WEBVTT - Death of an Accent 0:00:02.880 --> 0:00:06.200 If you watch any movie from Hollywood's Golden Age today, 0:00:06.800 --> 0:00:11.480 you'll notice something distinctive about the way many actors speak. 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:13.080 Oh, we're going to talk about me. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:20.560 Good Catherine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story, Orson Wells in Citizen Kane. 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:23.480 You're right, mister Thatcher. I did lose a million dollars 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:25.560 last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:28.720 I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:30.720 mister Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:34.560 and I have to close this place in sixty years. 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:39.400 Or Betty Davis as Margot Channing in All About Eve. 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:43.320 Nice speeches, But I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:45.640 You can always put that award where your heart. 0:00:45.680 --> 0:00:51.240 On t V, I've always been fascinated by this old 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:55.000 timey accent, whether in black and white movies or in 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:57.040 the TV commercials of my youth. 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:01.560 You see, high Point has a special way of capturing flavor, 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:03.360 deep brood flavor. 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:08.759 You see, high Point has a special way of capturing flavor. 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:13.480 Better. Yes, deep brood flavor. 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:14.920 Deep brood flavor. 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:16.119 Nice. 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:19.920 Who knew Lauren Bacall was such a coffee connoisseur. But 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:23.160 just where did this peculiar accent come from? 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:27.320 It was a real accent. It was a really dominant 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:31.080 sound in the northeastern part of America. 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:33.200 And one that commanded authority. 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:38.720 Let me upsit, my family. That's the only thing we 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:40.400 have to fild. 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:45.600 Bird the idea that that's the way you wanted to 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:48.560 hear your leaders speaking is a different kind of America 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:49.080 than today. 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:53.280 So why does almost nobody talk like this anymore? With 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:55.000 the exception of Kelsey Grammar. 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:59.320 Rather than truckle to the forces of commercialism, I've decided 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:01.760 to take a stat and on principle it's. 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:06.880 A mystery I'm determined to solve. From CBS Sunday Morning 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:18.959 and iHeart I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries, this moment 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:42.040 the death of an accent. Now, this is where it 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:45.080 gets a little bit controversial. There's a lot of disagreement 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:49.560 around what to call this because it's been commonly called 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:51.040 the mid Atlantic accent. 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:55.960 I call it the old Rless dialect, or that way 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:58.720 they talked in old movies. It's Betty Davis roughly. 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:05.680 That's linguist and New York Times columnist John mcwarter. You 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:08.440 may remember John from our episode on the death of 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.320 once popular names. He's helping me today with some of 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:17.320 this dialect detective work. Let's listen to Betty Davis herself. 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:21.200 Pay attention to the way she says Parker's written. 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:23.280 By that outstanding leading lady of. 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:28.040 Literature, Dorothy Parker. Dorothy Parker is the one who said 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:32.000 men seldom make passes at girls who wear. 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:35.840 Glasses Paka instead of Parker. Yeah, that excellent, And is. 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:40.240 That the primary characteristic when we're discussing this way of 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:41.520 talking burlessness? 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:46.040 Yeah, what sticks out today is that ours at the 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.040 end of syllables have a way of softening or even 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:53.200 not being present. And there's a certain archness that we detect. 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:56.080 We imagine that the women had fluty voices, etc. But 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:58.640 then again, Betty Davis did not have a fluty voice. 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.000 She didn't talk like this. She had a rather low, 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:05.040 cigarette stained voice. And yet what we hear in her 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:10.680 is paka instead of Parker, corner instead of corner. And 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:14.320 that's where you get this accent that sounding ever more 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:16.280 exotic as the decades go. 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:20.039 By, sounds almost alien and it makes people, i think today, 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:22.120 especially young people, kind of laugh. 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:24.839 I think that's absolutely true. It makes a lot of 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:27.320 older movies difficult for people. I would say, at this 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:32.480 point under fifty to take because everybody seems to talk funny. 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:35.599 It's been a long time since any real person spoke 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:36.000 that way. 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:39.600 Where does the R lists come from? 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:44.840 There are some consonants that are less hardy than others, 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:48.640 Like R is a very muddy kind of sound. It's 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:51.440 almost like a vowel. There's a difference between going puoh 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:55.080 or too and going it's muddy. When you hang a 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:57.960 R on the end of a vowel, it's delicate. It's 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:00.360 kind of like hair and split ends. You know that 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:03.280 that R is ripe for getting soft. It's going to 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:05.719 change the color of the vowel before it, and pretty 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:09.960 soon the our is gonna probably disappear. It's gonna erode, 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:12.720 as we put it. And so in any English, any 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:14.800 rs that are at the end of syllables, such as 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:17.880 in Parker, are in danger in a way, and it's 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:20.919 almost a matter of not weather, but when stuff is 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:21.800 going to start to happen. 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:26.760 Would you find this all over the United States? 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:31.120 Well, actually no, it's interesting. You have it most prominently 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:34.880 in New York and thereabouts, and then also you have 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:38.360 it in Boston, and then it also happened in the South. 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:42.919 But that was also partly because African languages on the 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:45.599 West Coast tend not to have ours at the end 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:48.640 of syllables. Slaves were brought to the Southern United States 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:51.000 often helped to bring up kids. That meant that the 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:53.200 ours were certainly going to fall away in the South. 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:56.000 So it's a different reason. So that's why you have 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:59.919 the r less Southern accent, and so that means Black 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.599 English is r less all over the country. But the 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:05.520 main things that people tend to think about if we're 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:07.760 talking about, say Betty Davis, is what was going on 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:11.279 in the northeastern United States starting in the eighteen hundreds. 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:12.919 And she was from Lowell, Massachusetts. 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:13.920 She was from Lowell. 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.839 Well, let's listen to her right now. In all about 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:17.839 Eve Eve. 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:21.080 This is an old friend. Mister DeWitt's mother, Missus Caswell, was. 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:24.279 Having to miss kiswell, how do you do Edison. I've 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:26.560 been wanting you to meet Eve for the longest time. 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:28.800 It could only have been your natural timidative, but kept 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:29.680 you from mentioning it. 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:32.080 You've heard of her great interest in the theater. 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:35.200 Clip and it's where she's meeting Marilyn Monroe, right, and 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:36.480 Marilyn Monroe walks in. 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:36.520 And. 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:43.200 She's a luminous closed. She really does. You should close. Okay, 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:45.440 now let's listen. Oh and I just have one other 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:47.800 thing to say about All about Eve. My father once 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:51.480 said to me. He said, the two most purely evil 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:55.159 character is sort of in Western arts and culture, in 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:59.240 the Western canon where Iago in Othello and Eve Harrington 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:00.040 and all about. 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:02.400 Eve, if not Addison to but Eve, Yes, she is 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:05.159 more evil. That's definitely true. She has no feelings. That 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:06.480 is absolutely the case. 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:09.480 I want to be Addison, right, you're referring to Addison Dewett, 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:11.120 the imperious drama critic. 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:14.720 I wish Sondheim were still alive so that he would 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:17.280 do a musical of All about Eve that actually is 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:19.680 all about Eve, as opposed to Applause fifty years ago, 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:22.000 which wasn't. And because I'm kind of the age and 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:24.600 the temperament and we're now so interested in diversity in 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:26.480 the theater, I want to play Addison, but I can 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:27.280 tell nobody is going. 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:27.520 To do it. 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:30.280 You would be great that I should want you at 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:34.440 all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability, and 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:36.480 that in itself is probably the reason. 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:40.000 Did people speak like this in all cities on the 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:40.960 Eastern Sea border? 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:45.280 No, they didn't. This hourlessness developed by chance in some 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:47.960 places and not others. New York and Boston have it, 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:51.960 but Philadelphia and Baltimore don't. And particularly there are Philadelphia 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:55.920 and Baltimore were our full rhodic cities, as we call it. 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:58.680 It just skipped those cities. So it's ironic then that 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:02.480 Katherine Hepprince, because come Back, Early, Comeback was playing Tracy 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:03.920 Lord in the Philadelphia story. 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:07.160 You seem quite contemptuous, and. 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:09.840 They all of a sudden she wouldn't have sounded that way. 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:13.840 In other words, Tracy Lord would not have ordered a 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:18.920 cheese steak. She would have ordered one. Other aspects of 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:23.440 this accent, it's posh, it's proper. What would you say, 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:24.560 how would you describe it? 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:28.560 That is an accent that sounds British to us, And 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:31.840 I think there's an idea that everybody was trying to 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:36.160 sound British. I question that. I think that the way 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:39.880 American English happened to develop was something that would have happened, 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:42.320 whether there was a great Britain, and whether we associated 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:44.439 it with poshness or not. 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:51.360 Here's a surprise. John mcwater says, early Americans didn't talk 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:51.880 this way. 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:55.240 We have a tendency to think that the Founding Fathers, 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:58.360 for example, because they were such formal and educated people, 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:01.679 we assume that they sound that like masterpiece theater, or 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:04.080 if that's a dated reference, like many of the actors 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:08.000 in Every Potter. And actually that's not true. That accent 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:11.320 actually developed after America was already up and running. 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:13.840 So Thomas Jefferson would have said went in the course 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:19.439 of human events, definitely, And John says the Brits themselves 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:23.359 only started dropping their rs in the late seventeen hundreds, 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:27.080 so the early sixteen hundreds it was William Shakespeare, definitely. 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:30.640 Yeah. And there was no horelessness among the people in 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:31.440 the Globe. 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:33.880 Theater, okay, all right. And it was the Virgin Queen. 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:36.120 The Virgin Queen, not the Virgin Queen, right. 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:40.640 Although Betty Davis dislay she was all the quing Queen. 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:45.679 I'm suddenly imagining Betty Davis walking to the hunter Acre 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:55.280 would and having to greet that donkey eawe. This accent, 0:09:55.520 --> 0:10:00.280 with its emphasis on enunciation was especially prevalent in the 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:04.360 early American theater before the invention of the microphone. It 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:06.920 tended to carry all the way to the back of 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:07.400 the house. 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:11.720 And then once amplification comes in, old habits die hard. 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:13.680 And so you have these people, you know, on the 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.079 soundtracks of these old movies, still talking in a way 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:18.679 that maybe would have been thought of as a better 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.200 way to sound if you're doing Our American Cousin in 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:24.040 eighteen sixty five as opposed to what you need to 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:24.520 do now. 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:27.840 Thank you for the Our American Cousin reference, which, of 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:30.439 course was the stage comedy that Lincoln was watching at 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:33.199 Ford's Theater. Now, I've always wondered there was a star 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:35.560 of it. But then there was a guy who was 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:38.840 the second Banana, who played kind of the funny guy role. 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:42.080 And there's an insult he lays on her, and that's 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:44.320 the big laugh line. And that's when John Wilkes Booth 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:47.200 fired the gun. He was waiting for a laugh line. 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:51.840 You suckologizing old man trap, And that was the big 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:53.880 That was sort of like the sit on It Potsey 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:56.400 of its time. 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:01.760 So few people are going to get them, all. 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:04.840 Right, it's that's what she said of its time. Right, Wait, 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:07.160 what are the people laughing to now? I don't know 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:12.439 what they're laughing to now. Now, it wasn't only Hollywood 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:16.959 royalty who spoke like this, but also the political elite. 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:20.800 Here is Teddy Roosevelt campaigning to return to the White 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:22.400 House in nineteen twelve. 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:26.520 These prohibitions have been given by the gods from safeguards 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:30.600 against political and social privilege, in the barriers against political 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:34.200 and social justice and the bastie our papers. He is 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:36.960 not to impume the gods, but to emancipate them from 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:40.360 a position where they stand in the way of social justice. 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:43.040 That was amazing. I've never heard him. There's a story 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:47.240 of him going up to Albany when he is in 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:49.760 the Assembly and he was made fun of for the 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:52.360 way he talked, because that arl attack scent sounded silly 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:53.880 to a lot of the people from other parts of 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:56.520 the state. They imitated him as saying, mister speaker, miss 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:58.440 the speak up when he wanted to talk. That's not 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:01.200 the way people from further upstate spoke. 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:06.920 Let's hear now his fifth cousin, Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, let. 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:11.679 Me ussit my firmilie. Let's the only thing we have 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:21.800 to fish fire, so nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terra with paralyses 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:26.280 needed up, We'll convert with creek enter advance. 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:27.160 It's perfect. 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:29.480 Okay, this is twenty one years after that clip we 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:32.960 heard from Teddy, but it's still there, that accent very 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:35.960 much in the thirties, Like so many millions of others. 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:41.040 My Italian grandmother, she to her dying day, was grateful 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:44.079 to him for the new deal for the WPA. And 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:46.480 you know, she didn't talk anything like that. 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:48.600 The idea that that's the way you wanted to hear 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:51.920 your leaders speaking is a different kind of America than today. 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:54.199 You know, It's funny. My grandmother might have not only 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:57.280 expected it, but demanded it. That's right, let her leaders 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:01.120 speak like that. John mcwater says that in politics that 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:04.040 accent is as much of a relic as the art 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:05.640 of oratory itself. 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:09.920 Your grandmother would not have tolerated the way a lot 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:13.840 of our leaders today speak in public. And it's not 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:15.720 to say that there isn't a such thing as being 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:20.880 very eloquent within the bounds of being colloquial and casual. 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:22.960 But for someone to get up and talk the way 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:25.000 Trump does. And this is independently of the content, but 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:28.320 just that kind of scattershot half sentences and you know, 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:32.560 rarely completing a thought that would have been processed as amateurish, 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:33.480 as offensive. 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:35.960 But it's interesting the transition that happens, because you know, 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:38.880 FDR's last vice president, and his successor, of course, is 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.120 Harry Truman, who does not talk like that. He's not 0:13:41.160 --> 0:13:41.959 a habadasha. 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.560 Oh, he's a Midwesterner. He has his urs. 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:47.800 I can't tell you. 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:52.360 How very much I appreciate the honor which you just 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:58.240 confarred upon me. I shall continue to try to deserve it. 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:02.800 And what's interesting is that his speaking is not something 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:05.720 anybody was particularly interested in paying attention to. He wasn't 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:09.640 considered an orator, he wasn't a performer. But yes, he's 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:12.280 somebody who did not have that kind of hourlessness, and 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:14.960 no one ever expected that he was going to become president. Anyway. 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:21.360 Let's now hear from one of Teddy Roosevelt's six children. 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:24.760 And no one had more fun children than tr had 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:27.120 in the White House. Okay, so let's hear from Ethel 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:27.880 Roosevelt Derby. 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.480 The children especially will be interested in seeing that odd 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:35.280 little animal under the table there. His name is Josiah. 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:38.480 And my father, knowing how he liked to have things 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:40.680 brought home to us whenever he could from his trips 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:43.680 out west, used to bring us home treasure. One time 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:46.600 he brought us a bear which lived in the woodshed. 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:50.400 This time he brought home a little badger. I took 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:54.040 a picture of my brother Archie in his ordinary girl 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:58.920 barefoot is little ragged trousers holding Josiah. My father used 0:14:58.920 --> 0:14:59.480 to say. 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.600 Hissing like it, boy, And you can see why people 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:05.560 think this is about great Britain. Actually, the badger that 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:06.640 was a wonderful cliff. 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:08.600 It is so great. And I had to tell you 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:12.360 the picture of Archie holding Josiah the badger is just adorable. 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:14.800 Really, Yeah, you've got to look it up. 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:16.640 You will, of course not remember that I wrote a 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:18.880 book about presidential pets in two thousand and four, and 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:22.440 so Cheddi Rosevelt was my favorite chapter. He didn't know, no, 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:25.520 of course he didn't. I've seen the sales figures, and 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:30.200 so he had thirty six pets, and he hated amazing pets. 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:31.120 He had amazing pets. 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:32.840 Did the Lincolns. How many pets they did. 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:37.280 They had a horse samed Old Bob. They had a dog, 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:41.440 which is the very first photographed presidential pet. The dog's 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:45.040 name was Fido. It's actually really a very sweet picture 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.080 of Fido. He was a mott which is perfect for it. 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:47.960 But there's of Lincoln. 0:15:48.200 --> 0:15:48.400 Yeah. 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:50.880 And then they had two goats named Nanny and Nanco. 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:53.240 Did the dog sit still in the Lincoln picture? Is 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:53.920 it all blurry? 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:57.400 Because no, the dog is actually seated on what looks 0:15:57.480 --> 0:15:59.280 like a pedestal, like a plinth. 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:00.760 Yeah. 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:04.400 And after Lincoln died, a drunk with a knife stabbed 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:04.880 the dog. 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:06.520 You're kidding. 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:10.000 I'm just bringing all of us really down. It's really, 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:12.320 really terrible. But let me just make it better by 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:15.040 saying the teddy Roosevelt. They had a bear, a little 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:17.840 bear that they named Jonathan Edwards. So next time, listened 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:22.040 to Ethel Roosevelt saying Jonathan Edwards, the bad and the Bad. 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:26.480 And they had a hyena. Did they really have they 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:27.240 did have a hyena? 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:27.440 No? 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:29.280 It was crazy. I mean, I hope those kids had 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:35.200 all their shots. I want to give this guy some props. 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:40.520 Cornelius Vanderwbilt the fourth because he was an outcast from 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:44.200 the Vanderbilt family because he dared to get into newspapers. 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:48.080 Can imagine that as if he'd gotten an OnlyFans account 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:51.480 he was working for the newspaper My God. Okay. He 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:57.600 produced what is arguably the very first anti Hitler documentary, 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:01.280 Hitler's Reign of Terror, in nineteen three four. It was 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.920 met with a cold shoulder as hysteria warned people about 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:10.560 anti Semitism. So if just for that, let's listen to him. 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:12.679 There was money enough in Hollywood to tempt me to 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:14.880 go through it again. I'll tell you that last day 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:16.680 on the frontier, I felt like Mickey Mouse. 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:18.160 It was one tough. 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:18.520 Squeak for me. 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:20.800 I knew just what I would be up against if 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:22.480 the Nazzies ever found my films. 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:24.800 The last few weeks I've been carefully watched. 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.400 He sounds like Betty Davis and Nazzy. 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:28.919 Nazzy. 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:32.800 Yeah, you hear that occasionally, especially that Nazzies. Yeah, yeah, 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:35.399 that's that's something that people It was a spelling pronunciation 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:37.600 if you don't know German, and so it looks like 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:40.199 Nazzy and some people would get away with saying it. 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:42.000 That guy says is a piece of work. 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:43.119 Yeah, he really is. 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:44.000 Did he have a family? 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:47.640 He was married seven or eight times, never had children. 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:50.439 It seemed like a guy I look just for the 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:52.639 documentary along. We've got to give the guy some props. 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:53.760 I mean, I don't know what it was like to 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:57.640 be married to him, but I like him. I like him. Okay, 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:01.080 let's hear another voice often associated with this accent. This 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:05.119 is a conservative intellectual, founder of the National Review and 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:09.440 co host of the TV show firing Line, William F. Buckley. 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:13.400 If the telephone company projected the number of people using 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:16.680 telephones nineteen thirty eight, they figured that at the rate 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:19.160 of which people were using the telephone by nineteen hundred 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:23.160 and sixty, in order to service that many calls, they'd 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:25.119 have to hire. Every woman in the United States is 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:25.840 a telephon operator. 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:30.439 Now, this is a much parodied accent. What is it 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:32.800 that we're hearing there that we're reacting to. 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:37.840 He's speaking rather quickly, not a whole lot of melodic change, 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:42.160 almost as if he can't be bothered to enunciate too much. 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:44.960 There's a privilege in it, and that he sounds like 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:48.600 he can't quite be bothered to try to get himself across. 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:50.240 He assumes that you're listening. 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:52.919 Closely, there's a certain lack of effort or I'm not 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:57.440 sure if it's a fatigue in there, a detachment, detachment. 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.840 It might also be brilliant, because he he was brilliant, 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:02.879 whatever you think of the content of the things that 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.960 he wrote and said. And so he's so committed to 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:10.080 the thinking that he can't be bothered with performance is 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:13.440 one kind of quick psychology you might pull. 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:18.359 Buckley indeed had a cosmopolitan upbringing. Born in New York, 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:22.399 he grew up speaking Spanish and received his early formal 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:26.800 education in France and England. But it wasn't just those 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:30.280 to the manor born who spoke this way. Let's turn 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.600 back to entertainment to listen to a commercial from the 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:38.800 early nineteen eighties starring The Bronxes. Betty Joan Persky aka 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:40.320 Lauren Bacall. 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:44.720 My favorite time of day is night. I love curling 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:47.720 up with a rich cup of coffee. You think coffee 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:48.640 and sleep down mix. 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:49.480 They do. 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:54.800 If it's high Point, it's decaffeinated and the flavor is marvelous. 0:19:55.480 --> 0:20:00.800 You see, high Point has a special way of capturing flavor, flavor. 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:05.640 It's a coffee lover's dream. 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:08.600 Betty Joan Persky was born of the Bronx. Okay, okay, 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:11.920 grew up pretty hard scrabble. Now we can only guess 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:14.480 because she started in Hollywood when she was so young. 0:20:14.800 --> 0:20:18.840 But do we think that an adolescent Betty Joan Persky 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:21.520 soon to be Lauren bacall, was arless. 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:25.760 She definitely would have been ar less, because this hourlessness 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:28.800 was not only people of a certain means, it was 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:33.240 also people who were middle and even lower class. Lauren 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:36.520 McCall had an air about her, especially as she got older, 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:40.040 and so it ends up sounding rather high toned that 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:44.400 she says flavor. But she learned to say flavor, probably 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:47.280 in the Bronx, in a very hot third floor apartment, 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:49.440 because that's the way everybody would have spoken there. 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:51.639 She's playing a high status character in one of the 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:54.879 high Point commercials. She's in a limousine drinking high Point coffee. 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:57.320 She's actually pouring it, which is insane. That's because how 0:20:57.400 --> 0:20:59.880 you I mean? These are New York City streets, pop 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:02.879 holes everywhere. That's a major LOSSU youit ready to happen. 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:05.600 My pants are full of flavor, my dad. 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:11.000 These pants are full of flavor. I'm the woman of 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:19.520 the year with third degree burns. Okay, sorry, coming. 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:22.800 Up after a break. How to speak with distinction when 0:21:22.880 --> 0:21:24.680