A recent Apple + documentary on the seminal African American actor Sidney Poitier. Tracing his roots from the Caribbean to his sojourn to America where he found himself as an actor in a Black Dramatic troupe & developing a rivalry w/up & comer Harry Belafonte, both actors would invariably be up for the same roles w/Poitier luckily besting him in some key parts namely 1958's The Defiant Ones. Once he won the coveted Best Actor Oscar for 1963's Lilies in the Field, his standing as an actor vaulted him into the stratosphere making him more than just a black actor but an actor whose race would be the onus for all of those who would follow. Late interviews w/Poitier detail his standing as an actor (which in the 70's he would parlay into a career as a successful director w/1980's Stir Crazy, the biggest financial success for a black director up to that point) & as a family man where his first marriage floundered after he had an affair w/Diahann Carroll & then later to his last wife, Joanna Shimkus, a white woman. Luckily most audiences saw him return to acting in a handful of films in the 80's & 90's (Little Nikita, Sneakers, The Jackal) to see what everyone else knew when he first hit the scene.
