- What’s a Northern boy like you doing all the way down here?
- I was waiting for the train. Tuesdays only - 4:05 to Memphis.
In The Heat of the Night (1967) dir. Norman Jewison

“The famous slap, where Tibbs retaliates against a racist landowner, wasn’t improvised, though, as has been suggested. I kept telling [Sidney] Poitier that Tibbs was a sophisticated detective, not used to being pushed around. I showed him how to do the slap. ‘Don’t hit him on the ear,’ I said. ‘I want you to really give him a crack on the fatty side of his cheek.’ I told him to practise on me. A black man had never slapped a white man back in an American film. We broke that taboo.

”Young black people in northern cities responded to the film in a much more visceral way than the whites did. This was the first time a black actor was wearing the fancy suit and being looked up to.”

-Director of In the Heat of the Night (1967), Norman Jewison on The Slap Heard Round The World

Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier in IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (‘67)

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

ICONS: Sammy Davis, Jr., Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier in an outtake from their February 4, 1966 LIFE magazine cover. Thank you Reggie Hudlin! Photo: Philippe Halsman/Magnum Photos.