Hollywood's 'Fake' Mid-Atlantic Myth DEBUNKED!

Want to know why actors in Golden Age Hollywood movies sound different from people today? A legend has grown up that it was all because an Australian and a Canadian invented a fake accent that studios forced their stars to use. Here I'll try to show why that's a load of you know what, and get closer to the fascinating reality.

(Just to be clear: Wikipedia, which I support, is an invaluable resource on languages and linguistics, but this article cited a lot of sources by non-linguists.)

0:00 Introduction
3:21 Hollywood's beginnings
4:20 William Tilly
5:16 Problems with the 'fake' story
5:48 Rhoticity
6:58 Northeastern Elite
7:55 On stage and in public speaking
8:55 Edith Skinner
9:33 Katharine Hepburn
12:31 Intermission
14:33 Aspirational Hollywood
16:00 Cary Grant & Brits
16:44 Various other accents
20:16 Nasal nonsense
21:03 Kenyon & Knott's dictionary
22:18 Towards GenAm
23:50 The monster accent
24:17 Magnificence

Los Angeles crew: Stewart Hoke and Steven Angelo

[mimisler]

my aunt heard this myth and her reaction was "its not fake! i went to school with people who talked like that!" she was born during the great depression in upstate new york.

[jabezcreed]

Best part is calling out these silly YouTube channels who regurgitate Wikipedia as content

[megandlola]

My grandmother grew up during the depression and once I asked her if people in the old days “talked like they do in the old movies or if that was just something they were faking”. She had no idea what I was talking about. She just said “they don’t have accents, they just speak clearly…not like today.”

[tercerocastero]

"A gross oversimplification. Reality is more complex and far more interesting."
I've learned this is pretty much true no matter the topic. We like to simplify in order to understand complexity, an entirely necessary and useful process.
Problem is we tend to oversimplify, then proceed as if the complexity doesn't even exist.
I appreciate these deeper dives to uncover at least a little of the reality. And accents are always fun to dive into!

[WalterLiddy]

it goes to show how 95% of what's on Youtube is just people repeating one-another's content, trying to get views by bandwagon-jumping.

[matukonyc]

It's so obvious that Katherine Hepburn spoke her own WASPy Connecticut accent, and people seem to forget that Cary Grant was British.

[wantwithout]

I have no proof of this whatsoever but as a sound guy I cant help but wonder if some of these people claiming everyone "sounded the same" back in the day are having part of their brain tricked by the very specific curve of the old mics and storage mediums. That sharp roll off of the high highs and and subtle peaks of the mids is so inextricably linked to this era, and no matter the actor or movie they almost always spoke with that "filtering" effect we perceive it as nowadays.

[gsandau]

I live in Maine. You'd be amazed at how much of the old New England accent is still lingering.

[dwoodbury]

I knew the "Mid-Atlantic" accent wasn't fake because my grandmother, born in 1892 in Massachusetts, spoke quite similarly to Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn, as did many of her friends. You don't hear the accent any more, but the older generation, especially in New England, spoke that way when I was a kid.

[Alex-cwrz]

Bet in 100 years they'll be people claiming that the cockney accent never existed and was an invention of theatre, because the actors were force to speak Propah' by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

[LoganPEade]

I'm 63 and I've been hooked on classic movies all my life, you have it absolutely correct, as some kind of bizarre protest of the past people are making up these stories out thin air, about Hollywood and many other things, it's dangerous to rewrite history based on falsehoods!

[WT.....]

So... in summary, people believe in this myth because they'd rather believe in the gossipy existence of a made-up conspiracy, than accept the boring reality. What really triggered me about the conspiracy (and as a history buff), was that people viewed the past with an imposed modern context rather than a historically accurate one. It assumed that modern accents are "unchangeable" and resulted from linguistic "battles for dominance" rather than linguistic transitions.

[petermgruhn]

Watched a lot of old movies when I was a kid. Always thought I'd grow up to wear a hat and live in a hotel in the city.

[Meagan-Renee]

I’m old enough to remember family members and teachers who lived in New England and Hollywood who spoke exactly like Katherine Hepburn. I can confirm it definitely wasn’t voice coaching - they weren’t public figures, it was just the way they talked.

[MrReaganUSA]

I'm so glad someone finally debunked this nonsense. The "fake accent" story never made sense to me for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that Cary Grant WAS ENGLISH.

[braziliantvhd]

The no bass technology excuse is ridiculous, they'll swear up and down Teddy Roosevelt's voice is not high pitched as it was on the recordings, conveniently disregarding the fact that William Jennings Bryan and Howard Taft's voices were recorded on the same technology and theirs wasn't as high as Teddy's.

[kentculotta]

Thank you for this! All these "fake accent" videos were driving me crazy. My grandmother totally had the "Katherine Hepburn accent" and I miss hearing it.

[Norvik_-ugge]

I love how Cary Grant, of all people, is called out for having a 'fake' accent, on the basis that it sounds somewhat British. He was British. And as we all know 'nobody talks like that' anyway 😉

[thisis.michelletorres]

Those of us from the Northeast (Gen X and older) know this accent. K. Hepburn was from an upper-class Connecticut family, and they spoke with this "elite accent." It can still be heard a bit in mature folks of certain circles. I think the lesson here (which one should learn in post-secondary) is that Wikipedia is not an accepted research resource!

[OceanlinerDesigns]

Thanks for clarifying this! It’s important to dissect things like this because in many cases unregulated media like YouTube, which is not peer-reviewed or academic in any way, is re-writing the way many of us see and understand history.