Bad Accents in Movies

[papeetepatrick]

I believe that was supposed to be based on Norma Talmadge's voice, wasn't it? one of the many who didn't make the transition to talkies. I don't think I ever heard Talmadge's voice though.

Thinking about it, I'm not sure I've ever heard Talmadge's "real" voice. What I've heard of her (Idiot's Delight, mostly) is really plummy.

Just looked up Talmadge, who made at least 2 talkies, but I think you may mean Norma Shearer for Idiot's Delight. I may try to find these early Talmadge talkies, though, to see what she did sound like. There are 'New York Nights' and 'Dubarry Woman of Passion', but I've never heard anything about these.

[bart]

A group of us at dinner recently were discussing accents. For example: the way that some people never lose the accent of the place in which they were raised (one maintained, at 60, the strong Boston Irish accent of his youth despite living in other parts of the U.S. for most of his life), while others seem to pick up a new accent easly (a woman, raised with a powerful Australian accent, who now sounds like an Ivy League American from North East). Neither made a conscious effort to change (or to retain) the accent they grew up with.

When it comes to accent, there seem to be many differences from individual to individual. There can also be inconsistencies within the same person. For example, I've always been pretty quick at picking up the sound of foreign languages when travelling, but cannot reproduce dialects accurately in English for more than a few syllables at a time. (Eg. a recent attempt to read Moon for the Misbegotten -- American Irish, with different degrees of assimilation -- aloud.)

Has anyone else experienced such disparities? What explains them? Do the people who are "good with accents" hear things differently from the rest of us, or possibly have better links between ear and tongue? How far can trainining and re-conditioning go to remove an old accent and replace it with a new one -- whether for the run of a play or the shooting of a movie, or for the rest of one's life?

[dirac]

I just saw, for the first time, a portion of the American tv series House. Hugh Laurie -- a British actor, educated at Eton and Cambridge -- uses what sounds like a flawless accent playing a cantankerous but brilliant American physician in New Jersey.

You have to have seen him in British comedy -- especially as the thick-as-a-plank Prince of Wales (c. 1790) and the even thicker upperclass military twit (c. World War I) in the 3rd and 4th Blackadder series -- to appreciate how miraculous this American make-over is.

And didn't he do a Jeeves and Wooster series with Stephen Fry?

I didn't watch House at the beginning, but have been dipping into the reruns on USA and am really enjoying it.

Laurie used to specialize in pop-eyed ninnies, so it did give me quite a turn when I first saw him in House. I don't watch the series regularly as my appetite for teevee hospital dramas, no matter how well done, was sated long ago. But on the occasions when I've seen it he was excellent and the accent near perfect. In any case, he seems to be getting more money and attention than he ever has before, and it's well deserved.

Thank you, miliosr, for reviving this old thread. I have the impression there are quite a few Brits who can do Americian quite well, although the reverse doesn't always obtain.

[volcanohunter]

Collectively, the worst set of accents I've run across is in Black Hawk Down, a film I've never seen in its entirety. Whenever I run across it, I'm reminded of the NYT review: "...a cast of non-American actors like Ewan McGregor, Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom try out their Yankee soldier accents, with vowels so oddly enunciated that you expect them to be singled out as foreign spies." When I do catch a bit of the film on television, I always stop for a few mintues for a good howl and to award the anti-prize for least convincing accent to one of the poor sods on screen. At present I'd be inclined to give it to Jason Isaacs.

[sandik]

Thinking about it, I'm not sure I've ever heard Talmadge's "real" voice. What I've heard of her (Idiot's Delight, mostly) is really plummy.

Just looked up Talmadge, who made at least 2 talkies, but I think you may mean Norma Shearer for Idiot's Delight. I may try to find these early Talmadge talkies, though, to see what she did sound like. There are 'New York Nights' and 'Dubarry Woman of Passion', but I've never heard anything about these.

Oh, my ears are red, red, red!

You're absolutely right.

[Mel Johnson]

Although she's not credited with it, in addition to Lina Lamont, Norma Talmadge may also have influenced the character Vera Charles in Auntie Mame, especially as portrayed by Coral Browne.

PATRICK: Who was that English lady, Auntie Mame?

MAME: What English lady, dear?

PATRICK: Miss Charles.

MAME: Oh, Vera? She's not English, dear, she was born in Pittsburgh.

PATRICK: But she sounds so....

MAME: Well, when you're from Pittsburgh, dear, you have to do something!

Norma Talmadge was born in Niagara Falls to a family of transplanted Brooklynites. In the novel, Vera's accent started in Mayfair, and became quite impenetrable by the end of the book.

[papeetepatrick]

Mel, thanks for all that information--esp. because it makes me remember again how I think Coral Browne is one of the most perfect actresses who ever came around to stage and screen--Edith Evans agrees, lavishing praise on her style and beauty that no other actress got, as I remember, except Gladys Cooper, who Edith described as being so beautiful when young as to always be 'straight from the bath.'

But Browne is also even appropriate for this thread insofar as we talk about accents in general sometimes, not just bad ones. As an Australian, she nevertheless became one of the greatest practitioniers of those 'plummy accents' that sandik refers to--and I imagine Penelope Keith studied both hers and Evan's when she did a Lady Bracknell in London this year, as well as back in the 80s for her BBC sitcoms. But Australians are definitely not who we usually look to for the most upper-class English accents, and Coral's is amazing in 'The Killing of Sister George'. So that adds something to various commenters queries about non-Brits doing British accents. (I'm not sure whether, on the other hand, Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum did suitable Australian accents in 'The Sundowners'.)

I had read some sort of sketchy bio of the Talmadge sisters, and while I think Norma is praised more, Constance is perhaps most memorable, because she was lucky enough to have the role of the Mountain Girl in Griffith's 'Intolerance.' They'd made so much money in innumerable silents that they claimed not to mind that they had to 'retire' in their 30s (I think it was that young.) There's still an old pile once owned by one of them on Franklin Avenue, Hollywood, that I photographed several years ago, but I never found out which one, but quiggin might know--it's either on or very close to Camino Palmero.

[dirac]

When I do catch a bit of the film on television, I always stop for a few mintues for a good howl and to award the anti-prize for least convincing accent to one of the poor sods on screen. At present I'd be inclined to give it to Jason Isaacs.

Thanks for mentioning “Black Hawk Down," volcanohunter. How could I have forgotten. I think I’d give the booby prize to Orlando Bloom.

The movie has some good action set pieces, though.

Special awards for Knowing Their Own Limitations and Being Big Enough Stars to Get Away with It go to Robert Redford for not trying to be British in “Out of Africa” and Clark Gable for not trying to be Southern in “Gone with the Wind.”

[Quiggin]

Catherine Hepburn's "The cala lilies are in bloom again" was much commented on and imitated when I was in college.

And there is Celia Johnson's daughter's impenetrable English accent in "Brief Encounter."

But the Pandora's box of curious intonations has to have been "Beverly Hills 90210," traces of which you still hear here on the West Coast. It involves a kind of fast talking, hitting consonants hard and bumping solidly into the end of the word.

What makes unusal accents sound bad perhaps is that the actor prizes sound over conveying sense. At least this was the case in Beverly Hills 90210, where there was no sense.

MAME: Well, when you're from Pittsburgh, dear, you have to do something!

Norma Talmadge [the model for Vera Charles perhaps] was born in Niagara Falls to a family of transplanted Brooklynites.

The most famous Brooklynite who passed for an European may have been Henry James' Madame Merle, whose accent we can only try to imagine.

It was true that the national banner had floated immediately over her cradle, and the breezy freedom of the stars and stripes might have shed an influence over the attitude she there took towards life. And yet...

[Memo]

Dick Van Dyke's "Cockney" accent in Mary Poppins.

I second this one. But he danced so beautifully we forgave him!

[miliosr]

I'm in the process of converting my Colby's [Note: Dynasty spinoff from the 1980s] VHS tapes to disc and I can't help but marvel at the way Barbara Stanwyck [who played Constance Colby Patterson on the show] spoke. Most of the time, she sounds like she just rolled out of a speakeasy. But every so often she'll bust out this affected 30s studio system "voice" -- "paht" for "part" and "cahn't" for "can't". I keep waiting for her to say, "I'm from Ba Ha-buh!"

[dirac]

Joan Crawford used to speak the same way every once in awhile. Oh, those studio elocution teachers....

[carbro]

I cahhhn't stahhhhnd him.

I cai-un staiunum.

I cahhhn't stahhhhnd him.

I cai-un staiunum.

[bart]

I cahhhn't stahhhhnd him.

I cai-un staiunum.

I cahhhn't stahhhhnd him.

I cai-un staiunum.

Sounds like Lina Lamont in that scene from Singing in the Rain.

Doesn't she say (and pronounce) something like: "I ca-a-a-n't staaandim."

[carbro]

Sounds like Lina Lamont in that scene from Singing in the Rain.

Doesn't she say (and pronounce) something like: "I ca-a-a-n't staaandim."

It depends on how you hear "aaaaa". The challenge is getting the equivalent vowel sound/s of "yeah," for can't and stand. Keahn't and steahn' don't work. In my mind's ear (and I may well be misremembering) I hear Lina eliding the D in "stand."

[bart]

There's also the matter of rhythm. Lamont makes the "can't" very long and bleating. "Staandim" is short and punchy. It's almost entirely unrelated to English as spoken by most people. I love her complete inability to hear -- and therefore to duplicate -- the coach's corrections.

Long ago I found myself attending the first day of a university summer-school class in conversational French. The teacher asked each person to pronounce "non." The "nons" -- some perfect, some pretty good, all acceptible -- followed one after another up and down the classroom rows. Then came, in a loud female voice sounding remarkably like Lina Lamont: "NA-A-A-HN." The teacher was unkind and made the young woman repeat it several times, each time giving her the chance to listen to him pronouncing it correctly. And each time, the same response: "NA-A-A-HN!"

The student, I suspect, never heard the difference between the teacher's "non" and her own.

I left the class early and dropped the course -- and that teacher -- the next morning.

[carbro]

Lina's ordeal is all

.

[bart]

carbro, you're amazing! I love that little tremolo in the last "staaandim." A sweet baby goat. It's enough to break a mother goat's heart.