Weirdly, the movie wasn’t in black and white — but I remember it that way, for some reason.
I hesitate to put this out there because I KNOW I’m doing this rather randomly. I don’t think in those terms (best black this, best white that), so when my brain tries to run a report based on such criteria, it doesn’t operate as efficiently as it ought.
But I had to react to this piece in The Guardian about all-time top film performances by black actors. The story is from way back in October, but I just saw it, and now is when I’m reacting.
It’s headlined “Sidney Poitier’s Mister Tibbs voted best performance by black actor in public poll.” And that’s what I’m reacting to.
Don’t get me wrong. I thought “In the Heat of the NIght” was pretty awesome, one of the greats of the decade. It was groundbreaking, with talented actors skillfully depicting characters groping their way through unfamiliar roles and relationships. This was done, in 1967, with better understanding and fresh open-mindedness than we usually see today. Everybody was good, from Poitier and Steiger down to Warren Oates.
I also enjoyed the sequel, the title of which was the most memorable line in the original.
But I’m sorry — I’m going to have to go with “To Sir, with Love” as Poitier’s best performance. OK, so bits of it were mawkish and I first saw it at an impressionable time when high-school themes were particularly appealing (when I had yet to attend high school). But the character was unique, and drawn with masterful nuance. And the song still kind of gives me chills. (OK, guys, go ahead and give me the business, but I think it was better even than when Jim Brown threw those grenades down the vents to fry the Nazis in “The Dirty Dozen.” So there.)
Anyway, here are the top five from the British Film Institute poll that The Guardian was reporting on:
- Sidney Poitier (In the Heat of the Night, 1967)
- Pam Grier (Jackie Brown, 1997)
- Michael K Williams (The Wire, 2002-08)
- Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave, 2013)
- Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption, 1994)
As much as I dug Pam Grier in “Jackie Brown,” the only one I can put on my list is Michael K. Williams in “The Wire.”
Here’s my initial stab at a personal list — which I will no doubt amend when y’all remind me of performances I’m forgetting. (I wish The Guardian had linked to the 100 performances on the list the poll respondents chose from — that would have helped.)
I’m not going to rank mine — I’m just going to list five, and see what y’all think:
- Sidney Poitier in “To Sir, with Love” — I already explained this above. Sort of.
- Michael K. Williams in “The Wire.” — You could pick Idris Elba’s Stringer Bell, or any of a dozen or so powerful performances by black actors in this series. But Williams steals every scene in which he appears. Best scene ever — when he traipses to the grocery to pick up some Cheerios early one morning, and on the way back a dealer tosses his goods out the window at him, because the cry of “Omar comin’!” strikes such terror. (“They don’t have the honey-nut?”)
- Chiwetel Ejiofor in… wait for it… “Serenity.” Nope, not “12 Years a Slave” or anything else most people would cite. I thought his portrayal of The Operative was practically hypnotic. Have you ever see such a thoughtful, sensitive, really bad guy? And the sword thing appealed to the 12-year-old in me.
- Danny Glover in “Places in the Heart.” — Yeah, he’s great in lots of things — his cold-hearted cop-gone-bad in “Witness” was amazing. But I loved the way his character stuck to the role that society assigned to a black man in Texas in the ’30s, while showing his intelligence and experience in guiding helpless widow Sally Field to grow the crop that saves the day — even though his tactful assertiveness nearly costs him his life. Love the scene when he distracts the grieving boy by making a fuss over what bad luck it is to rock an empty chair.
- Butterfly McQueen in “Gone With The Wind” — Yes, I’m being a bit perverse here, overlooking Hattie McDaniel’s much larger role, for which she rightly received an Oscar. But “Prissie” was just so… inventive. What a weird character, played so convincingly! When she meanders through the gate singing to herself just before the famous “birthin’ babies” line — was she tripping, or what? (OK, I admit it. I’m deliberately refusing to choose the obvious performance lest Barry in “High Fidelity” mock my list.)
I consider this to be a start on a good list. I’m eager to see what y’all suggest…
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My first thought was Cicely Tyson in The Diary of Ms. Jane Pittman. Am I the only one who thinks this?
No, I think a lot of people would include that. It was a landmark performance…
In 1987, Pauline Kael speculated in the pages of the New Yorker that “Morgan Freeman might be the greatest American actor.” And most people at the time, myself included, thought, “who’s Morgan Freeman?” She made this speculation as far back as 1980 (she claimed) on the basis of stage performances, but the movie that made her pose the question in her column was “Street Smart.” It’s been a long time—I’ll have to watch that again, but your post reminded me of her acclaiming his talents long before most people had ever heard of him.
He’s always good. He adds class to anything he’s in…
Dang, you know what? I meant to include Denzel Washington in “Glory”…
He was great in Glory. His character’s relationship with the others made the movie.
Since you’re mentioning Denzel, I would just like to cast a vote for his performances in both Philadelphia and Malcolm X. Of course Hanks got most of the attention for Philadelphia but Denzel’s character (and specifically how he conveyed that character) was just as essential to the film.
1. Cuba Gooding, Jr. – Jerry Maguire
2. Eddie Murphy – Trading Places
3. Denzel Washington – Fallen
4. Eddie Murphy – Beverly Hills Cop
5. Morgan Freeman – Driving Miss Daisy
I almost did two lists. One for great performances, the other for personal favorites. Eddie Murphy in Trading Places would have been on the personal favorites list…
In deference to the Barry factor, I almost included Laurence Fishburne as “Clean” in Apocalypse Now. Or maybe even Giancarlo Esposito’s bit part in Trading Places. Esoteric enough that I think even Barry would have been reluctantly impressed.
Another I wish I’d squeezed into my list: Brock Peters as Tom Robinson in “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Powerful, compelling performance…
When he says “No, sir, I did NOT!” It sort of gives chills…
In no particular order – and not chosen for any one performance but rather for consistently solid performances in good roles:
Viola Davis
Lawrence Fishburne
Forrest Whitaker
Don Cheadle
Samuel L. Jackson
Also, an honorable mention goes to Regina Taylor as Lilly Harper in “I’ll Fly Away,” a great series about the South in the Civil Rights era.
I was interested that The Guardian reported this:
Of course The Guardian, being The Guardian, hastily added:
Whew, nice save, Guardian! For a moment there I thought I could stop checking my privilege.
But seriously, the fact that a higher-than-proportional percentage of speaking character doesn’t mean they are represented as fully as whites — there are speaking parts, then there are speaking parts.
Still, the stat is a pleasant thing to know.
I’m a bit surprised by the Hispanics thing, though. It doesn’t feel that way, but maybe it’s true…
Maybe the Hispanic representation feels proportional to me because I live in South Carolina rather than Texas. But my experience of SC is atypical, since every Sunday I attend a Mass that about 99 percent Hispanic.
On the other hand, 14.2% black representation ought to seem low to us in SC, since our population is close to 30 percent black…
Number 1, Morgan Freeman in just about any role he plays in a movie. The rest of the list is in no particular order.
Danny Glover.
Sidney Poitier. One of his better performances was in “Shoot to Kill”, it was not a big hit.
Denzel Washington. Denzel Washington will play a character with flaws and criminal acts but always in the end, his flawed character is not rewarded for his criminal actions.
Whoppi Goldberg in “The Color Purple”, great performance along with Danny Glover’s part as her abusive husband. Oprah Winfrey was very good in the same movie.
Samuel L. Jackson, always a solid performance in anything he does.
Yaphet Kotto
Know I went beyond the 5 but there are too many really good black actors on the scene to restrict the list.
Speaking of Morgan Freeman… even the best actors occasionally do something cheesy.
Over the weekend, I happened to run across a clip from “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” — and there he was, in the role later lampooned by (cool casting choice by Mel Brooks) the immortal Isaac Hayes. (“Talkin’ ’bout Shaft…”)
That was just two years after “Driving Miss Daisy.” I think at that point, he was still just digging finally being in demand in Hollywood…
Samuel L. Jackson – Pulp Fiction
James Earl Jones – Star Wars
J B Smoove – Curb Your Enthusiasm
Tracy Morgan – Pumpkin Escobar in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Lance Crouther – Pootie Tang
Robert Downey Jr. – Tropic Thunder
Tracy Morgan is the Nicholas Cage of the Black Actor’s Guild… how anyone thinks he’s a good actor is beyond me. Sinbad is hilarious compared to Tracy Morgan and I don’t think I’ve ever laughed at anything Sinbad has ever said.
I’ve got his new standup special on Netflix queued up. He is good in small doses and can spin a line that can get me to laugh out loud occasionally.
Ron O’Neal – Super Fly
Pam Grier – Foxy Brown
Richard Roundtree – Shaft
Sidney Portier – They Call Me Mr. TIbbs
William Marshall – Blackula
I haven’t seen a lot of the Blaxploitation flicks, although I’d really like to go back and see “Shaft.”
Which reminds me. I’d like to go back and see some of those all-black movies from the 30s and 40s, what they used to call “race films.”
Anyone ever see the awesome dance mashup below? It’s one of my favorite things to go back and watch again on YouTube. I recognize some of the dance clips from movies I’ve seen — “Singin’ in the Rain,” “On the Town,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy” — but some of the most impressive stuff is from movies with all-black casts, things I’ve never seen.
If you don’t watch the whole thing, at least go to 4:25 to see those three guys jump off a balcony and land in splits on a hard floor, and immediately pop right back up — instead of being scraped up with a snow shovel, the way they’d have to do with me. Kind of thing that makes a white boy from Marlboro County say “GOT-taw-mighty!”…
Very bold, idiosyncratic choices! No safe, obvious ones… Barry would never mock you!