Word: poitier
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ghetto involved here is Chicago's black belt, where Scriptwriter Hansberry lived as a child. The hero (Sidney Poitier), his wife (Ruby Dee), his twelve-year-old son (Stephen Perry), his mother (Claudia McNeil) and his sister (Diana Sands) are all jammed together in three small rooms, toilet down the hall. Wife and mother do cleaning for white folks, sister is a pre-med student, hero drives a Cadillac for a downtown business executive-and hates it. At night he paces his low-rent prison and snarls at the walls: "I got to change my life...
...Young Men (Hall Bartlett; Columbia) expertly blends two traditions rich in cinematic cliche-the war movie and the fearless-denunciation-of-race-bigotry movie. Sidney Poitier, an accomplished actor so discriminated against because of his color that he will probably never be allowed to play a character who is not strong, sensitive and noble, is a Marine sergeant whose unit is chopped to pieces during a Korean war skirmish. The only officer dies, and Poitier takes over, despite a near mutiny by Paul Richards, a race-baiter who calls him "night-fighter." and Alan Ladd, a surly type...
...usual in such dramas, the outfit's radio is bashed up. Poitier announces that despite its losses, the unit will follow its original orders, which were to garrison a farmhouse and hold a mountain pass against a regiment or so of Chinese. He makes a grim wisecrack about his color ("You'll be able to see me real good up there against the snow") and manfully leads his men through a mine field. Nothing that follows is very startling. The farmhouse contains the beautiful Eurasian girl (Argentine Actress Ana St. Clair) who is saved by Poitier from...
...Chinese tank crushes Ladd's leg, and guess whose blood sustains him during an amputation? There is barely time for a scene heavy with symbolism, as Racist Richards queasily watches the corpuscles flow from Poitier to Ladd. Then the Chinese attack in force. Poitier shoos his men and Actress St. Clair out the back door of the farmhouse. Refusing to leave Ladd, he grasps a BAR and stands off the baddies until his bullets...