Family dynamics change dramatically and often tragically as parents and grandparents grow older. Some children continue to love their parents in their senior years and care for them when they become infirmed. But others turn their back on their loved ones and forget to “honor thy father and thy mother.”

King Lear, one of William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, explores this theme. The elderly King Lear decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. But he makes a fatal error when he tells his daughters that they must offer florid declarations of love in order to get the land.

The vile Goneril and Regan are effusive in their love and get part of the kingdom. But his beloved Cordelia, the only one who really loves Lear, refuses to be insincere and is disinherited. Lear learns quickly just how Goneril and Regan really feel about him when they go back on their promises to support him. Lear becomes mad as he wanders the land with his faithful Fool. And though he is reunited with Cordelia, it doesn’t end well.

This subject continues to be explored in literature, theater and feature films. In fact, there are three acclaimed films released this year that are all in awards consideration.

Netflix’s DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD is the unique, funny and poignant Sundance Award-winning documentary in which Kirsten Johnson attempts to cope with her sweet widowed father’s dementia by staging increasingly absurdist ways her father could die—body doubles did the stunts—and even stages a mock funeral so he can hear just how much people love him. Anthony Hopkins gives one of his most complex performances in the haunting film THE FATHER, which will be released this December, as a man descending down the rabbit hole of Alzheimer’s when his daughter (Olivia Colman) leaves him in a nursing home in London and moves to Paris to live with her new boyfriend.

And then there’s Sophia Loren’s powerful turn in Netflix’s Italian-language drama THE LIFE AHEAD. The still stunning 86-year-old actress, who won the Best Actress Oscar of 1961 for Vittorio De Sica’s harrowing TWO WOMEN, plays Madame Rosa, a former prostitute living in Naples who is haunted by memories of the Holocaust. Madame Rosa has created her own family as a foster mother to a trio of children born of prostitutes, as well as a loyal, caring group of friends. THE LIFE AHEAD was a family affair for Loren. Her youngest son, Edoardo Ponti, directed and co-wrote this adaptation of a 1975 Romain Gary novel. He said in a recent interview that when they collaborate on a project, “We want to show the world the best of Sophia.” And he did.

There’s a good chance you haven’t heard of one of the most admired films dealing with old age, Leo McCarey’s MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (’37). McCarey is best known for his zany Marx Brothers comedy DUCK SOUP (’33); THE AWFUL TRUTH (‘37), the hilarious screwball comedy for which he won the directing Oscar; the sentimental GOING MY WAY (‘44), which swept the Oscars; and the four-hankie weepie romance AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (‘57).

So, it’s hard to believe the same filmmaker made MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW, a drama so powerful, well-acted and sad that it will stay with you forever. In fact, it may force you to look at the way you treat your ageing parents. Filmmakers such as Orson Welles once said of MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW, “It would make a stone cry.” Jean Renoir, Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Capra, Delmer Daves and Bertrand Tavernier have championed the movie as well. And, it also inspired Yasujiro Ozu’s masterpiece TOKYO STORY (’53).

In a 2010 piece he wrote for Criterion, Tavernier recalled seeing the film for the first time. “The screening remains one of the most powerful moments of the decade for me,” he noted. “The nearly miraculous way in which McCarey manages to avoid the bathos inherent in such a subject, steering clear of sticky pity, of condescension and moralizing sermons – it all transfixed me. It was as though an arrow had struck me and stayed vibrating in my heart. I’ve experienced the same feeling every time I’ve seen the film in the 40 years since.”

Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore give the performances of their storied careers as a longtime married couple who lose their home to a bank foreclosure. Though they have five children, none of their offspring are willing to take them together. So, Bondi goes to live with her son (Thomas Mitchell) where she keeps driving her daughter-in-law (Fay Bainter) and teenage granddaughter (Barbara Read) crazy. Moore doesn’t have it any better moving in with his hard-nosed daughter and lazy son-in-law. The couple reunite for one day in New York City and those scenes are a gut-punch of emotion. And unlike most Hollywood films of the day, it doesn’t end happily for the couple.

Paramount pleaded with McCarey to change the ending to something more upbeat. He refused. Despite good reviews, the film bombed at the box office. Paramount dropped him from their roster. So, he signed with Harry Cohn at Columbia where he made THE AWFUL TRUTH, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, which was nominated for six Oscars including Best Film, Best Actress and McCarey winning Best Director. But McCarey didn’t forget MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW during his Oscar acceptance speech. He opened it by saying: “Thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong picture.”

The very first time I saw an Oscar telecast was in 1964. I remember, because I watched Sidney Poitier accept his Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actor for LILIES OF THE FIELD (‘63). Here is his win. Our family saw that movie when it came out and that was the first time I saw Poitier. Oh, I’m pretty sure I saw his movies on that 15-inch black-and-white tv set my sister and I shared. But to actually go to the movie theater and see him up there on the silver screen was quite a different thing indeed. He was tall, dark and handsome. He was articulate, moved gracefully. Did I mention handsome? He was the whole enchilada…a dreamboat. What thoughts for a 12-year-old.

How can I explain to you what it was like to be a little kid seeing someone who looks like you…up there…bigger than life…in Hollywood no less! A MOVIE STAR!! It was amazing to see a Black man / Caribbean / Person of Color having adventures; hell, having a bonafide STORY to tell and not just carry trays, be a porter or not know which end was up to use a telephone. Do you have to be Black / African-American / Caribbean / a Person of Color (take your pick) to appreciate Sidney Poitier? Naaaaah. You just have to like movies…and the tall, dashing guy who played the hero.

For this 21-film salute to actor Sidney Poitier, TCM has pretty much covered the depth and breadth of his career. Of the films they’re airing this September, I’ve seen five of them in the theatre at the time of their original release. (I’m that old!) I have distinct movie-going memories of LILIES OF THE FIELD, TO SIR, WITH LOVE (’67)—which always made me feel it was giving Sidney a taste of the medicine he dished out in BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (‘55)— GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (’67) —Tracy’s and Hepburn’s swan song as a screen team—and A WARM DECEMBER (’73). Oooh, how I wish TCM had included in their schedule two other films I saw as a kid: FOR LOVE OF IVY (’68) and one of my favorite Westerns, DUEL AT DIABLO (’66) – also seen when it was released. When I saw this movie back then, I had never even seen or heard of a Black cowboy (sorry Bill Picket). As I watched DUEL AT DIABLO, I incredulously proclaimed, “how could he even BE a cowboy?” I’ve since learned that lesson! This Western had intersecting stories that weaved its way to a good ol’ fashioned battle between ‘cowboys and Indians.’ The fifth movie I saw in theatres, and one that I heartily recommend, is THE LONG SHIPS (’64).

Poitier (Aly Mansuh): “We sail tomorrow and may Allah send us a fair wind and a calm sea.” 

Richard Widmark (Rolfe): “And may Thor do the same, my lord.”

This movie would make a fun evening for a big audience. It’s action and adventure all the way. THE LONG SHIPS revolves around Vikings and Moors working together to find “The Mother of All Voices” – a great large bell made of pure gold. Is it real, is it a tale told by a cunning schemer? They’re about to find out. These two cultures clash but they need each other for the common good: TREASURE! Richard Widmark and Poitier made a total of three movies together; the others being the searing racial drama NO WAY OUT (’50) and the Naval tale THE BEDFORD INCIDENT (’65). That film sort of puts me to mind of Denzel Washington’s and Gene Hackman’s submarine drama CRIMSON TIDE (’95).

In THE LONG SHIPS the sea-faring Vikings go toe-to-toe with the masters of the Desert. Widmark is engaging as the glib liar who weaves tales out of whole cloth and gets his men into scrapes his boasting can’t get them out of. Don’t be thrown by Poitier’s Elvis pompadour; he is the stoic and regal ruler of a Moorish kingdom and the King and master of all he surveys. He can command–as he does–any soldier to die and it’s considered an honor. < Gulp!! > The Mare of Steel has to be seen to be believed. That’s embedded in my memory. Poitier’s the villain this time and I’ll bet he relished it. He’s played a lot of noble heroic characters up until then. It must’ve been fun to cut loose. Seeing the movie now at my life-experienced 12-plus-plus-plus years, he might not seem as villainous as he did when I was a kid, nor the Moors that bad.

Widmark and Poitier were friends and enjoyed joining up again, shooting in an exotic location, playing dress up and having beautiful women around. If you want to get slightly into the racial subtext, it’s interesting to see how each man acts around the other’s woman. Widmark (as prisoner of the Moors) has a lot more leeway to seductively come on to the dark-haired beauty of the Moorish Queen played by Rosanna Schiaffino, than Poitier’s King has with the comely young blonde played by Beba Loncar. Poitier is so hungry for the riches of the bell, he even ignores his own wife’s advances. How’s that for avoiding America’s sticky racial peccadilloes.

If you like action, adventure, tenuous explosive partnerships, a stirring musical score by Dusan Radic that Steiner and Korngold would be proud of and which still gives me goosebumps…you can’t go wrong with THE LONG SHIPS. It’s the one to DVR or catch on Watch TCM.

Doctor, teacher, juvenile delinquent, dock worker, wayward son, Moor, cowboy, detective and more, it’s great to have Sidney Poitier as TCM’s Star of the Month. In all his incarnations there was a code of honor at his core. Before him was actor James Edwards and before that, the great Juano Hernandez. They didn’t quite capture the audience or studio backing in a big leading man way. Sidney Poitier came at just the right time. I think America was finally ready.

Sidney Poitier was the first African-American to win an Oscar for a lead role for 1963’s LILIES OF THE FIELD. Five years later, he was the No. 1 box-office champ thanks to a trio of hit films that were released in 1967: IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER and the baby boomer fave, TO SIR, WITH LOVE.

But early in his career, Poitier and actor/activist Canada Lee had to be listed as indentured servants in order to make the lauded 1951 drama CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY in apartheid South Africa for director Zoltan Korda. If they had been described as actors, both Poitier, Lee and Korda probably would have been arrested and held without trial.

When I interviewed Poitier in 1997 for the L.A. Times, he recalled the horrors he encountered in South Africa in 1950. “The experience in South Africa made an impact,” said Poitier. “I mean, it was stunning in its brutality. The law required that we live 26 miles outside the city of Johannesburg. They rented us a farm for that purpose. A car would come and get us in the morning and take us to Johannesburg to the studio. When we were done, we would get in the car and it would take us out of the city and back to the farm.”

Poitier, who was 23 when he made the film, described himself as a “fairly alert kid when I was that age, so I knew what to expect [and] that it would be different from where I came from, but I really wasn’t ready for the extent of it.”

He made his feature film debut in the 1950 gritty racial drama NO WAY OUT, written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, in which he played a young hospital intern forced to take care of a wounded, bigoted criminal played by Richard Widmark, who became a good friend of the young actor. They would go on to work on other projects including 1965’s THE BEDFORD INCIDENT.

The New York Times was effusive in its praise of Poitier, writing that he “gives a fine, sensitive performance …and his quiet dignity is in sharp, affecting contrast to the volatile, sneering, base animal mentality and vigor that Mr. Widmark expresses so expertly as Ray Biddle.”

(Ossie Davis also made his film debut in NO WAY OUT, which also featured his wife Ruby Dee.)

Poitier told me in a 1991 interview I did for the L.A. Times that some areas of the South refused to screen NO WAY OUT. “But it was not closed out entirely,” he noted. “There were areas in the white community in the South where pictures with black stars played, but they didn’t get uniformly wide distribution in those days. Much of it depended on what the films were about. NO WAY OUT was an explosive film about race relations. I am sure it was not shown in every corner of the South.”

The film also ran into trouble in the North. The New York Times reported on Aug. 30, 1950 that “Capt. Harry Fulmer of the censor division of the Chicago Police Department announced today that the showing of the motion picture NO WAY OUT would be permitted in this city with a small portion of the film deleted.”

Richard Brooks’ 1955 BLACKBOARD JUNGLE starring Poitier as a bright but troubled inner-city high school student also ran into controversy. “That picture has kind of carved a little place for itself in the consciousness,” he said. “But it was recommended by Claire Boothe Luce that the picture not be screened in Europe.” Of course, TCM fans may know Luce for her hit play The Women that was adapted into the hit 1939 film comedy. But in 1955, she was President Dwight Eisenhower’s Ambassador to Italy.

“She thought it was showing America in a bad light,” Poitier explained. “We were just not accustomed in America to deal with tough social questions. The question of race was avoided altogether. The word ‘damn’ was not allowed in a film. So that was the mind-set then.” Poitier continued: “In such a mind-set, a film like BLACKBOARD JUNGLE could be considered controversial, but to be considered sufficient to have a US. Ambassador recommend that it be censored or denied exposure? So, you see we have grown some.”

I first saw Poitier when I was 11 in LILIES OF THE FIELD as the second feature on a double bill with Disney’s 1966 comedy, Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. The latter is just a blip in my memory, but encountering Poitier in his endearing turn as a sweet itinerant handyman who helps East German nuns living in Arizona build a chapel is etched in my mind.

When I asked Poitier about the film, he explained “director Ralph Nelson, in order to make the movie, put his house up as collateral to United Artists. We rehearsed that picture here in town. Then we got on a plane and went to Arizona where he had gone to a deserted area and built a little church. We were so well-rehearsed that it took us 14 days to make the movie.”

Poitier admitted that “the guys who were forerunners to me, like Canada Lee, Rex Ingram, Clarence Muse and women like Hattie McDaniel, Louise Beavers and Juanita Moore, they were terribly boxed in. They were maids and stable people and butlers, principally. But they, in some way, prepared the ground for me. I like to think I may have turned a pebble or two for those who have come behind me.”