Fawcett Publications vs Censorship
By: Jacqueline Clay
Introduction:
The lesbian pulp fiction novel Women’s Barracks ignited controversy locally and nationally in the United States during the early 1950s due to its depictions of homosexual relationships, and despite vocal opposition to the novel, Fawcett Publications Inc. reprinted the novel 11 times between November 1950 and June 1958.[1] Women’s Barracks is recognized as one of the first, and most influential, lesbian pulp fiction books in romance fiction history.[2] Fawcett Publications Inc. fought to continue producing and selling the novel in legal battles with a municipal court in St. Paul, Minnesota and a 1952 House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials. In this report I explore the impact these legal cases had on the publisher’s alterations to Women’s Barracks to ensure its continued sale and popularity in the US. The report focuses on the cover art and front matter of the 1958 Women’s Barracks, in comparison to the original 1950 novel.[3] My report begins with a detailed analysis of both printings’ cover art to decipher what alterations were made to the 1958 cover. I then examine the House Select Committee’s report to understand what censorship rules applied to Women’s Barracks. In the final half of this report, I explore a court case synopsis included in the front matter of the 1958 novel and analyze how this diverges from Fawcett’s pattern of front matter composition in other lesbian pulp novels. I argue that the additions and alterations to the original front matter and cover art exhibited in the 1958 printing of Women’s Barracks showcase Fawcett Publication’s strategic utilization of the novel’s surrounding controversy and publicity to promote the novel while operating within the confines of U.S. censorship law.
Part I: Analysis of Cover Art in Women’s Barracks
Women’s Barracks documents the lives of a group of French women working in London during World War II, following their friendships, hardships and the relationships they encounter inside and outside of the barracks. The cover art chosen for Women’s Barracks displays the women of the story in a scene where they are in the act of dressing into army uniforms inside an industrial barracks. Fawcett Publications used this same scene for the cover art of both the first and eleventh printings of the novel, however small changes are visible when comparing the covers alongside each other.
Women’s Barracks cover art: (Left) First printing from November 1950. (Right) Eleventh printing from June 1958.[4]
The copy of Women’s Barracks I had physical access to during my investigation for this report was limited to the 1958 printing of the novel. It is a small paperback novel, measuring only 6 ½ by 4 inches, with colorful and bold cover art wrapped around the novel’s 189 pages. Both covers center three women in various states of undress under the black lettering of the title. Although the basis of the 1950 and 1958 covers remain the same, subtle alterations made to the colors on the cover and the women’s facial expressions offer an interesting analysis of the types of changes made to the novel following the criticism it faced in the years between the printings. An essential difference between the covers are the women displayed at its centers and their interaction with one another. The cover art on the 1950 printing of the novel includes two women at the center gazing into each other’s eyes, one of them with a sultry smile. In contrast, the 1958 cover depicts the women without any interaction or eye contact; instead, they are portrayed focusing on the task of dressing independently, seemingly unconcerned with the presence of the other women sharing the cover.
This alteration to the gazes of the women is subtle, however it changes an essential part of the 1950 cover– the connection between the women, reflective of the homosexual relationships they shared with each other throughout the novel. The connection between these women prompted Women’s Barracks to be investigated by the 1952 House Select Committee for its narrative including “accounts of homosexuality, lesbianism, and other sexual aberrations.”[5] The 1958 cover removes the sultry smile and hint of a homosexual connection between the women on the cover. The visual dilution of the connections these women had with each other on the novel’s cover mirrors how Fawcett Publications made the cover arts and front matter of its lesbian public fiction novels clearly condemn homosexuality following the conclusions of the Committee.
The House Select Committee was established amidst the backdrop of the Cold War, a time when the United States sought to project an idealized image of capitalism, often symbolized by the nuclear Christian family.[6] Homosexuality challenged this image of the nuclear family and was categorized as a threat to the morality and traditional values of Americans.[7] US lawmakers attempted to curb the media and literature that disrupted this image through the censorship of popular entertainment media like comic books and pulp fiction.[8]
The official 137 page report from the 1952 House Select Committee, also known as the Gathings Committee, called 31 witnesses, including the editorial director and vice president of Fawcett Publications Inc., Ralph Foster Daigh. The committee’s investigations found that publishers learned that the “most lurid and daring illustrations of voluptuous young women on the cover, book sales increased substantially.”[9] Committee members questioned Daigh’s on whether Fawcett Publications intentionally exaggerated the sexual scenarios in Women’s Barracks story and its cover art to bring in more profit.[10] Daign denied this but the committee concluded that Women’s Barracks was too obscene and morally disruptive for the general public’s consumption.[11] Fawcett Publications prevented the banishment of the novel by agreeing to alter the novel by adding a narrator’s voice to disapprove of the women’s behavior and caution readers against engaging in similar homosexual relationships.[12] Throughout the novel the narrator makes comments on how women who engage in lesbian relationships are disoriented and isolated.[13] This disapproving message is reinforced by the eleventh printing cover which eliminated the women’s smiles and the connections between the women, making them appear isolated and lonely in the barracks.
While I did not find documented evidence of the Committee requesting changes to the Women’s Barracks cover, editorial director Ralph Daigh stated in the 1952 House Select Committee that there is always a correlation between the covers and front matter of books and their contents.[14] Fawcett Publications learned that in order to adhere to the Committee’s overarching requirements on books featuring homosexual relationships, they needed to convey to readers the immorality and dissatisfaction of homosexuality, including cover art.[15] The addition of a narrator in later printings of the novel shows the publisher’s willingness to alter its novels to satisfy the Committee’s censorship requirements for publishing lesbian fiction.
Fawcett’s progression in producing works that disapprove of homosexuality is evident not only in the alterations made to Women’s Barracks cover but also in the cover art of other lesbian pulp novels printed by Fawcett in the decade following the 1952 Committee report. The other lesbian pulp works from Fawcett Publications Inc. printed after the 1952 report include Odd Girl Out, The Evil Friendship, Women in the Shadows, and The Girl’s in 3-B. All of these novels include significant warnings about homosexuality on their covers. Their covers advertise their stories as the “latest study of the tragedy of forbidden love,” and “their dark and troubled loves could flourish only in secret.”[16] These negative messages underscore the primary requirement set forth by the Committee for the publishers producing lesbian pulp fiction, which mandated that homosexuality be portrayed as unnatural, unacceptable, and not worthy of a happy ending.
The artwork on Fawcett’s lesbian novel covers depicts characters devoid of happiness, emphasizing the disapproval for the homosexuality depicted in their narratives. All of Fawcett’s lesbian pulp fiction covers from the late 1950s and early 1960s showcase women in somber moods, comforting each other or not interacting with each other at all. The covers of the 1960 printing of Odd Girl Out and the 1963 printing of The Evil Friendship both feature two women at their center, where one is in a position of distress while the other comforts them.[17] The Girls in 3-B, uses a similar layout to the Women’s Barracks cover where three women are in the act of dressing but their faces are expressionless and focused on their own tasks.[18] The cover art used for Fawcett’s lesbian pulp fiction novels reflected a common aspect of lesbian fiction during this period, which emphasized that homosexuality does not end in happiness.[19] During this period, Fawcett Publications Inc. and other publishing companies were constrained to selling books that featured covers emulating the unhappy endings their queer characters were mandated to have by the House Select Committee.
Part II: Analysis of Front Matter in Women’s Barracks
The first page a reader sees when they open up the 1958 printing of Women’s Barracks is a first page dedicated to a 1953 municipal court case. The page states that St. Paul salesman of Women’s Barracks, Fred Lovekove, was charged with selling “indecent and lewd literature.”[20] The judge’s ruling concluded that the novel story did not contribute to corrupting or depraving the ordinary reader.[21] This judgment greatly contrasts the Committee report that was released almost a year earlier on December 31, 1952, finding that Women’s Barracks had a negative influence on readers who they believed would not otherwise be exposed to this type of content.[22]
The first page of Women’s Barracks eleventh edition, featuring the summary of a 1953 court case and its conclusion.[23]
A journalist investigating the 1953 case made the journey to St. Paul, Minnesota to review the case documents. The investigation found records of the listed defendant, Henry Fredkove, the owner of a Minnesota bookstore called Courtesy News Co and the complaint, Kenneth Bayliss, a member of the National Council for Youth. This National Council had a reputation for sending out members to sellers of media to monitor their items on sale.[24] The judge’s conclusion disagreed with the complainant’s main argument of the book’s indecency because censorship revolving around obscenity is a relational and changing concept that varies “both as to time and space” because what was considered obscene in the mid 19th century might not be obscene in the mid 20th century.[25] The judge highlights a key defense for Women’s Barracks that Ralph Daigh also used in his 1952 testimony, which is the ambiguity of the concept of obscenity making it difficult to categorize a book as obscene. It is particularly difficult when the main intent of the novel, according to the author in an interview and echoed by Daigh in his testimony, is to describe a period of recent history and is not exclusively discussing homosexuality.[26] The municipal court’s conclusion is a notably more favorable verdict for the publisher compared to the 1952 Committee report.
The eleventh printing of Women’s Barracks printed five years after both the Committee and municipal court’s decisions were released, however, its front page only references the latter. The publisher intentionally chose to include the more favorable verdict supporting the sale and distribution of Women’s Barracks from the legal cases it was embroiled in during the early 1950s.[27]
This appears to have been a special case for Women’s Barracks since Fawcett Publications followed a different front matter structure for its other lesbian pulp novels. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the front matter of lesbian pulp fictions published by Fawcett Publications typically consisted of a scene between women from the novel on the first page, followed by publisher information, the title page, and copyright information. On the first page of Odd Girl Out one line states “hungrily they fed on each other’s lip,” and the scene from The Evil Friendship, one of the characters “bent over Beth and began to kiss her like a wild, hungry, child, panting.”[28] Fawcett Publication used this front page to boldly display the lesbian content of the novel to its reader, however, the 1958 printing of Women’s Barracks is the exception. No where in the front matter is there a snapshot of a lesbian scene from the novel, instead the first page boldly displays the 1953 court case in St. Paul. Compared to the other Fawcett lesbian fiction analyzed, Women’s Barrack was unique in that it had court dealings it could reference, however, instead of displaying the national case with higher authority, it highlights the municipal court judgment. The decision to include the municipal court ruling despite the involvement of a higher federal court case suggests that it was deliberately added to signal to booksellers and buyers that the book passed the requirements for acceptable legal and moral standards for reading.
One part of the front matter that is universal across all of Fawcett’s lesbian pulp fiction novels, including Women’s Barracks, is the fine print under the copyright information that states, “all characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.”[29] This statement on the fictional nature of the novel is particularly interesting in the case of Women’s Barracks as it contrasts the “frank autobiography of a French girl soldier” advertised on the front cover and the back synopsis that explains how these stories come from women who confided in the author, Tereska Torres. Ralph Daigh repeatedly defended the novel as a true story in his testimony to the House Select Committee:
The above transcription from the 1952 report is an example of the questioning that Ralph Daigh faced during his testimony and his commitment to defending the trueness of the novel ranged all 5 pages of the report transcript. The publisher’s assessment of the novel’s accuracy does not align with the disclaimer indicating it as a work of fiction. Although I do not have access to the front matter for the first few printings of Women’s Barracks or other lesbian fiction produced by Fawcett before the 1952 report, it is clear that a strong disclaimer of the fictional nature of the novels became frequent in Fawcett printings in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Fawcett Publications’ implementation of a standard fictional disclaimer across all their lesbian pulp fiction enabled them to appease the House Select Committee who attempted to discredit the authenticity of lesbian experiences by discouraging the portrayal of true stories.
Conclusion:
Fawcett Publishing Inc., continued printing Women’s Barracks and publishing other lesbian pulp fiction novels in the decade following the 1952 House Select Committee report. This 1952 Committee censored the US publishing industry’s portrayal of homosexuality by banning books and enforcing clear guidelines to depict homosexual relationships as doomed and unfulfilling. Facett’s commitment to producing these lesbian works while also working within the bounds of legal and creative constraints placed by the committee is evident by their cover art styles and front matter. Despite the Committee’s conclusions which forced publishers to condemn homosexual behaviors in their novels to avoid bans, publishers like Fawcett Publications continued to sell millions of copies of lesbian pulp fiction, offering stories featuring homosexual relationships and characters to US readers.[31] The alterations and additions made to the printings of Women’s Barracks exemplify how Fawcett adeptly adapted to censorship guidelines while leveraging its notoriety to effectively market the book.
Endnotes
[1] Tereska Torres, Women’s Barracks, trans. George Cummings (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1958), 4.
[2] Len Barot, “Queer Romance in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century America: Snapshots of a Revolution,” In Romance Fiction and American Culture, edited by William A. Gleason and Eric Murphy Selinger, Ashgate, (2016): 389-404.
[3] Torres, 1.
[4] Tereska Torres, Women’s Barracks, trans. George Cummings (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1950); Tereska Torres, Women’s Barracks, trans. George Cummings (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1958).
[5] U.S. Congress, Report of the Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials, House of Representatives, Eighty-Second Congress, Pursuant to H. Res. 596, a Resolution Creating a Select Committee to Conduct a Study and Investigation of Current Pornographic Materials, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. House Report no. 2510. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1952, 15.
[6] María J. Quintana-Rodriguez, “Attempted Book Bans: The Censorship of Queer Themes in the 1950s,” Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal 4, no. 2, (2023): 100-121. https://works.swarthmore.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&context=suhj.
[7] Erin Owens, “The Lavender Scare: How Fear and Prejudice Impacted a Nation in Crisis,” Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History 10, no. 2 (2020): 115-128.
[8] Quintana-Rodriguez, “Attempted Book Bans,” 109.
[9] U.S. Congress, Report of the Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials, House of Representatives, Eighty-Second Congress, Pursuant to H. Res. 596, a Resolution Creating a Select Committee to Conduct a Study and Investigation of Current Pornographic Materials, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. House Report no. 2510. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1952, 3.
[10] U.S. Congress, 38.
[11] Quintana-Rodriguez, “Attempted Book Bans,” 113.
[12] Quintana-Rodriguez, “Attempted Book Bans,” 113.
[13] Tereska Torres, Women’s Barracks, trans. George Cummings (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1958), 122, 49.
[14] U.S. Congress, Report of the Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials, House of Representatives, Eighty-Second Congress, Pursuant to H. Res. 596, a Resolution Creating a Select Committee to Conduct a Study and Investigation of Current Pornographic Materials, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. House Report no. 2510. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1952, 39.
[15] María J. Quintana-Rodriguez, “Attempted Book Bans: The Censorship of Queer Themes in the 1950s,” Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal 4, no. 2, (2023): 100-121. https://works.swarthmore.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&context=suhj, 113.
[16] Vin Packer, The Evil Friendship, (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1963); Ann Bannon, Women in the Shadows, (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1959).
[17]Ann Bannon, Odd Girl Out, (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1960); Vin Packer, The Evil Friendship, (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1963).
[18] Valerie Taylor, The Girls in 3-B, (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1963).
[19] Len Barot, “Queer Romance in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century America: Snapshots of a Revolution,” In Romance Fiction and American Culture, edited by William A. Gleason and Eric Murphy Selinger, Ashgate, (2016): 389-404, 389.
[20] Tereska Torres, Women’s Barracks, trans. George Cummings (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1958), 1.
[21] Note: No printings of Women’s Barracks were released between the House Select Committee in 1952 and the 1953 municipal case, thus both the Committee and municipal Judge reviewed the same printing of the novel but only one decided in favor of the novel’s continued distribution.
[22] U.S. Congress, Report of the Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials, House of Representatives, Eighty-Second Congress, Pursuant to H. Res. 596, a Resolution Creating a Select Committee to Conduct a Study and Investigation of Current Pornographic Materials, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. House Report no. 2510. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1952, 14.
[23] Tereska Torres, Women’s Barracks, trans. George Cummings (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1958), 4; Calerie Taylor. The Girls in 3-B. (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1963), 4.
[24] Richard Price, “Women’s Barracks and 1950s Prudes,” Adventures in Censorship (blog), June, 28, 2022, https://adventuresincensorship.com/blog/2023/6/10/womens-barracks-and-1950s-prudes
[25] City of St. Paul v. Fredkove, November 1953. Minnesota Civil Liberties Union Records, Box 12. Minnesota Historical Society, 4.
[26] Christine Smallwood, “Sapphic Soldiers,” Salon, August 9, 2006. Retrieved 7 April 2024, https://www.salon.com/2005/08/09/torres_3/; U.S. Congress, Report of the Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials, House of Representatives, Eighty-Second Congress, Pursuant to H. Res. 596, a Resolution Creating a Select Committee to Conduct a Study and Investigation of Current Pornographic Materials, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. House Report no. 2510. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1952, 37.
[27] Note: A Canadian judge in Ottawa ruled that Women’s Barracks encouraged depraved and corrupt behavior by those who read it. The Canadian case took place before the Gathings Committee report and is referenced in the notes of Ralph Daigh’s testimony. This is included as a footnote because the focus and scope of this paper does not extend beyond the U.S.
[28] Ann Bannon, Odd Girl Out, (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1960); Vin Packer, The Evil Friendship, (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1963).
[29] Tereska Torres, Women’s Barracks, trans. George Cummings (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1958), 4; Calerie Taylor. The Girls in 3-B. (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1963), 4; Ann Bannon, Odd Girl Out, (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1960), 4; Vin Packer, The Evil Friendship, (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1963), 4; Ann Bannon, Women in the Shadows, (Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1959), 4.
[30] U.S. Congress, Report of the Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials, House of Representatives, Eighty-Second Congress, Pursuant to H. Res. 596, a Resolution Creating a Select Committee to Conduct a Study and Investigation of Current Pornographic Materials, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. House Report no. 2510. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1952, 37.
[31] Yvonne Keller, “‘Was It Right to Love Her Brother’s Wife so Passionately?’: Lesbian Pulp Novels and U.S. Lesbian Identity, 1950-1965,” American Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2005): 385–410. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40068271.
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Adams, Mary Louise. “Youth, Corruptibility, and English-Canadian Postwar Campaigns against Indecency, 1948-1955.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 6, no. 1 (1995): 108–117. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3704439
Bannon, Ann. Odd Girl Out. Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1960.
Bannon, Ann. Women in the Shadows. Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1959.
Barot, Len. “Queer Romance in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century America: Snapshots of a Revolution.” In Romance Fiction and American Culture, edited by William A. Gleason and Eric Murphy Selinger, Ashgate (2016): 389-404.
Keller, Yvonne. “‘Was It Right to Love Her Brother’s Wife so Passionately?’: Lesbian Pulp Novels and U.S. Lesbian Identity, 1950-1965.” American Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2005): 385–410. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40068271.
Owens, Erin. “The Lavender Scare: How Fear and Prejudice Impacted a Nation in Crisis.” Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History 10, no. 2 (2020): 115-128 DOI: 10.20429/aujh.2020.100208
Packer, Vin. The Evil Friendship. Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1963.
Quintana-Rodriguez, María J. “Attempted Book Bans: The Censorship of Queer Themes in the 1950s.” Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal 4, no. 2 (2023): 100-121. https://works.swarthmore.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&context=suhj
Richard Price, “Women’s Barracks and 1950s Prudes,” Adventures in Censorship (blog), June, 28, 2022, https://adventuresincensorship.com/blog/2023/6/10/womens-barracks-and-1950s-prudes
Taylor, Valerie. The Girls in 3-B. Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1963.
Torres, Tereska. Women’s Barracks. Translated by George Cummings. Greenwich, NY: Fawcett Publications Inc., 1958.
U.S. Congress, Report of the Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials, House of Representatives, Eighty-Second Congress, Pursuant to H. Res. 596, a Resolution Creating a Select Committee to Conduct a Study and Investigation of Current Pornographic Materials, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. House Report no. 2510. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1952, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3971443&seq=33&q1=women%27s+barracks
