Poster for the film One Potato, Two Potato: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Poster for the 1964 American film One Potato, Two Potato, directed by Lawrence "Larry" Peerce for Bawalco Picture Co. and distributed by Cinema V Distributing, Inc. The poster is printed with scenes from the film, with the central image showing Frank Richards (Bernie Hamilton) and Julie Cullen (Barbara Barrie) embracing in front of a courthouse clock tower.

The film tells the story of an interracial couple in a midwestern town, exploring the discrimination and prejudice they face from neighbors, family, and the government. In its unyielding and frank portrayal of the challenges faced by mixed-race families in the mid-20th century, Frank and Julie are even forced by a judge to give up custody of their daughter to her estranged father. As the poster states, interracial relationships and marriage (ruled legal by the Supreme Court in the 1967 case Loving v. Virginia) were among "the hotter topics of our time" when the film was released in 1964. In contrast to the more popular and slightly later film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), One Potato, Two Potato didn't shy away from demonstrating both the official and social prejudice and oppression faced by mixed-race couples nor the raw emotion felt by those whose love American society rejected. Unlike Sidney Poitier's unflappable, placid Doctor John Prentice in the 1967 film, Bernie Hamilton's Frank in One Potato, Two Potato seethes with anger and rage when he and his wife are treated unfairly. In a memorable scene from the film, while watching a western film at a drive-in theater, Frank cathartically urges the Native American characters on the screen to "Kill that white bastard!" presaging the violent catharsis of later blaxploitation films.

One Potato, Two Potato had a limited and controversial theatrical release but earned critical acclaim including the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival and a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen for writers Orville H. Hampton and Raphael Hayes.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: 1964
• Object Name: poster
• Physical Description: paper (overall material)
• Physical Description: printed (overall production method/technique)
• Measurements: overall: 41 in x 27 in; 104.14 cm x 68.58 cm
• depicted: United States: Ohio, Painesville
• Subject: Motion Pictures
• Subject: Race Relations
• Subject: African Americans--Civil rights
• ID Number: 2021.0102.01
• accession number: 2021.0102
• catalog number: 2021.0102.01
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.