Word: poitier
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Defiant Ones. Stanley Kramer's film about a Southern chain-gang escape, with drama and photography that are black and white, and characterizations that are expertly blended shades of grey; with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier (TIME...
...Poitier), chained together at the wrist, are the only two to escape when a prison truck cracks up in a ditch. Linked but loathing, they stumble through swampland, nearly drown fording a river, nearly wrench their arms from their sockets clawing out of a deep clay pit. When they pause, it is not to rest but to spit forth their hatred. Telling Poitier why he is a "nigger," Curtis says: "It's like callin' a spade a spade. I'm a hunky. I don't try to argue out of it." Replies Actor Poitier: "You ever...
...helps them smash the chain, spends the night with Joker Jackson, and persuades him to flee with her while Cullen heads overland to hop a northbound freight. In a scene that would be the worst sort of corn if the script faltered, Curtis learns that the woman has directed Poitier through a quicksand bog. Their painfully borne chain, even broken, has bound them irrevocably together, and Curtis plunges after him to sure capture by the law. Behind the coupled heroes, the moviemakers have sketched a mud-grimed tableau of the blood-happy townsmen giving chase and a soul-weary sheriff...
First, Singer Harry Belafonte turned down an offer of a part. Then Actor Sidney (Edge of the City) Poitier quit his co-starring role as Porgy, declared that the show was a "classic," but "as a creative artist, I just do not have enough interest in the piece." Goldwyn's version of the incident: Poitier quit after his demand to approve the script had been refused. Said Goldwyn: "If Poitier had seen a script and the way we are treating Porgy and Bess, he would be excited to do it." Goldwyn would name no names of other entertainers...
...Spanish-mossbacked Southern gentleman whose vassals are so happy that they all mass by ol' man river to sing hallelujah whenever Gable's steamboat comes round the bend. Yvonne is also cooing Gable's glory, though in more intimate circumstances. The trouble comes from Sidney Poitier, a pampered boss Negro whom Gable raised as a son; Sidney has turned bitter, would like nothing better than to plant kindly Massa Clark in the col', col' groun'. In the fury of his ingratitude, he is obliged to cuff Mulatto De Carlo for flouncing around like uppity...