me in, and I would - I was the janitor.
GROSS: Let me advance the story a little further and take you to the early part of your movie career, specifically to "Blackboard Jungle," which was released in 1954. This was an important film for you. You had one of the leads in it. This is, like, the most famous high school film, I think - opens with "Rock Around The Clock." Glenn Ford plays the new teacher at a school just filled with juvenile delinquents. And in your first scene, he catches you and some of the other guys smoking in the bathroom. You're washing your hands with your back turned toward the teacher for most of this scene. Let's hear this scene.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKBOARD JUNGLE")
GLENN FORD: (As Richard Dadier) What's your name, wise guy?
POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) Me? Miller - Gregory Miller. Do you want me to spell it out for you so you won't forget it?
FORD: (As Richard Dadier) No, no. You don't have to do that. I'll remember, Miller.
POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) Sure, chief. You do that.
FORD: (As Richard Dadier) Or maybe you'd like to take a walk down to the principal's office right now with me? Is that what you want?
POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) You're holding all the cards, chief. You want to take me to see Mr. Warneke, you do just that.
FORD: (As Richard Dadier) Who's your home period teacher?
POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) You are, chief.
FORD: (As Richard Dadier) Well, why aren't you with the rest of the class?
POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) I already told you - came in to wash up, chief.
FORD: (As Richard Dadier) All right, then. Wash up. Just cut out that chief routine, you understand?
POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) Sure, chief. That's what I've been doing all the time.
GROSS: Sidney Poitier, how did you like your role in "Blackboard Jungle"?
POITIER: I liked it. I liked it. This young guy that I play, he was really on the cusp of finding himself in useful ways or losing himself to forces he couldn't quite understand by then. And so he had some complications. He had some complexities. He had some depth to him. And I liked playing him.
GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with Sidney Poitier in 2000. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Sidney Poitier in 2000.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: Well, you became the African American leading man in the '60s. What were some of the things that you felt you weren't allowed to play or express as an African American leading man in the '60s in Hollywood?
POITIER: I - that is a very good question. And the true answer is I have no such imagery of what I was not able to express because taken - taking the times as they were, the fact of my career was in itself remarkable...
GROSS: Right.
POITIER: ...Just the fact of it, you see. It would have been a luxury I would not have spent much time on trying to determine what was missing. What was missing was not so much for me but what was missing for the overwhelming majority of other minority actors at the time.
GROSS: Well, I'm glad you brought that up. What were some of the things you heard from your fellow actors at the time about stereotype roles that they had to play in Hollywood when you came to Hollywood?
POITIER: Yeah, well, you know, most of us, I think, were obliged to play what was available. I did not. I did not take advantage of that. I couldn't. It was not what I needed to do for my life. I had elected to be the kind of actor whose work would stand as a representation of my values.
GROSS: Let me talk with you about a scene that I think represents the kind of values that you're talking about. And this is a scene from "In The Heat Of The Night." In that film, Rod Steiger plays a local police chief in a Southern town. You're a homicide cop from Philadelphia passing through the Southern town, but you're arrested for being suspicious because you're a Black man from out of town carrying money in your wallet. The police chief doesn't really believe that you're a cop, so he calls your boss in Philly. And your boss suggests that you stay in the small Southern town to help them solve this big murder case that they're working on 'cause they don't have cops who are nearly as experienced as you are. So in this scene, you and Rod Steiger, who's still very skeptical of you, go to question one of the leading white businessmen in town. And I'll just explain, in case it's confusing as our listeners hear it, that as you're questioning him, the businessman slaps you, and then without missing a beat, you slap him right back. Here's the scene.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT")
LARRY GATES: (As Eric Endicott) Let me understand this. You two came here to question me.
POITIER: (As Virgil Tibbs) Well, your attitudes, Mr. Endicott, your points of view are a matter of record. Some people - well, let us say the people who work for Mr. Colbert - might reasonably regard you as the person least likely to mourn his passing. We were just trying to clarify some of the evidence. Was Mr. Colbert ever in this greenhouse, say, last night about midnight?
(SOUNDBITE OF SLAPPING)
GATES: (As Eric Endicott) Gillespie.
ROD STEIGER: (As Bill Gillespie) Yeah.
GATES: (As Eric Endicott) You saw it.
STEIGER: (As Bill Gillespie) I saw it.
GATES: (As Eric Endicott) Well, what are you going to do about it?
STEIGER: (As Bill Gillespie) I don't know.
GATES: (As Eric Endicott) I'll remember that. There was a time when I could have had you shot.
GROSS: Sidney Poitier, in your new memoir, you say that's not the way the scene was originally written. Originally, you didn't slap this businessman right after he slapped you. What did you do in the original scene, and why did you want to change it?
POITIER: The original scene called for the businessman to slap me and for me to absorb it and leave. I found it reprehensible that the writers, writing for that period, would not have written it differently. And I felt that the natural emotional response to being slapped as - and I'm speaking not as Sidney Poitier, but I'm speaking as a Philadelphia detective - that the natural response to a man slapping him, he's going to slap him right back. And I thought that that would be - since those kinds of moments were never found in American films - from the inception of films in this country, that kind of a scene, which would be electrifying on the screen, was always either avoided, not thought of, and I insisted that if they wished my participation in the film, that they would have to rewrite it to exemplify that.
They were - meaning the director, Norman Jewison, who was and is an exquisite artist, and the producer, Walter Mirisch, who is - I mean, his record is fabulous, and we've been very good friends all these years. Both of them said, hey, that's great. Let's do it that way. So we did it. And it indeed did turn out to be a highlight moment in that film, but it also spoke not just of the two characters. It spoke of our time. It spoke of the time in America when in films, at least, we could step up to certain realities.
GROSS: In that film, you use something that you've used in a lot of your films, a very indignant stare, a stare that carries a lot of weight. Can you talk about how you perfected that look?
POITIER: First of all, I don't acknowledge that I have such a look, I mean...
GROSS: Right, right.
POITIER: ...Because I see myself differently than other people see me obviously.
GROSS: Right. But is that, do you think, a look that came from real life or one that you just developed for your acting roles?
POITIER: No, my acting roles are, at the core of themselves, a part of me. So whatever that look is, I mean, it - I cannot manufacture such a look. It comes out of those forces that are churning internally in the individual, you know? And so I just have that look, I suppose, even when I'm thinking of things that are quite contrary to what the look might suggest.
GROSS: Well, I thank you so much for talking with us.
POITIER: Thank you for inviting me.
GROSS: Sidney Poitier, recorded in 2000. He died in 2022 at the age of 94. Our series Classic Films and Movie Icons continues tomorrow, featuring interviews from our archive with Dennis Hopper, who made his movie comeback with the film "Blue Velvet," and Isabella Rossellini, who starred in that film too. She's the daughter of two other movie icons, actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini. I hope you'll join us.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT")
RAY CHARLES: (Singing) In the heat of the night, seems like a cold sweat creeping cross my brow. Yeah.
GROSS: Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producers are Molly Seavy-Nesper and Sabrina Siewert. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT")
CHARLES: (Singing) ...Stare from the skies all mean and bright. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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