Five Things You Might Not Know about Sidney Poitier’s Early Years

Sidney Poitier is revered as the iconic African American actor who broke new ground as Hollywood’s first black leading man. As the Museum opens its nine-film Poitier retrospective, which runs April 9–17, 2016, here are five things you might not know about his early years, in his own words.

“I started my film career where the museum is now housed,” said Sidney Poitier, about his appearance in a short training film called From Whence Help Cometh, made in 1949, at the Astoria studio which was then in use by the U.S. Army Signal Corp.

"I'm going to go to Hollywood and become a cowboy," a young Sidney told his sister. Growing up in the Caribbean (on Cat Island and then in Nassau, Bahamas), Poitier watched a lot of American movies, many of them westerns, and he fell in love with them. His directorial debut in 1972 would be the revisionist western Buck and the Preacher.

“When I was very young, I came to New York. And I had no friends or relatives here so what I did to earn a living was I washed dishes a lot.” In those days, he looked for dishwashing jobs in the classified section of The Amsterdam News, where he one day stumbled upon an ad for “Actors Wanted.”

“I bought a radio. From that day on for six months solid, I listened to that radio every day, every night, when I wasn't at work.” His first audition with the American Negro Theater was a total disaster in part because of his strong Caribbean accent. “I intended to change my accent, so I listened to Americans speaking.”

“So I understudied for Harry Belafonte.” And when Belafonte did not show up in their first student production at the American Negro Theater, Poitier went on stage. A casting director in the audience then offered him a role in the Broadway production of Lysistrata.

These quotes come from a 1989 talk at the Museum featuring Poitier in conversation with Richard Koszarski, then the Museum’s senior curator of film, and historian Donald Bogle. This event took place just after MoMI feted Poitier at its fourth annual Salute (and the first one since it opened to the public in 1988). Read the whole transcript here.

Labyrinth is a film that has always meant a great deal to me personally. It feels particularly poignant to watch this film as we remember David Bowie. None of us who worked on Labyrinth will forget how kind Mr Bowie was to every person on this film. Whether dancing with the goblins or playing with baby Toby Froud, sharing a cigarette with my brother or having a pint in the studio pub, he was kind to everyone. We were so lucky that my father asked David to play Jareth and that he accepted. Brave man. Sometimes people forget that David wrote Jareth's songs. Performers on the closing song "Underground" include great musician friends of his like Chaka Khan and Luther Vandross. It was a great, fun film to make and he was an essential part of it. My mother said that Labyrinth was the most personal of my father's films. That may be because he had three daughters who he watched go through that transition from girl to woman. For me, this film is about choices. Watch out for all the many choices, bad and misguided, that Sarah makes. In some ways Jim struggled the most with the ending. In the final scene, when Sarah is putting away her childhood, she stops and sees her friends and realizes that she doesn't have to let it all go in order to grow up. Jim gives her permission to hold on to the part of her fantasy life that gives her emotional support, just not the part that obsesses and controls her. It is a message that could apply to any of us. Thank you for enjoying this film.

—Cheryl Henson

We have many dedicated members, but every once in a while a member surprises us with his devotion. When Samuel Rojas posted on Facebook that he had seen over 100 films at the museum, we knew we had a case of extreme cinephilia on our hands. Below is an interview with him about his moviegoing habits, favorite films, and more. 

You've reached the 100 film mark: how does it feel to reach that milestone? What have been some of your favorite programs at the museum?  I am happy that many of the films in that number were outside of my normal purview, I pushed myself to see more films outside of my personal scope and the museum gives more than a few chances to experience some very unique works that aren't often available. I've loved the Halloween programs; it's pretty fun to see horror films around that time of the year. I think Halloween was the first film I went to see after I obtained my initial membership. 

I love See It Big! too and it serves as a statement of sorts: you can see films at home in more than a few ways but watching in a house of cinema, designed for the sole purpose of film is something that can't be matched to this day.

The Mizoguchi retrospective was a major highlight; he was someone I was unfamiliar with and the body of work shown was fantastic! 

Widely credited as the director who revolutionized Tamil-language cinema—an industry just as prolific as its far better known “Bollywood” Hindi-language cousin—Mani Ratnam is that rarest of film directors nowadays: an artist capable of making exquisitely crafted, hugely entertaining, yet intelligent and provocative films on a range of social and political issues. The false dichotomies that are used to categorize films—art vs. commercial cinema, entertainment vs. political filmmaking—disappear when one sees how easily Ratnam is able to combine aspects of all of them into his work.  

Born into a film family—his father was a noted film distributor—Ratnam was sent off to study business in Mumbai, earning his degree in 1977 and landing a job with management firm soon after. But there was celluloid in his blood, and soon he drifted into film production, writing and directing his first film,Pallavi Anu Pallavi, in 1983. Although it fared poorly at the box office, his talent was definitely noted, and soon he had invitations from a number of producers to develop projects. His 1986 Mouna Ragamwas seen as a decisive new direction in Tamil cinema, with its closely observed tale of difficult first months of a newly-wed couple. That was followed by Nayakan (1987), Ratnam’s gloss on The Godfather, which became an enormous hit all over India and received three national film awards. Without any doubt, after Nayakan, Mani Ratnam was widely considered one of India’s leading directors, a position he managed to maintain for almost 30 years.  

If one can sum up the special quality of Mani Ratnam’s work, it might be to think of it as tales of “innocents adrift.” So often Ratnam’s protagonists believe that the world is a better place than it actually is; the audience, sadly knowing more than the characters do (at least about this), feel sorry and even protective of them, knowing their eventual education won’t be long in coming—even if they get blown up in the process. A consummate craftsman himself, it is clear that Ratnam demands the absolute best from his collaborators, and it is no accident that so many of them would continue working for him for years.  

Mani Ratnam is a treasure, and this program offers a rare opportunity to see his gorgeous films on the big screen, presented in 35mm. —Richard Peña

Museum of the Moving Image mourns the passing of video game pioneer Ralph Baer (1922–2014). In 1966, Baer designed a prototype for an interactive digital game that could be played through a television receiver. This prototype, known as the “Brown Box,” was licensed by Magnavox and released in 1972 as the Magnavox Odyssey, the world’s first commercial home video game console. For this and other seminal contributions, Baer is known as the “father of video games.”

Read more about Baer and see examples of his work in the Museum’s collection here.

"Like most of Kieślowski's earlier feature films, Blind Chance, the director's third full-length feature, is a technically straightforward production, devoid of special effects. It was completed in 1981 on the eve of martial law and was immediately banned. It was finally released in 1986. Although not a political film, it nevertheless reflects the political reality of its time. Its significance lies in the philosophical exploration of chance in human existence, and the part we play in shaping our destinies through our ability to make conscious choices. However, more than just a fascinating account of how chance influences fate, Blind Chance brings up the question of how one ought to live."

Read the full article: Fate and Choice in Kieślowski's Blind Chance by Annette Insdorf

Opening today at the museum is a new animation by the artist Ezra Wube. Commissioned especially for the Museum and organized by Jason Eppink, Associate Curator of Digital Media, the piece is based on present-day observations from Wube's personal experiences, walks and interactions around the museum's surrounding neighborhood. Here's a description from Wube about his process: 

I began with the idea of walking in the four directions from the museum building (north, south, east, and west), to experience the area. To make the animation I painted scenes from memory and photographed them. Each frame was painted on top of the previous one, each scene triggering the following scene. Memory interests me, perhaps because of my own personal biography. Time and place are not static for me. I grew up in Ethiopia, and now I live in the US. Not having a singular home might have influenced the fluidity of place and time in my work. When places and time continuously shift memory becomes a vehicle that connects and makes meanings to understand my existence. The performative aspect of the short reflects the bodily experience of the story. The body becomes the only definite witness that connects multiple realities. Sound was collected from the actual places I depicted in the animation. I remade the conversations, music and sounds of the environment. —Ezra Wube

Museum of the Moving Image mourns the passing of master makeup artist Dick Smith (1922-2014). Smith’s pioneering work on such films as Little Big Man, The Exorcist, Amadeus, The Godfather, and many more, forever changed the way special-effects makeup is created and applied. Smith’s legacy will endure through the work of the many special effects makeup artists to whom he was a generous mentor.

                                                                    Kenji Mizoguchi on the set of Ugetsu

"...Ugetsu Monogotari is Kenji Mizoguchi's masterpiece, and one which ranks him on equal terms with Griffith, Eisenstein, and Renoir. 

The art of Kenji Mizoguchi is to prove that real life is at one and the same time elsewhere, and yet here, in its strange and radiant beauty." 

"There was a wonderful sense of revolution and innovation in the studio in Queens."—Gloria Swanson, on the Astoria studio, subject of a new exhibition now on view at Museum of the Moving Image

Photo: John Barrymore and Carole Lombard in Twentieth Century (1934). Courtesy of Sony Repertory.

If film critics Andrew Sarris and Molly Haskell didn't exist, Howard Hawks would have had to invent them; a garrulous, witty cinephile who became a paragon in his field, a woman who could match him insight for insight, and distinguish herself in an enclosed, nearly all-male world. Chief Curator David Schwartz interviewed them about Hawks in 2008 for Moving Image Source:

[Schwartz] Howard Hawks is a great example of a director who was rescued by film critics. SARRIS: Well, by the French! Could you talk about how that happened? Hawks was successful as a director in Hollywood, but not really known. SARRIS: He was successful, but he wasn't prestigious. HASKELL: Wasn't taken seriously. SARRIS: I think he was only nominated for one Oscar, for Sergeant York. And he never won an Oscar, of course. The first time I heard about him was when my friend Eugene Archer, went to Paris in the 1950s on a Fulbright. He wrote me a letter and said, "Who the hell is Howard Hawks?" He had signed a contract for a book that he was going to do about six directors: Elia Kazan, John Ford, George Stevens, and so on. The Cahiers people said, "Ugh! What about Howard Hawks and Hitchcock?"