Poitier To Portray Screen’s First Negro Detective Hero

June 18, 1965 - The screen is about to have what is believed to be its first Negro detective hero. Sidney Poitier, who won an Oscar two years ago for “Lilies of the Field,” will play the detective of John Ball’s novel, “In the Heat of the Night.” 

There have been several Negro detectives in recent years in mystery novels. But until now, Negro actors have appeared on the sidelines in cops-and-robbers films, dogging the heels of the detectives as helpful servants or comic relief. Recently, Negroes have appeared as assisting members of detective squads.

Poitier will play Virgil Tibbs, a detective of the Pasadena (Calif.) Police Department, who is accidentally picked up as a murder suspect in a small South Carolina town.

The New York Times review describing Ball’s book, his first novel, on May 2, called its hero “a remarkable individual who may well end up in the Great Detective category.”

Television rights to the character of Virgil Tibbs have been acquired for possible use in a Mirisch-Rich Television Productions series.

Poitier is now in Hollywood filming “Call Me Back,” a melodrama with Anne Bancroft. He is then scheduled for his first Western, “Duel at Diablo.”

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