I Remember Mama

Based on Kathryn Forbes's fictionalized family memoir, Mama's Bank Account, I Remember Mama is a 1944 comedy-drama by English playwright-cum-director John Van Druten. The play chronicles a close-knit Norwegian American family, led by its stalwart but loving matriarch, in a series of vignettes that explore their lives in 1910s San Francisco. Much of the action concerned Mama's interventions in the lives of her family members to help them realize their goals. It is related through the eyes of the eldest daughter, Katrin, a teenager who aspires to become a professional writer. In that Norwegian Americans comprised one of the 10 largest ancestry groups in the United States, I Remember Mama had a special, nostalgic appeal to many Americans.

John Van Druten was one of the most prolific and successful English playwrights of the 1920s and 1930s. After a string of successes in London and New York, Van Druten turned his attention to Mama's Bank Account in 1944. Kathryn Forbes, who had worked initially as a scriptwriter for radio programs, based much of the book on the experiences of her grandmother, who had immigrated to California from Norway toward the end of the 19th century. Perhaps for this reason, the work was very adaptable.

Toni Campbell played the role of Dagmar on the CBS television program Mama in 1956, which featured a Norwegian American family. The popularity of the show prompted a national release of the film I Remember Mama in 1956.

Scandinavian immigration to the United States began in the early 19th century and peaked in the early 1880s. Most Scandinavian émigrés came to the United States in search of religious freedom, economic opportunity, or because of a famine in [Page 1129]Norway during the 1930s. They found the communities in the Pacific northwest and midwest especially welcoming. By the 1910s, during which the novel is set, nearly one million Norwegians had immigrated to the United States, and primarily lived in northern California, Oregon, and Washington, where they were mostly shipbuilders and farmers.

The work was set in San Francisco, which has had a thriving community of Americans of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Finnish descent since the early 20th century; in fact, as of the 2010 U.S. Census, California has the second-largest population of Scandinavian Americans of any state in the nation. Although many Scandinavian Americans quickly learned English, they still preserved the ethnic traditions of their homelands through various cultural organizations, fraternal associations, and commercial centers. However, Norwegian Americans were the least likely of all Scandinavian immigrants to assimilate and gain English fluency. This tendency toward maintaining Norwegian customs is a recurring theme throughout I Remember Mama.

The Broadway production of I Remember Mama opened on October 19, 1944, and played 713 performances at the Music Box Theatre. Mady Christians, Oscar Homolka, and Joan Tetzel assumed the leading roles; Marlon Brando made his Broadway debut in a supporting role. The famed composing team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II produced the play, which was received favorably by critics and audiences alike.

In 1948, George Stevens directed a screen adaptation, penned by DeWitt Bodeen. The film starred Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Philip Dorn, Sir Cedric Hawdwicke, Ellen Corby, Rudy Vallee, and Edgar Bergen, with Oscar Homolka reprising his Broadway role. Named one of the year's Ten Best Films by Film Daily, I Remember Mama was nominated for five Academy Awards and three Writers Guild of America Awards, and Corby won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. Based on the film's success, a radio version was produced for Lux Radio Theater, and it featured Dunne, Homolka, and Bel Geddes in their film roles.

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