When Kathryn McClean Gave Herself a Pen Name, the World Discovered Her Writing

Before Kathryn McClean (née Anderson) started writing dramas and gag bits for NBC’s West Coast Radio Broadcasting Center in San Francisco, she hadn’t really thought about writing as a career. She graduated from high school at 15 and then she went to business school. When she was 17, she headed across the Bay for college because her mom thought she was now old enough to do so. Later in her 17th year, Kathryn married San Francisco contractor Robert McLean and somewhere in there, she quit college.

While she was raising her two sons, Robert born in 1928 and Richard born in 1930, she would listen to NBC’s on-air monologues. She thought she could do better and her mom would encourage her. “Remember when you used to win all those essay contests?” “Remember when you wrote those school plays?”

In the mid-1930s, Kathryn began writing those radio gigs. At first, her payment consisted only of having her name mentioned as “writer” on-air. So she decided to get herself an agent and give herself a pen name.

She liked “Forbes.” Her father had grown up in Forbestown, a small community in Butte County. Her parents had married there in 1895. And so the native San Franciscan chose “Forbes” for her pen name, got an agent, and enjoyed the checks that came in from for her radio dramas and gag bits. When NBC moved their radio headquarters to Hollywood in 1938, Kathryn decided it was time to make a go of writing magazine fiction. Time after time, nothing she submitted was published.

She decided rather than writing complete fiction, she would write a story loosely based on her own childhood. When her 1,000-word short story “Mama’s Bank Account” was rejected by Atlantic Monthly, she almost gave up. But then she decided she still had the stamina for one last try. She sent her story to Reader’s Digest and received a check immediately along with a request for more stories. She wrote a second story, “Mama’s Roomer,” and received a second check. Her agent told her he could see these stories and more “Mama” stories turned into a novel.

It took Kathryn a year to write 17 episodic chapters that comprised the life of an immigrant Norwegian family in San Francisco. But once her novel, “Mama’s Bank Account,” made it to publication in 1943, it was an instant success. The thread that runs through all 17 stories is Mama. Mama was based on Kathryn’s own Norwegian grandmother. Mama runs a boarding house in San Francisco and while she struggles financially, she never lets on and provides her family with a constant sense of security by inventing, for their sake, a mythical bank account that she can always turn to if things get too tough. Mama also dishes out wisdom to family members and tenants alike.

Kathryn Forbes’ “Mama’s Bank Account” became a bestselling novel, so much so that during World War II the U.S. Government purchased 100,000 copies for distribution overseas. Following the War, the government encouraged Japanese and German translations because of the book’s “endearing portrait of American family life.” Kathryn’s book inspired the hugely popular John Van Druten play “I Remember Mama,” which premiered on Broadway in 1944 and ran for 713 performances. The play was subsequently turned into a 1948 movie starring Irene Dunne as Mama and Barbara Bel Geddes as Mama’s aspiring-writer daughter. The story was also turned into a CBS television series, “Mama,” which ran from 1949 to 1957. Twice her novel made it to the stage as a musical. In 1947, Kathryn published her second novel, “Transfer Point.”

Kathryn (Anderson) McLean was born on March 20, 1908, in San Francisco to Lee Ellis Anderson – a member of Carpenters’ Union Local 483 – and his wife Della (Jesser) Anderson. She was the second of their two children. Her brother Ellis Reed Anderson was born in 1896. Both of her parents were native Californians. Kathryn’s maternal grandmother was from Norway and her maternal grandfather was from Denmark. When Kathryn was born, the family was renting a flat at 460 Scott Street in Hayes Valley. Her mom ran the multi-family property which had a number of their relatives as boarders. When Kathryn was 10, her father died. In the 1920 U.S. Census, Kathryn and her mom can be found at 410 Steiner Street. Eight boarders also lived at the same address and Kathryn’s mom served as the boarding house manager.

Kathryn, who divorced her husband in 1946, would often note that she could not act “authorish at all” around her sons. But when her son Robert was in New York, on liberty from his maritime service, he was given tickets from producers Rodgers and Hammerstein to see “I Remember Mama” on Broadway. Robert told the buddies he brought along nothing about his connection to the playwright, until the play was over and he liked it. Then he admitted all.

Kathryn Forbes died on May 15, 1966, in Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco. She was 58. A Requiem Mass was held at St. Catherine’s Church in Burlingame, followed by her burial at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery. Visitors can find her grave in Section 5, Row 8, Grave Number 35.