Lillies of the Field was one of those Hollywood Cinderella stories that the film colony likes to tell about itself. A film shot in only two weeks with a big star working way below his usual salary and a bunch of no-name players in the rest of the cast and it winds up contending for Best Picture with blockbusters like Cleopatra, How the West Was Won, and Tom Jones. Lillies of the Field might have won a few more Oscars if it wasn't for Tom Jones in the race.
Sidney Poitier plays Homer Smith, ex-GI whose truck breaks down at a convent in the Arizona desert. It's populated with a small group of German speaking nuns to whose order was left this property. The group is headed by Lilia Skala who's not going to let the fact she doesn't speak English deter her from building up the place. Starting with a chapel.
It seems like the Almighty has answered her prayers when she finds out Poitier has a construction background. The sister is convinced God is on her side and even without the Deity, she's pretty formidable all by herself. The rest of the story is their effort to make it happen.
I guess the closest example to this film I can come up with is Marty, another story without any real stars in it, shot on a shoestring budget that got to be Best Picture and win for Ernest Borgnine an Oscar for Best Actor and stardom. Lillies of the Field was up for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for Lilla Skala and a few other categories. But it came home with one winner, Best Actor for Sidney Poitier the first black person to win in that category.
I don't think it would detract one bit from Poitier's achievement to say that the Civil Rights Revolution at its crest in 1964 might have just put Poitier over the top. His competition that year was Rex Harrison for Cleopatra, Paul Newman for Hud, Richard Harris for This Sporting Life and Albert Finney for Tom Jones. Tom Jones won a host of Oscars that year including Best Picture, but in 1964 in the wake of the Kennedy assassination and the news of the atrocities done to civil rights workers and the mounting pressure to pass the Civil Rights Act, Hollywood was casting its own voice of support in naming Sidney Poitier as Best Actor. As you can see Sidney Poitier faced some stiff competition in the category, I certainly wouldn't want to say he was better than Albert Finney or Paul Newman who got rave reviews for their performances.
Sidney Poitier was something special in Lillies of the Field. As his character Homer Smith says he's a camp meeting Baptist from the south. And the highlight of the film is him teaching the nuns to sing that Baptist camp meeting song, Amen. That was about brother and sisterhood and peoples of all kinds working together and respecting each other in their differences.
And for that reason, because that message is so vital today, the Academy voters gave Sidney Poitier a well deserved Oscar for delivering that message in an under-financed, but very beautiful film.
Sidney Poitier plays Homer Smith, ex-GI whose truck breaks down at a convent in the Arizona desert. It's populated with a small group of German speaking nuns to whose order was left this property. The group is headed by Lilia Skala who's not going to let the fact she doesn't speak English deter her from building up the place. Starting with a chapel.
It seems like the Almighty has answered her prayers when she finds out Poitier has a construction background. The sister is convinced God is on her side and even without the Deity, she's pretty formidable all by herself. The rest of the story is their effort to make it happen.
I guess the closest example to this film I can come up with is Marty, another story without any real stars in it, shot on a shoestring budget that got to be Best Picture and win for Ernest Borgnine an Oscar for Best Actor and stardom. Lillies of the Field was up for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for Lilla Skala and a few other categories. But it came home with one winner, Best Actor for Sidney Poitier the first black person to win in that category.
I don't think it would detract one bit from Poitier's achievement to say that the Civil Rights Revolution at its crest in 1964 might have just put Poitier over the top. His competition that year was Rex Harrison for Cleopatra, Paul Newman for Hud, Richard Harris for This Sporting Life and Albert Finney for Tom Jones. Tom Jones won a host of Oscars that year including Best Picture, but in 1964 in the wake of the Kennedy assassination and the news of the atrocities done to civil rights workers and the mounting pressure to pass the Civil Rights Act, Hollywood was casting its own voice of support in naming Sidney Poitier as Best Actor. As you can see Sidney Poitier faced some stiff competition in the category, I certainly wouldn't want to say he was better than Albert Finney or Paul Newman who got rave reviews for their performances.
Sidney Poitier was something special in Lillies of the Field. As his character Homer Smith says he's a camp meeting Baptist from the south. And the highlight of the film is him teaching the nuns to sing that Baptist camp meeting song, Amen. That was about brother and sisterhood and peoples of all kinds working together and respecting each other in their differences.
And for that reason, because that message is so vital today, the Academy voters gave Sidney Poitier a well deserved Oscar for delivering that message in an under-financed, but very beautiful film.