Larry Peerce

Lawrence "Larry" Peerce (born April 19, 1930) is an American film and TV director whose work includes the theatrical feature Goodbye, Columbus (1969), the early rock and roll concert film The Big T.N.T. Show (1966), One Potato, Two Potato (1964), The Other Side of the Mountain (1975) and Two-Minute Warning (1976). Life and career The son of operatic tenor Jan Peerce and talent agent Alice (Kalmanowitz) Peerce, Larry was born in The Bronx, New York. He attended the University of North Carolina. He made his directing debut with One Potato, Two Potato, released in 1964 by the distributor Cinema V. The groundbreaking drama about an interracial marriage between a white divorcee (played by Barbara Barrie, who won the Best Actress award at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival for the role) and an African-America office worker (Bernie Hamilton) was the first U.S. movie to portray such an interracial relationship. Peerce went on to direct several episodes of the television series Branded, the superhero series Batman, and other shows, and then directed the early rock and roll concert film The Big T.N.T. Show, released in 1966 by American International Pictures and featuring The Byrds, Ray Charles, Bo Diddley, Donovan, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Ronettes and The Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Following more television, Peerce returned to film in 1967 with The Mystery of the Chinese Junk and The Incident, the latter of which starred Martin Sheen and Tony Musante. He followed this with Goodbye, Columbus, an adaptation of the Philip Roth novel. The movie earned Peerce a DGA Award nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures and screenwriter Arnold Schulman an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.