{"id":1197274,"date":"2022-01-07T14:04:47","date_gmt":"2022-01-07T19:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1197274"},"modified":"2022-01-07T14:04:51","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T19:04:51","slug":"hollywood-legend-sidney-poitier-dies-at-94","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/hollywood-legend-sidney-poitier-dies-at-94\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood Legend Sidney Poitier Dies At 94"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fhollywood-legend-sidney-poitier-dies-at-94%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1197274&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Sidney Poitier, the first black actor to win an Oscar for a leading role, died Thursday at his home in the Bahamas, an official for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Bahamas confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>Poitier was born in Miami as the youngest of nine children but grew up in the island nation, then a British colony. The son of tomato farmers, he moved to New York City as a teenager, working as a dishwasher and other odd jobs while breaking into the theatrical world. An older employee at a restaurant where he was worked mentored him in the evenings, teaching him to read and improve his diction by reading newspapers together.<\/p>\n<p>Poitier\u2019s silver screen break came when he was cast as doctor who must attend to racist patients in Joseph L. Mankiewicz\u2019s 1950 film, \u201cNo Way Out.\u201d From there, he blazed a trail in Hollywood, becoming renowned for the grace and dignity of his performances in classic films like \u201cLilies of the Field,\u201d \u201cTo Sir With Love,\u201d \u201cIn the Heat of the Night,\u201d and \u201cGuess Who\u2019s Coming to Dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI made films when the only other [b]lack on the lot was the shoeshine boy,\u201d he told Newsweek in 1988. \u201cI was kind of the lone guy in town.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Poitier\u2019s rise coincided with the civil rights movement, and he became in many American\u2019s eyes a symbol of racial equality. As Aram Goudsouzian wrote in his 2004 biography \u201cSidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon,\u201d as a performer, Poitier embodied a \u201ccool boil\u201d that \u201cstruck a delicate balance, revealing racial frustration, but tacitly assuring a predominantly white audience that blacks would eschew violence and preserve social order.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He broke barriers for black actors with his first Academy Award nomination in 1959, starring alongside Tony Curtis in &nbsp;\u201cThe Defiant Ones,\u201d and made history in 1964 when he won \u201cBest Actor\u201d for his portrayal of a handyman who helps a group of German immigrant nuns restore their chapel in \u201cLilies of the Field.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 1967, theater owners named him the number one movie star \u2014 a first for a black performer.<\/p>\n<p>Denzel Washington summed up Poitier\u2019s impact in his own 2002 Oscar acceptance speech, saying, \u201cBefore Sidney, African-American actors had to take supporting roles in major studio films that were easy to cut out in certain parts of the country. But you couldn\u2019t cut Sidney Poitier out of a Sidney Poitier picture. He was the reason a movie got made; the first solo, above-the-title, African-American movie star.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 2000, Poitier <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oprah.com\/omagazine\/Oprah-Interviews-Sidney-Poitier#ixzz40HRCUWFw\">told<\/a> Oprah Winfrey that his awareness of his legacy as black pioneer led him to live his life and conduct himself in such a way to bring honor to the black community. \u201cIt\u2019s been an enormous responsibility,\u201d&nbsp;he said, \u201cand I accepted it, and I lived in a way that showed how I respected that responsibility. I had to. In order for others to come behind me, there were certain things I had to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added, \u201cI had in mind what was expected of me \u2014 not just what other blacks expected but what my mother and father expected. And what I expected of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/p>\n<p><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sidney Poitier, the first black actor to win an Oscar for a leading role, died Thursday at his home in the Bahamas, an official for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Bahamas confirmed. Poitier was born in Miami as the youngest of nine children but grew up in the island nation, then a British &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1197274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1197274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1197274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1197274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1197274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}