Comments on: One Potato, Two Potato

By: Tammy

Tammy — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:04:28 +0000

Give me TMC, and AMC any day over regular TV. It’s nice to know there are still many of us left out here that enjoy, Real Movies.

I can still find some of these older movie videos in the stores once in a while, but even that is becoming more difficult to do.

By: kingrat

kingrat — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 23:40:47 +0000

Barbara Barrie is superb in a really bad TV film called THE EXECUTION. Premise: a group of women who are concentration camp survivors run into a man who was responsible for atrocities there. The other women include Loretta Swit, Valerie Harper, and Jessica Walter, none of whom has a clue that someone 1) European 2) who survived a concentration camp wouldn’t move, talk, think, or react exactly like a Hollywood sitcom actress. Loretta Swit is spectacularly bad, treating this as another day in the life of Hot Lips on MASH. Then there’s Barbara Barrie, who understands everything that needs to be done and gives a wonderfully nuanced performance. Thanks for reminding me that I need to see her in ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO.

By: Roger Hanover

Roger Hanover — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:43:30 +0000

Medusa is right. One Potato, Two Potato is like an extended Playhouse 90 drama which is not an insult at all. Back in the 60s, TV dramas like East Side, West Side were every bit as intelligent and hard-hitting as critically acclaimed films like Lumet’s 12 Angry Men. This film is particularly unique in its refusal to tie everything up neatly or to even suggest a positive resolution to the tragedy.

By: saraeg

saraeg — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:31:16 +0000

i first saw this movie when i was a naive young teenager, probably at a movie house in manhattan, nyc. where most art house movies were playing at the time. i didn’t know that there were couples who could have such anger and racism thrown at them in such a way as i saw on the screen and it made me very mad and heartbroken. of course, i knew what my jewish family went through escaping from europe during world war II and i knew prejudice from being jewish, but knowing about racism concerning white and black was different and the same. TCM just showed this movie a few months ago and showed it with ‘guess who’s coming…’ and the difference in the two movies are striking. i guess because there is a little girl involved in ‘one potato, two potato’ that the horror of divorce and racially mixed parents seems even more striking considering that it was the sixties and many of us were aware of civil rights for all people. i know i will not miss this showing again on TCM and i know it will still leave me emotionally raw. thank you morlockjeff for your essay on this wonderful movie.

By: Patricia

Patricia — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:14:14 +0000

I’ve wanted to see this for years. I don’t think it’s overstating to say that TCM is a blessing in my life. Thanks for the heads up and the information.

By: medusamorlock

medusamorlock — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:53:19 +0000

I would say that “One Potato, Two Potato” is perhaps more like a long episode of one of the fine adult dramas on television at the time — writer Hayes’ “Ben Casey” stint, to name one. Barbara Barrie was a veteran of many such quality series — “Dr. Kildare”, “Route 66″, “Naked City”, “Mr. Novak”, “The Defenders” and “The Fugitive”, as you mentioned. I think there’s a lot of correlation between the mature stance of “One Potato, Two Potato” and TV’s “Naked City”, for instance, and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” and “Ironside”, another of Ms. Barrie’s credits just a few years later. Something unostentatious and supremely intelligent sort of got tossed aside — also the use of B&W for drama really serves the works.

Can’t wait to watch this again — saw it many years ago and really want to savor those wonderful performances again!

Great heads-up and appreciation of that film and the rest!

(Of course, my favorite interracial couple on screen: Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones in the famous TV movie about Betty and Barney Hill, “The UFO Incident”. Again, it’s doubtful anything similar could/would be done today with as much seriousness or essential dignity, or by two such amazing actors.)