October 3, 1963: "Lilies of the Field" Premieres

October 3, 1963: Lilies of the Field premieres, based on the novel by William Edmund Barrett, published the year before. Ralph Nelson directed.

Sidney Poitier plays Homer Smith, a traveling handyman. He stops in the Arizona desert to get water for his car, when he sees some women trying to fix a fence. They are nuns: German, Austrian and Hungarian. The mother superior, Mother Maria asks him to fix the roof of their convent. But instead of paying him, she offers him a free dinner. Since all the nuns speak German, he doesn't understand them. He teaches them some helpful English phrases.

The next morning, again instead of paying him for his work, Mother Maria gives him breakfast and asks him to build them a chapel. Knowing that she is taking advantage of him and his work, he responds in a way he thinks she will understand, by quoting Scripture, Luke 10:7: "The laborer is worthy of his hire." She comes right back, with Matthew 6:28 and 29: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." He is smart enough to know that, this time, he is not going to win a battle of words and knowledge.

The nuns -- who call Homer "Schmidt," the German version of his surname "Smith" -- need the chapel because their church is a long walk away. Homer drives them to Mass on Sunday. At the trading post next door, he meets the shopkeeper, a Mexican immigrant named Juan, who tells him that the nuns had escaped from Eastern Europe, over the Berlin Wall, leaving everything they had behind, to come to America. They had no money, living off the land, selling whatever vegetables they could grow, but told Juan that Homer would build a chapel. Homer comes to understand it's not for the nuns, but for the locals, all Mexican-Americans, quite poor, and many of them also far from the church.

Homer admits that he had wanted to be an architect, but couldn't afford college. By day, he works on the chapel, eventually being joined by the locals. By night, he teaches the nuns English (except for Mother Maria, the only one who was already fluent). They teach him Catholic chants, and he teaches them Baptist hymns and "Amen," a recent hit song by the Chicago-based rhythm & blues group The Impressions, which serves as the film's opening and closing theme -- a bold move for a film intended for white audiences in 1963. Indeed, as Homer drives off at the end of the film, his work done and the nuns singing inside the chapel, instead of "The End," the closing graphic reads, "Amen."

This is one of my mother's all-time favorite movies. She told me she rarely watches a movie more than once, but she once insisted that I watch it with her, and that it was the 4th time she'd seen it. The following Spring, Poitier became the 1st black man to win an Academy Award. (Hattie McDaniel, 24 years earlier, for her supporting role in Gone with the Wind, had become the 1st black person to win one.)

Lilia Skala, who fled Austria from the Nazis instead of Germany from the Communists, lived until 1994. Sir Sidney Poitier, born in Miami to Bahamian parents and raised in the Bahamas, and thus a British subject and eligible for a knighthood, one of the most beloved actors in American history, passed away on January 6, 2022.

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October 3, 1963 was a Thursday. There was only 1 score on this historic day. It was Game 2 of the World Series. The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the New York Yankees, 4-1 at Yankee Stadium. Johnny Podres, who had shut the Yankees out for the Brooklyn version of the Dodgers in Game 7 in 1955, beats them again. Al Downing, the 1st black pitcher for the Yankees and the 1st black pitcher to lead the American League in strikeouts, is valiant in defeat.

Willie Davis doubled in 2 runs in the top of the 1st inning. Bill "Moose" Skowron, the 1st baseman who had helped the Yankees win 8 Pennants and 4 World Series, but was traded away to make room for the rising Joe Pepitone, gets revenge by hitting a home run in the 4th. He is only the 2nd player ever to hit home runs in World Series play for both Leagues, following Enos Slaughter, who did it for the Yankees in 1956 after doing it for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Sandy Koufax had struck out 15 Yankees, setting a Series record that would last for 5 years, in Game 1. Don Drysdale would shut the Yankees out in Game 3 in Los Angeles, and Koufax would complete the sweep in Game 4. It was the 1st time the Yankees had ever been swept in a World Series. The Cincinnati Reds would do it to them in 1976.

September 27, 1958: “The Defiant Ones” Premieres

September 27, 1958: The Defiant Ones premieres. It stars Sidney Poitier, Tony Curtis, Theodore Bikel, Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Akins, Cara Williams, and, in what turned out to be his last role, Carl Switzer, a.k.a. Alfalfa from Our Gang.

One actor it did not star was Marlon Brando, who was originally supposed to star with Poitier, but Poitier was unavailable at the time. Director Stanley Kramer wanted Poitier so badly that he delayed filming. But, by the time that Poitier was available, Brando wasn't. Curtis was.

Another that this film could have starred, but didn't, was Robert Mitchum. At age 14, he had been arrested for vagrancy in Savannah, Georgia, and was put on a chain gang. He turned down the role because he knew that even chain gangs were segregated in the South. To his credit, once Curtis got the role, he insisted that Poitier have equal billing.

Noah Cullen (Poitier), black, and John "Joker" Jackson (Curtis), white, are shackled together because "the warden had a sense of humor." They are on a truck loaded with prisoners that crashes, allowing them to escape. Despite their mutual hatred, they are forced to cooperate, as they are chained together. At first, their co-operation is motivated by self-preservation, but gradually they begin to respect and like each other.

They end up being captured by a lynch mob, who threaten to hang both of them, but they are saved and aided by a big white man (Chaney) who was once a chain-gang prisoner himself. They meet a fatherless boy named Billy (Kevin Coughlin), who takes them home. His mother (Williams) breaks their chain, but sets them up to be captured. Joker gets shot, and the film ends with the Sheriff (Bikel) finding him, barely alive, in Cullen's arms.

Switzer was murdered just 4 months after the film's release. Chaney died in 1973. Coughlin was hit by a car and killed in 1976, only 30 years old. Akins died in 1994, Kramer in 2001, Curtis in 2010, Bikel in 2015, Williams in 2021, and Poitier on January 6, 2022.

*

September 27, 1958 was a Tuesday. Actor Shaun Cassidy was born. And these baseball games were played:

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 9-5 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Ted Williams and Pete Runnels hit home runs for the Red Sox. Eddie Yost hit one for the Senators. Harmon Killebrew appeared as a pinch-hitter, but did not reach base.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-3 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Roberto Clemente did not play.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Al Kaline went 1-for-4 with 3 RBIs.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 2-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. For the A's, Roger Maris went 0-for-3 with 2 walks.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Cincinnati Redlegs, 6-1 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Warren Spahn was the winning pitcher, and helped his own cause with a home run. Red Schoendienst and Frank Torre also hit home runs. Hank Aaron went 0-for-2, and was then replaced. For the Redlegs, who were restored to the Reds name the next season, Frank Robinson went 0-for-5.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 7-4 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Ernie Banks went 0-for-4 with a walk.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the San Francisco Seals, 11-7 at Seals Stadium in San Francisco. Stan Musial went 1-for-5. Willie Mays went 2-for-5 with an RBI.

* And the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles were rained out at Yankee Stadium. The game was rained out the next day, as part of a regular-season-ending doubleheader. The Yankees swept it, 7-0 and 6-3. In the opener, Yankee manager Casey Stengel trusted Don Larsen to start. Unlike in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, he didn't trust him to take a shutout into the 6th inning, even though he'd allowed only 1 hit and 1 walk. Ryne Duren pitched the 6th and the 7th, and Johnny Kucks pitched the 8th and the 9th, finishing the 2-hit shutout. Tom Sturdivant won the nightcap.

Over the 2 games, Mickey Mantle went 3-for-7 with a walk. Yogi Berra went 0-for-3 with a walk in the 1st game, and sat out the 2nd game. Brooks Robinson did not play in the 1st game, but went 1-for-4 in the 2nd.

August 2, 1967: "In the Heat of the Night" Premieres

Sidney Poitier (left) and Rod Steiger

August 2, 1967: The film In the Heat of the Night premieres, directed by Norman Jewison, and based on a 1965 novel by John Ball. Quincy Jones wrote the score and the theme song, which was sung by Ray Charles.

Three years earlier, Sidney Poitier had become the 1st black man to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor. Still, born in Miami and raised in The Bahamas -- and thus having both American and British citizenship -- he knew what racism existed in the American South, and did not want to film any of his scenes in the American South. Not wanting to lose him, Jewison shot all of Poitier's scenes in Sparta, Illinois -- in southern Illinois, not exactly a place that welcomed civil rights activists -- while filming scenes without him in Dyersburg and Union City, Tennessee.

Poitier played Virgil Tibbs, who is arrested by Officer Sam Wood (played by Warren Oates) at the train station in Sparta, Mississippi, for the murder of wealthy industrialist Phillip Colbert (an uncredited Jack Teter). The police chief, Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger), looks through his wallet, and discovers a badge: Tibbs is a homicide detective with the Philadelphia police, and was visiting his mother in Sparta.

A calendar in Gillespie's office reveals the date as September 12, 1966, which suggests the date of filming. There actually is an unincorporated community in northeastern Mississippi named Sparta. The choice of Philly as Tibbs' adopted hometown cannot be a coincidence: In 1964, 3 civil rights workers had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Gillespie hears the name "Virgil," and says to Tibbs: "That's a funny name for a (N-word) boy that comes from Philadelphia! What do they call you up there?" Tibbs angrily tells him. "They call me Mister Tibbs!"

Tibbs wants to leave town on the next train, but his Chief in Philadelphia suggests he stay in Sparta to help Gillespie with the murder investigation. Though Gillespie, like many of Sparta's white residents, is racist, he and Tibbs reluctantly agree to work together. This leads to Tibbs' detective skills overruling the town doctor as to when and where the murder occurred, and the Sparta police for overlooking the alibi of a suspect, Harvey Oberst (Scott Wilson).

Tibbs initially suspects the murderer is wealthy plantation owner Eric Endicott (Larry Gates), a genteel racist and Sparta's most powerful citizen, who publicly opposed Colbert's new factory. When Tibbs begins interrogating him, Endicott slaps him, to which Tibbs responds by slapping him back. Afterwards, Endicott sends a gang of local thugs after him. Gillespie rescues Tibbs and tells him to leave town to save himself, but Tibbs is determined to stay and solve the case.

The scene of Tibbs slapping Endicott is not present in the novel. According to Poitier, the scene was almost not in the movie, and it was he who had proposed the idea of Tibbs slapping Endicott back. In the textbook Civil Rights and Race Relations in the USA, Poitier stated: "I said, 'I'll tell you what, I'll make this movie for you if you give me your absolute guarantee when he slaps me I slap him right back, and you guarantee that it will play in every version of this movie.' I try not to do things that are against nature."

It turns out that Officer Wood has a 16-year-old girlfriend, Delores Purdy (Quentin Dean). Her brother Lloyd (James Patterson -- not the mystery novelist) wants to press statutory rape charges against Wood for getting her pregnant. Tibbs wants to be present for Delores' questioning. Lloyd is offended, and gathers a lynch mob to go after Tibbs.

Tibbs pressures illegal abortionist Mama Caleba (Beah Richards), who is black, to reveal that she is about to provide an abortion for Delores. (Roe v. Wade was still over 5 years away.) When Delores arrives and sees Tibbs, she runs away. Tibbs follows Delores and confronts her armed boyfriend, Ralph (Anthony James), a cook at a local roadside diner.

Lloyd's mob arrives and holds Tibbs at gunpoint. Tibbs tells Lloyd to check Delores' purse for the $100 that Ralph gave her for an abortion, which he got from killing and robbing Colbert. Lloyd realizes Tibbs is right when he opens the purse and finds the money. After Lloyd confronts Ralph for getting his sister pregnant, Ralph shoots Lloyd, killing him. Tibbs grabs Ralph's gun as Gillespie arrives on the scene.

Ralph is arrested, and confesses to the killing of Colbert. He explains that after hitchhking a ride with Colbert and asking him for a job, Ralph attacked him at the construction site of the new factory, intending only to knock Colbert unconscious and rob him, but accidentally killing him instead.

Tibbs arrives at the station to meet the next train that will return himto Philadelphia, as Gillespie, having carried his suitcase, shakes Tibbs' hand and bids him farewell. In the final interaction between Gillespie and Tibbs, as the detective ascends the stairs onto the train, for one last time Gillespie calls out to him and sincerely tells Tibbs: "You take care, you hear?" After a moment of hesitation, Tibbs turns around to face Gillespie and gives a warm smile in reply. Gillespie smiles back at Tibbs as he boards the train.

The time of this film's release may have been a "Summer of Love" in San Francisco, but, in so many other places, it was "The Long Hot Summer" and "The Year of Living Dangerously." And it was all because of the lingering effects of what America's white aristocracy had done to black people. And to poor white people, too: A few weeks later, the Number 1 song in America would be "Ode to Billie Joe" by Bobbie Gentry, set in rural Mississippi.

Still, the film aimed to both expose and heal. It certainly did the former, and maybe it helped to do the latter, too. After all, the symbolism is undeniable. When the film begins, it's the middle of the night, and everything is dark and foreboding, and nobody feels like smiling, even before they find out there's been a murder. When it ends, it's midday, and the film's formerly antagonistic protagonists, their mission accomplished, are smiling.

The film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, winning Best Picture, and Best Actor for Steiger. Poitier made 2 sequels, with the character having moved to San Francisco and being married to a woman named Valerie, played by actress and jazz singer Barbara McNair: They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! in 1970 and The Organization in 1971. Both films did well at the box office, but not as well as the original.

Neither of these films was based on Ball's subsequent novels about Tibbs, all of which, like the original, set the action outside Los Angeles in Pasadena, California: The Cool Cottontail (1966), Johnny Get Your Gun (1969), Five Pieces of Jade (1972), The Eyes of Buddha (1976), Then Came Violence (1980) and Singapore (1986).

Jewison seemed to specialize in making films of Broadway plays, including the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971), the musical Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), A Soldier's Story (1984) and Agnes of God (1985). He also directed The Cincinnati Kid (1965), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), the original version of Rollerball (1975), ...And Justice for All (1979) and The Hurricane (1999).

James Patterson died in 1972, Warren Oates in 1982, John Ball in 1988, Larry Gates in 1996, Beah Richards in 2000, Rod Steiger in 2002, Quentin Dean in 2003, Barbara McNair in 2007, Scott Wilson in 2018, Anthony James in 2020, and Sidney Poitier in 2022. As of August 2, 2022, Norman Jewison is still alive. So is Lee Grant, who played Mrs. Colbert, widow of the murder victim. (UPDATE: Jewison died in 2024.)

In 1988, NBC began a TV version of In the Heat of the Night, but played with the timeline: The show took place in the present day, but the events of the previous meeting between Tibbs and Gillespie are said to have taken place only "a few years ago." Tibbs returns to Sparta for his mother's funeral, and is persuaded by the Mayor to stay and integrate the town's all-white police force as Chief of Detectives.

Tibbs was played by Howard Rollins, and Gillespie by Carroll O'Connor, who had played Archie Bunker on All in the Family. Both Archie and Gillespie had to learn to suppress their bigotry, but, by the time the TV show began, Gillespie had proven better at it than Archie.

The show ran 4 years on NBC, then switched to CBS for 3 years, but Rollins' legal and health issues made it impossible to continue: He died in 1996, only a year and a half after the show aired its last episode. O'Connor's son, Hugh O'Connor, played Officer Lonnie Jamison. Like Rollins, Hugh had drug problems, causing him legal problems, and couldn't take it anymore, and killed himself in 1995, during the show's last days.

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August 2, 1967 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the California Angels, 5-4 at Yankee Stadium. Bill Monbouquette blew a 4-3 lead in the 9th inning. Mickey Mantle went 0-for-2 with 2 walks.

* The New York Mets lost to the Houston Astros, 5-2 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Boston Red Sox, 8-6 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4.

* A doubleheader was split at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The Detroit Tigers won the opener, 4-2. Al Kaline went 1-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBIs in the 1st game, then sat out the nightcap. The Baltimore Orioles won that, 2-1. Over the 2 games, Brooks Robinson went 4-for-8 with a home run and 2 RBIs, and Frank Robinson went 1-for-5 with 3 walks and an RBI on a bases-loaded walk.

* The Washington Senators beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-4 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (It was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.) Hank Allen singled Ed Stroud home with the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Atlanta Braves, 7-3 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Pete Rose went 3-for-4 with 2 home runs, a walk and 2 RBIs. Hank Aaron went 4-for-5 with an RBI.

* The St. Louis Cardinals swept their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 4-2 and 7-1 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Over the 2 games, Lou Brock went 6-for-10 with a stolen base and 2 RBIs. Ernie Banks went 1-for-7 with a home run, a walk and an RBI. Steve Carlton won the 2nd game for the Cardinals, but Bob Gibson did not pitch in either game: This was during his time on the Disabled List with a broken leg.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Dick Allen singled Billy Cowan home with the winning run in the top of the 10th inning.

* And the San Francisco Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-2 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente both hit home runs.

March 19, 1955: “Blackboard Jungle” Premieres

Glenn Ford (left) and Sidney Poitier

March 19, 1955: Blackboard Jungle -- no "The" in the title -- premieres, based on the novel by Salvatore Lombino, using the pen name Evan Hunter. He based it on his experiences at Bronx Vocational High School, now named the Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School.

It stars Glenn Ford as an inner-city teacher, with his students including characters played by Sidney Poitier, film debutant Vic Morrow, and film debutant Jamie Farr. Also in the cast were Anne Francis, Louis Calhern, John Hoyt, Richard Kiley and future director Paul Mazursky.

Possibly the first "juvenile delinquent film" since the salad days of the Bowery Boys, and predating James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause by 7 months, the film is best known for being the first with a rock and roll soundtrack, including Bill Haley & His Comets' "Rock Around the Clock." Its showing caused riots in Britain, but it also made Haley more popular there than in America.

Poitier was already 28 years old, too old to play a high-schooler, and only 10 years younger than Ford. Morrow was 27. Farr was 20, and could be taken seriously as a teenager. He was credited under his birth name, Jameel Farah, an Arab-American playing an Italian-American named Santini. He was then drafted into the U.S. Army, and stationed in Korea, although the Korean War was already over, and there's no record of the real-life Toledo street kid having worn women’s clothes in the service. When he was cast as Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger on M*A*S*H 17 years later, he wore his own dogtags.

(Incidentally, Tony Packo's, mentioned in a few episodes, is a real Toledo eatery, on the East Side, across the Maumee River from downtown. Just a little down the river on the West Side is a park named for Farr. But the real-life Triple-A baseball team, the Toledo Mud Hens, moved after the 1952 season, a point never brought up on M*A*S*H. A new team with the name debuted in 1965 and has remained ever since.)

In the 1967 film To Sir With Love, Poitier would be the teacher in the tough inner-city school, in that case a black teacher at a school in the East End of London, where the poor at-risk kids were white.

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March 19, 1955 was a Saturday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There were 2 games played in the NBA Playoffs. The Boston Celtics beat the New York Knicks, 116-109 at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Minneapolis Lakers beat the Rochester Royals, 119-110 at the St. Paul Auditorium.

There were 2 games in the NHL. The Montreal Canadiens beat the New York Rangers, 4-2 at the Montreal Forum. And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 5-0 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Boston Bruins and the Detroit Red Wings were not scheduled.

And in English soccer, North London team Arsenal went to the North-East of England, and beat Sunderland, 1-0 at Roker Park.