PAUL: Sidney Poitier. The future Jackie Robinson of films was born 24th of February 1927 in Miami during a visit his parents made to Florida.

MAN: Legally?

PAUL: To sell tomatoes they had grown in the Bahamas. He grew up on Cat lsland so poor they didn't even own dirt, he has said. Neglected by his family, my father would sit on the shore, and, as he's told me many times: "Conjure up the kinds of worlds that were on the other side, and what I'd do in them." He arrived in New York City from the Bahamas in the winter of 1943 at the age of 15 and a half, and lived in the pay toilet of the bus station across from the old Madison Square Garden at 50th and 8th Avenue. He moved to the roof of the Brill Building, commonly known as Tin Pan Alley, washed dishes at the Turf Restaurant for $4 and 11 cents a night. He taught himself to readby reading the newspaper. In the black newspaper, the theatre page was opposite the want-ad page. Among his films are: No Way Out - 1950, Cry, the Beloved Country - 1952, Blackboard Jungle - 1955, The Defiant Ones - 1958, A Raisin in the Sun - 1961, Lilies of the Field - 1963, In the Heat of the Night - 1967, To Sir, with Love - 1967, Shoot to Kill - 1988, and, of course...

MAN & WOMAN: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner!

PAUL: He won the Oscar for Lilies of the Field, and was twice named top box-office star in the country. My father made no films from 1977 to 1987 but worked as director and author. Dad said to me once: "I still don't fully understand how all this came about in the sequence it came about." (someone claps)