I Would LOVE To See a Remake.

It is definitely time to remake this movie. It is a wonderful book and the first movie did not do it justice.

Lovely Raquel probably thought that Golden Globe for best comedic role by an Actress that they gave her for her rather good romantic lead performance as Constance Bonacieux in The Three/Four Musketeers (it was filmed all at once, then released as two separate features in 1974 and 1975) meant that Hollywood finally respected her as a genuine dramatic talent instead of a sexpot.

She won the award, and deserved it, but she had no business playing Amber St. Clare in a remake of this classic 1948 blockbuster. However, she was/is, like Linda Darnell before her, half-Latina, and always considered to be more of a sex symbol than a great actress. Maybe Welch wanted her daughter to play the part at some point, because after she sued MGM for canning her (no pun intended) from Cannery Row in 1980, her movie career was dead in the water. She was also almost forty at the time and would have been too long in the tooth.

Forever Amber, like The Three Musketeers, takes place in the seventeenth century, and is chock-full of true-life characters who actually lived. A great irony is that the Duke of Buckingham who was murdered in 1628 by John Felton in real life as in the Dumas classic was the uncle of Barbara Villiers (born in 1640), Amber St. Clare's chief rival for the affections of King Charles II in the 1944 best-seller.

I agree that English actors would be the best to fill out a stellar cast, particularly in the role of King Charles, because most of the original Forever Amber featured players were British, excluding the American Glenn Langan (Rex Morgan), a Fox contract player who was a former college football star. Of the two leads only Darnell was homegrown, as were some of the supporting actors Anne Revere (Mother Redcap), Natalie Draper (Barbara Villiers), Jane Ball (Corinne Carlton), and Jack Russell, who played Black Jack Mallard the highwayman, and who died the very same week as Langan in January 1991.

Russell later had fame on t.v. as a cowboy, while Anne Revere, who won the Academy award for Best Supporting Actress as Elizabeth Taylor's mother in National Velvet, suffered under the anti-communist witch-hunt for her role in Gentleman's Agreement, which won the 1947 Best Picture award. The success of Gentleman's Agreement angered every Republican in Congress especially the future Vice-President Richard Nixon, and Revere's name went on the blacklist. Afterwards, she could only get bits parts in Forever Amber and A Place in the Sun, which also starred Elizabeth Taylor. Revere played Montgomery Clift's mother in the latter and had very little screen time.

George Sanders, who would later win the Best Supporting Actor award for his standout performance as Addison Dewitt in 1950's All About Eve, was one of the many Brits on the roster, and was perfectly cast for the part of the randy but regal King Charles II. Michael York in the telecast The Lady and the Highwayman (1988 on CBS), Sam Neill in Restoration (1995) and John Malkovich in the 2004 feature The Libertine were also excellent as The Merry Monarch, as Charles II was so aptly called.

P.S. Hugh Grant was the star of The Lady and the Highwayman, a delightful television movie based on a Barbara Cartland novel, while he only had a bit part in the R-rated Restoration. He might be a good fit for the part of Charles in a remake, but he isn't getting any younger, although he still looks great even with salt/pepper hair. Actors in their fifties nowadays seem younger than actors in their late twenties/early thirties looked way back then in the 1940s. Just some thoughts.