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Earlier, in 1962, he had appeared before the House Committee on Education and Labor, headed by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., where Poitier remarked satirically, '"My first job in the theater was in 1946. My second was in 1959,"' and, as a result, he could expect his next theater job in thirteen years (Powers 1969,106). Nevertheless, by the mid-1960s, he had made a significant impact on the film industry. In 1957, with his performance in Something of Value, "his screen presence was almost singlehandedly shaping the movies he was in, even though he still was getting secondary billing, usually below the title" (O'Neal 1978, 9). His impact also applies to The Defiant Ones (1958) and Lilies of the Field, where he "[brought] a dimension to the script that cannot be written into it," a product "of his strength and integrity as an actor" (Kelley 1983, 143). Poitiers success, however, did not necessarily mean a major shift in acting opportunities for black actors in Hollywood, where "he was frequently the only Negro on the set of a movie he was making - except for one other, who usually worked as a coffee boy" (Ewers 1969,106).
Poitier had become a recognized choice for black roles where race was an obvious component, but his casting as Homer Smith in Lilies of the Field was a break from such expected portrayals. In an interview conducted in Tucson, Arizona, during the filming of Lilies of the Field, he admitted that he was "beginning to repeat [him] self" and considered his work in Lilies of the Field as a "labor of love," suggesting that it was somehow a different kind of role (Poitier, Interview). It is interesting that Harry Belafonte, another recognized black actor during this time, supposedly rejected the part of Homer "as he deemed the character a nonperson" (Mapp 2008,16).
Retrospectively, nearly fifty years from the Oscar recognition, the question can still be posed: to what extent did Poitier participate in the making of a whole character, one who was representative of black male aspirations of the time? In its day, the film was considered "an important landmark" because it showed a black "free citizen, roaming across the country in an automobile and coming into serio-comic emotional struggles with a...