Kathryn McLean née Anderson (March 20, 1908 - May 15, 1966), best known by her pen name Kathryn Forbes, was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer and memoir

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

ist. Many of her works were based on the experiences of her family.

Life

Kathryn Anderson was born in San Francisco in 1908. Her grandmother had emigrated to California from Norway in the late 19th century; both of Anderson's parents were native-born Americans.

Forbes died in San Francisco in 1966. She is interred at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery

Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma

Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, California is an American Roman Catholic cemetery operated by the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Established in 1887 on of a former potato farm, it is the oldest and largest cemetery established in Colma to serve the needs of San Francisco...

 in Colma

Colma, California

Colma is a small incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, at the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 1,792 at the 2010 census. The town was founded as a necropolis in 1924....

. (Section 5, Row 8, Grave 35), which is just south of the city where she was born and raised.

Work

Forbes was a radio scriptwriter and later began publishing short stories. Forbes published the first two chapters of her novel, Mama's Bank Account and Mama's Roomer in 1942. Mama's Bank Account, her best known work was published in 1943 about a Norwegian family living in 1920s San Francisco. Her heartwarming stories focused on their simple aspirations and their often difficult struggles, dreams and determinations, happiness, and sorrows.

Forbes' book served as the inspiration for John Van Druten's 1944 play I Remember Mama

I Remember Mama

I Remember Mama is a play by John Van Druten. Based on the fictionalized memoir Mama's Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes, it focuses on the Hanson family, a loving family of Norwegian immigrants living on Steiner Street in San Francisco in the 1910s.Produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein...

. RKO Pictures

RKO Pictures

RKO Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chains and Joseph P...

 bought the rights to the novel and later bought fifty percent of John van Druten's Broadway adaptation and made a deal with the play's producers, Richard Rodgers

Richard Rodgers

Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

 and Oscar Hammerstein II

Oscar Hammerstein II

Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...

. RKO Pictures distributed the 1948

1948 in film

The year 1948 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* Laurence Olivier's Hamlet becomes the first British film to win the American Academy Award for Best Picture.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :...

 film, which was directed by George Stevens

George Stevens

George Stevens was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer.Among his most notable films were Diary of Anne Frank , nominated for Best Director, Giant , winner of Oscar for Best Director, Shane , Oscar nominated, and A Place in the Sun , winner of Oscar for Best...

 and starred Oscar Homolka

Oscar Homolka

Oskar Homolka was an Austrian film and theatre actor. Homolka's strong accent, stocky appearance, bushy eyebrows and Slavic name led many to believe he was Eastern European or Russian, but he was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary.- Career :After serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War...

, Edgar Bergen

Edgar Bergen

Edgar John Bergen was an American actor and radio performer, best known as a ventriloquist.-Early life:...

, Irene Dunne

Irene Dunne

Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron , Theodora Goes Wild , The Awful Truth , Love Affair and I Remember Mama...

, Barbara Bel Geddes

Barbara Bel Geddes

Barbara Bel Geddes was an American actress, artist and children's author. She is best known for her role in the television drama series Dallas as matriarch Eleanor "Miss Ellie" Ewing. Bel Geddes also starred in the original Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the role of Maggie...

 and Ellen Corby

Ellen Corby

Ellen Corby was an American actress. She is most widely remembered for the role of "Grandma Esther Walton" on the CBS television series The Waltons, for which she won three Emmy Awards...

.

A popular long-running television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 series was broadcast on the CBS network from July 1, 1949 to March 17, 1957. In addition to the John van Druten adaptation, McLean's novel was twice turned into a stage musical. The first was adapted by Neal Du Brock

Neal Du Brock

Neal Du Brock directed the world-premieres of many important plays including Edward Albee's Box and Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky ....

 and John Clifton and opened in Buffalo, New York

Buffalo, New York

Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...

 in 1972, with Celeste Holm

Celeste Holm

Celeste Holm is an American stage, film, and television actress, known for her Academy Award-winning performance in Gentleman's Agreement , as well as for her Oscar-nominated performances in Come to the Stable and All About Eve...

 in the role of Mama. In 1979, Richard Rodgers wrote the music for the second musical version for which Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann

Liv Ullmann

Liv Johanne Ullmann is a Norwegian actress and film director, as well as one of the "muses" of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman...

played the role of Mama.

In 1947, Forbes published another novel, Transfer Point, regarding the daughter of divorced parents. Unlike Mama's Bank Account, for which she drew on the experiences of her Norwegian-born grandmother, the later novel was closer to Forbes' real-life childhood.

External links

• Kathryn Forbes' grave in Colma