Interview With Kathleen Winsor Author of 'FOREVER AMBER'

ORIGINAL Interview With Kathleen Winsor Author of ‘FOREVER AMBER’ – MAR. 9, 1945

For those of you who are not familiar with the book Forever Amber was written at in 1944. It was considered quite controversial at the time.

In fact, there are stories of stunning movie star, Ava Gardner, reading the book and being admonished by two of her husbands for it.

One being Frank Sinatra. The other Artie Shaw. The irony with Shaw is that he went on to marry the author – Kathleen Winsor – after divorcing Gardner.

The marriage to Winsor was quickly annulled. Shaw was married eight times in his life. Two were annulled and the rest were divorced.

Artie Shaw was an extremely talented man, but described by many – including himself – as “a very difficult man.”

Learn more about the Forever Amber below or download a pdf copy (FREE) Here…

Below is a summary from Wikipedia;

“Forever Amber (1944) is an historical romance novel by Kathleen Winsor set in 17th-century England. It was made into a film in 1947 by 20th Century Fox.

Forever Amber tells the story of an orphaned Amber St. Clare, who makes her way up through the ranks of 17th-century English society by sleeping with or marrying successively richer and more important men while keeping her love for the one man she can never have.

The subplot of the novel follows Charles II of England as he returns from exile and adjusts to ruling England.

The novel includes portrayals of Restoration fashion, including the introduction and popularization of tea in English coffeehouses and the homes of the fashionably rich; politics; and public disasters. This includes the plague and the Great Fire of London.

Many notable historical figures appear in the book, including Charles II of England, members of his court, and several of his mistresses including Nell Gwyn.

Winsor’s inspiration for the book came from her first husband, who had written his undergraduate thesis on Charles II, completed while he was serving in the army. She read books on the period and wrote numerous drafts of what would become Forever Amber.”

Below is the actual text from the interview which Kathleen Winsor gave to ‘YANK’ Magazine issue 1945-03-09. Yank Magazine was a WW II publication.

YANK The Army Weekly • MAR. 9, 1945

PEOPLE ON THE HOME FRONT

Kathleen Winsor

By Cpl. HYMAN GOLDBERG – YANK Staff Writer

**Note the language used toward Winsor, as a woman, for this national magazine publication…**

(picture of Kathleen Winsor around the time of the interview in 1946 below)

Kathleen Winsor may not be the best writer in the world, as some literary critics have

said, but none of them has denied that she’s the prettiest.

Miss Winsor—that’s her maiden name—is the author of “Forever Amber,” a historical novel about a young girl laid in the Restoration period of England, during the years 1660 to 1670.

Publication of the book has brought forth more discussion than any other recent novel, and Miss Winsor, who photographs exceedingly well, as any fool can plainly see, has become a very famous lady on the home front.

Some of the critics were fairly gentle with “Forever Amber,” but others emphatically didn’t like it, as will be seen from the following reviews:

In the New York Herald Tribune, Bernard de Voto, a former Harvard faculty man, said:

“With the War Production Board ordering another cut in paper, 1 vote for the World Almanac.”

Time said: “Many readers will never finish so dull a book.”

And the New Yorker magazine observed: “Her characters talk about as interestingly as brokers on the 8:19 from White Plains.”

Well, if that’s so, then those brokers who commute from White Plains are pretty hot stuff, and some weird things are happening on the old New York Central these days, because listen to what one of the heroine’s lovers says to her:

“Please, darling—don’t be angry. I’m in love with you. I swear I am. I want you. I’ve got to have you!”

And Miss Winsor, describing this stirring scene in the novel, writes: “His fingers cut into her shoulders and his voice in her ear was hoarse with intensity.”

Then this wolf gives out with the pay-off sales talk like this: “Please, Amber, I won’t hurt you —I won’t let anything happen—come here.”

But let us draw a curtain on Amber and this guy with the hoarse voice and go back to Miss Winsor, in whose pretty little head all this first took place.

She doesn’t seem to mind too much what the critics have said. It isn’t any wonder that she has the attitude that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”

Her publishers, Macmillan, who also sponsored “Gone With the Wind” and “The Oxford Book of English Verse,” have already sold well over 400,000 copies of the book—at $3 a copy—and 20th Century-Fox, the movie company, has paid her $200,000 for the screen rights.

“Forever Amber” is Miss Winsor’s first novel and her only published work, with the exception of several newspaper feature stories she did for the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune giving the woman’s angle on football.

Her husband, Miss Winsor acknowledges, knows quite a lot more about football than she does. He is Robert John Herwig, All-American center for 1936-37, football coach for the University of California and currently a lieutenant with the 4th Marines in the Pacific.

Miss Winsor was regretful, but she couldn’t tell her age because her agent had advised her not to – which may or ay not be an indication that Miss Winsor intends to act in the movies, as has been reported.

But she’s probably around 28.

(picture of Kathleen Winsor around the time of the interview in 1946 below)

Not that she looks like an old hag of 28, but she was graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1938, which would make her about that age.

Miss Winsor is a poised, easy, self-confident talker, as befits someone who has earned in the neighborhood of $400,000 and who has talked often about herself. She’s tall – 5 feet 6 inches in her stocking feet, she says – and her hair and eyes are brown.

While an undergraduate at California, she wrote a number of short stories, but she didn’t try to sell any of them. “I wrote them for my own amusement, or my own amazement,” she says.

Her story about how she came to write the best-selling story of Amber St. Clare, the Restoration pin-up girl, goes like this;

Her husband, also a student at the university, brought home some books to use in this homework, which happened to be a paper about the English Restoration period. Kathleen just like all wives who can’t keep their noses out fo their husband’s business, picked up one of the books.

She was fascinated.

She read more. And no wonder, because the English, or at least the English nobility in those days were frank people. They called a spade a spade.

And a bed a bed.

Miss Winsor denies that she deliberately put a lot of sex into her book so it would sell. “That’s the way people were in those days,” she says, “and I tried to tell the truth about them. They weren’t hypocrites.”

She laughed when it was pointed out that her use of the word “hypocrites” might be taken to mean that she thought the standards of the 17th century were better than those of our day. “I don’t mean that at all. I mean that when a man has a mistress nowadays – and they do have them,” she said earnestly-“he keeps it a secret, and when it’s discovered there’s a scandal. In those days everybody had mistresses, and they didn’t try to hide them.

Amber St. Clare, Miss Winsor’s heroine, is a prominent Restoration mistress.

She’s a bastard.

Her father is a nobleman and she is born in the country, which bores her crazy. It’s no place for a girl of her talents. So she comes to the big city, just like a lot of country girls are still doing without knowing there is a broken heart for every light on Broadway.

She is beautiful.

(picture of Kathleen Winsor around the time of the interview in 1946 below)

Her mother named her Amber because that’s the color of her eyes. And her hair is honey-colored. And she is small.

Well, Amber meets a city slicker named Lord Carlton and he promises her a screen test or something and she falls for him.

Before she’s through, Amber goes on the stage, gets married four more times, becomes the favorite mistress of Charles II, King of England, who managed to have quite a number of mistresses and has other loves.

“How many love affairs did she have altogether? My goodness,” Miss Winsor said, laughing, “I don’t know. I couldn’t keep track of them. Some of those love affairs were very short ones, you see.”

Here are some of Amber’s lovers; “Rough and chivalrous” Capt. Rex Morgan, “picturesque highwayman” Black Jack Mallard, “bestial obscene” Luke Channell, “the sadistic” Earl of Radcliffe and “irresistible” King Charles.

“I read 356 books on the Restoration period,” Miss Winsor said, “in one year. Altogether, I spent five years working on ‘Forever Amber.’ I wrote six drafts before I was through.”

The sixth draft totaled 1500 pages in manuscript form and the published version numbers 972 pages and weighs just a little bit less than two pounds.

Miss Winsor was asked if she had any Restoration material left over for another book.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” she said. “I haven’t any plans now for another book.

My mind is still full of the Restoration period. And whatever the critics say, Amber is a true portrait of a type of woman of those days. In those days if a woman wanted to get ahead in the world, she had only one resource. Nowadays, women have other resources.”