Trailblazing actor, director and Hollywood icon Sidney Poitier has written a new memoir, Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter, which, as the title implies is his life story told in letters to his great-granddaughter. His previous memoirs, This Life and The Measure of a Man have been wildly successful (Measure of a Man was an Oprah Book Club selection) and illuminating, letting us know a bit more about this living Hollywood legend and the struggles and obstacles he has faced and emerged triumphant.

In 1967, Sidney Poitier had three box-office smashes: “To Sir, With Love,” “In the Heat of the Night,” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” It was the career apex of a trailblazing actor who had vaulted over Hollywood’s color barrier to become Hollywood’s first black leading man, upturning the stereotypical roles inhabited by Butterfly McQueen, Stepin Fetchit and the like. Poitier gave the movies a bold new image of an African American man who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his white counterparts. That he did this during the turbulent years of the civil rights era made his impact even greater.

Then, suddenly, the love affair was over. In the racial and political fury of the late ‘60, Poitier and the button-down, impossibly noble characters he played became outdated symbols of slow, moderate progress in a country that was in rapid upheaval. He worked decades longer without another major hit, gradually receding into the role of elder statesman — revered by African American actors and filmmakers who passed through doors he opened, but seemingly ignored by just about everyone else.

What will Sidney Poitier’s legacy be to future generations, those born in the Barack Obama era and beyond? It’s an unasked question that resonates through “Life Beyond Measure,” Poitier’s third memoir. Composed as a series of letters to Poitier’s great-granddaughter Ayele, born in 2005 (when Poitier was in his late 70s), the book is equal parts family history, autobiography and ruminations on love, faith, life, death and personal strengths and foibles.

Poitier never lectures or condescends, but “Life Beyond Measure” still has the feel of an old man waxing nostalgic and philosophical to a little girl bouncing on his lap. He revisits oft-told tales from the arc of his life, from his upbringing in a dirt-poor paradise in the Bahamas, to arriving in New York alone at 16 and sleeping in bus-station pay toilets, to the job search that led him to an ad for “actors wanted.” Here, though, the stories are used as object lessons and entrees to broader essays about the world Poitier bequeaths to the little girl. It’s all written in simple, gentle prose that’s restrained even by Poitier’s own standards; not kid stuff exactly, but you won’t find the four-letter words or the simmering anger that fueled Poitier’s two previous books, “This Life” and “The Measure of a Man.”

Source: Breaking barriers

Read an excerpt of Sidney Poitier’s book.

Here’s a look at some of Poitier’s early groundbreaking work….

No Way Out earns its place in the history books thanks to the searing feature film debut of Sidney Poitier, offering a formidable performance as a doctor tending to slum residents whose ethics are put to the test when confronted with blind racism, personified by Richard Widmark as the hateful robber Ray Biddle.

Source: Wikipedia “No Way Out”

Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark in “No Way Out“ (1950)

Here is the trailer for “No Way Out”

Blackboard Jungle is another groundbreaking film, in which Sidney Poitier starred as a teacher in an inner-city school coping with students who exhibited disrupting and sometimes violent behavior.

The film has also been credited with sparking the Rock and Roll revolution by featuring Bill Haley & His Comets’s Rock Around the Clock, initially a B-side, over the film’s opening credits, establishing that song as an instant classic. The music led to a huge teenage audience for the film: their exuberance sometimes overflowed into violence and vandalism at screenings.^[1] In this sense, it has been seen as marking the start of a period of visible teenage rebellion in the late 20th century.

Source: Wikipedia – Blackboard Jungle

Sidney Poitier and Glenn Ford in “Blackboard Jungle” (1955)

Here is a scene from “Blackboard Jungle” – opening day at school

Sidney Poitier won the Oscar for “Lillies of the Field,” the first black ever to win a Best Actor Academy Award.

Sidney Poitier with Lilia Skala in “Lilies of the Field”

Final scene of “Lilies of the Field”

Sidney Poitier’s 1964 Oscar acceptance speech for “Lilies of the Field”

That’s just a small sampling of Sidney Poitier’s impressive, trailblazing early work in Hollywood. In an era in which movies were dominated with images of black stereotypes, Poitier’s dignified leading man roles were remarkable indeed.