Sidney Poitier’s two most iconic moments as an actor both occur in the 1967 Oscar-winning drama “In the Heat of the Night.” The first is his famous declaration “They call me Mister Tibbs!” The seco…
.” The first is his famous declaration “They call me Mister Tibbs!” The second arrives when his big-city detective is questioning a Mississippi cotton tycoon, who slaps Tibbs for implying that he’s a criminal. Tibbs slaps him back — an act of shocking-at-the-time defiance that Poitier improvised, and one that gave a jolt to film history. It connected, electrifyingly, with the militancy of the late ’60s, and left no doubt that Poitier was a figure of mythological magnitude.
At times, there was a perception that Poitier, due to the groundbreaking nature of his stardom, played characters who were rigorously idealized, walking role models who may have been a bit too perfect for their own good. Yet that’s actually a specious view of Poitier’s fulsome artistry — the liquid emotional dance of it.
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