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Speaker 1: If you watch any movie from Hollywood's Golden Age today,

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Speaker 1: you'll notice something distinctive about the way many actors speak.

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Speaker 2: Oh, we're going to talk about me.

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Speaker 1: Good Catherine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story, Orson Wells in Citizen Kane.

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Speaker 3: You're right, mister Thatcher. I did lose a million dollars

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Speaker 3: last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year.

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Speaker 3: I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know,

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Speaker 3: mister Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year,

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Speaker 3: and I have to close this place in sixty years.

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Speaker 1: Or Betty Davis as Margot Channing in All About Eve.

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Speaker 4: Nice speeches, But I wouldn't worry too much about your heart.

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Speaker 4: You can always put that award where your heart.

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Speaker 1: On t V, I've always been fascinated by this old

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Speaker 1: timey accent, whether in black and white movies or in

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Speaker 1: the TV commercials of my youth.

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Speaker 5: You see, high Point has a special way of capturing flavor,

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Speaker 5: deep brood flavor.

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Speaker 6: You see, high Point has a special way of capturing flavor.

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Speaker 4: Better. Yes, deep brood flavor.

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Speaker 1: Deep brood flavor.

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Speaker 4: Nice.

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Speaker 1: Who knew Lauren Bacall was such a coffee connoisseur. But

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Speaker 1: just where did this peculiar accent come from?

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Speaker 4: It was a real accent. It was a really dominant

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Speaker 4: sound in the northeastern part of America.

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Speaker 1: And one that commanded authority.

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Speaker 7: Let me upsit, my family. That's the only thing we

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Speaker 7: have to fild.

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Speaker 8: Bird the idea that that's the way you wanted to

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Speaker 8: hear your leaders speaking is a different kind of America

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Speaker 8: than today.

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Speaker 1: So why does almost nobody talk like this anymore? With

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Speaker 1: the exception of Kelsey Grammar.

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Speaker 7: Rather than truckle to the forces of commercialism, I've decided

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Speaker 7: to take a stat and on principle it's.

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Speaker 1: A mystery I'm determined to solve. From CBS Sunday Morning

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Speaker 1: and iHeart I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries, this moment

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Speaker 1: the death of an accent. Now, this is where it

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Speaker 1: gets a little bit controversial. There's a lot of disagreement

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Speaker 1: around what to call this because it's been commonly called

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Speaker 1: the mid Atlantic accent.

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Speaker 8: I call it the old Rless dialect, or that way

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Speaker 8: they talked in old movies. It's Betty Davis roughly.

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Speaker 1: That's linguist and New York Times columnist John mcwarter. You

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Speaker 1: may remember John from our episode on the death of

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Speaker 1: once popular names. He's helping me today with some of

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Speaker 1: this dialect detective work. Let's listen to Betty Davis herself.

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Speaker 1: Pay attention to the way she says Parker's written.

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Speaker 9: By that outstanding leading lady of.

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Speaker 2: Literature, Dorothy Parker. Dorothy Parker is the one who said

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Speaker 2: men seldom make passes at girls who wear.

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Speaker 8: Glasses Paka instead of Parker. Yeah, that excellent, And is.

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Speaker 1: That the primary characteristic when we're discussing this way of

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Speaker 1: talking burlessness?

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Speaker 8: Yeah, what sticks out today is that ours at the

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Speaker 8: end of syllables have a way of softening or even

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Speaker 8: not being present. And there's a certain archness that we detect.

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Speaker 8: We imagine that the women had fluty voices, etc. But

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Speaker 8: then again, Betty Davis did not have a fluty voice.

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Speaker 8: She didn't talk like this. She had a rather low,

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Speaker 8: cigarette stained voice. And yet what we hear in her

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Speaker 8: is paka instead of Parker, corner instead of corner. And

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Speaker 8: that's where you get this accent that sounding ever more

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Speaker 8: exotic as the decades go.

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Speaker 1: By, sounds almost alien and it makes people, i think today,

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Speaker 1: especially young people, kind of laugh.

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Speaker 8: I think that's absolutely true. It makes a lot of

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Speaker 8: older movies difficult for people. I would say, at this

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Speaker 8: point under fifty to take because everybody seems to talk funny.

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Speaker 8: It's been a long time since any real person spoke

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Speaker 8: that way.

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Speaker 1: Where does the R lists come from?

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Speaker 8: There are some consonants that are less hardy than others,

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Speaker 8: Like R is a very muddy kind of sound. It's

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Speaker 8: almost like a vowel. There's a difference between going puoh

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Speaker 8: or too and going it's muddy. When you hang a

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Speaker 8: R on the end of a vowel, it's delicate. It's

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Speaker 8: kind of like hair and split ends. You know that

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Speaker 8: that R is ripe for getting soft. It's going to

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Speaker 8: change the color of the vowel before it, and pretty

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Speaker 8: soon the our is gonna probably disappear. It's gonna erode,

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Speaker 8: as we put it. And so in any English, any

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Speaker 8: rs that are at the end of syllables, such as

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Speaker 8: in Parker, are in danger in a way, and it's

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Speaker 8: almost a matter of not weather, but when stuff is

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Speaker 8: going to start to happen.

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Speaker 1: Would you find this all over the United States?

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Speaker 8: Well, actually no, it's interesting. You have it most prominently

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Speaker 8: in New York and thereabouts, and then also you have

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Speaker 8: it in Boston, and then it also happened in the South.

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Speaker 8: But that was also partly because African languages on the

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Speaker 8: West Coast tend not to have ours at the end

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Speaker 8: of syllables. Slaves were brought to the Southern United States

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Speaker 8: often helped to bring up kids. That meant that the

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Speaker 8: ours were certainly going to fall away in the South.

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Speaker 8: So it's a different reason. So that's why you have

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Speaker 8: the r less Southern accent, and so that means Black

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Speaker 8: English is r less all over the country. But the

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Speaker 8: main things that people tend to think about if we're

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Speaker 8: talking about, say Betty Davis, is what was going on

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Speaker 8: in the northeastern United States starting in the eighteen hundreds.

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Speaker 1: And she was from Lowell, Massachusetts.

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Speaker 8: She was from Lowell.

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Speaker 1: Well, let's listen to her right now. In all about

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Speaker 1: Eve Eve.

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Speaker 5: This is an old friend. Mister DeWitt's mother, Missus Caswell, was.

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Speaker 2: Having to miss kiswell, how do you do Edison. I've

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Speaker 2: been wanting you to meet Eve for the longest time.

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Speaker 8: It could only have been your natural timidative, but kept

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Speaker 8: you from mentioning it.

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Speaker 4: You've heard of her great interest in the theater.

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Speaker 1: Clip and it's where she's meeting Marilyn Monroe, right, and

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Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe walks in.

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Speaker 10: And.

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Speaker 1: She's a luminous closed. She really does. You should close. Okay,

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Speaker 1: now let's listen. Oh and I just have one other

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Speaker 1: thing to say about All about Eve. My father once

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Speaker 1: said to me. He said, the two most purely evil

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Speaker 1: character is sort of in Western arts and culture, in

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Speaker 1: the Western canon where Iago in Othello and Eve Harrington

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Speaker 1: and all about.

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Speaker 8: Eve, if not Addison to but Eve, Yes, she is

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Speaker 8: more evil. That's definitely true. She has no feelings. That

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Speaker 8: is absolutely the case.

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Speaker 1: I want to be Addison, right, you're referring to Addison Dewett,

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Speaker 1: the imperious drama critic.

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Speaker 8: I wish Sondheim were still alive so that he would

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Speaker 8: do a musical of All about Eve that actually is

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Speaker 8: all about Eve, as opposed to Applause fifty years ago,

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Speaker 8: which wasn't. And because I'm kind of the age and

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Speaker 8: the temperament and we're now so interested in diversity in

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Speaker 8: the theater, I want to play Addison, but I can

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Speaker 8: tell nobody is going.

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Speaker 11: To do it.

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Speaker 3: You would be great that I should want you at

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Speaker 3: all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability, and

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Speaker 3: that in itself is probably the reason.

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Speaker 1: Did people speak like this in all cities on the

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Speaker 1: Eastern Sea border?

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Speaker 8: No, they didn't. This hourlessness developed by chance in some

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Speaker 8: places and not others. New York and Boston have it,

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Speaker 8: but Philadelphia and Baltimore don't. And particularly there are Philadelphia

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Speaker 8: and Baltimore were our full rhodic cities, as we call it.

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Speaker 1: It just skipped those cities. So it's ironic then that

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Speaker 1: Katherine Hepprince, because come Back, Early, Comeback was playing Tracy

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Speaker 1: Lord in the Philadelphia story.

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Speaker 5: You seem quite contemptuous, and.

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Speaker 8: They all of a sudden she wouldn't have sounded that way.

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Speaker 1: In other words, Tracy Lord would not have ordered a

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Speaker 1: cheese steak. She would have ordered one. Other aspects of

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Speaker 1: this accent, it's posh, it's proper. What would you say,

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Speaker 1: how would you describe it?

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Speaker 8: That is an accent that sounds British to us, And

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Speaker 8: I think there's an idea that everybody was trying to

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Speaker 8: sound British. I question that. I think that the way

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Speaker 8: American English happened to develop was something that would have happened,

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Speaker 8: whether there was a great Britain, and whether we associated

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Speaker 8: it with poshness or not.

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Speaker 1: Here's a surprise. John mcwater says, early Americans didn't talk

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Speaker 1: this way.

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Speaker 8: We have a tendency to think that the Founding Fathers,

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Speaker 8: for example, because they were such formal and educated people,

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Speaker 8: we assume that they sound that like masterpiece theater, or

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Speaker 8: if that's a dated reference, like many of the actors

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Speaker 8: in Every Potter. And actually that's not true. That accent

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Speaker 8: actually developed after America was already up and running.

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Speaker 1: So Thomas Jefferson would have said went in the course

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Speaker 1: of human events, definitely, And John says the Brits themselves

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Speaker 1: only started dropping their rs in the late seventeen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: so the early sixteen hundreds it was William Shakespeare, definitely.

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Speaker 8: Yeah. And there was no horelessness among the people in

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Speaker 8: the Globe.

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Speaker 1: Theater, okay, all right. And it was the Virgin Queen.

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Speaker 8: The Virgin Queen, not the Virgin Queen, right.

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Speaker 1: Although Betty Davis dislay she was all the quing Queen.

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Speaker 1: I'm suddenly imagining Betty Davis walking to the hunter Acre

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Speaker 1: would and having to greet that donkey eawe. This accent,

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Speaker 1: with its emphasis on enunciation was especially prevalent in the

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Speaker 1: early American theater before the invention of the microphone. It

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Speaker 1: tended to carry all the way to the back of

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Speaker 1: the house.

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Speaker 8: And then once amplification comes in, old habits die hard.

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Speaker 8: And so you have these people, you know, on the

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Speaker 8: soundtracks of these old movies, still talking in a way

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Speaker 8: that maybe would have been thought of as a better

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Speaker 8: way to sound if you're doing Our American Cousin in

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Speaker 8: eighteen sixty five as opposed to what you need to

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Speaker 8: do now.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for the Our American Cousin reference, which, of

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Speaker 1: course was the stage comedy that Lincoln was watching at

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Speaker 1: Ford's Theater. Now, I've always wondered there was a star

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Speaker 1: of it. But then there was a guy who was

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Speaker 1: the second Banana, who played kind of the funny guy role.

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Speaker 1: And there's an insult he lays on her, and that's

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Speaker 1: the big laugh line. And that's when John Wilkes Booth

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Speaker 1: fired the gun. He was waiting for a laugh line.

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Speaker 1: You suckologizing old man trap, And that was the big

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Speaker 1: That was sort of like the sit on It Potsey

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Speaker 1: of its time.

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Speaker 8: So few people are going to get them, all.

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Speaker 1: Right, it's that's what she said of its time. Right, Wait,

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Speaker 1: what are the people laughing to now? I don't know

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Speaker 1: what they're laughing to now. Now, it wasn't only Hollywood

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Speaker 1: royalty who spoke like this, but also the political elite.

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Speaker 1: Here is Teddy Roosevelt campaigning to return to the White

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Speaker 1: House in nineteen twelve.

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Speaker 10: These prohibitions have been given by the gods from safeguards

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Speaker 10: against political and social privilege, in the barriers against political

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Speaker 10: and social justice and the bastie our papers. He is

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Speaker 10: not to impume the gods, but to emancipate them from

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Speaker 10: a position where they stand in the way of social justice.

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Speaker 8: That was amazing. I've never heard him. There's a story

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Speaker 8: of him going up to Albany when he is in

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Speaker 8: the Assembly and he was made fun of for the

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Speaker 8: way he talked, because that arl attack scent sounded silly

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Speaker 8: to a lot of the people from other parts of

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Speaker 8: the state. They imitated him as saying, mister speaker, miss

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Speaker 8: the speak up when he wanted to talk. That's not

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Speaker 8: the way people from further upstate spoke.

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Speaker 1: Let's hear now his fifth cousin, Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, let.

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Speaker 7: Me ussit my firmilie. Let's the only thing we have

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Speaker 7: to fish fire, so nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terra with paralyses

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Speaker 7: needed up, We'll convert with creek enter advance.

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Speaker 8: It's perfect.

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Speaker 1: Okay, this is twenty one years after that clip we

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Speaker 1: heard from Teddy, but it's still there, that accent very

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Speaker 1: much in the thirties, Like so many millions of others.

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Speaker 1: My Italian grandmother, she to her dying day, was grateful

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Speaker 1: to him for the new deal for the WPA. And

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Speaker 1: you know, she didn't talk anything like that.

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Speaker 8: The idea that that's the way you wanted to hear

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Speaker 8: your leaders speaking is a different kind of America than today.

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Speaker 1: You know, It's funny. My grandmother might have not only

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Speaker 1: expected it, but demanded it. That's right, let her leaders

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Speaker 1: speak like that. John mcwater says that in politics that

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Speaker 1: accent is as much of a relic as the art

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Speaker 1: of oratory itself.

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Speaker 8: Your grandmother would not have tolerated the way a lot

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Speaker 8: of our leaders today speak in public. And it's not

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Speaker 8: to say that there isn't a such thing as being

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Speaker 8: very eloquent within the bounds of being colloquial and casual.

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Speaker 8: But for someone to get up and talk the way

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Speaker 8: Trump does. And this is independently of the content, but

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Speaker 8: just that kind of scattershot half sentences and you know,

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Speaker 8: rarely completing a thought that would have been processed as amateurish,

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Speaker 8: as offensive.

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Speaker 1: But it's interesting the transition that happens, because you know,

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Speaker 1: FDR's last vice president, and his successor, of course, is

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Speaker 1: Harry Truman, who does not talk like that. He's not

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Speaker 1: a habadasha.

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Speaker 8: Oh, he's a Midwesterner. He has his urs.

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Speaker 5: I can't tell you.

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Speaker 12: How very much I appreciate the honor which you just

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Speaker 12: confarred upon me. I shall continue to try to deserve it.

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Speaker 8: And what's interesting is that his speaking is not something

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Speaker 8: anybody was particularly interested in paying attention to. He wasn't

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Speaker 8: considered an orator, he wasn't a performer. But yes, he's

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Speaker 8: somebody who did not have that kind of hourlessness, and

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Speaker 8: no one ever expected that he was going to become president. Anyway.

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Speaker 1: Let's now hear from one of Teddy Roosevelt's six children.

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Speaker 1: And no one had more fun children than tr had

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Speaker 1: in the White House. Okay, so let's hear from Ethel

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Speaker 1: Roosevelt Derby.

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Speaker 2: The children especially will be interested in seeing that odd

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Speaker 2: little animal under the table there. His name is Josiah.

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Speaker 2: And my father, knowing how he liked to have things

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Speaker 2: brought home to us whenever he could from his trips

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Speaker 2: out west, used to bring us home treasure. One time

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Speaker 2: he brought us a bear which lived in the woodshed.

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Speaker 2: This time he brought home a little badger. I took

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Speaker 2: a picture of my brother Archie in his ordinary girl

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Speaker 2: barefoot is little ragged trousers holding Josiah. My father used

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Speaker 2: to say.

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Speaker 8: Hissing like it, boy, And you can see why people

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Speaker 8: think this is about great Britain. Actually, the badger that

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Speaker 8: was a wonderful cliff.

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Speaker 1: It is so great. And I had to tell you

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Speaker 1: the picture of Archie holding Josiah the badger is just adorable.

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Speaker 8: Really, Yeah, you've got to look it up.

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Speaker 1: You will, of course not remember that I wrote a

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Speaker 1: book about presidential pets in two thousand and four, and

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Speaker 1: so Cheddi Rosevelt was my favorite chapter. He didn't know, no,

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Speaker 1: of course he didn't. I've seen the sales figures, and

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Speaker 1: so he had thirty six pets, and he hated amazing pets.

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Speaker 1: He had amazing pets.

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Speaker 8: Did the Lincolns. How many pets they did.

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Speaker 1: They had a horse samed Old Bob. They had a dog,

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Speaker 1: which is the very first photographed presidential pet. The dog's

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Speaker 1: name was Fido. It's actually really a very sweet picture

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Speaker 1: of Fido. He was a mott which is perfect for it.

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Speaker 8: But there's of Lincoln.

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Speaker 13: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And then they had two goats named Nanny and Nanco.

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Speaker 8: Did the dog sit still in the Lincoln picture? Is

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Speaker 8: it all blurry?

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Speaker 1: Because no, the dog is actually seated on what looks

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Speaker 1: like a pedestal, like a plinth.

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Speaker 13: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And after Lincoln died, a drunk with a knife stabbed

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Speaker 1: the dog.

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Speaker 8: You're kidding.

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Speaker 1: I'm just bringing all of us really down. It's really,

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Speaker 1: really terrible. But let me just make it better by

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Speaker 1: saying the teddy Roosevelt. They had a bear, a little

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Speaker 1: bear that they named Jonathan Edwards. So next time, listened

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Speaker 1: to Ethel Roosevelt saying Jonathan Edwards, the bad and the Bad.

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Speaker 1: And they had a hyena. Did they really have they

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Speaker 1: did have a hyena?

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Speaker 8: No?

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Speaker 1: It was crazy. I mean, I hope those kids had

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Speaker 1: all their shots. I want to give this guy some props.

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Speaker 1: Cornelius Vanderwbilt the fourth because he was an outcast from

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Speaker 1: the Vanderbilt family because he dared to get into newspapers.

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Speaker 1: Can imagine that as if he'd gotten an OnlyFans account

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Speaker 1: he was working for the newspaper My God. Okay. He

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Speaker 1: produced what is arguably the very first anti Hitler documentary,

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Speaker 1: Hitler's Reign of Terror, in nineteen three four. It was

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Speaker 1: met with a cold shoulder as hysteria warned people about

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Speaker 1: anti Semitism. So if just for that, let's listen to him.

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Speaker 10: There was money enough in Hollywood to tempt me to

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Speaker 10: go through it again. I'll tell you that last day

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Speaker 10: on the frontier, I felt like Mickey Mouse.

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Speaker 4: It was one tough.

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Speaker 10: Squeak for me.

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Speaker 2: I knew just what I would be up against if

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Speaker 2: the Nazzies ever found my films.

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Speaker 14: The last few weeks I've been carefully watched.

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Speaker 8: He sounds like Betty Davis and Nazzy.

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Speaker 12: Nazzy.

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Speaker 8: Yeah, you hear that occasionally, especially that Nazzies. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 8: that's that's something that people It was a spelling pronunciation

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Speaker 8: if you don't know German, and so it looks like

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Speaker 8: Nazzy and some people would get away with saying it.

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Speaker 8: That guy says is a piece of work.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he really is.

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Speaker 8: Did he have a family?

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Speaker 1: He was married seven or eight times, never had children.

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Speaker 1: It seemed like a guy I look just for the

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Speaker 1: documentary along. We've got to give the guy some props.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what it was like to

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Speaker 1: be married to him, but I like him. I like him. Okay,

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Speaker 1: let's hear another voice often associated with this accent. This

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Speaker 1: is a conservative intellectual, founder of the National Review and

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Speaker 1: co host of the TV show firing Line, William F. Buckley.

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Speaker 15: If the telephone company projected the number of people using

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Speaker 15: telephones nineteen thirty eight, they figured that at the rate

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Speaker 15: of which people were using the telephone by nineteen hundred

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Speaker 15: and sixty, in order to service that many calls, they'd

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Speaker 15: have to hire. Every woman in the United States is

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Speaker 15: a telephon operator.

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Speaker 1: Now, this is a much parodied accent. What is it

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Speaker 1: that we're hearing there that we're reacting to.

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Speaker 8: He's speaking rather quickly, not a whole lot of melodic change,

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Speaker 8: almost as if he can't be bothered to enunciate too much.

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Speaker 8: There's a privilege in it, and that he sounds like

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Speaker 8: he can't quite be bothered to try to get himself across.

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Speaker 8: He assumes that you're listening.

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Speaker 1: Closely, there's a certain lack of effort or I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure if it's a fatigue in there, a detachment, detachment.

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Speaker 8: It might also be brilliant, because he he was brilliant,

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Speaker 8: whatever you think of the content of the things that

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Speaker 8: he wrote and said. And so he's so committed to

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Speaker 8: the thinking that he can't be bothered with performance is

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Speaker 8: one kind of quick psychology you might pull.

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Speaker 1: Buckley indeed had a cosmopolitan upbringing. Born in New York,

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Speaker 1: he grew up speaking Spanish and received his early formal

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Speaker 1: education in France and England. But it wasn't just those

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Speaker 1: to the manor born who spoke this way. Let's turn

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Speaker 1: back to entertainment to listen to a commercial from the

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Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties starring The Bronxes. Betty Joan Persky aka

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Speaker 1: Lauren Bacall.

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Speaker 5: My favorite time of day is night. I love curling

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Speaker 5: up with a rich cup of coffee. You think coffee

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Speaker 5: and sleep down mix.

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Speaker 8: They do.

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Speaker 5: If it's high Point, it's decaffeinated and the flavor is marvelous.

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Speaker 5: You see, high Point has a special way of capturing flavor, flavor.

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Speaker 5: It's a coffee lover's dream.

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Speaker 1: Betty Joan Persky was born of the Bronx. Okay, okay,

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Speaker 1: grew up pretty hard scrabble. Now we can only guess

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Speaker 1: because she started in Hollywood when she was so young.

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Speaker 1: But do we think that an adolescent Betty Joan Persky

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Speaker 1: soon to be Lauren bacall, was arless.

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Speaker 8: She definitely would have been ar less, because this hourlessness

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Speaker 8: was not only people of a certain means, it was

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Speaker 8: also people who were middle and even lower class. Lauren

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Speaker 8: McCall had an air about her, especially as she got older,

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Speaker 8: and so it ends up sounding rather high toned that

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Speaker 8: she says flavor. But she learned to say flavor, probably

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Speaker 8: in the Bronx, in a very hot third floor apartment,

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Speaker 8: because that's the way everybody would have spoken there.

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Speaker 1: She's playing a high status character in one of the

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Speaker 1: high Point commercials. She's in a limousine drinking high Point coffee.

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Speaker 1: She's actually pouring it, which is insane. That's because how

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Speaker 1: you I mean? These are New York City streets, pop

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Speaker 1: holes everywhere. That's a major LOSSU youit ready to happen.

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Speaker 8: My pants are full of flavor, my dad.

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Speaker 1: These pants are full of flavor. I'm the woman of

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Speaker 1: the year with third degree burns. Okay, sorry, coming.

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Speaker 6: Up after a break. How to speak with distinction when

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Speaker 6: quoting from the classics.

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Speaker 4: Don't say flavor and hold it, get off it quicker flavor.

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Speaker 6: You see high Point has a special way of capturing

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Speaker 6: flavor better. Yes, you see high Point. You see high Point.

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Speaker 4: That's not bad. You see high Point has a special

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Speaker 4: way of capturing flavor.

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Speaker 1: You see high Point has a special way of capturing flavor.

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Speaker 16: Cap cap Chuck like cha sharing capturing dialect coach Jessica

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Speaker 16: Drake is teaching me to pitch decaf like Lauren Bacall.

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Speaker 1: Since the late nineteen eighties, Jessica's been helping major Hollywood

411
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Speaker 1: actors get into character for movies and TV. She helped

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Speaker 1: Sean Penn play Harvey Milk and Anada Armis become Marilyn Monroe.

413
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Speaker 1: I'm curious, what are you asked most about.

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00:22:30,640 --> 00:22:34,760
Speaker 4: It's Forrest Gump. It's always Forrest Gump. That's it.

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00:22:34,880 --> 00:22:36,040
Speaker 1: The Alabama accent.

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Speaker 7: Yes.

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Speaker 11: Now, because I've been a football starg and war hero

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Speaker 11: and national celebrity and a Shrimp and Bolt captain and

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Speaker 11: the college graduate this city follows at Greenbow, Alabama decided

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Speaker 11: to get together and offered me a fine job.

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Speaker 4: You know, for an actor, it's another piece, right, It's

422
00:22:54,280 --> 00:22:58,360
Speaker 4: like a false nose or a limp. It's a thing

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Speaker 4: that they add to the character, or it's a piece

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Speaker 4: that brings them closer to that other person they're playing.

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Speaker 1: The accent that we're talking about is commonly called the

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Speaker 1: mid Atlantic accent, the Transatlantic accent. Is that a misnomer?

427
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Speaker 4: Yes, it is, first of all mid Atlantic. I just

428
00:23:22,920 --> 00:23:26,000
Speaker 4: want to say, would be Delaware, Maryland, something like that.

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Speaker 4: The idea, the notion is it's halfway between English and

430
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Speaker 4: American speech, and so it's this mythological place that doesn't

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Speaker 4: exist in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I know exactly right. The closest you

433
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Speaker 1: could get it's a southern tip of Greenland. And I

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Speaker 1: don't think they talk like that there.

435
00:23:42,440 --> 00:23:46,920
Speaker 4: No, definitely not well observed. It's got nothing to do

436
00:23:47,080 --> 00:23:50,400
Speaker 4: with that. It was a real accent. Loads of people

437
00:23:50,480 --> 00:23:51,320
Speaker 4: spoke that way.

438
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Speaker 1: So what would you call this accent we're talking about.

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Speaker 4: I would call it probably Northeastern elite, because it's a

440
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:03,920
Speaker 4: sod with those regions. I mean where you really would

441
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 4: hear its, places like New York City, Newport, Rhode Island, Darien, Connecticut,

442
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:14,400
Speaker 4: Kenny Bunkport, Maine, and Boston.

443
00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:18,359
Speaker 1: Now this way of speaking wasn't only about dropping ours.

444
00:24:18,760 --> 00:24:23,200
Speaker 1: You'll also notice a softening and elongation of the vowels,

445
00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:27,359
Speaker 1: especially the A sound. And can I say my father,

446
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 1: who grew up in a factory town called Leminster, Massachusetts,

447
00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:35,920
Speaker 1: I would hear every so often he would say bathroom

448
00:24:36,320 --> 00:24:40,320
Speaker 1: instead of the bathroom. He'd say bathroom, bathroom, the bathroom,

449
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:44,199
Speaker 1: I need that or bathroom? Yeah yeah that a and

450
00:24:44,240 --> 00:24:46,560
Speaker 1: I would go bathroom, but he'd go bathroom.

451
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:49,400
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, it's pretty good, Moe, you have a pretty.

452
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,760
Speaker 1: Good middle a. Jessica Drake says that for most people,

453
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:55,680
Speaker 1: this accent wasn't learned formally in school.

454
00:24:56,080 --> 00:24:59,960
Speaker 4: The influences on most people's speech are pretty basic. It's

455
00:25:00,119 --> 00:25:04,520
Speaker 4: your parents and it's your friends when you're young, and

456
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:09,840
Speaker 4: that's pretty much where it gets formed. But where their classes,

457
00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:16,320
Speaker 4: I think unless you were pursuing either a career in

458
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:19,639
Speaker 4: the arts or perhaps going to say some sort of

459
00:25:19,640 --> 00:25:23,960
Speaker 4: a finishing school, which is a thing that existed, then yeah,

460
00:25:24,720 --> 00:25:26,200
Speaker 4: but otherwise no.

461
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:35,320
Speaker 1: One piece of misinformation you'll find online about this accent

462
00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:38,440
Speaker 1: is the notion that it was taught to Golden age

463
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:42,760
Speaker 1: Hollywood actors by a woman named Edith Skinner, a speech

464
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:46,840
Speaker 1: teacher best known for writing a book called Speak with Distinction.

465
00:25:48,040 --> 00:25:51,720
Speaker 1: Jessica Drake was one of Skinner's students at New York's

466
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:55,679
Speaker 1: famed Juilliard School, and she wants to set the record

467
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:57,480
Speaker 1: straight about her late mentor.

468
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 4: Edith Skinner was dedicated to the theater more than anything else.

469
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:07,920
Speaker 4: The theater. She is responsible definitely for training a whole

470
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 4: generation of regional theater actors.

471
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:15,280
Speaker 1: But Jessica says Skinner couldn't have coached those old, tiny

472
00:26:15,359 --> 00:26:20,960
Speaker 1: Hollywood stars because she never once worked in Hollywood. How

473
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:23,879
Speaker 1: did she become associated with this.

474
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 4: Accent misinformation is the simplest answer. Unfortunately, there have been

475
00:26:31,840 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 4: things put into print that have claimed that she was

476
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:39,879
Speaker 4: in Hollywood teaching in the thirties, or that actors were

477
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:44,040
Speaker 4: running around the studio lots carrying her book under their arms.

478
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:48,160
Speaker 4: This is all complete and total fabrication.

479
00:26:49,040 --> 00:26:52,400
Speaker 1: In fact, her book wasn't published until nineteen forty two,

480
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:55,399
Speaker 1: and then it was only available in the bookstore at

481
00:26:55,440 --> 00:26:59,720
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh's Carnegie Tech, where she taught at the time. Now,

482
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 1: Skinner did teach a later generation of actors something that

483
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:07,120
Speaker 1: would come to be known as good American speech.

484
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 4: So the sound that she came up with, the good

485
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:15,639
Speaker 4: American speech, is certainly based on what we've been talking about.

486
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:21,120
Speaker 4: That Northeastern accent. However, it had specifically something she called

487
00:27:21,200 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 4: the seven points.

488
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:27,840
Speaker 1: One of those seven points Skinner prescribed was softening those rs,

489
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:31,600
Speaker 1: but not quite as much as old time Hollywood actors

490
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:36,399
Speaker 1: often did. Skinner's method also encourages performers to pronounce certain

491
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 1: words with a middle a.

492
00:27:38,800 --> 00:27:42,400
Speaker 4: What she called the ask list of words. Those are

493
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:45,960
Speaker 4: words that Southern English would pronounce with a long a.

494
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 4: Ask pauls Claus and she had it at ask pass class,

495
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:56,719
Speaker 4: which is not ask past class, which would be more

496
00:27:56,880 --> 00:27:57,720
Speaker 4: general American.

497
00:27:58,320 --> 00:28:02,480
Speaker 1: One of Skinner's students, the actor Ellis rab Here, in

498
00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:05,639
Speaker 1: a production of the comedy The Royal Family, he.

499
00:28:05,640 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 8: Said, who's directing this picture? I said, you're directing the picture.

500
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:10,280
Speaker 8: You're not directing me. I'm through with it and you

501
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 8: can take that to remember me.

502
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:17,000
Speaker 1: By Ellis rab taught by Edith Skinner, was the inspiration

503
00:28:17,640 --> 00:28:23,439
Speaker 1: for Kelsey Grammar's voice for side show Bob on The Simpsons,

504
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:28,479
Speaker 1: which means that side show. Bob was trained by Edith Skinner.

505
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:33,280
Speaker 7: Lisa, you always wear the one rose petal floating atop

506
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 7: the cesspool.

507
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:35,600
Speaker 8: That is the Simpsons.

508
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:36,639
Speaker 14: You see.

509
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:40,000
Speaker 4: You can tie Edith to these things that way. Kelsey

510
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:42,880
Speaker 4: was a student of hers at Julliard as well, and

511
00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 4: I would say the frasier sound is in no small

512
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 4: part connected to that Edith training.

513
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:52,480
Speaker 8: It's hard to say what to hate.

514
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:56,920
Speaker 14: Most about Crane's show is Papa's sanctimonious style, his constant

515
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 14: self congratulatory references to his own life, or his voice

516
00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 14: a mock sympathetic tone, so sickly sweet. One wonders if

517
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:08,479
Speaker 14: the man graduated from medical school or from some mind

518
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:09,640
Speaker 14: controlling cult.

519
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:14,200
Speaker 1: And how's this for influence? That's truly out of this world.

520
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 4: Robin Williams. He took some of the speech exercises and

521
00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 4: turned them into that language that Mork spoke. She has

522
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:30,959
Speaker 4: an exercise mo may me my mo moo nona nine

523
00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:36,760
Speaker 4: no new LAWI li lo lou, Oh my god, that's

524
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:38,120
Speaker 4: where nyeah come from.

525
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:39,160
Speaker 1: Belief out of that.

526
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:40,959
Speaker 13: Wow.

527
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 1: I'll catch you on the rebound your magnitude until next week.

528
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:45,160
Speaker 12: I know.

529
00:29:45,920 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 1: No Coming up more with linguist John mcwater. Is this

530
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: a white accent?

531
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:20,000
Speaker 8: This is of course largely associated with white people. But

532
00:30:20,120 --> 00:30:24,600
Speaker 8: an interesting thing about the olden times is that there

533
00:30:24,680 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 8: was a sense in the United States that if you

534
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:29,200
Speaker 8: were going to be a person of influence, you had

535
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 8: to learn to talk in a certain way.

536
00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 1: I'm back with linguist John mcwarter to finish talking about

537
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:39,320
Speaker 1: the way some of us used to talk.

538
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:44,120
Speaker 8: And one of the most counterintuitive things I think these days,

539
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 8: because of all sorts of layers of assumptions that we make,

540
00:30:47,280 --> 00:30:50,280
Speaker 8: is that black public figures did the same thing. So

541
00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:54,600
Speaker 8: Booker T. Washington was born a slave, he learned to

542
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 8: sound like William Jennings Bryan because that is just what

543
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 8: one had to do, included for black audiences as well.

544
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:04,440
Speaker 8: And so you listen to people, especially in the first

545
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 8: half of the twentieth century, when you can have recordings

546
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:10,520
Speaker 8: of them black leaders, and it can be jarring. How frankly,

547
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 8: what to our ears is white? They sound today, But

548
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:19,320
Speaker 8: really what it was was public oratory American style.

549
00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:23,480
Speaker 1: Let's hear the voice of educator and orator and founder

550
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:27,640
Speaker 1: of the National Negro Business League, Booker T. Washington. It

551
00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 1: may be a little hard to make out since it

552
00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:31,240
Speaker 1: was recorded in nineteen oh eight.

553
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 17: Through the frays who depends on suttering back and begins

554
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:41,520
Speaker 17: a foreign land, or wonder that fat eatavating friend relations

555
00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 17: for southern white men? Who is the next door neighbor?

556
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 17: I would say, cast down your bucket where you are

557
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:52,080
Speaker 17: pass down making friends in every man the way.

558
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:56,400
Speaker 1: So Bucker T. Washington, we can only speculate he would

559
00:31:56,440 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 1: not have said I'm trying to sound white. He would

560
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 1: have said, I'm trying to sound like a public figure

561
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 1: who's respected.

562
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:04,640
Speaker 8: He would almost certainly have said that. Yet the idea

563
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:06,960
Speaker 8: that we would listen to him and think he sounded white,

564
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 8: he would have to wrap his head around that. He

565
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 8: would think, how else was I supposed to sound? If

566
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:13,040
Speaker 8: I was standing up in front of a massive audience

567
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:16,040
Speaker 8: making a speech, and this would include a black audience.

568
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:18,360
Speaker 8: Booker T. Washington didn't try to sound white. He tried

569
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 8: to sound formal.

570
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 1: Let's listen to who is often used as sort of

571
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 1: the counterpoint to Booker T. Washington. This is the activist,

572
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 1: pioneering sociologist, and socialist W. E. B. Du Bois, reading

573
00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:34,479
Speaker 1: from his autobiography, so presumably this is much later in

574
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 1: his life.

575
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:39,960
Speaker 18: I went from my home in Massachusetts when I was

576
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 18: seventeen don to Fisk University in Tennessee. There I stayed

577
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:50,440
Speaker 18: three years. Then I came from there to Harvard University

578
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:55,680
Speaker 18: in the fall of eighty five and stayed there four years.

579
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:59,800
Speaker 8: You know why that's perfect? That's so perfect? Do boys

580
00:32:59,840 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 8: was rful? He has his ours. The reason he's ourful

581
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 8: is because there is this otherwise utterly boring difference. It's

582
00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 8: a dialecticians thing between western and eastern New England. Boston

583
00:33:13,600 --> 00:33:17,640
Speaker 8: accent is eastern. Western is say, Great Barrington, where he

584
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 8: grew up. I actually went to college for two years

585
00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 8: in Great Barrings in the Berkshires, And that's why he

586
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:24,800
Speaker 8: says year instead of the year. And so he's on

587
00:33:24,840 --> 00:33:26,040
Speaker 8: the other side of that line.

588
00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:29,280
Speaker 1: Isn't that neat Well it's such an interesting clip to

589
00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 1: me because vers goes Massachusetts, but he keeps his ar

590
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: on Harvard. And there are moments and I could be

591
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 1: getting this wrong. He almost it almost sounds like a burr.

592
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 1: He almost sounds Scottish.

593
00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 8: He also just sounds like he's very much from another time.

594
00:33:43,840 --> 00:33:46,200
Speaker 8: His vowels are something that we wouldn't hear in anybody

595
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 8: in the United States these days, because if you're listening

596
00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:50,520
Speaker 8: to Dubois, you're listening to somebody who learned to talk

597
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:53,840
Speaker 8: at the end of the eighteen hundreds, and yet he

598
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 8: lived long enough to be recorded in good sound in

599
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 8: that way.

600
00:33:57,240 --> 00:33:59,959
Speaker 1: And I think a whole heck of a lot of

601
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,000
Speaker 1: people who know who w eb Boys was and who

602
00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:06,320
Speaker 1: have read him would be shocked to listen to that.

603
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:08,080
Speaker 8: Oh, you know, to tell you the truth. And this

604
00:34:08,160 --> 00:34:11,919
Speaker 8: is getting into a less cuddly dimension of these things.

605
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:14,560
Speaker 8: But as a black person, I have often thought this,

606
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:18,440
Speaker 8: many people who are big fans of people like Duboys

607
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 8: today might find themselves involuntarily put off by the way

608
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:27,560
Speaker 8: he spoke, because he had There's no hint of what

609
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:30,480
Speaker 8: we today think of as blackness in the voice of

610
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 8: that man. And it isn't an affectation. That's there's all

611
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:36,560
Speaker 8: evidence that that's the way he and people like him

612
00:34:36,600 --> 00:34:40,319
Speaker 8: always spoke. And I think many black people today, quite

613
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:42,640
Speaker 8: innocently would be waiting for him to kind of get

614
00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 8: down and use certain expressions and to you know, have

615
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 8: some horlessness and to have some vowel colorations, and he

616
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 8: would never do it. And I think it would make

617
00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 8: a lot of them rather uncomfortable. Whenever I've heard do boys,

618
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 8: I think to myself, hmm. Socially, it'd be a little

619
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:01,759
Speaker 8: awkward now for many black leaders, even black intellectuals and

620
00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:04,399
Speaker 8: black thinkers, we have a whole different sense of what

621
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 8: makes a person approachable, and perhaps even our value of

622
00:35:08,160 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 8: what approachability is very interesting.

623
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:13,279
Speaker 1: Well, so we talked about William F. Buckley earlier, his

624
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:18,680
Speaker 1: famous one of his famous debate partners James Baldwin. So

625
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:20,840
Speaker 1: let's listen to James Baldwin.

626
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:23,759
Speaker 9: The reason for the political hesitation and in spite to

627
00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:27,040
Speaker 9: the Johnson landslide, is the one that's been betrayed by

628
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:31,000
Speaker 9: American politicians for so long. And I am, I'm a

629
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 9: grown man, and perhaps I can be reasoned with.

630
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:35,520
Speaker 8: I certainly hope I can be.

631
00:35:37,400 --> 00:35:41,239
Speaker 9: But I don't know, and neither does Martin Luther King.

632
00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:44,640
Speaker 9: None of us know how to deal with those other

633
00:35:44,680 --> 00:35:47,359
Speaker 9: people whom the white world is long ignored. We don't

634
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 9: believe anything the white world says, and don't entirely believe

635
00:35:52,600 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 9: anything I or Martin say. And one can't blame them.

636
00:35:57,719 --> 00:35:59,359
Speaker 9: You watch what has happened to them in less than

637
00:35:59,360 --> 00:35:59,960
Speaker 9: twenty years.

638
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:06,200
Speaker 1: I mean, James Baldwin's voice is beautiful, and it sounds

639
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:09,920
Speaker 1: pretty close to British to my untrained ears.

640
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:13,360
Speaker 8: He was a performer. I'm a huge admirer of Baldwin,

641
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:16,279
Speaker 8: but he also he was cultivating a persona. But to

642
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:24,320
Speaker 8: be honest, I just hear black and nineteen twenties New York.

643
00:36:24,719 --> 00:36:26,640
Speaker 8: If anything to me, he sounds like Earth a Kit,

644
00:36:27,160 --> 00:36:29,720
Speaker 8: and Earth a Kit was not trying to sound British.

645
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:30,960
Speaker 8: He was trying to sound like Earth the Kit.

646
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:34,640
Speaker 1: I want to be evil. That's my favorite. Earth the Kid,

647
00:36:35,120 --> 00:36:39,359
Speaker 1: the kids, I want to be mean. One interesting point here,

648
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:42,000
Speaker 1: and tell me if you think this factored in. James

649
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 1: Baldwin's stepfather was a preacher. I wonder if that had

650
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:46,680
Speaker 1: any bearing.

651
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:54,680
Speaker 8: You know, it probably did, because Baldwin had a very

652
00:36:54,680 --> 00:36:58,840
Speaker 8: close relationship to the preaching and the church and the

653
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:03,319
Speaker 8: performance aspect of that. That definitely would have affected him.

654
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:05,759
Speaker 8: What you're not supposed to say, though, and I'm going

655
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:07,560
Speaker 8: to say it because I think many people are thinking it,

656
00:37:07,600 --> 00:37:10,640
Speaker 8: is that another thing he was doing I think was

657
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 8: imitating the way many gay men of that time spoke.

658
00:37:14,560 --> 00:37:18,000
Speaker 8: I think that there's some amount of playing with that

659
00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:20,680
Speaker 8: dynamic too, So if there's the preaching, there's the performing,

660
00:37:21,040 --> 00:37:24,359
Speaker 8: There is his sexuality, there is his blackness. You could

661
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 8: pour all of those things and mix them up and

662
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:30,160
Speaker 8: almost predict that what would come out is him saying

663
00:37:30,239 --> 00:37:31,800
Speaker 8: matn in the way that he does.

664
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:38,120
Speaker 1: We spent so much time focusing on the eastern part

665
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:41,279
Speaker 1: of the United States. Let's hear a clip from a

666
00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:44,920
Speaker 1: great playwright from Chicago, Lorraine Hansbury.

667
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:50,880
Speaker 13: In other words, what I was trying to say exactly

668
00:37:50,920 --> 00:37:54,920
Speaker 13: the opposite of what you paid attention to. That is

669
00:37:54,960 --> 00:38:00,719
Speaker 13: that we are not concerned, or perhaps to say, I

670
00:38:00,719 --> 00:38:05,880
Speaker 13: am not concerned with doing away with the mere paraphernalia,

671
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:14,799
Speaker 13: traditional paraphernalia of the inexpressive, crude Negro character. That is

672
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:20,880
Speaker 13: not the point. I very arbitrarily, very deliberately of thought

673
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:24,440
Speaker 13: and intention, chose to write, for instance, and I come

674
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:29,120
Speaker 13: from the Negro middle class about the Negro working class deliberately.

675
00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:31,520
Speaker 1: So I love the way she talks.

676
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:34,920
Speaker 8: There's something about the way she spoke. And what's interesting

677
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:37,359
Speaker 8: is that she has a few arms in there. She's

678
00:38:37,520 --> 00:38:41,280
Speaker 8: almost certainly smoking chainsmoker, and so there's some false starts

679
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:45,080
Speaker 8: as she kind of composes her thoughts while taking puffs

680
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 8: on the cigarette, and yet I must admit, as a

681
00:38:49,040 --> 00:38:51,719
Speaker 8: modern linguist, I spend a lot of time arguing that

682
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:57,320
Speaker 8: there are no grounds for looking down on new speech habits,

683
00:38:57,760 --> 00:38:59,879
Speaker 8: and I very much mean it, But I must admit

684
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:02,840
Speaker 8: I'm going to only say this once on this show,

685
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:04,879
Speaker 8: and I'm never going to say it again. I must

686
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:08,839
Speaker 8: admit I liked that she wasn't saying like and sort

687
00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:12,360
Speaker 8: of every two seconds, because her equivalent today, including that

688
00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 8: she could be just as fierce, just as educated, just

689
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:19,600
Speaker 8: as talented, it would be sort of every four sentences

690
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 8: or so. That's not as good as we just heard.

691
00:39:23,160 --> 00:39:26,360
Speaker 8: And it's because she lived in a time when public

692
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:29,799
Speaker 8: eloquence was still valued in a way that it just

693
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 8: isn't today. You don't grow up living under the strictures

694
00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:35,240
Speaker 8: that she did in terms of how you were expected

695
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:37,320
Speaker 8: to speak in public. And she didn't sound like George

696
00:39:37,360 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 8: Washington's inaugural address, but that was different from all of

697
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 8: the humble hesitations that are part of the way most

698
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:50,000
Speaker 8: modern people express themselves. I must admit I'd rather hear that.

699
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:53,919
Speaker 1: Her father was a successful real estate broker, her mother

700
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:58,359
Speaker 1: was a ward committee woman in municipal politics, so they

701
00:39:58,360 --> 00:40:01,920
Speaker 1: were rich, but there's something And she describes herself as

702
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:03,719
Speaker 1: a member of the Negro middle class.

703
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:07,560
Speaker 8: Middle class and not and she wrote about the Negro

704
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 8: working class. But she went to school beside you know,

705
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:13,839
Speaker 8: many white people, and she lived in an environment where

706
00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:15,600
Speaker 8: there was a sense that if you were going to

707
00:40:15,640 --> 00:40:18,440
Speaker 8: present yourself in public, you had to speak in a

708
00:40:18,480 --> 00:40:21,319
Speaker 8: certain way. And I am quite sure that she did

709
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:24,960
Speaker 8: not think of herself as speaking whitely. She thought of

710
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:27,640
Speaker 8: herself as speaking the way one was supposed to in

711
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:29,360
Speaker 8: order to go out into the world and try to

712
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:30,040
Speaker 8: make a difference.

713
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:31,720
Speaker 1: You know, I had to say, of all the clips

714
00:40:31,760 --> 00:40:35,600
Speaker 1: we've heard, this is the one that if I heard today,

715
00:40:37,040 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: I would say, I really like hearing this person talk.

716
00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:44,520
Speaker 1: This is this doesn't seem like a put on, This

717
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 1: doesn't seem alien to me. It's like she's speaking in

718
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:52,759
Speaker 1: a way that's almost a bridge between that accent we've

719
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:55,080
Speaker 1: been talking about and today.

720
00:40:56,200 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 8: Because she is somebody who's in her late twenties in

721
00:40:59,600 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 8: that clip, I think, and she's speaking in.

722
00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:06,719
Speaker 1: That nineteen sixty is nineteen sixty one.

723
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 8: Okay, yeah, And so she has learned to speak in

724
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:12,719
Speaker 8: the middle of the previous century. So she's not going

725
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:17,319
Speaker 8: to sound as arch as say black female activist Mary

726
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:19,880
Speaker 8: McLeod Bethune, where if you listen to her making speeches,

727
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:23,920
Speaker 8: she sounds like Eleanor Roosevelt. But she also Lorraine Hansbury

728
00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 8: is not a modern person yet, and so she speaks

729
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:31,319
Speaker 8: with a certain crisp directness. You sense that she knows

730
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 8: there's a microphone in front of her, and she's therefore

731
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:34,879
Speaker 8: supposed to switch into a certain mode.

732
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:39,759
Speaker 1: And she treats her vowels right surely. But she's also

733
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:42,279
Speaker 1: from the Midwest, and we love the Midwest.

734
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:45,359
Speaker 8: And therefore there's none of the weird rlessness. She's got

735
00:41:45,400 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 8: her proper urs. Yeah, that's let's make her the voice

736
00:41:48,719 --> 00:41:50,840
Speaker 8: of the twentieth century. That's the best voice of the

737
00:41:50,840 --> 00:41:51,640
Speaker 8: twentieth century.

738
00:41:51,680 --> 00:41:57,719
Speaker 1: I really really loved that clip. So what happened to

739
00:41:57,800 --> 00:42:00,440
Speaker 1: the accent? The last time I hear it in the

740
00:42:00,520 --> 00:42:04,239
Speaker 1: movie was probably twenty oh four in The Aviator when

741
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:06,440
Speaker 1: Kate Blinchett played Katherine Hepburn.

742
00:42:07,200 --> 00:42:11,080
Speaker 12: It's all been a grand adventure, but it couldn't possibly last.

743
00:42:11,840 --> 00:42:14,920
Speaker 1: But to alike you and I, the truth is some

744
00:42:15,040 --> 00:42:18,960
Speaker 1: Golden Age actors had never adopted it through the thirties

745
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:22,720
Speaker 1: and forties, manly man actors like Gary Cooper and Clark

746
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:26,000
Speaker 1: Gable brazenly brandished their rs.

747
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 8: Frankly, might hear I don't give a damn.

748
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:30,959
Speaker 1: But then the accent started disappearing.

749
00:42:32,080 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 8: There certainly seemed to come a time after World War Two,

750
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:39,880
Speaker 8: and no one knows exactly why when that accent was

751
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:41,879
Speaker 8: no longer fashionable.

752
00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:46,520
Speaker 1: The war itself was probably a factor, with infantrymen from

753
00:42:46,520 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 1: all over the country mixing accents in dialects blending together.

754
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:54,800
Speaker 1: And then, six years after the war ended, a film

755
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:58,880
Speaker 1: performance that dealt a blow to the accent. Here's Jessica

756
00:42:58,960 --> 00:42:59,920
Speaker 1: Drake again.

757
00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:04,600
Speaker 4: Marlon Brando and Streetcar Name Desire changed a lot of

758
00:43:04,640 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 4: people's ideas about what had to happen, certainly in movies

759
00:43:08,560 --> 00:43:12,520
Speaker 4: and entertainment and in the theater in terms of speech.

760
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:16,279
Speaker 6: You know what I say, ha ha, you hear me.

761
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:21,600
Speaker 4: But I also think that the culture began to shift

762
00:43:21,680 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 4: because the television came about. Now we had sources from

763
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:32,200
Speaker 4: all over the country, but a lot coming from the West,

764
00:43:32,840 --> 00:43:37,440
Speaker 4: which in many ways to this day I would say,

765
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:41,560
Speaker 4: has gone a long way to kind of leveling a

766
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 4: lot of regionalisms too, not just the Northeastern elite sound

767
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:47,200
Speaker 4: but all accents.

768
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:52,080
Speaker 1: The year after Brando in Streetcar, the movie musical Singing

769
00:43:52,160 --> 00:43:56,600
Speaker 1: in the Rain, with a hilarious scene between the ridiculously

770
00:43:56,760 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 1: untalented actress played by the wonderful Genie Hagen being tutored

771
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:06,360
Speaker 1: by an equally ridiculous addiction coach played by Kathleen Freeman.

772
00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:08,960
Speaker 5: Now, let me hear you read your line.

773
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:11,920
Speaker 7: And I can't stand him.

774
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:16,160
Speaker 5: And I can't stand him.

775
00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:17,840
Speaker 7: And I can't stamn.

776
00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 8: Can't get can't.

777
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:25,240
Speaker 6: Kid.

778
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:29,719
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know that's a good that's a good timeline piece,

779
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:32,879
Speaker 8: because there that is it's nineteen fifty two and they're

780
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:36,200
Speaker 8: making fun of the idea that there's a certain plumby

781
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:38,279
Speaker 8: way that people need to learn how to talk. And

782
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 8: that's that's a sign of the times. That character wouldn't

783
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:44,240
Speaker 8: have been as funny in nineteen forty two.

784
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:48,840
Speaker 1: And then thirty years later The knockout punch against the Accent,

785
00:44:49,480 --> 00:44:54,240
Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty two performance by Hollywood heavyweight Meryl Streep.

786
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:59,200
Speaker 19: I don't care that I would die. I'm afraid that

787
00:44:59,239 --> 00:44:59,719
Speaker 19: you would die.

788
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:04,000
Speaker 1: With a to me, what is the significance of Sophie's choice?

789
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:09,719
Speaker 4: I think it made a huge impact because Meryl Streep's

790
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:17,560
Speaker 4: Polish accent is flawless and real, and it does so

791
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:22,920
Speaker 4: much to amplify the emotional life of that character and

792
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:24,680
Speaker 4: the truth of that story.

793
00:45:25,200 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 19: So I hid it maham under my skirt on the train.

794
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:33,200
Speaker 19: I'm pretending that I am pregnant, you know, Oh you're

795
00:45:33,440 --> 00:45:36,400
Speaker 19: so afraid shaking.

796
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:41,040
Speaker 4: And I think after that, suddenly it became very important

797
00:45:41,719 --> 00:45:44,880
Speaker 4: to get the accents right. And everyone's trying to be

798
00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:48,920
Speaker 4: real now and not a fantasy or better than us

799
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:51,480
Speaker 4: in the old days of the Golden Age and Louis B.

800
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:54,760
Speaker 4: Mayer it's not that at all. It's now, let's really

801
00:45:54,800 --> 00:45:55,879
Speaker 4: get down in it.

802
00:46:01,880 --> 00:46:03,839
Speaker 1: And do you miss what I guess we'll just call

803
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:05,600
Speaker 1: this old timey accent.

804
00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:08,920
Speaker 8: You know something, though, I don't miss it. And the

805
00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:13,839
Speaker 8: reason is because one with home video and streaming such

806
00:46:13,840 --> 00:46:15,680
Speaker 8: as it is, so much of it is at our

807
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:17,600
Speaker 8: fingertips that we can have it whenever we want it.

808
00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:21,600
Speaker 8: And too, I enjoy listening to the variety of normal

809
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:25,640
Speaker 8: modern voices. To me, it's all just a menagerie of

810
00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 8: different vowels and consonants and melodies and slang and new

811
00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:33,360
Speaker 8: ways of using words. So no, I don't miss it,

812
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 8: but I think it's very charming.

813
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:40,279
Speaker 1: As for me, I kind of do miss it, and

814
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:46,120
Speaker 1: you never know, it could come back and I'll be ready.

815
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 1: It's a coffee lover's dream.

816
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:52,200
Speaker 4: That's your best line. Excellent.

817
00:46:56,239 --> 00:46:59,600
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May I ask you

818
00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 1: to please rate and review our podcast. You can also

819
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:07,160
Speaker 1: follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow

820
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:10,600
Speaker 1: me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter

821
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:15,920
Speaker 1: at Moroka. Hear all new episodes of Mobituaries every Wednesday

822
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:20,400
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, and check out Mobituaries Great

823
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:24,280
Speaker 1: Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best selling book,

824
00:47:24,560 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 1: available in paperback and audiobook. This episode of Mobituaries was

825
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:34,440
Speaker 1: produced by Aaron Shrank. Our team of producers also includes

826
00:47:34,600 --> 00:47:39,680
Speaker 1: Hazel Brian and me Moroka, with engineering by Josh Han.

827
00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:43,719
Speaker 1: Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Our archival

828
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:49,400
Speaker 1: producer is Jamie Benson. Mobituary's production company is Neon Hum Media.

829
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:56,080
Speaker 1: Indispensable support from Alan Pang, Annie Cronenberg and everyone at

830
00:47:56,120 --> 00:48:01,160
Speaker 1: CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Tim Monk, Diane Camp,

831
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:06,840
Speaker 1: Steve Razis, Rand Morrison, and Alberto Robina. Executive producers for

832
00:48:06,960 --> 00:48:12,720
Speaker 1: Mobituaries include Megan Marcus, Jonathan Hirsch, and Moroka. The series

833
00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:14,920
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