Richard Brooks: "The Brick Foxhole," 1945

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Richard Brooks' World War II novel, The Brick Foxhole, included the murder of a homosexual man, Mr. Edwards, by a soldier who picks him up and encourages him, then punishes him with death. This post-war novel was among a group of mainstream and underground works of the period that began to decry the victimization of homosexuals along with "Negroes," Jews, and other groups who were subject to virulent, active "prejudice." By the start of the repressive 1950s, however, such objections to the plight of society's victims would become more of a rarity, especially in the mainstream.

In 1947, when The Brick Foxhole was made into a film, Cross Fire, the homosexual who was murdered in the novel was changed to a Jew. "In 1947, the idea of the homosexual as victim of social intolerance was still too radical to screen," Jonathan Ned Katz suggested in Gay/Lesbian Almanac (1983).

The depiction of Mr. Edwards in The Brick Foxhole provides a revealing case study of the perceived attributes of a "homosexual" male at this time, in a mainstream novel.

<Add section on Mr. Edwards, pp. 84-on>

Add jacket photos, front and back, including Richard Wright blurb.