One Potato, Two Potato

You should see the pile of ironing I still have to do, Martha, but that "One Potato, Two Potato" is certainly a wonderful movie. It's about this nervous, unhappy girl--Barbara Barie, did you see her on "Mr. Novak" last week? She played a nervous, unhappy teacher. Anyway, this white girl was married to a really irresponsible nogoodnik. He left her with a little baby, and took off for the oil fields and adventure of South America so she divorced him. Then she meets this black person, a really fine man. So they get married.

The Negro, Frank, that's Bernie Hamilton, and Julie, that's Barbara Barie, set up house just outside of town, named Plainesville. Really, it's in Ohio. Julie's daughter (played by a snot nose, from Shaker Heights I bet) soon has company--it came out in between, you know. Then the white husband comes back and wants his daughter. After all, living with Negroes, and it was partly his own child.

A fellow who plays judges on T.V. and who looks like a judge (in fact he is a judge!) tells how he saw that Frank and Julie gave their white daughter An Ideal Home Life to grow up in. The judge is a good man but he knows how sick and prejudiced other people in the world are. So he gives permanent custody to the nogoodnik. I don't know, Martha, it's so difficult these things. Who really knows what's best?

But you should have seen the last scene. Real drama. The white father arrives to pick up his daughter like the court ordered, but the little girl thinks her own mother is sending her away! The little girl hits her own mother again and again. But, you know, when the girl is in the cab driving away she cries, and yells that she doesn't want to leave. And then the mother runs after the cab. A lady in front of me, she looked like Peggy Wood, sobbed out loud. I was touched too, but still I felt embarrassed.

But you know, Martha, something fishy about that movie. Doesn't look like a movie, or sound like a movie. Somebody said it was done by an unemployed T.V. director who had nothing better to do, Larry Peerce (he's Jan's son!). I know the orchestra sounded like the organ on "Young Doctor Malone," but an organ's an organ. And, also, usually those festival prizes go to movies I never understand. I mean I certainly liked "One Potato, Two Potato" but some young people left the theatre muttering about how important a "nuclear family" is. But I guess some people never stop thinking about the bomb.

Still, I bet even Campbell's soup would never sponsor it on television. And I think, also, it is a wonderful achievement when the masses can see really important T.V. programs--even if they have to go to the theatre.