Sidney Poitier: actor, activist, and trailblazing heartthrob
Tributes have cascaded in since Sidney Poitier died. And so they should have. He was an unparalleled actor, a committed activist, and a beloved family member. He was also, frankly, a heartthrob.
Tributes have cascaded in since Sidney Poitier died last week at 94. And so they should have. He was, as many have noted, an unparalleled actor, a committed activist, and a beloved family member. He was also, frankly, a heartthrob – quite literally tall, dark and handsome.
Poitier first became a movie star in the 1950s – an era where most of the Black men in movies and on television had little choice asthe radio) or dim (Stepin Fetchit) or cast to be . (Louis Armstrong was a musical genius and a race man, but in the 60s and 70s his Cheshire Cat grin was an embarrassment to many people my age; it seemed obsequious to young people newly enamored of Black nationalism.) Sidney was none of that.
