meropegaunts:

“You listen to me. You say you don’t want to tell me how to live my life. So what do you think you’ve been doing? You tell me what rights I’ve got or haven’t got, and what I owe to you for what you’ve done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing! If you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you’re supposed to do! Because you brought me into this world. And from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me like I will owe my son if I ever have another. But you don’t own me! You can’t tell me when or where I’m out of line, or try to get me to live my life according to your rules. You don’t even know what I am, Dad, you don’t know who I am. You don’t know how I feel, what I think. And if I tried to explain it the rest of your life you will never understand. You are 30 years older than I am. You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it’s got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight of you be off our backs! You understand, you’ve got to get off my back! Dad… Dad, you’re my father. I’m your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man. Now, I’ve got a decision to make, hm? And I’ve got to make it alone, and I gotta make it in a hurry. So would you go out there and see after my mother?” - Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner [x]

kimnovaks:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIDNEY POITIER

February 20, 1927

“I’m OK with myself, with history, my work, who I am and who I was.”

And Mrs. Prentice says that, like her husband, I’m a burned out old shell of a man who cannot even remember what it’s like to love a woman the way her son loves my daughter. And strange as it seems, that’s the first statement made to me all day with which I am prepared to take issue. Because I think you’re wrong. You’re as wrong as you can be.

Sidney Poitier made his feature debut in No Way Out (1950) and developed a lifelong friendship with his co-star, Richard Widmark.

“He was the first person in this town to invite me to dinner,” Poitier said. “I was always grateful for that because this town at that time was new to me. Widmark softened that for me. It was a reaching out. It was an embracing. He chose to let me know that I was welcome.”

Filming, however, was a tense experience for Widmark, who recalled, “I had to say these horrible things to him in the movie and immediately afterward I’d go to him and say, ‘I-I’m sorry, Sid. It’s not really me’,” which Poitier would laugh off.

“He was always apologizing to me about it, you know? And I tried to get across to him that I’m an actor too and that’s what we do as actors. But he really went deep into that character….he’s a good man…a good good man.”

At the 1964 Academy Awards, Sidney Poitier receives the Oscar for the Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field. He is presented the Oscar by Anne Bancroft and congratulated (from behind the curtains) by Jack Lemmon!