About Actor James Edwards

 When I was a boy, Dad wasn't the most talkative character as opposed to Mom. Mom could -- and did -- hold her own filibusters in the house when she didn't get something she wanted and took her frustrations out verbally on the family. I learned about Dad's innermost feelings and sensibilities by the films he liked from his youth and my youth. Some of those films were KINGS ROW (1942), FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (1943), PARIS BLUES (1961), LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962), the 1963 comedy GONE ARE THE DAYS! starring Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and Godfrey Cambridge and A PATCH OF BLUE (1965).

Another one of those films was 1949's HOME OF THE BRAVE, a drama about the emotional effects that serving in World War 2 had on one Black soldier. I remember how Dad sat in his favorite living room chair giving full attention to the movie when it aired one weekend afternoon on local KCOP/Channel 13. Dad pointed out actor James Edwards who was playing the Black war vet undergoing psychoanalysis to free him of the mental block that may have been caused by racism. In my adult years, I'd come to realize what a groundbreaking role that was. An educated Black man, a WWII veteran, in therapy with a white psychiatrist. This often-overlooked film really helped usher in a new era of Black images for men in Hollywood films. Private Peter Moss (Edwards) was not a butler, an enslaved field hand or a railroad porter -- roles Black actors were saddled with through most of the 1930s and 40s. In school, Private Moss's best friend was a white fellow played by Lloyd Bridges. Moss was a breakthrough character for African American moviegoers.

 I also learned of the significance of the tall, lean, handsome and talented James Edwards. Before Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, there was James Edwards. In the 1950s, he should've received the same kind of roles and stardom that Poitier achieved. However, white Hollywood executives limited his opportunities. About six years ago, I was interviewing Oscar winner Lou Gossett, Jr. in his L.A. home. After we finished taping, I asked him about Edwards and Gossett replied that, basically, Edwards was blacklisted in Hollywood because he dated white women. Two of the women keen on dating him, he added, were Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. Hollywood gossip columnists in the 1950s would've had a field-day with that news.

Whereas Poitier and Belafonte got lead roles, James Edwards -- who definitely deserved lead roles as well -- got supporting roles.

After 1949's HOME OF THE BRAVE, he seemed to be Hollywood go-to guy to play a military character, a Black man in uniform. Watch him in THE STEEL HELMET (1951), THE CAINE MUTINY (1954) as one of the Navy mess hall workers who served Captain Queeg strawberries, in BATTLE HYMN (1957), FRAULEIN (1958), PORK CHOP HILL (1959), THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962) and PATTON (1970).

Edwards had a key role in 1951's BRIGHT VICTORY. This drama brought Arthur Kennedy an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. It's a tale of change and redemption. Kennedy plays a G.I. who was blinded while fighting in World War 2. The blindness is not permanent. While he's recovering in a military hospital, he becomes buddies with another veteran in the ward. In conversation, the blinded soldier makes casual racist remarks unaware this his new buddy is Black. James Edwards plays that other soldier.

BRIGHT VICTORY, not shown on TV a lot, gets the DVD treatment in September thanks to Kino Lorber.

For more info, go here:   www.kinolorber.com.

Trailblazer James Edwards was a good actor who deserves to be remembered.