Forever Amber (novel) - Cultural References

Cultural References

• In Child of Divorce, a 1946 film, Nora, the maid, balks at reading Roberta 'Bobby' Carter Forever Amber as a bedtime story.
• In the Christmas Eve 1946 show of The Abbott and Costello Show, Santa lists one of the reasons that Costello shouldn't get a present as him having a certain book under his bed. Lou says that it was only a book on how to change the color of tea. When Santa asks what it was called, Lou replies Forever Amber, to which the audience roars with laughter.
• On the Burns and Allen radio show, the book is often spoofed for its blatant references, usually with Gracie Allen commenting on it naively not knowing what it is all about.
• The book is referred to on multiple episodes of many radio shows including The Jack Benny Program, Bob Hope Show, A Day in the Life of Dennis Day, The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show, The Fred Allen Show, It Pays to Be Ignorant, The Great Gildersleeve and The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show and Fibber McGee & Molly on the episode from 2/19/1952.
• On the debut episode of the radio show A Day In The Life Of Dennis Day, Dennis Day dresses up as the female lead character from Forever Amber for a costume party because the costume is deemed too sexy for his girlfriend to wear.
• Amber St Clair appears as a historical character in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as a member of the first incarnation of the League in the 17th century, Prospero's Men.
• In Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley Forever Amber makes an appearance after Dr Poole's release to the Facts of Life where he is sleeping under guard of two Postulants, one who is himself asleep; the other who is 'absorbed in an ancient copy of Forever Amber.' Throughout Ape and Essence the Postulants spit at the sexual acts of others, so for one of them to be absorbed in the racy book is a bit of fun on Tallis's (Huxley's) part alluding to the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of the new society.
• In the film "The Last Time I Saw Archie" Archie Hall (Robert Mitchum) and William Bolden (Jack Webb) both read the book while lying on their respective bunks.
• In the 1949 psychological thriller Somewhere in the Night (directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Police Lt. Donald Kendall (played by Lloyd Nolan) jokes that the murderer confesses "... with full detail that'll make better reading than Forever Amber."
• In the 1948 Merrie Melodies cartoon Home Tweet Home, the nurse who is tending the baby and Tweety is seen reading (and gasping at) a book labeled AMBER.
• In I Love Lucy, Season 2, epsiode titled "Lucy Writes a Novel," Lucy reads about a housewife who makes a fortune writing a novel, and then pens her own book entitled "Real Gone With the Wind." Fred, Ethel and Ricky secretly obtain a copy and find upon reading it that it is all about them. Ethel then destroys the book, telling Lucy that she changed the title to "Forever Embers."