The Measure of a Man

by Sidney Poitier

  At the point where life and art intersect, John Cassavetes once gave me some advice that has proved invaluable. This was some years ago, when he wanted me to play a particular role. I don’t know how, but he sensed reluctance on my part, even though I had said nothing except, “Yes, that would be great. Let’s talk about it.”

  He said, “Let me tell you something.” He said, “We’re good friends, but never, ever do an artistic favor for a friend. Loan friends money, be there for them in every other way, but don’t do them any artistic favors, because you’ve got to have one area of your life where there’s no room for compromise.”

  That’s tough medicine, but I think it holds up absolutely for anyone wishing to create something that will stand the test of time. You simply can’t “fake” your way through good work. But even the purest devotion to an art or craft doesn’t take place in a vacuum. We work with others, with people often very close to our hearts, so convictions that are firmly held can cost a pretty penny indeed.

  I learned this lesson when I came back to live theater in 1960, after having been away from it for ten years. The occasion was A Raisin in the Sun, an extraordinary play written by Lorraine Hansberry, produced by Philip Rose, and directed by Lloyd Richards, all of whom were my contemporaries and compatriots.

  This experience was for me a confirmation. I had been away from theater but very much engaged in learning about acting; I had been having experiences as an actor in films that altered the way I worked. It had been a very difficult ten years—difficult in that I was determined to develop the ability to recreate close to the bone so that people would feel that what I was doing was natural.

  I had just finished Porgy and Bess when we went into rehearsal for A Raisin in the Sun, Claudia McNeil was to play the mother, I was to play the son, Ruby Dee was to play my wife, Diana Sands was to play my sister, and Glen Furman, all of ten or twelve years old, was to play my son.

  We opened in New Haven, then we went to Philadelphia, and then—since the theater that was supposed to be available to us on Broadway wasn’t (and wouldn’t be for some weeks)—we took the play to Chicago and spent about four weeks polishing.

  It was a hugely successful play from the very beginning. There were so many firsts. I had never before seen that kind of focus on black family life. It was a realistic change, a modern change, and it had a tremendous impact.

  But it was terribly difficult for me. I can’t work on technique alone. I have to work on pure, raw experience, so I had to find a way to get me to raw, organic experience emotionally. I was able to do that for four months, but around about the end of the fourth month it became extremely hard, because I knew the words so well and had to fight against just speaking the lines, just going through the motions.

  Broadway theatergoers hadn’t been accustomed to seeing this new kind of theater—I mean, theater where they were absolutely grabbed by the power of the piece, and the power of the piece was in its basic human emotions. Just the raw emotions of a mother and a son and a daughter-in-law and a daughter and a grandchild, all caught up in very human tragedies and human difficulties. They were wrenching difficulties between mother and son, son and wife, son and sister, and son and his son. The play was a lesson in what humans are really, really all about. People aren’t about being black or white. Black and white in the face of real issues are mere cosmetics.

  I knew for certain that I was meant to be an actor when the curtain came down on opening night in New York. After all the doubts that had accumulated since that serendipitous meeting between myself and that gentleman at the American Negro Theatre, when he threw me out and slammed the door. After all my clumsy efforts at trying to act (like when I read True Confessions magazine in my first audition!). After my disastrous opening in Lysistrata and all the difficulties I had in remembering the lines. After all the stage fright that had overwhelmed me when I was in acting classes and didn’t quite understand what I was about. After all the years of struggling with a craft I couldn’t get a grip on. After all those things—that night in 1960 I knew for certain that I had just been formally introduced to my true calling. I had finally learned where the energy was, and how to call on it, how to replenish it, how not to overuse it. That night, I was an actor. I had come a long, long way. But I wasn’t yet out of the woods. Seven more years would come and go before Rod Steiger and I squared off technique for technique in In the Heat of the Night.

  I finished a six-month run, but by the time I left the production the actress who played the mother wasn’t speaking to me. She hated me. Need I tell you that this is a difficult position to find yourself in as the member of an ensemble of actors?

  Claudia McNeil, a fine performer, was in complete dominance over most of the other members of the cast. Naturally enough, she perceived the play as being best when it unfolded from the mother’s point of view. I perceived the play as being best when it unfolded from the son’s point of view, however, and I argued that position. In fact, we argued constantly.

  I prevailed, I guess because I was considered the principal player who was responsible for getting the piece mounted. I suppose there might have been some who didn’t agree with me but simply acquiesced to my position. But I wasn’t just throwing my weight around. I was not, and am not, in the habit of doing that. I genuinely felt that when tragedy fell on the family in Raisin, the most devastating effects were visited upon the son, because the mother was such a towering figure.

  In my opinion, it was the son who carried the theatrical obligation as the force between the audience and the play. The eyes of those watching were on the son to see if the tragedy would destroy him, would blow him apart beyond recovery. And it was also my opinion that there was no such feeling between the audience and the mother. The audience witnessed the sadness that was visited on her. They saw that her family was in disarray, but they also saw her as a force beyond that kind of vulnerability. If they were to vote, they would say, “Oh, but she’s going to be okay.”

  So where’s the drama in the piece?

  The drama asks an audience to care. This was my argument to the playwright and the director and the producer, all of whom were my friends. If you’re going to ask that audience to care, you’re going to have to take them to the place where the most damage is possible so they can feel that pain.

  If you keep them focused on the mother, they’re going to say, “Oh, that’s too bad that happened—but listen, that family’s going to be okay.”

  Well, I had learned in my experience as an actor and as a theater participant that wherever there’s threatened destruction of a human being, that’s where the focus is; and the only existence that was threatened in Raisin was the son’s. There was simply no guarantee that he would survive. It was fifty-fifty that this boy couldn’t do it, wouldn’t be able to bounce back. It was highly probable that he wouldn’t have the resilience, the guts, the stamina, or the determination. Or, looked at another way, it was possible that he wouldn’t be able to experience the catharsis as fully as necessary for him to be reborn. That’s what the audience had to see to be fully engaged; the rebirth of this person.

  Now, there was no ego in that, I mean, I was a theater person. I had spent most of my early years in theater—not on Broadway necessarily, but I had done many, many off-Broadway shows. I’d seen dozens and dozens of plays, I’d worked in dozens of plays, so I felt comfortable in my sense of what drama is made of, both in theatrical terms and in life terms.

  So that was my position, and I was fought tooth and nail on it by the director and the writer and the producer. Ruby Dee and I saw more eye to eye than did either of us with the others, so it was my intent, and she concurred, that I would play the drama on opening night the way I believed it should be played. That didn’t require changing the words, only making a fundamental change in the attitude of the individual.

  Now, this gets to the very core of what acting is. How do you shift the emphasis of a play when, as is the case in A Raisin in the Sun, there are two characters
who are very forceful and quite strong? Here’s how: if you see the son’s need as not just personal but a need on behalf of his family, then the emotional center shifts, and it becomes a different play.

  The action of the play turns on the death of the father, and the fact that the mother receives ten thousand dollars in insurance money because her husband was killed in an accident on the job. The son wants to use the money in the most constructive way he can think of, which is to start a business, to move the family in some structural way up from where they are.

  The mother, on the other hand, wants to use the money to buy a house. But the son says to her, in effect, “The money used to buy a house wouldn’t affect the family circumstances in that I’d still chauffeur for somebody else, my wife still works as a maid, and you’d still work as a maid. There’d be no shifting of dynamics here. But there could be, with some sweat and tears, there could be some shifting of dynamics if that money were used as down payment for a business that we could all work at. Then in two years or five years, what we’d have done would be substantial enough for us to be thinking about getting a house and, hopefully, then the business would grow and we could have two such businesses or three such businesses in ten years by the time my son is ready for college.”

  That’s his argument, and the mother’s argument runs something like, “You want to spend that money to open a liquor store?” She insists, “My husband’s memory is not going to be tied in with the selling of liquor. I’m going to use that money to buy a house, to put a roof over our heads.”

  He says to his mother, “Isn’t it better that my father’s death advances the family? You have a daughter who’s going off to college, hopefully, but where is the money coming from? I have a son who is going to be soon a young man. What are the lessons in this for him? I am a chauffeur. Where are we going to be down the line? Am I going to be a chauffeur at the age of sixty, and is my son going to take over chauffeuring?”

  So that’s the heart of it. Therefore, the playing of this man has to be such that the audience believes that his need for his family is absolutely elemental, and that this is the last chance, his last chance. If he fails now, he’ll never be able to gather the steam, gather the courage and the determination to spend himself again in a losing effort. He just won’t be able to.

  It’s this sense of possible destruction that prepares the audience for tragedy when the mother does give him the money, after he really fights and struggles for it, and the money is lost. All of it.

  The audience is primed to see either total destruction of this man or his resurrection, you follow? But there’s no resurrection for the mother, regardless. She gives the money to her son because she finally decides to let him have his shot at being a man, his own man—and then he fucks it up. Well, sad as it might be for her as a mother, there’s no great tragedy in that for her as an individual. She loses ten grand that she didn’t really have in the first place.

  But this young man—he’s destroyed. That’s what the audience assumes. But in the third act he comes out of the ashes, and that’s where the real drama is, because he looks at that boy of his, and he talks to him. In fact, he’s talking to the audience through the boy; and when he speaks, the audience just goes nuts. I mean, it’s so dramatic.

  Well, that was my position—the position I acted from. The other position, as I said, was held very strongly by the actress who played the mother, as well as by the producer, the director, and the playwright—my friends. When I left the fold to go make movies and they had to replace me, the several men who, over time, took the part had to play it the other way, the mother’s way, because the continued success of the play depended on having Claudia McNeil.

  Well, the audiences didn’t seem to mind one bit. The play continued to work well because it had garnered such recognition by then. And the guys who took over the part were all very fine actors, all extremely fine actors, one of whom was Ruby Dee’s husband, Ossie Davis.

  So what was the lesson in all this?

  I would say that sometimes convictions firmly held can cost more than we’re willing to pay. And irrevocable change occurs when we’re not up to paying, and irrevocable change occurs when we are up to paying. Either way, we have to live with the consequences. If I’m up to paying the price in a certain situation. I walk away from the experience with some kind of self-respect because I took the heat. And if I go the other way, feeling that the cost is too high, then however bright the situation turns out, I feel that something is missing.

  For an actor to go onstage every night with the sort of hostile undercurrent we experienced with A Raisin in the Sun—it can only be described as being like a bad marriage. I felt that Claudia McNeil wasn’t giving me what I needed. She knew where my big moments were, and she knew when to hold back and take the air out—and I lived through that opposition for months.

  It was very painful for me to know the effect our disagreement was having on my colleagues. If you’re a producer, certainly you’re irritated by dissension that threatens to interrupt the life of a hit play. Now, my friend Philip Rose, the producer, disagreed with me completely, and I believe that his disagreement was genuine, because I’ve known the man all these years, and today he’s still one of my closest friends. But at the time. I was leaving his play. He had a play that would run, if he could hold it together and keep Claudia McNeil happy, for years and years. So he wasn’t especially sympathetic to my concerns.

  The playwright’s sympathies were completely against me. She saw the play as weighted toward the mother; that’s how she’d written it. She was a very intelligent young black woman, and she came from a family of achievers. Her whole family were achievers, especially the women, and she had a certain mindset about women and their potential, especially black women in America. So she wrote a play about a matriarch faced with this dilemma. But in that formulation the son is just a ne’er-do-well. He’s a fuckup, not a tragic figure, not a man whose life is on the line. I simply couldn’t do it that way, because in my mind the dramatic possibilities were so much greater the other way.

  Then, of course, there was the director, Lloyd Richards. Again, a very close friend with whom I had very little quarrel on the question, because his first responsibility was to the work by the playwright. He had gone inside the play with her; she had taken him on an excursion into the inner selves of these characters. So he saw the play as she conceived it, and when he put it together, he put it together that way. He didn’t have any conflict with it. But I did—because I had to face an audience, you know?—and I just couldn’t face an audience playing it with less than the attitude I thought was necessary for this drama.

  Out of town in New Haven I played it their way, but I was looking for answers. I wasn’t altogether comfortable. We went on to Philadelphia. Same thing. The play was working fine, but there was something missing. It was working overall, but I wasn’t really there. We went to Chicago. Same thing. So Ruby Dee and I started exploring, and in Chicago magic started to happen. Wham! And I started to play differently.

  Then we went to New York, and on opening night the energy was at its apex. The director saw it, but he wouldn’t characterize the added excitement he sensed as coming from the way I had played the role. The producer saw it too, but he said it was just a great night. The playwright was in the audience, and I went out and helped her up on the stage so that all the world could see this magnificent young woman, this gifted person. She assumed that the incredible night of theater we’d all just experienced was as she wrote it.

  Well, I say it played well because there was something special in the conviction I held, and I carried it from Chicago to New York.

  There’s special moment in the third act, just before the end. They had put a down payment on a house before they lost the money, but a man comes to tell them that they’re not wanted in that neighborhood. My character, the son, has to stand up and talk to this man. He’s talking to this man about his family. After a given point in the speech, he says, “This
is my mother.” Then he says, “This is my sister.” And then he says, “This is my wife,—and she is”—pride, pain, and love overpower him and he’s not able to get her name out. And by the time he turns to his son, his emotions are more than any words could express. The tears roll down his cheeks and he begins to cry. He gestures to the boy, but the words won’t come out, and finally he forces out the words. He says, “This is my son,” and the house goes nuts, you hear me?

  I know from my own experience that when a guy is just afraid, and he wishes to succeed because he’s afraid of failure, that’s not much of a commitment. But there’s another kind of drive to succeed. I think of my father, going from bar to bar selling his cigars, probing my arm because he’s worried that I’m not getting enough to eat. Then sitting down to write a letter to his eldest son, telling him that he’s no longer able to control and guide his youngest, that he needs help. You find a man like that, with a need to do something that’s over and above his own ego-requirement—a need that’s for his family, as he sees it—and you get every ounce of his energy. When a man says, “This is for my child,” you get over and above that which he thinks he’s capable of.

  My father was with me every moment as I performed in A Raisin in the Sun. The themes, too, seemed like so many threads from my own life. The days in Nassau and Miami and New York when I seemed to be in such a downward spiral and there was no promise of resurrection. All the risks I took, all the brushes with destruction. I know how much it pained my family, but there was nothing they could do. It was this art form that saved me. Ultimately, by taking even greater risks—by going to New York and then by choosing a life in the theater—I came through. And it wasn’t just for myself. It was for Reggie too.