A core childhood memory of mine is being in a hotel room with my family from one of the times my parents used to drive us to and from Florida for vacation and "To Sir, with Love" being on TV. I was mesmerized. He was the classiest of all actors. RIP!

3 hours ago, Vee said:

I first became aware of him in Sneakers, of all things,

I loved that movie, too.  Terrific cast.  It was like watching a combination of "Three Days of the Condor" and "WarGames."

RIP Sidney Poitier. All movie award shows need to give him his own in memoriam segment.

I remember reading Donald Bogle's book from the '80s about black entertainers of Hollywood, and the passages about the backlash against Sidney Poitier, his being called "Super Sidney" and so on. It reminds me of some of the backlash Whitney Houston faced when she became too successful, but as Sidney himself said, he was the only successful/high-profile black actor for a long time, so he had to be everything to everyone. He seemed to seriously scale down his public role at his career peak due to that backlash, and likely the ugly national climate at the time. I wonder what roles he might have gotten and been able to create if he hadn't hit that backlash, similar to how Denzel Washington has managed to have a lot of high-profile parts through decade after decade. 

I think I was more interested in some of his earlier films like Edge of the City, although that would probably be seen poorly today.

Edited January 8, 20223 yr by DRW50

14 hours ago, Khan said:

I loved that movie, too.  Terrific cast.  It was like watching a combination of "Three Days of the Condor" and "WarGames."

And upon revisiting (I have close family who were very involved in early computer security, who saw it with me and came out of that '60s computer culture depicted with Redford and Kingsley in the film), way too prescient for today. But Poitier gave it such dignity and gravitas - despite such a stacked cast, as a kid I'd never seen anyone like him. (I'd grown up with The Cosby Show, but Poitier was a much more serious presence than Cosby.)

Edited January 8, 20223 yr by Vee

1/6 I couldn’t even begin this morning…Losing my dearest of brothers, Sidney Poitier, is like losing a piece of myself. We were joined at the hip from our times scraping to get by, coming up in New York in the 50’s, to achieving all of our dreams & working together in Hollywood

— Quincy Jones (@QuincyDJones) January 8, 2022

(1/3) “A tiny bit of myself is lost when my friends are gone,” Sidney Poitier wrote in his book LIFE BEYOND MEASURE. My dear Sidney, an enormous part of my soul weeps at your passing. In your ninety-four years on this planet, you left an indelible mark with your extraordinary… pic.twitter.com/VzVR6FOLWM

— Halle Berry (@halleberry) January 7, 2022

Oh, lord, now Marilyn Bergman has died.

 

Lisa Loopner pays her respect.

 

 

 

  

Edited January 8, 20223 yr by victoria foxton

Maybe we should just skip 2022 and go straight to 2023?!

This year has not started well at all...... 

Marilyn Bergman co-wrote so many of Babs best songs, including the entire song score to Yentl. And of course this gem.

 

 

https://e2gsports.com/harold-williams-weekly-wrestling-glow-legend-matilda-the-hun-passes-away-at-age-73/
 

Idk how to embed from Twitter (really don’t use it, honestly), but Matilda the Hun from the original GLOW series has passed away. She was one of the show’s two heartbeats, IMO, along with Mountain Fiji. You could tell from her appearances at their reunions that she loved the experience and the sisterhood they shared because of it. 

 

 

Jesus, it's 2016 all over again.

Now I know how people who lived through the Dark Ages must've felt.

 

 

 

 

Dwayne Hickman, the actor best known as Dobie from “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” died on Sunday morning due to complications from Parkinson’s disease. He was 87.