Sidney Poitier: Actor

Richard Widmark, a supremely brave and accomplished American actor, now long removed to TCM and the mists of memory, and Sidney Poitier, an equally brave and accomplished American actor, now justifiably enshrined in the imagined pantheon of American cultural history, joined forces in 1950 to create under the guidance of Daryl F. Zanuck and Joseph L. Mankiewicz a raw film about racism in America.

Directed and written by Mankiewicz[1] and produced by Zanuck, No Way Out (1950),[2] presents a simple moral quandary about its two main characters. The confrontation begins simply: in the prison ward of an urban county hospital where two White men, brothers, Ray and Johnny, are being treated for gunshot wounds received during the commission of a robbery. Both are being treated by a young Black doctor, Luther Brooks. He notices that one of the men, Johnny, the younger brother, is presenting symptoms beyond those of a gunshot. While Brooks is addressing these additional symptoms, including preparing to test bodily fluids, Johnny dies. Ray, who has already made viciously clear his hatred for Blacks, immediately concludes that the doctor killed Johnny. Ray’s hate-warped mind knows that the murder as he sees it was committed in revenge for the racial epithets he had hurled at the doctor.

If you are a virulently racist White man, who, being a criminal, already have demonstrated anti-social behavior and attitudes, believing the Black doctor would do such a thing is a fully rational deduction. He is, after all, seeing the world in his own reflection.

Ray rants about the incident, raves about the racism involved in the doctor’s getting even, and causes all the Whites in authority (and there are only Whites in authority) to start fearing the repercussions of their possibly having an inexperienced Black doctor in their midst. Perhaps more powerful is their fear that someone may say that they have a rogue Black doctor in their midst. Dr. Brooks, to clear his name, insists on an autopsy, the necessary permission for which Ray refuses to give.

Ray’s anti-medical-knowledge rantings would today give him charter membership in the anti-vaxxer community. They suggest also how the roots of so much that we see today were evident in this country’s past.

The idea of performing an autopsy to check if Brooks’ diagnosis of a brain tumor was accurate was frightening to the powers-that-be. What if a Black doctor misdiagnosed a patient; what would happen to the hospital’s funding because they had such a doctor, i.e., Black. What if? What if? What if this newly minted (Black) doctor had been unsupervised by an experienced (White) one? What if? What if? What if he (a Black doctor) had intentionally killed the (White) brother of a (White) racist who had been taunting him? What if? What if?

The film’s characters and situations are infested with “What if?”

(Of course, Brooks’ diagnosis is ultimately proven accurate and his procedure appropriate; this isn’t the kind of film that needs a spoiler alert. If you want to perceive it as such, you are missing the point.)

How do we know Black is the issue? Brooks’ supervisor and mentor acknowledges that his protégé made the same call he would have. This doesn’t matter to the power figures, though, because they see only their bottom line being affected by this (Black) doctor. There is a sense that even if the diagnosis were supported by the autopsy, there is still be problems for the hospital simply because it had a Black doctor make life and death decisions over a White person.

The “wee cowering timorous beastie,” as Robert Burns would have characterized the bureaucrats, stand for the whole of society. How do we change things to allow for the entrance/presence of this type of person into the working world of a hospital and behave as though we actually trust his knowledge and skill?

To the film’s credit, it engages this issue directly by having Brooks, being young and an outsider, be unsure of his abilities. Brooks’ uncertainty/humility humanizes him and makes his mentor’s trust in him acceptable to us; rather than being knee-jerk or patronizing, it plays as supportive, mentor to novice. We see Brooks as a care-giver who wants to help people, not someone who wants to prove something. We also see that he ultimately has confidence in himself and does what he believes needs to be done.

For the contemporary audience to see the real relevance of the film today, it must listen carefully to what comes out of Ray’s mouth, then surf to a channel on which anti-vaxxers hold forth on their philosophies of medicine and health care. The channels that support/replay the advocacies of those who were inclined to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021 are central to No Way Out’s relevance. They are Ray’s descendants.

Ray could have been written for 2021. And yet history proves that this character was true of the 1950s, with hangings and other manifestations of racial animus on almost gleeful display. Listen to Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit.

Still, we should not look at the film as necessarily prophetic. Being accurate in presenting the mid-twentieth century manifestations of the racial antagonism that had existed in the US for centuries and had been a central component of its economic life for much of that time may make it astute in its observance of the world in which it existed. In no way does it suggest how the 1950s would bleed into the 1960s and beyond. The rumble that breaks out between the Black and White neighborhoods hasn’t quite come to fruition in the actual world, but all the elements are present. Consider it a piece of “journalism” that presents a picture of a time and place and its residents, which can, therefore, serve as a warning to the residents of a future time and place.

And this raises an essential issue that No Way Out begs us to address today. How much of the power of the film is in the language the characters use? Specifically, Ray. His racist rants, carefully scripted by Mankiewicz and Samuels achieve two goals . The first is simple; Mankiewicz and Samuels replicate the possible dialogue of the day as could have been spoken by someone of Ray’s background and beliefs. The writers leave no question as to who Ray is, what Ray is.

More complex is the man on the other end of the rants. Brooks stands, often monument still, as the bile pours out of Ray. The bile, though, has nowhere to go as Brooks doesn’t receive it. Metaphorically, it puddles on the floor like so much waste. This just frustrates and angers Ray more because Brooks is ignoring the subservience Ray had been expecting.

Brooks represents the early days of the Civil Rights movement, starting with A. Phillip Randolph and his Pullman Porters, carrying through the protesters/demonstrators who populated the Southern streets of cities and towns of various sizes.

They didn’t fold under pressure. The Rays of the world didn’t know how to deal with that. Still don’t.

Poitier’s Brooks reflected their spirit, and he shined that light back on them. He was iconic.

Against that, Ray had two arguments. He held close to the racial one, even when he has seen that it doesn’t play well. The other would be, oh, so familiar to a modern audience. How can someone trust science and medicine?

(Especially when they are represented by a Black man?)

America has had traditions of skepticism since its inception. And let me stipulate that skepticism is never bad – as long as it is rational, i.e., as long there is a clear and reasonable source for the skepticism.

“Because” should never be enough. Actually, it should be soundly, vigorously laughed at.

As long as the skeptic is not carrying an AK-47. At that point all reactions should be modulated!

All that said, Ray, with his racism and his fear of knowledge regardless of who holds that knowledge, is the great-grandfather of those individuals today who use Ray’s logic to refuse Covid vaccination. He is also the great-grandfather of those who see no problem with the assassination of George Floyd or all of the too many people of color who have been colored in the wrong time and the wrong place.

Today, Ray with his virulent anger would be defending against the removal of Confederate memorials from display in the South. His descendants are standing in for him. Loudly.

This anger, though, finds itself a curious climax in the film. As the film comes to a close, Brooks has saved Ray’s life once again, even after Ray (now escaped and virulent language intact) has tried to kill Brooks. A White woman, enamored of Ray, who has tried to make some sense of it all is in a living room with Brooks and Ray. All are hearing the police sirens which they know signal the imminent arrival of the police to take Ray back into custody. The actors are frozen in place and the camera pulls back and up to a shot that suggest that all are frozen there forever; that nothing will change for these Americans trapped in this moment of unresolved hostility.

A central idea of the film is that Brooks saved Ray’s life twice, despite who he was. Brooks did this because of who HE was. We saw/heard what Brooks was subjected to by Ray. From Brooks’ carefully modulated response that Poitier provides us with, we know that Brooks has heard this before and has his defenses in place.

What would Brooks’ defense system have been if the Rays of the world felt as they did but were cautious about their choice of words – if they had a set of safeguards in place. Would Ray’s words have disappeared into some mist, or would they have arisen, directed to other black-skinned achievers? But Brooks’ defenses had been fine-tuned by life so he was able to resist the taunts, which enraged Ray further, and save Ray’s life, which enraged and confused Ray even more.

Here we are seventy years later. The racism that moves the film forward is certainly of little difference from the racism of today. At least, not so much in terms of the marches, protests, et al. That is not of the ‘50s, unless you are looking at the deep south and such things as Freedom Summer, but that’s a few years away yet. But A. Phillip Randolph and his Pullman porters, along with others, are starting things moving.

We are today looking at a culture wide/country wide attempt to prevent usage of language like Ray’s that offends. There are scenes in the film, let’s take the extended first scene between Ray and Brooks in which Brooks tries to apply medical aid to both brothers. Ray spews out as many disparaging racial epithets as the script’s pages can hold. This continues with appropriate rhythmic variations from scene to scene when the two are together, climaxing with an elegant soliloquy for Ray late in the film on the name “Sambo.”

Brooks stands silent and lets the epithets from Ray wash over him. Brooks never takes the bait. He never lets the goading from the White racist bring him down. He has worked too hard to get where he is; his wife’s soliloquy as he lays in her arms tells us this. His behavior shows us this when confronted by Ray’s diseased rants.

Poitier’s grace as an actor was his ability to play underlying anguish and anger without making them obvious. Unless he wanted them to be, but they were unmistakably there. Consider “They call me, Mister Tibbs[3],” the line from In the Heat of the Night. Poitier’s gently thunderous delivery of this simplest of lines of dialogue shook this country. It was clear to anyone, even those who did not want to hear the message, that “boy’ and all the other dismissive, denigrating terms in the racist glossary no longer could be applied within their comfortably presumed realm of white supremacy. Mister Tibbs had come to town! Dr. Brooks had been laying down the roadmap.

From the rants Ray expels, Brooks seems to draw energy so he can move forward. He fears and welcomes them. They are to him as common and as useful as air, however poluted. They do not define him; they provide him with energy, purpose. Most importantly, for the character, the actor, the people of the time, he did not run from the various terms. He took his energy from them, in his opposition to them.

Now here we come to a quandary. This film, as it is written, could not be made today. No studio, production house, or independent producer would touch it because of the language. No theater chain or streaming service would touch it. It would likely be deemed too offensive for contemporary audiences.

This, of course, raises a question for a contemporary storyteller. How does one create Brooks without Ray spewing his bile and hatred so that we can see Brooks’ reaction.

Would the producers suggest, as helpful producers do, that Widmark’s character literally say, “Hey, n-word?” And such?

One would hope not, but producers are…

Nonetheless, Brooks’ professionalism and Ray’s racism are the central opposing forces in the film’s ending.

Ray’s rants late in the film drain from the words and their speaker any vital force so that the final image of the film arrives as a metaphoric summary the film’s world. The angry, screaming White man is alive and will live because of the Black man, the doctor who saved him. The doctor will live with the White man’s screams of rage, pain, and anguish ringing in his ears always, but they will never stop his practice of medicine. The woman will be trapped in the middle.

But this interaction will never change, will never improve, or evolve. While the image is not a freeze frame, morally it might as well be.

So how then does a contemporary writer or actor convey the great dignity and inner strength that would make Poitier the iconic, world-changing figure he would become. He doesn’t. Both Poitier and Brooks have to be confronted with the bile spewed by Widmark’s character. As does the audience. The audience has to see the strength Brooks has to possess, as defined by its adversary, to continue to be what he is: a healer. (Assign whatever level of metaphor to this you wish.)

Not accepting the speaking of a hateful word, does not make the hatred underlying it dissipate. Rather it emboldens it, because it shows a certain way to hurt the hated opposition. Without being shown the degree of the evil in a story, we can’t appreciate the degree of the good set in opposition to that evil.

Thanks for your courage, Sidney. Rest well, Mister Poitier.

_________

Share this:

Related

Leave a comment Cancel reply