To get into more theaters, Fox made some cuts and added opening and closing voice-over damning the film's heroine for her sinful exploits. Once the film was completed, it caught the ire of the infamous Catholic censorship organization the Legion of Decency and was branded with their dreaded 'C' rating (for Condemned). After more than a month of filming, the studio didn't like what they were getting, so they scrapped the original production (at a loss of around one million 1940s dollars) and started again with A Letter To Three Wives' Linda Darnell as Amber and Otto Preminger directing. Production originally began with Gun Crazy's Peggy Cummins cast as the title character and Leave Her to Heaven's John M. screens in 1947, after a slightly bumpy journey. (I personally haven't cracked this particular tome, but reading the opinions of many internet commenters gives me the impression that while the novel's original readers were inflamed, for better or for ill, by the novel's sexual relationships out of wedlock, the story would not be considered nearly as racy by today's standards.)Īs with all smutty best-sellers, Forever Amber was given a toned-down film adaptation that arrived on U.S.

Numerous states banned the nearly 1000-page book, but scandalized readers gobbled it up so heartily that it became the American best-seller of the decade. In terms of cultural impact, Kathleen Winsor's 1944 romance novel Forever Amber was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its day.

Forever amber book review