Sidney Poitier was well-known for being the first Black man to win the Oscar for Best Actor. What is less-known is how he would often credit his success to a Jewish waiter he met when he was new to New York.
When Poitier arrived in New York, he worked as a dish washer at a restaurant trying to make ends meet while he was hoping to make it as an actor. He brought newspapers to his shifts even though he did not know how to read.
“I sit there, and I’m reading one of the papers, and there was a Jewish waiter sitting at the table, elderly man, and he saw me there. He got up, and he walked over, and he stood by the table and he said, ‘Hi. What’s new in the papers?’ And I said to him, ‘I can’t tell you what’s new in the papers because I don’t read very well.”
“Every night after that he would come over and sit with me, and he would teach me what a comma is and why it exists, what periods are, what colons are, what dashes are. He would teach me that there are syllables and how to differentiate them in a single word and consequently, learn how to pronounce them. Every night."
“One of my great regrets in life is that I went on to be a very successful actor, and one day I tried to find him, but it was too late, and I regret that I never had the opportunity to really thank him.”
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