Dionne Warwick couldn’t help but laugh in answer to Stephen Colbert’s question.
How, exactly, did she meet Sidney Poitier?
“You really wanna know, huh?” she asked Colbert Thursday, resting her head on clasped hands and closing her eyes for a moment.
“Actually,” she said, “I stalked him.”
Warwick, a guest on “The Late Show,” said she was leaving a recording studio on 54th Street in 1964 or 1965 when she spotted the Oscar-winning actor. Poitier was 94 when he died Jan. 6.
When Warwick first saw him, she was with a group of friends.
“In front of me was walking this regal, gorgeous man,” she said. “And I broke rank and left my girls and I started following him.”
“You sprinted after Sidney Poitier,” Colbert said.
“I did, I actually stalked him,” said Warwick, who turned 81 in December.
Funnily enough, she caught up with Poitier at Broadway and 53rd Street, the location of the Ed Sullivan Theater where Colbert tapes “The Late Show” (and where she sat telling him the story). A bit embarrassed to be following the actor, she looked away.
“I actually bumped into him,” Warwick said. “He turns around, he says, ‘Little girl, what do you want?’ And of course I went crazy. My mouth didn’t work. It just didn’t. Finally I said, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ And from that day until the last time I saw him a year or so ago, he did not greet me as, ‘Hi, Dionne.’ It was, ‘Hello, little girl, you want my autograph?’”
In 1964, Poitier became the first Black winner of the Academy Award for lead actor when he received the Oscar for “Lilies of the Field.” Warwick released her first single, “Don’t Make Me Over,” in 1962, and the hit song “Walk On By” in 1964. Her first album, “Dionne Warwick Presents,” came out in 1963.
The five-time Grammy winner, who lives in South Orange, shared a shorter version of the Poitier story in a Jan. 7 tweet after he died:
“He said ‘little girl what do you want’ I muttered ‘can I have your autograph.’ From that day he always called me little girl and asked if I wanted his autograph. It was something we laughed about. He was my hero & great friend. May he RIP.”
During the pandemic, Warwick has amplified her compelling voice on Twitter, becoming “queen” of the social network for her razor-sharp takes and frank posts.
Warwick is promoting “Power in the Name,” her new song with Krayzie Bone of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and her son, producer Damon Elliott, also known as Nomad (you can listen below). Proceeds from sales of the song benefit charity.
This past fall, the veteran singer welcomed the release of the documentary “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over,” which chronicles her career, starting with her early days of stardom in the ’60s and continuing with her history of activism and AIDS advocacy.
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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com and followed at @AmyKup on Twitter.