Sidney Poitier

"The Measure of a Man," by Sidney Poitier. Harper. 272 pages. $26. This is not the clench-jawed growl of Mister Tibbs. Nor is it the elegant patter of the unimpeachably perfect doctor who is coming to dinner. This is the casual cadence of Sidney Poitier, just a guy taking stock of the mountains and valleys of his accomplishments. He's preaching the lessons of manhood,and the tension between rage and restraint. At 73, he's a survivor of prostate cancer and hard knocks, fatherhood and fame.

The films of Sidney Poitier will be showcased in a free outdoor film series running Fridays through Aug. 17 in Clifton Park, at the band shell off St. Lo Drive. Tonight's kick-off film is Norman Jewison's Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night (1967), with Poitier as a Philadelphia detective confronting bigotry and condescension while investigating a murder case in a small Southern town. The festivities begin at 8:30 p.m. Sponsored by Meridian Homes, the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello Corp, Civic Works and the Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks.

HOLLYWOOD -- On Thursday night, at festivities to be televised later, Sidney Poitier will become the American Film Institute's 20th Life Achievement Award winner (a succession that began with John Ford in 1973 and has included James Cagney, Orson Welles, Bette Davis and Alfred Hitchcock, among others). Mr. Poitier is the first black person to be so honored, which is a commentary at once on his own great accomplishments and, hardly less, on the long struggle it has been for black actors and directors to achieve eminence in Hollywood.

Each time a movie star breaks out, the media reach into Hollywood's history for precedents. Kevin Costner becomes the new Gary Cooper, Tom Hanks the new Jimmy Stewart, Denzel Washington the new Sidney Poitier. Will Smith, who earned an Oscar and Golden Globe best-actor nomination for his searing performance as the homeless stockbroker trainee in The Pursuit of Happyness, defies any such categorization. For an actor who started out as rap royalty and then played a sitcom version of himself in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Smith has shown surprising versatility and guts from the beginning of his big-screen career.

The films of Sidney Poitier will be showcased in a free outdoor film series running Fridays through Aug. 17 in Clifton Park, at the band shell off St. Lo Drive. Tonight's kick-off film is Norman Jewison's Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night (1967), with Poitier as a Philadelphia detective confronting bigotry and condescension while investigating a murder case in a small Southern town. The festivities begin at 8:30 p.m. Sponsored by Meridian Homes, the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello Corp, Civic Works and the Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks.

Nobody does profiles of performers and artists like PBS' "American Masters." Compared to this series, the History Channel's "Biography" portraits are cut-and-paste jobs. "Sidney Poitier: One Bright Light," which airs tonight on public television, isn't in a league with the great "American Masters" profiles like last year's "Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note." But it is close enough that it is well worth going out of your way to see. No matter how much you know about Poitier, I guarantee you will wind up knowing more and seeing him in new ways.

Two and a half hours into the 74th annual Academy Awards, the extravaganza reached an emotional highpoint when veteran actor Sidney Poitier took the stage to accept his honorary Oscar and the entire Academy took to its feet. But it would be just one golden moment in a historic night that welcomed the Oscars into their new home and saw some old ghosts laid emphatically to rest, with Halle Berry and Denzel Washington joining Poitier as the only African-Americans ever to win best acting Oscars.

It's a Wonderful Life, E.T., Rocky and The Passion of the Christ are among the 300 candidates that the American Film Institute is asking more than 1,500 industry workers, critics and historians to choose from in selecting America's most inspiring movies for a TV special. The program, AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Cheers, follows on the heels of other AFI specials that paid tribute to film history's top comedies, stars and quotes, among other topics. It will be broadcast on CBS in June, saluting what AFI director Jean Picker Firstenberg described as "the films that inspire us, encourage us to make a difference and send us from the theater with a greater sense of possibility and hope for the future."

NEW YORK - David Hampton's pursuit of a fabulous Manhattan life ended last month in the early-morning hush of a downtown hospital. No celebrities keened by his bedside, no theatrics unfolded in the hall; there was no last touch of the fabulous. Just the clinical cluck that follows the death of a man who dies alone at 39. His name may not resonate, but his story will. David Hampton was the black teen-ager who conned members of the city's white elite 20 years ago with an outsized charm. He duped them into believing that he was a classmate of their children, the son of Sidney Poitier, and a victim of muggers who had just stolen his money and Harvard term paper - a term paper titled, "Injustices in the Criminal Justice System."

Philip Yordan wrote his 1940s melodrama, Anna Lucasta, about a Polish immigrant family. But the play is best known in its African-American version, first mounted by the American Negro Theatre in Harlem in 1944 and released on film five years later. Directed by Jennifer Nelson, this version - which helped launch the careers of Sammy Davis Jr., Eartha Kitt, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Sidney Poitier - opens the season tomorrow at Rep Stage in Columbia. The cast is headed by Deidra LaWan Starnes in the title role of a young woman whose circumstances drive her to a life as a streetwalker.

VISIONARY CINEMA -- Stanley Kramer's 1967 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as lifelong liberals whose convictions are tested when their daughter brings home a black man (Sidney Poitier) as her fiance, will be Thursday's offering in the American Visionary Art Museum's weekly summer movie series, "Flicks From the Hill." Movies can be viewed from Federal Hill, across Key Highway from the museum. If it rains, the movie will be shown in the museum's Tall Sculpture Barn.

It's a Wonderful Life, E.T., Rocky and The Passion of the Christ are among the 300 candidates that the American Film Institute is asking more than 1,500 industry workers, critics and historians to choose from in selecting America's most inspiring movies for a TV special. The program, AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Cheers, follows on the heels of other AFI specials that paid tribute to film history's top comedies, stars and quotes, among other topics. It will be broadcast on CBS in June, saluting what AFI director Jean Picker Firstenberg described as "the films that inspire us, encourage us to make a difference and send us from the theater with a greater sense of possibility and hope for the future."

Rakia Joseph's Black and In the Life is a 37-minute documentary look at five African-Americans struggling with public perceptions of the gay lifestyle and offering their take on the stereotypes they have to live down, dealing with AIDS and the black church's views on homosexuality. That may not sound like standard movie-theater fodder, but it's exactly the kind of film Michael Johnson wants at his third annual Maryland African American Film Festival, opening tonight and running through Sunday at the two-screen Heritage CinemaPlex, 1045 Taylor Ave. in Towson.

NEW YORK - David Hampton's pursuit of a fabulous Manhattan life ended last month in the early-morning hush of a downtown hospital. No celebrities keened by his bedside, no theatrics unfolded in the hall; there was no last touch of the fabulous. Just the clinical cluck that follows the death of a man who dies alone at 39. His name may not resonate, but his story will. David Hampton was the black teen-ager who conned members of the city's white elite 20 years ago with an outsized charm. He duped them into believing that he was a classmate of their children, the son of Sidney Poitier, and a victim of muggers who had just stolen his money and Harvard term paper - a term paper titled, "Injustices in the Criminal Justice System."

Philip Yordan wrote his 1940s melodrama, Anna Lucasta, about a Polish immigrant family. But the play is best known in its African-American version, first mounted by the American Negro Theatre in Harlem in 1944 and released on film five years later. Directed by Jennifer Nelson, this version - which helped launch the careers of Sammy Davis Jr., Eartha Kitt, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Sidney Poitier - opens the season tomorrow at Rep Stage in Columbia. The cast is headed by Deidra LaWan Starnes in the title role of a young woman whose circumstances drive her to a life as a streetwalker.

Two and a half hours into the 74th annual Academy Awards, the extravaganza reached an emotional highpoint when veteran actor Sidney Poitier took the stage to accept his honorary Oscar and the entire Academy took to its feet. But it would be just one golden moment in a historic night that welcomed the Oscars into their new home and saw some old ghosts laid emphatically to rest, with Halle Berry and Denzel Washington joining Poitier as the only African-Americans ever to win best acting Oscars.

Surely, few 20th-century figures are more deserving of respect than Nelson Mandela, who withstood nearly three decades in prison for refusing to bend his beliefs in the equality of men, and went on to become the first president of a democratic South Africa.At the same time, few men have been so mythologized in their own time, which helps explain what makes "Mandela and de Klerk" (airing at 8 p.m. tomorrow on Showtime) a valuable, if flawed, piece of filmmaking.Flawed, because it doesn't delve into the "de Klerk" half of its title nearly as deeply as it lays open the "Mandela" half.

"Sneakers" is actually about a fabled icon from the bottom of a cereal box in everybody's lost childhood: a Captain Jack Secret Decoder Ring. Except that this Captain Jack Secret Decoder Ring is a little black box; with it, one can penetrate all the"Sneakers" is actually about a fabled icon from the bottom of a cereal box in everybody's lost childhood: a Captain Jack Secret Decoder Ring. Except that this Captain Jack Secret Decoder Ring is a little black box; with it, one can penetrate all the computer codes known to man, and in our computerized age, that's very much the key to the kingdom.

"The Measure of a Man," by Sidney Poitier. Harper. 272 pages. $26. This is not the clench-jawed growl of Mister Tibbs. Nor is it the elegant patter of the unimpeachably perfect doctor who is coming to dinner. This is the casual cadence of Sidney Poitier, just a guy taking stock of the mountains and valleys of his accomplishments. He's preaching the lessons of manhood,and the tension between rage and restraint. At 73, he's a survivor of prostate cancer and hard knocks, fatherhood and fame.

Nobody does profiles of performers and artists like PBS' "American Masters." Compared to this series, the History Channel's "Biography" portraits are cut-and-paste jobs. "Sidney Poitier: One Bright Light," which airs tonight on public television, isn't in a league with the great "American Masters" profiles like last year's "Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note." But it is close enough that it is well worth going out of your way to see. No matter how much you know about Poitier, I guarantee you will wind up knowing more and seeing him in new ways.