Irish Examiner View: Farewell, Mr Tibbs

Sidney Poitier opened the door for successive generations of other actors to walk through.

Sidney Poitier poses with his honorary Oscar during the 74th annual Academy Awards on March 24, 2002, in Los Angeles. Picture: Doug Mills, AP

The actor Sidney Poitier, who died yesterday at the age of 94, was a pioneering stage presence and film star in an era where black faces were rarely seen in leading or heroic roles.

Poitier, born in Miami, won the Best Actor Oscar for Lilies in the Field, a romantic comedy based on the premise that he, a travelling handyman, helps a group of German, Austrian, and Hungarian nuns establish a chapel in the Arizona desert.

But Poitier is best remembered for films with social and political themes. He starred in Cry The Beloved Country, which was filmed in South Africa, and which turned him into a lifelong anti-apartheid activist.

His most gripping role was as the Philadelphia homicide detective Virgil Tibbs investigating a murder in a racist Mississippi town. His confrontation in the 1967 thriller In The Heat Of The Night with the calculating redneck police chief Gillespie, played faultlessly by Rod Steiger, is one of the great and riveting encounters of movie history. 

He opened the door for successive generations of other actors to walk through.