Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Larry Peerce
Starring: Barbara Barrie, Bernie Hamilton, Richard Mulligan, Harry Bellaver, Marti Mericka, Robert Earl Jones, Vinnette Carroll
Three years before Katharine Houghton brought Sidney Poitier home for dinner and four years before Kirk snogged Uhura, a little independent feature dared to not only portray a romance between a white woman and an African-American man, but also a kiss. Director Larry Peerce's One Potato, Two Potato was lauded at the 1964 Cannes Film festival where its leading lady Barbara Barrie shared Best Actress with Anne Bancroft (the latter for The Pumpkin Eater), and screenwriters Orville H. Hampton and Raphael Hayes found themselves Oscar nominated. But Peerce's film has largely been forgotten, overshadowed by more famous but less challenging studies of interracial relationships in the years since.
Eschewing the standard Deep South setting of most race dramas of its era, One Potato, Two Potato is set in a relatively liberal part of the MidWest. There we find Barrie's Julie, a young single mother whose husband Joe (Richard Mulligan) walked out on his wife and infant daughter Ellen (Marti Mericka) when the child was just a year old. Working at the same factory as Julie is Frank (Bernie Hamilton, best known as the progenitor of the "angry black police chief" trope in TV's Starsky & Hutch), an African-American who is outwardly accepted in his community but who knows enough to keep his head down.
A flirtation begins between Julie and Frank, with the former putting in most of the work. The mutual attraction is clear, but Frank is clearly wary of the dangers of a black man romancing a white woman. One night while out walking, the couple are told to move on by a cop who presumes Julie a streetwalker. Frank's father William (Robert Earl Jones) warns him that no good can come of the relationship, and Frank initially takes his words on board and attempts to end the romance. But Julie is determined to make it work even if society seems set against it, and she convinces Frank to become her husband. The two move into Frank's parents' farmhouse with Ellen, and despite his initial distaste, William warms to Julie, ultimately delighted when she gives him a grandson.
So they all live happily ever after? Of course not. The reality of racism arrives on the couple's door in the form of Joe, who has suddenly decided he wants to play a role in his daughter's life. Repelled at the idea of Ellen being raised by a black man, Joe files for custody of the child.
You'd have to be pretty naive to think Julie and Frank have any hope of winning this battle, so with the outcome established by the movie's midpoint it morphs into a story of two people realising that their valiant attempt to beat the system and change society is doomed. In less sensitive hands, this might come across as an act of cruelty on a filmmaker's part, simply forcing us to watch two characters be punished. But Peerce, his writers and his actors do so much to make us care about these people in the first half that the inevitable march towards injustice has a devastating impact.
The relationship comes about largely through Julie's innocent determination to make it work, and in the film's second half we watch as this white liberal woman has all her delusions about racial harmony shattered. While Julie never expresses any regrets about the relationship verbally, Barrie's performance suggests that she's starting to think she's made a mistake, even if she hates admitting so. When Joe expresses his racist beliefs in explicit manner to Julie, for a split-second there's a look on her face that suggests she might have found herself agreeing with him, but quickly corrects herself.
Frank is similarly complicated. For much of the film he's the sort of "model negro" that might have been played by Poitier in a more conventional version of this story, but the film allows Frank to express his anger. In a scene that must have been shocking for white audiences at the time, Frank visits a drive-in movie theatre and screams "Kill that white bastard!" at the screen during a cowboys and Indians flick. This scene plays like a response to the one that announces Joe's return, which sees him playing cowboys with Ellen.
One Potato, Two Potato is similarly nuanced in its refusal to make the outright racist Joe its sole villain. Ultimately it's a well-meaning but cowardly liberal judge who tears Julie away from her daughter, claiming he wants to protect her child from the very racism his cowardice helps thrive.
Peerce's film has no happy ending. At the end a loving family has been shattered by a society that simply can't let them live their own lives. Perhaps what's most upsetting of all is how Peerce ends his film with a shot of Julie framed alone as she watches her daughter disappear into the dust, suggesting that she's not only lost Ellen, but her husband too.
One Potato, Two Potato is on UK bluray/DVD/VOD from October 13th.