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

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

80,000 Hours wants to help you find a career that helps the world. Find masses of resources and a free career guide at 80000hours.org/drgeofflindsey

[@NinjaNezumi]

THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO! I was duped, and I think this needs to be made well known!

[@BloodAngel500]

@@NinjaNezumi dont trust the web

[@Suebee1988]

Mere words cannot start to express how much I love this video. Thank you. Thank you! THANK YOU! for always presenting well-researched, balanced content on a topic close to my heart. Best wishes always, Dr. Lindsey. P.S. Your 'Pink Panther' video is still my favorite KZbin music video evah!

[@AAA-fh5kd]

thank you for using our traditional "Scotch* Irish" form of the ethnonym.

[@zaroproductions1793]

This was an amazing video! I was always confused about this topic. I was also hoping that you could make a video about the Northern Cities Vowel Shift

[@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.

[@ehanneken]

Your aunt has been vindicated.

[@nineteenfortyeight]

Ok but where did those people learn it? Finishing school maybe.

[@JonahNelson7]

Oh cool

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thank you!

[@mimisler]

I remembered something else she said about it. She called it an old new england accent, which surprised me at the time but after seeing this it makes a lot more sense.

[@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.

[@angela_somanythings5670]

Some of the really old grandmas in Idaho still talk like this in their 80’s… I wonder if it’s because Idaho has very little original accent to lean to over the years….

[@garybackstrom183]

Yes it was that way even in the 70 s in Massachusetts Older people all talked that way in my neighborhood, even my grandfather

[@maureenmurphy7016]

I think that in the late 19th to early 20th century, the upper middle/upper class of New England (example, the WASP "Boston Brahmins") sent children to elocution and "deportment' classes and the standards there were those of this accent: "rawtha" instead of "rather" "wooood" instead of "wood."

[@cyberpotato63]

@@maureenmurphy7016 My great-great-aunt taught English elocution and French in Newton, Mass in the first half of the 20th century. She had a Boston Brahmin accent, with a good dose of Maine in it.

[@D.D.-ud9zt]

Growing up in Southern New England in the 80s and 90s we generally did not pronounce our Rs, but it is a different accent than what you hear in old films. It comes off as some type of working class accent and one that I sought to rid myself of, but when not conscious of my speech, most Americans can still pick it up. It certainly is not an accent you want to have in broadcasting today. It is less common because Americans tend to move around a lot and tend to have a mixed accent, especially if you are in the upper classes as those people will usually attend schools far from where they grew up. Ideally, you would speak like Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw who have midwestern accents. That's not to say Americans are as conscious of it as the British are, but when it does matter that is the accent you would want to emulate.

[@WalterLiddy]

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

[@Floorguy1000]

Absolutely agree!

[@caramelldansen2204]

Ah, you mean journalism?

[@MichaelKingsfordGray]

That is very nearly ironic,

[@stephenpmurphy591]

​@@caramelldansen2204No, Journalist have far lower standards than most You Tubers.

[@ssssssstssssssss]

It's not just KZbin. Medium is the same exact thing. Sometimes articles are copied almost verbatim.

[@gsandau]

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

[@RextheDragon881]

Yeeeesssaahhhhh

[@RyanGill]

ayuh

[@britaeirikr8609]

Maine is stuck in time. If most everyone has their way, it will never change.

[@gaguy1967]

Downeast

[@banjo304]

​@britaeirikr8609 Good for them, honestly. I'm jealous. I live in the South it's kind of a shame how the accent is flattening and the figures of speech are becoming less playful.

[@jabezcreed]

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

[@robertjenkins6132]

To be fair, Wikipedia is only as good as its sources, and it seems that there were quite few non-Wikipedia sources which were reporting the same misinformation...

[@dlxmarks]

Especially the ones that plagiarize multiple sentences verbatim.

[@mikeroman5208]

The rule of thumb, I guess, is that if the topic is to do with politics, culture, history, or any some such then the Wiki information should be taken with a grain (or ten!) of salt. Science articles (except of course anything to do with climate change) can usually be taken at face value.

[@thexanderthemander]

So many youtube channels basically just read Wikipedia 😞

@@mikeroman5208 And Wikipedia isn't even the worst. Wikipedia has its weaknesses, but many other media is much worse.

[@matuko313]

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

[@maureenpetrucci8605]

Thank you. Archie Leach was a Brit. Rich people from Greenwich, Connecticut m, etc.,all speak like that. All. Not just actors.

[@grilledflatbread4692]

You know young people don't even know what "WASP" means?

[@keittkatranch5167]

​@@grilledflatbread4692White Anglo Saxon Protestant

[@JamesVaughan]

Cary Grant was indeed British, but came from a working class background. He would most definitely not have grown up speaking Received Pronunciation.

[@elisaastorino2881]

The assumption about Cary Grant always fractured me!

[@Alex-cw3rz]

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.

[@johnl5316]

It WAS invented and by Hollywood studios

[@Dan-really]

They’ll? You mean there will be

[@carolinejames7257]

​@@topherthe11th23Indeed, Dick van Dyke's abomination of an accent in that movie was painful to listen to. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, Cockney.

[@sluggo206]

Mockney is the real Cockney.

[@mottom2657]

@@johnl5316 Of course, and in other words, you can't name your father since your mother is a well-know lady o' the night.

[@midn3341]

As a fan of golden age Hollywood movies, its sad that some people don't bother checking any of them out because they thing the accents are fake. What a strange reason to reject art. Anyway, thank you for this video. It is excellently made

[@Leofwine]

I've watched a few movies starring Vincent Price *because of* that accent. If I had to put it on, I'd probably nail the transatlantic accent.

[@mottom2657]

@@ChristopherSobieniak Здравствуйте, мой приятель!

[@cecilyerker]

@@Leofwinehe was from where I live in Saint Louis, I wonder if that’s how many people spoke in the Midwest

[@Norvik_-ug3ge]

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 😉

[@thomashunt6123]

But wasnt he from the Bristol area? So he should have spoken with a West Country/Bristol area

[@lowcostfish]

​​@@thomashunt6123 He went to a grammar school. I doubt he'd have lasted long there if he retained a regional accent.

[@MrsWilliamTheBloody]

@@thomashunt6123 I know so many people from around Bristol even today who didn't go to posh schools and still don't have a West Country/Bristol accent.

[@Norvik_-ug3ge]

@@thomashunt6123 Well I am sure he did, when he was young. According to his Wikipedia article his accent changed when he moved to London where he picked up a slight Cockney sound. He then blended this with his impression of a 'posh American' to get that particular accent that 'nobody talks like' 😉

[@EByrn3]

Well we have another data point. Carey Grant went to the same school as physicist Paul Dirac. They were just two years apart. There are lots of recordings of Dirac online. His accent is definitely rhotic, but I'm not familiar enough with Bristol accents to say anything more.

[@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.

[@Faith-ly2yh]

Never made sense to me either. Both sets of my grandparents talked like it. And they weren’t movie stars.

[@thelouisfanclub]

Same Vivien Leigh and Leslie Howard even though they played iconic American characters in gone with the wind. You can tell they’re trying to approximate a southern American accent but 😅

[@Meow_Tse-Tung]

The first video I looked at on your channel was titled "Should Women Be Allowed To Vote?", and opened up with the opinion that women are more easily manipulated than men, and that the Democratic party has been using that to their advantage. Only the best from Mr. Reagan.

[@bigol9223]

​@@Meow_Tse-Tung that rules.

[@Meow_Tse-Tung]

@@bigol9223 His channel is a content gold mine.

[@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!

[@photojeremy]

yes, this is the problem (and the joy, because reality is far more interesting). we all may have to simplify things sometimes to deal with the complexity of life - but then people proceed as if their gross oversimplifications are actual easily understood reality. and can even get upset if those 'beliefs' are challenged.

[@anti-ethniccleansing465]

Have you done so for the myth of Germany villainy in WWII?

[@Spookatz.]

​@@anti-ethniccleansing465 bro what point are you even trying to make here

[@norahe1953]

Actual maturity is discovering that nothing in life is absolute. Take everything with a grain of salt

[@norahe1953]

@@anti-ethniccleansing465 perhaps this would be a better comment under a comment calling Germany villains. In 2024, it is more commonly understood that Germans were manipulated by the Nazi party and their economic concerns were exploited. As opposed to "germans are villains"

[@walterpodolski5858]

I'm in awe. You called out this phenomenon without any sort of personal edge to it, with a straightforward tour de force of examples, dialectic, and reason. My hearing has been damaged over the years and I can hear differences easily. There's a certain amount of silliness and herd mentality in our current online era.

[@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.”

[@nittyjee]

Well, this is why I assumed it was elitist, that they spoke "clearly" and "properly", and people today don't. Interesting anecdote though, it does emphasize that it was not fake.

[@ModernDayRenaissanceMan]

Annunciation

[@Jumpoable]

@@ModernDayRenaissanceMan ENUNCIATION.

[@KasumiRINA]

@@nittyjee that's not elitism, it's ignorance: people saying "there is no accent" or "I talk without accent" have no idea what accent means. There is ALWAYS an accent, just you don't feel it if it's one you got used to. For example, I'm from Odesa, and anyone speaking russian IN RUSSIA is considered a clown here, as their russian is obviously improper, ever heard A-king that the muscovites speak? It's horrible... same for Donbas, they say soft Gs and add Os... Only way to speak russian without accent is if you're from south-western Ukraine. Duh.

[@nittyjee]

​@@KasumiRINA100% agree with you. I think I'm saying the same thing, or similar. It's elitist to say "we speak better", or one accent is better than the other. I suppose that there is more clear enunciation, but that doesn't make one accent superior to the other, which it sounds like when someone says "we speak more clearly". However, yes, I do have to be more open to people's accents that people often consider "proper English" as just a way of speaking. This video opened up my mind a little, despite that accent being associated with closed minded people. By the way, I'm not following what you're saying about Russian - I'm not familiar. Can you explain more?

[@SCD-jy2xs]

I am a physician in New England. One of my patients is over 100 and speaks with Hepburn’s non rhotic accent (which is distinctly not a Boston accent).

[@curvs4me]

Connecticut likely

[@ZundappCZ]

Thats amazing.

[@frankmiller95]

Pissuh.

[@AWSMcube]

​@@frankmiller95 _Wicked_ pissuh.

[@ComicLaw]

My family is from New England as well. That was how my grandparents and parents sounded: like a rhotic received pronunciation. I have it as well and am often mistaken for a Brit because of my non-Bostonian New English accent

[@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.

[@DrSpaceman42]

You can say you had a lot moxy, see? Nyah!

[@susanravella6261]

Me, too! My working class parents didn't spend time talking to me, so much of what I learned was from those amazing old black and white movies! My grandma, born in 1914, also had a Midatlantic accent that she could not account for. Personally, I truly prefer anything over the horribly overemphasized, grating vocal fry that young women are using now! We should force them to watch those old classics, I think! Maybe it was fake or maybe it wasn't, but the Midatlantic accent was far easier on the ear, though it lacked the ability to communicate with creaky door hinges, or baby dinosaurs!

[@Leofwine]

Well, you can do both. I certainly wear a hat most days of the year.

[@Zelmel]

Old-style hats are awesome! We need to bring back men's formal hats!

[@dannyturkian9083]

I used to think that you could hop in a taxi, yell “follow that car” and get away with it.

[@scattygirl1]

24:40 "Mass audiences always find the artificialities and cliches of their own time easier to enjoy than the art and artifice of the past" Beautifully put.

[@compulsiverambler1352]

That is the difference between mainstream culture and goth and steampunk cultures. Most people seem to embrace their upbringing and surroundings and reject deviations from that automatically, so anything old fashioned such as old movies that have markers of another time period's stylistic choices are automatically rejected. Goth and steampunk take a critical eye at the present, from the 80s to today, and subversively cobble together an aesthetically and philosophically cohesive alternative reality from various historical inspirations and new ideas. "Our underworld isn't filled with fear Just brass and copper, leather scrap, and rusty gear You can keep your hip-hop techno-pop-rock schleppin-dub I'm on my way to a coal-powered underground vintage pub We've got a steampunk revolution We're tired of all your so-called evolution We've darted back to 1886 Don't ask us why; that's how we get our kicks Out with the new In with the old Out with the new In with the old Your subculture shops at the mall We build ours with blowtorch, needle, thread, and leather awl With our antique clock parts we've taken all arts, fine art to fashion And now we're spreading worldwide to circle the globe with a furious passion" -Steampunk Revolution, by goth band turned Steampunk band Abney Park

[@lostcauselancer333]

I’m glad you’re taking a stand against chronological snobbery.

[@brettbuck7362]

But, in truth, the so-called "golden age classics" are actually generally awful and the ridiculous acting - where you never for a second forget that Humphrey Bogart etc, are self-consciously acting, not the characters they are representing. Hepburn was the level worst, she was always Katherine Hepburn, always with the ridiculous accent no matter where it came fron. And those are two of the best. It takes you completely out of the story. The entire setup was completely fake from start to finish, it showed very clearly. And, I think it really is unAmerican and classist. I am not defending most current practices, either (like mumble acting) but the things that set people off now is how much it was just a collection of absurd affectations.

[@MK_Search]

⁠@@brettbuck7362 So you just didn’t watch the video at all then lol. Your very last line calling their accents “absurd affectations” just repeats the lie that this video spent its entire length disproving.

[@heycidskyja4668]

@@brettbuck7362 Did you even watch the video? The films were products of their time - they weren't "UnAmerican" they WERE American as it was then.

[@0hffs]

​@@brettbuck7362 that's a lengthy word salad that equates to you not understanding anything that this video talked about.

[@InqvisitorMagnvs]

@@brettbuck7362Clueless.

[@kentculotta5786]

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.

[@objective_psychology]

Was she from New England?

[@kentculotta5786]

@@objective_psychologyNot quite, she was from New Rochelle, NY. Same general region.

[@kentculotta5786]

@@mini_mozzer New York borders on the New England states, but is not considered to be one of them.

[@jodyricottone1388]

Yes, my Mother In Law was, too. Suburb of Boston. She said AUgotha instead of Agatha & such. We had a cat named Aggie but my MIL called her Agatha!!!😂😂🥴 ( AUGatha)

[@pleappleappleap]

This is my native accent. I grew up in a college town in the Northeast, surrounded by academics. Obviously, since I'm not that old, my accent isn't as thick, but almost everyone can hear the similarity between my accent and that of President Roosevelt. Where did I grow up? Poughkeepsie, NY. Maybe five miles from President Roosevelt, only a little less than a century later.

[@nicolasstanley1392]

Sexy

[@irgendwieanders2121]

Sorry to go off-topic, but Poughkeepsie as a place name slaps, imo (Should I try to look up the history of the name? Or is it mostly a letdown knowing what it means? I'm guessing it is Native American, but if it means something like "place where something is" (e.g. Hill with large trees) then please say no, because my fantasies are better)

[@pleappleappleap]

@@irgendwieanders2121 No. Don't look it up.

[@thing_under_the_stairs]

People have frequently told me that my accent sounds like this as well, although I'm from southern Ontario. My best guess is that between growing up as one of the last batch of kids learning English the old fashioned British way, having done speech therapy as a child to deal with a stubborn lisp, and having an English stepfather, I picked up certain bits of a slight English accent and a subconscious awareness of crisp diction. Actually, some of that probably also came from being a theatre nerd, too. Either way, it's sort of fun, particularly when I meet new people and they start guessing when I'm "originally" from - I've heard everything from Oxford to Australia, and all but one have been wrong. And even stranger, apparently I speak French with a German accent, and Spanish with a French accent! Who would guess it? Accents just fascinate me!

[@ekfred]

Were your family Bahstin Brahmins?

[@albinjohansson5975]

The 1968 debate between Gore Vidal and William F Buckley is a brilliant showcase of this accent, and I doubt Tilly ever coached them in English.

[@Bob-yb8rs]

William Buckley did learn the accent at an early age. That doesn’t make it fake, but the videos calling it fake are pointing out that it wasn’t natural for most unless picked up in the etiquette classes and schools William went to. Similar to a lot of American accents. My grandfather grew up in that same circle, had English maids, etiquette classes (where they learned to speak like this) and went to a boarding school more prestigious than William’s and so he had the accent. None of his kids did, and he slowly had a less intense version of it over the years. Common story.

[@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.

[@budwarner8219]

Growing up in Connecticut, I remember clearly being taught Mid Atlantic. Most of the students rejected it and even mocked the teacher after class. Some in my family , especially my grandparents, spoke a Mid Atlantic accent. It definitely wasn’t fake.

[@aestroai8012]

Same here! I'm a stones throw from Providence these days, and I hear it from time to time. My gran, born in '20's Providence spoke exactly like Hepburn as did her brother, and all though we all caught it we would tease her a bit for being so stilted.

[@chrystalblue7170]

​@@budwarner8219It was a practiced accent. It was taught on purpose. It wasn't fake bit It was forced. Not a naturally evolving accent. It was a class accent because eugenics was a huge thing at the time and the elites definitely wanted to be separated from the masses on sight, smell, and sound. I imagine touch and taste also if we were to get that involved. I'm sure we'll fed humans taste better than poor underfed humans. Though I imagine all humans are gross tasting.

[@portapotty69]

​@@chrystalblue7170now kids come out of college speaking a hybrid of ebonics and Valley girl.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@chrystalblue7170I find most people have a hard time distinguishing practiced/deliberate and fake/unnatural. Or rather, they conflate them so often they think it’s the same thing. I see this a lot in misunderstanding of what a “social construct” means too. For instance, money is also a social construct but it, and its effects, are certainly still real!

[@fr57ujf]

Social Media is a blessing and a contradiction. A blessing because we get to hear and see experts like you. A contradiction because so many unqualified people put out poorly researched or simply false information because they hope to make a few bucks. I especially appreciated how you characterized the phony Tilly story as part of a general trend toward disparaging the past.

Old style media also has lots of unqualified people putting out poorly researched stuff.

[@fr57ujf]

Please specify.

[@jam-trousers]

It’s also very irritating that it’s usually the grifters and false narrative merchants get the most views and wider spread, and also that it takes a half hour well-researched and presented video like this to effectively debunk 5 minutes of lies. Depressing

[@jeffreyhenion4818]

The folks putting out these videos are the lightweight cousins of conspiracy content creators. They know there’s an audience of people who long for simple answers even if those ‘answers’ are gross oversimplifications or outright wrong. Digesting such gives the viewer a sense of pride, a sense that they know what’s going on while they rest of us soldier on in ‘ignorance’.

[@Bnio]

It reminds me of the "Captain Kirk effect" in which the knee-jerk reaction to hearing a mention of Capt. Kirk from Star Trek is to quip, "Heh, he never met a green lady he didn't want to go to bed with." When, he never did that in any of the TV episodes nor the movies. That is, until the 2009 reboot, when an exaggerated, joke characterization of Kirk being a playboy green-lady seducer became the real thing, because the joke had become so common it was now seen as what was true.

[@JimTheCurator]

It's honestly really devastating how much information, particularly on KZbin, looks perfectly legitimate and is frequently repeated, yet is in reality totally wrong.

[@Novarcharesk]

A healthy sense of skepticism and simply not believing what one is told on the face of it is needed. For too long we have been trained to 'trust experts', and this video is a great example as to why we shouldn't. Even lauded 'experts' can be radically wrong.

[@joshuaswart8211]

@@NovarchareskThis is a strange takeaway considering that this video doesn’t disagree with any experts. It disagrees with KZbinrs making trivia content.

[@Novarcharesk]

@@joshuaswart8211 wrong. Those videos cite sources. They build a case using said sources. They are presenting their words as those of experts. And people believe them. It makes perfect sense 😂

[@T_Black_Lodge]

TikTok is brimming with it as well. In fact, literally the majority of what you see passed around on social media is total clickbait bunk.

[@zedwpd]

very much like political arguments

[@jrhusney]

My wife’s paternal family were elites who all had “cottages” in the Borough of Fenwick in Connect. My father-in-law grew up next door to Katherine Hepburn. When we would visit in the 2010s, many of the elderly had retained much of their elite northeastern accents

[@kieranhall1980]

It's interesting how this mirrors the video essays all repeating the same factoid about how Technicolor is somehow 'fake' colour because the image is made up of 3 "black and white" dye images, as though modern film and digital camera sensors don't capture colour in broadly this same way.

[@Pinkdam]

A similar 'mirror' can be found in the contemporary - 30s and 40s - British references to 'mid-Atlantic' as being an American equivalent to Received Pronunciation, or 'BBC English', particularly in contrast to an older, 18th-century American.

[@KasumiRINA]

Oh oh and they say the same about space, with a very putting-on-monocle tone "the colors are FAKE they just take three black and white exposures and combine them", yes, as do TVs, computers, and... our eyes.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I’ve seen a few thumbnails/headlines along those lines, but the ones I’ve actually given my attention have thankfully all said “this is in fact how all colour film, colour TV, and colour digital images work too” and just used it as an on ramp to discuss colour spaces in general.

[@samp.8099]

That whole "old technology had no bass frequency" story is so laughably ridiculous...

[@CantankerousDave]

The "BASE FREQUENCY" spelling was the icing on the cake.

[@praetorfenix69]

It's true that old (pre WWII) audio tech had poor bass response but to say it had "no bass frequency" is pretty absurd.

[@tomfitzsimmons6535]

A big part of the problem in radio was reverb. The early answer to this was a wonderful contraption with a speaker aimed at a large thin steel plate. Improved the sound dramatically. Real world sound has that third dimension and without it everything sounds 'off', artificial. I spent much of my youth without much bass at all with tinny, tiny speakers. We got by, but I couldn't really imagine what a bass player did.

[@gljames24]

It is true for records. Records aren't bassy as it would wash out the treble in the grooves so they boost the bass frequencies. Dynamic range of recordings were just limited by the technology of the time. Actual things likes guitars and cellos had plenty of bass, but recordings don't portary it well.

[@LanceHall]

Old vacuum Tube radios have just as much fidelity as modern.

[@charles7765]

Channels like half as interesting basically just read a wikipedia article and watch some youtube videos for their research. It’s clear they have virtually no specialised knowledge, so when they make a video about something you yourself know well, you realise how many mistakes they make.

[@ferdinandfoch7816]

Half as interesting is one of the worst channels on KZbin. It’s so lazily researched and poorly written. It’s so bad that it turned me against the guy’s other channel. If he’s willing to put out slop on Half as Interesting, why should I expect anything better from Wendover Productions? All these channels make their hay on stylish production and slick editing, the actual content of the video is an afterthought.

[@kjh23gk]

@@ferdinandfoch7816 Half as Interesting is just light entertainment; it doesn't pretend to be anything else.

[@TillyOrifice]

It's well named, though.

[@williamjoshualucas6503]

The effect has a name! Gell-Mann Amnesia! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

[@AlphaGeekgirl]

@@williamjoshualucas6503 thank you!

[@danielgebert4556]

Thank you for cutting thru all the lazy misinformation out there on KZbin, etc. on this topic. I’ve always really liked your work and this is a perfect example of your attention to primary sources and authentic research. Thank you for this - such a treat. Keep doing what you do!

[@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.

[@alextirrellRI]

Makes me think of the old newsreels where announcers or reporters (usually men) will project their voices and speak in a higher pitch -- this combined with the mics and curve would make them all sound very very similar.

[@notahotshot]

No, the problem is they only have/use a very limited sample size, and don't actually have extensive familiarity with media from the past.

[@kaitlyn__L]

This is definitely part of it, anyone imitating old newsreels or movies tends to raise their voice but also clip the highs off (by increasing the tension in the vocal folds).

[@aaronmarks9366]

Another aspect is simply the delivery. Watching films from the 1930s especially, the norm seemed to be this overly-dramatic and somewhat stilted delivery that sounds very "put on" or "acted" to a modern audience used to the more realism-based dialog and delivery of films of the last 30 years or so. I imagine the 1930s delivery had a lot to do with traditional stage acting, where that kind of delivery can still be heard today.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@aaronmarks9366 for sure. Even into the 60s, when films got more naturalistic, TV was still played like a stage play

[@braziliantvhd2768]

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.

[@kehammer100]

Agreed. Contemporary reports and articles confirm Teddy's voice was high pitched, some even calling it "screechy".

[@diggoran]

but Person I Admire couldn't have had a bad sounding voice!

[@tom_demarco]

Old mics did have bad bass though

[@newenglandgreenman]

My grandmother, born in 1907 in New York City to somewhat affluent parents and sent to private school, had this accent all her life.

[@dvdivine1962]

Always found it hard to believe people could mass fake accents.

[@amyhull754]

THANK YOU for highlighting the fierce independence of Katharine Hepburn whom NO ONE could make to do ANYTHING. What a gift she was.

[@carolinejames7257]

Couldn't agree more!

[@TangerineCreamsickle]

@@bottlerocket3218how silly, rich people are real

[@markrichards6863]

​@@bottlerocket3218Most of my teachers in elementary school spoke with that accent. I grew up in Massachusetts. Our music teacher focused on elocution. We were corrected constantly. It starts to sink in after a while. This was in a blue collar community.

[@rogerstone3068]

@@bottlerocket3218 Have you read "The Great Gatsby"? It's an assumed style, an artifice, but that's NOT the same as 'fake'.

[@blarghblargh]

​@@rogerstone3068sounds like hipsterism, with class aspiration tendencies

[@rasmusn.e.m1064]

This is the sort of video that is a litmus test for having been on the language-interest algorithm of KZbin for a while. I "knew" the myths addressed in the video already but I didn't know from where. Thanks for once again reminding us to use our critical faculties on those crystalised factoid cobwebs that seem to manifest so easily when don't want them to and hardly ever when you do.

[@miloowen1]

I knew Kate Hepburn when I was growing up in CT. She spoke as we all spoke: I was in my teens when I realized "stabboard" had a pronounced r in it. I still say vahse and tomahto, which causes silliness here in Pensacola where I live.

[@madelyn2351]

Wow! Thanks for writing this comment. Can you share any stories about growing up with "Kate"? :-)

[@miloowen1]

@@madelyn2351 She lived in Old Saybrook; I grew up in Old Lyme, across the river. We shopped at the same places: Walt's grocery on Main Street, Stop & Shop, the only big store in the area, Maynard's farm stand for flowers and produce. She was striking & mesmerizing, wryly funny, and despite arriving anywhere as if she were the queen, we adored her. She often traded recipes with my mom, and loved my mom's green bean vinaigrette. I can still hear her voice & her laugh today.

[@AngloSaks666]

@@miloowen1 A nice little human insight. Thanks for sharing.

[@jonwallace6204]

I love how fluid our speech is. One of my favorite facts is that there is an Antarctic accent that evolved naturally from a handful of Americans in close quarters for long periods with Swedish, German, and a few other scientists. They all subconsciously warped the way they spoke to be more easily understood by everybody. I’ll bet thanks to the internet, in two generations, all English speakers will sound more or less the same. It’s already getting harder to tell which country someone is from on KZbin. You’re obviously very British, but I’ve seen other younger KZbinrs who are British have a much more subtle accent to me, I’ll bet they sound almost Americanized to you. Also, I think Dutch had a strong influence on New Englands unique accent too. I have older family members who spoke like that and their parents were Dutch.

[@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!

[@foxylibrarian1]

Very Orwellian , isn’t it

[@LoganPEade]

@@foxylibrarian1 I hadn't thought of it that way but .... yes!

[@bluetoad2668]

We are also being encouraged to think that modern Hollywood is fake too, that it's 'woke' and wants to push a ideology just like it did in the past. In fact this is just disinformation and it's the same as demonising educational institutions - those that do this are frightened of Hollywood's influence and the influence of academia because they undermine the authority of those that seek power through the exploitation and support of the ignorant.

[@leninswalrus]

Is there any other kind of history in this country other than rewritten?

[@Zionswasd]

​@@leninswalrus Yes.

[@Barfield-cg7iq]

I had my eyes opened about Wikipedia when I discovered a big mistake on a Wiki page about a famous person who happens to be a family friend. They had him a starring in two films he'd never been in. I had a running battle with editors who wouldn't let me correct the mistake because it was just my word and I couldn't come up with a 'reliable source'. They wouldn't even accept IMDb. They wouldn't accept 'fan sites' even though one of them is run by leading experts on his career and have been writing about his career for over a decade. What they DID accept as the reliable source was a brief mention in a short article in a newspaper mentioning these two films. When I contacted the journalist they admitted they had just googled him for ten minutes and got confused between him and an actor with a similar name. But the article was out there, was a reliable source and therefore Wiki would not be corrected. So poorly researched, flimsy article full of mistakes is acceptable if it's a 'reliable source'. Knowledge of experts is unacceptable if they don't get the dubious Wiki seal of approval as a 'reliable source'. It's a sh-t show.

[@alexmajor2366]

Maybe you should (or did) get the publication to issue a correction.

[@mynameisworld]

IMDb is notoriously incorrect as well. The cast lists often have incorrect character names, the "facts" and "trivia" sections often have bizarre lies. It's nearly impossible to get any of them corrected, even if you send a screen capture of the closing credits that list the correct character names.

[@whtalt92]

Yep, WP does not allow primary source material. Very unwise, if you ask me.

[@archieames1968]

Wikipedia is just a bunch of random dudes or friends of random dudes who are self appointed experts/final say on the articles they squat on. Its the worst on articles about modern politics.

[@thermionic1234567]

Same with the events of the last four years…

[@elustran]

Some extra credit goes to your editor who found all that lovely old Hollywood B-Roll. This channel consistently meets the highest standard for intellectual honesty.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

As the editor, thank you! I'm a one-man band :)

[@MIRobin22]

The zoom-out to reveal Frankenstein was fun too

[@elustran]

@@DrGeoffLindsey I guess you need to do a Marx Brothers mirror gag and thank yourself!

[@dressmaking]

@@DrGeoffLindsey Loved the video and the production. All those different locations! The map animations! The shot of the oil pump gave me chills. It was like a story within the larger story. I don't know if you've been purposefully pushing your skills but this felt very "next level" to me.

[@Tracymmo]

​@@DrGeoffLindseyI really appreciate all the work you put into your videos at each stage of production.

[@goldduxt]

Great video. Joan Crawford said when she first started in Hollywood her southern accent was so strong it took her 5 syllables to say “yes”. Now we always associate the trans atlantic accent with her. She studied hard to “rid” herself of her original accent.

[@okAphex]

Jesus, I’ve watched every single one of the videos you referenced and I took them at face value and had conversations as if it were fact. I’ll have to rewatch this a couple times to reprogram my brain! Thank you

[@Ba1aamsdonkey]

Wendover is wrong a lot.

[@CrankyHermit]

Tip of an enormous iceberg. Wait till you find out how much more widely accepted truth is actually complete bs. It's certainly not confined to the internet.

[@papamurrth1]

Now think, that is the case for nearly all information because of social media now. And a lot of people don't believe "institutions". I see this often with alien videos, often published by former media outlets. They no longer do research, they just go online and see what the majority of people are saying, and that is what new 21st century facts are. The most viral information is fact. And doesn't help we are all fractured in our own silos and platforms, so now we all have our own viral facts. Truly, truth has been lost.

[@hellocommaspacebitch]

Wendover's authoritative way of speaking about a topic really projects confidence, makes you feel like he must have done his research. It's a shame he doesn't

[@artsyomni]

Someone wanting to use a video to willingly program their brain feels vaguely dystopian to me. =P

[@TSIRKLAND]

It is particularly silly to use "The Philadelphia Story" as an example of "The power-mad Studio executives forced all of their actors to use this accent!" when right there alongside Hepburn and Grant is Jimmy Stewart, with all of his Midwestern accent on full display.

[@luiysia]

he's so cute in that movie 🥰

[@BarbaraAnderson-xc4mc]

He's from Pennsylvania

[@robb7398]

Mid-Atlantic, he was from Pennsylvania.

[@fibanocci314]

I agree except about Jimmy Stewart's accent being "Midwestern."

[@Viv1063]

Also, Cary Grant was British so he didn’t need to fake an accent.

[@rillloudmother]

That's because they don't bother to ask anybody who can remember folks who lived in the first half of the 20th century...

[@objective_psychology]

And they have no bullshit detector, especially not one gained by experience

[@mynameisworld]

Amen to this! The kids even make videos about times as recent as the 1990s, completely full of fiction, as though they think no one older than 30 will ever see that video and point out how ridiculous it is.

[@Aster_Risk]

​@@mynameisworld I'm 33 and I've definitely noticed this in some videos lately. Stuff from my high school years being incorrect which is absurd, because 2005-2009 was a boom for social media and a lot of stuff is easy to find from that time period. I've noticed several other 30-somethings point out the inaccuracies as well.There will unfortunately always be lazy channels that spread misinformation.

[@fibanocci314]

@mynameisworld I'm convinced these kids don't realize people older than thirty really exist, sometimes (joking, partially). I once started a video that declared that until the seventies women weren't allowed to leave their homes and they would go crazy and make up stories about their wallpaper (which is presumably the reason for much bolder wallpaper patterns in the seventies?). That's the plot of a fiction novel called The Yellow Wallpaper. This person hadn't just asked anyone alive before the seventies if they were allowed to leave the house. She just believed a novel.

[@whitneybrandenburg672]

The explanation of the mid Atlantic accent always seemed odd to me but I never realized how completely false it was. It’s pretty clear that the people spreading the story largely haven’t watched a lot of old movies and haven’t seen the diversity of accents. Thanks for this fascinating video.

[@bethparker3146]

THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO! I lived in New York and New England for many years and heard many non-rhotic accents from upper-class, middle-class, and blue-collar people. There is even a linguistic divide between the non-rhotic accents of Boston and northern New England and the rhotic accent of most of Western Massachusetts. One friend in her 80s from coastal Connecticut talks in an upper-class, slightly nasal non-rhotic accent, while her husband from Brooklyn speaks with that non-rhotic accent familiar from Hollywood gangster movies. But he wasn’t a gangster, just a middle-class guy from Brooklyn who ended up at Princeton. The claims that these accents (and others from New England and the New York area) were made up makes my blood boil! If you just listen to older people from these regions talk, you understand that the claims of the fake accent are groundless. Yes, we had elocution classes in school, where we were taught to speak clearly and with a tone supported on the breath. But we were taught in the dialect of our area. I’m 67 and remember being taught elocution in public schools in Denver and in Albany, NY. I’m going to send a link to this video to every person who repeats this fiction. I work with “classical” singers on their English diction for operas and art song.

[@Burninhellscrootoob]

Amen, im from the western mass ct river valley, we have no accent...my fiancee is from southern ct and has no accent either....but....occasionally, a word pronounced different between us will make us laugh...ie: she says i say kwahtahs instead of quarters( i dont hear it myself) she says draahs instead of drawers, and doesent hear hers either.lol

[@WinstonSmithGPT]

YES! I remember an expensive antiques store in the ‘90s when a blunt cut waltzed in and cried, “Muffeh! Looook! This linen closet is only 40 grand! Hwat a steal!”

[@simongregory3114]

@@Burninhellscrootoob Everyone has an accent! It's just a word for the way you speak.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thanks! Fascinating comment.

[@StarlightedWanderer]

@@Burninhellscrootoob Likewise, I'm from the Connecticut River valley (Hartford, like also Katherine Hepburn) and I also "have no accent", or so we were taught and believed. That belief may have been due to our accent being generally neutral American, very different from either Boston or New York City on either side of us. It wasn't until college that a teacher of Spanish, a Colombian, pointed out to us our lovely nasalized vowels before "n", such that the vowel in "candy" or "hand" is *shockingly* different from in "caddy" or "had", without our ever noticing it. I've read somewhere that this vowel nasalization was somehow step 1 in the "Northern Cities Vowel Shift", and it seems plausible to me.

[@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.

[@tonyromano6220]

Woke mindset.

[@MrChickennugget360]

yup.

[@tubeguy4066]

The reality is much more interesting than the lie

[@twist3d537]

@@tonyromano6220 goofball

[@LeftJoystick]

We’re seeing another myth propagate (and thankfully get shot down) with the whole Yasuke/Assassin’s Creed Shadows video game situation. The woke crowd are attempting to blackwash Japanese culture based on a lie. Look up videos on the topic, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s unbelievable. Some loser added false information to a Wikipedia article in 2012 + kept embellishing it, and then a book was written based on the lie that there was a famous African Samurai. Now Ubisoft have made a video game, using that Wikipedia article + book as their source, and claim it’s historical. The Japanese are not happy, and they’re getting called r4c1st for defending their own history.

[@exapplerrelppaxe7952]

About time someone debunked this silly theory. I'm old enough to remember when this "transatlantic English" was a pretty common real accent on the East coast, especially among older people. Yes, announcers tend to speak too fast and too cheerfully. They still do.

[@neomancr]

It's fake in that it was an intentional way of speaking to signify WASP culture as a purer white culture

[@fallwitch]

Thank you for pointing this all out. I studied theatre in Uni and we were taught very much your version of events. I was always confused hearing all the mis-information on this topic.

[@vonnie0_0]

Wow, that’s crazy how many videos were calling this accent fake, thank you for taking the time to actually research this properly.

[@OceanlinerDesigns]

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

[@CannibaLouiST]

with stars ranking changed to like system with unlikes hidden, and rampant comment censorship, this is the natural result.

[@lucyc.5816]

I think some of what people are attributing to an "accent" is actually a matter of theatrical diction. Old movie stars projected like stage actors did and still do--they had to, on account of the recording equipment available at the time. With better mics and plentiful subtitles have come increasingly naturalistic voicework in film.

[@CrimsonMey]

And now we can't watch a film without subs because unless you're watching with a really good sound system, they all sound like they're mumbling and everything gets drowned out be the background music and sound effects.

[@RossPitSharkHunter]

​​@@CrimsonMeyHave you only watched Christopher Nolan films in the past 80 years?

[@CrimsonMey]

@@RossPitSharkHunter nah, even others, but his are indeed the worse. I have to sit beside my mother and talk her through most of the dialogue because she can't hear it and she doesn't want to strain reading the subs.

[@wolliveryoutube]

In the case of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, the company which produced them through much of their history, the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, had developed a style of diction and operatic speaking and singing that came to be known as the “D’Oyly Carte accent.” You can hear it on all the DOC vinyl records up until their disbandment in the 1970s, and almost none of the amateur G&S society performances since then have replicated that sound. I also like the versions put on by Opera Australia at the Sydney Opera House. That thing has unparalleled acoustics, so by good diction alone actors can carry their voices throughout the entire theater and be heard clearly. No electronics required. But it does mean that they have to theatrically shout during normal dialogue speaking scenes, which sounds awkward to people who are expecting a musical comedy and not a true comic opera. By the way, I applaud your use of the term “naturalistic” and not “realistic.” “Realism” can mean so many different things, it’s a pet peeve of mine when I see the word thrown around too often.

[@luiysia]

you can project your voice in any accent though

[@RLRedHeron]

My paternal grandmother, a graduate of the Leland Powers School for Stage and Theatre during the Great Depression, normally spoke in a way that many people associated with Bryn Mawr. But her cousin, a native of northern Boston's nicer areas (of their time), spoke with the same accent as Hepburn. My maternal grandmother, a Geordie, once accused her of contriving an accent to sound like actors in popular old films. She supported the idea that it was a "somehow contrived" accent, even before such was popular. This video's explanation supports my paternal grandmother's statements, decades after her death. Thank you. I never quite understood how anyone could convince some Hollywood actors but not others to adopt an accent, especially someone as wilfully independent and headstrong as Hepburn was said to be. This makes MUCH more sense to me.

[@fabrisseterbrugghe8567]

I'm from the U.S. South. I worked with some British actors on a Louisiana accent for a Tennessee Williams play they were performing on the London Fringe. I explained I was from Virginia, but I would do my best based on friends from school who were from Louisiana. They accused me of having lived in London too long because of the way I pronounced the phrase "bone orchard." Sheer luck had a Louisiana senator give a speech during this time, and they apologized to me after hearing him. The shape of the O and the non-rhotic R, which they'd thought exclusively British, were prominent.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Fascinating comment! It's vaguely like British pop singers using Rs because they think that's the way to sound 'American', when the pop/rock/jazz accent type is really based on non-rhotic Southern. Another video...

[@ek-nz]

@@DrGeoffLindsey I've seen Paul McCartney talk about people accusing The Beatles of singing in American accents in their early days. Were they? Did this change as their music matured? Was it imitation of their Rock and Roll heroes, or simply people's ignorance of Liverpudlian accents?

[@emjayay]

@@ek-nz A bunch of their earliest recordings were covers of American pop songs, some of them from girl groups.

[@ALTAJR-07]

@@DrGeoffLindsey I follow a few Singers from the Philippines on KZbin who are very popular with Millions of views who sing mostly in English and non-filipino fans are always Surprised that their English are Heavily Accented when they Speak but barely discernible when they are Singing. Is there a scientific explanation for this phenomenon? I guess a famous example of this is Celine Dion. the singers are Morrisette Amon, Michael Pangilinan, Daryl Ong, Bugoy Drillon

[@Glocktologist]

@AITaJr61 for what it’s worth, I as a non-native English speaker learn the accent of the song with the song. I haven’t really paid attention to doing this before as in my mind it’s part of the song as much as the melody. This requires hearing it in a certain accent, of course.

[@Clint52279]

25:07 "contempt for their cultural heritage." I call it "temporal superiority syndrome," the notion that things done in the past are automatically inferior, bad, or wrong." One of my developing fears for the future of the internet is "content creators" who spit out the same bad info in a race to get out as much content as possible with little to no true expertise. I love that this channel exists!

[@Mechanomics]

You can say the same about people under the notion that things done in the past are automatically superior and that new things are automatically inferior bad or wrong.

[@objective_psychology]

You know, there are words for this already

[@hermanhale9258]

You can see this when the people review Kubrick movies - they have no idea what was normal behavior in Kubrick's day.

[@Clint52279]

@@objective_psychology I like mine though. 🤷‍♂️

[@KairuHakubi]

Sometimes they're just politically motivated. Like all those schmucks claiming hebrew was recreated after being a totally dead language, and forced on a bunch of people with the reestablishment of Israel. when you consider Britain's infamous "received pronunciation" is being fought like it was the linguistic personification of a white male, and 21st century tv shows gleefully have medical doctors speaking like chavs... Not hard to see how the mid-atlantic accent could get devalued.

[@jeffreyschweitzer8289]

My father, born in 1934 on Long Island, NY, educated in public schools and at Yale and eventually a high school English teacher, spoke with this sort of a non-rhotic “mid Atlantic” accent as did his older sister. But his parents did not. They spoke standard rhotic East Coast American. As do I. I have no explanation for where or why they picked this up…

[@Muzer0]

Quite probably picked it up at school then, especially if he was on the East Coast. I myself spoke unrecognisably differently from when I started school (when I sounded mostly like my mum with some of my dad's features) to when I finished school (when I sounded mostly like the kids I went to school with, with a few of my mum's features and probably still a few of my dad's). Do you know where _his_ parents were from?

[@obiwanpez]

A lot of my suburban / rural friends from the Seacoast of New Hampshire picked up the Bostonian-suburban non-rhotic accent, or the NH rural equivalent. Mostly due to exposure at job sites after school ended. Several didn’t have it during school.

[@EebstertheGreat]

If their parents were born ca. 1900 in NYC, then the non-rhotic accent _was_ the standard. In 1934, it still was. Even today, many New Yorkers speak with a non-rhotic accent. It's possible your grandparents acquired their rhotic accents from their own parents or friends somewhere outside NY, and your father and aunt acquired their stereotypical NY accents because that's where they were raised.

[@dlxmarks]

Was there a jump in social class between your father's generation and his parents'? I've heard that JFK and his siblings developed their own generational accent perhaps to reflect their family's greatly increased wealth and status. If you listen to recordings of Joseph Kennedy Sr., his accent has some similarities but was not nearly as arch as the speech of many of his children. It's like they combined their original accent with the intonations of the upper class people with whom they began to mix to create something that didn't exist before and hasn't carried on as much with their descendants.

[@t_ylr]

I grew in Atlanta. My old track coach has one of those old timey non-rhotic Southern accents. He was also born around the 1930s I believe he's in his 90s. When you listen it's really similar to the Mid-Atlantic accent. Just wish a little southern twang added

[@calebsmith2362]

Absolutely brilliant video. It's shameful the way misinformation is so confidently spread and adopted without verification today. I have such a deep love and respect for these films, it pains me to see LEGENDARY actors (and actresses) patronized for nothing. I hope this video gets a million views.

[@Mackerdaymia]

Things like this make me realise how so much of what we think we know about history is probably much more vague than we can imagine. This stuff was captured on film and sometimes still in living memory, yet people gullibly believe a twisted reality because it makes a good story.

[@objective_psychology]

If we can't even get it right in hindsight, think of how much more we can't get right in the moment

[@kj3d812]

Case in point: the last few years on Planet Earth.

[@chriswhite2151]

Look at the news, they can't even get it right as it is happening! Or compare American history taught 50 years ago (pioneers, progress, inventions) to American history taught now! (Slavery!!! Oppresion!!!! Whiteness!!!)

[@sebytheman]

as a youngish person who's been on a crusade to advocate for our shared cultural heritage ( with a particular interest in 40s-70s western cinema and tv ) this myth has been a real pet peeve of mine, it's super smug and stupid. I appreciate your standing up for the truth -- and you've made a darn entertaining video in the process!

[@Novarcharesk]

The smugness is what's bizarre to me. That the myth persists is annoying enough, but this strange attitude of 'we're so much better because we think they were fake' is a very strange excuse to feel this superiority complex.

[@samp.8099]

​@@NovarchareskThere's no worst combination than smugness mixed with ignorance

[@SuperCosmicMutantSquid]

​@@Novarcharesk The irony is their claims of people being forced to be homogenous yet they regurgitate the same, false, homogenous information and act in the same homogenous algorithm-friendly way.

[@jimbobur]

I just checked and there's already a section about this video in the 'Talk' part of the Wikipedia article on the mid-atlantic accent 😂

[@kjh23gk]

It'll be interesting to see how the article changes. I suspect that there is too much momentum in the fake history and there will be Wikipedia editors who dig their heels in and refuse to accept changes that go against the narrative. I hope I'm wrong, though.

[@joonaa2751]

@@kjh23gkAnother annoyance with that Wikipedia article is how it uses the 1990 edition of Edith Skinner’s book to describe the speech pattern she taught. In reality, that edition completely revises what was laid down in the original 1942 edition, primarily by adding an additional phoneme /ɑə/ for the START set, and mandating a NORTH-FORCE merger to [ɔə], neither of which is historically accurate for the accent (START should be merged with PALM, and [ɔə] is utterance-closing allophone for the [ɔː] of NORTH-FORCE). There are probably some other changes too that I immediately forget. I have no idea why it was revised that way. It’s a baffling mystery.

[@RaptieFeathers]

​@@joonaa2751My immediate reaction to reading this was, "Oh god please marry me so we can talk about vowels forever" I'm a hopeless language nerd 😂

[@luiysia]

wikipedia is so unreliable. once you get into the weeds of it you realize how much pages are biased towards the obsessions of random shutins

[@sterlingherrera1792]

Wikipedia is honestly fairly bad in the realm of history and anthropology/social sciences too (speaking as an historian and anthropologist). Particularly with certain regions, like the Philippines; the sourcing used is embarrassingly bad but when someone like me who is objectively an expert tries to edit with updated sources, we get banned. Wikipedia is full of non-experts masquerading as experts. It’s with good reason that professors discourage its use.

[@rcamacho364]

Thank you for breaking the echo chamber of sources citing each other citing some shaky presumptions. This makes a whole lot more sense.

[@HuntingViolets]

Thank you for this! It always annoys me when people say Katharine Hepburn (New England) and Cary Grant (regular England) are using "midatlantic" accents.

[@bourneblue.]

Great video, it's amazing how many video essays are just reading directly off of Wikipedia

[@Mechanomics]

If that were true then those video essays wouldn't be saying what they say. It's amazing how people just say shit about wikipedia without ever actually looking at it.

[@skippysmom]

@@Mechanomicsperhaps, but in this case the wikipedia page was wrong. if you are relaying information to others, you have a responsibility to give them correct information and research properly. they are lazy and most of the time can get away with using wikipedia. in this case they couldn’t.

[@8miceinabox]

When one source posts a fake story, it just reverberates through the internet. There’s been cases of onion articles being copied and showing up as if they’re real.

[@Senumunu]

this was actually way harder to do back in the day. youtube had a very visible "response video" section und every video. (if there was any) it was really like "community notes" from twitter. but as they got more corporate and more monetized they removed this. resulting in freeways for fake information and scams. our politicians are sleeping.

[@ClimateScepticSceptic-ub2rg]

Half the climate science denier comments are like that. The other half are plain lies. Knowledge makes people circumspect; the ignorant are always 100% sure of themselves.

[@marim0y]

I have said it over and over, Wikipedia is not a valid source. I'm so glad you covered this the way you did. Thank you!

[@JessicaKennedy367]

It's almost like all of those other videos are confusing accent with the rhythm/delivery of old movie scripts.

[@tubeguy4066]

Everyone's gonna be thinking the southern accent and Boston accent is fake in a hundred years.

[@jeromemckenna7102]

I've always thought that the mid atlantic accent was a real accent. Your video just reminded me of what I already knew. I am a big fan of the old Hollywood movies so seeing clips of them is like visiting old friends.

[@jackperl7040]

I happen to be reading Christopher Plummer's autobiography "In Spite of Myself" -- he was a native speaker of the "midatlantic"-adjacent Canadian Dainty accent. Folks who claim there was a standard accent in old American films either haven't seen many old American films or just aren't going to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

[@OuterGalaxyLounge]

You are correct.

[@athenassigil5820]

I'd also add Robertson Davies, he was from Ontario, born and raised and had that same accent. When I was a kid, I thought he was British, because of his accent.

[@ronbock8291]

My mom was an actress in London in the 50s, and worked with Plummer and many others back then - she got a lot of work as an “American” as her natural Toronto accent was sufficiently foreign to pass for American, but not so exaggerated as to hurt the ears of casting agents in the West End. She was more than capable of a variety of American dialects, but these were not called for.

[@ronbock8291]

@@athenassigil5820Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye as well - plummy U of T accents all.

[@hermanhale9258]

@@ronbock8291 I read in an old article that when Disney cast the little girl for the voice of Alice in his Alice in Wonderland cartoon, he chose an English girl who had been living in America for some time. He thought her watered down accent would be more acceptable to an American audience.

[@ChuckMcKnight]

This is fascinating. Thanks for setting the record straight!

[@Vinemaple]

Dr. Lindsey, thank you so much for this video! It made me realize I've been pretending not to notice all the holes in the standard Trans-Atlantic Accent narrative, at the same time as I was noticing those videos have so many bad examples. The melodramatic narrative got me good! This is how urban legends start... Listening to your video, I noticed that even the clips that disprove the narrative all have something in common. I think it's _unusually clear diction and exaggerated delivery._ Probably, as you mentioned, it's a combination of theatre techniques transferring over to film, plus the tendency of people to code switch for posterity, to sound as respectable as possible in a world that wasn't (and still isn't) as class-neutral as we like to think. And the fact that most characters they portrayed were supposed to be elites. Thanks also for going full send on production. Looks like it's paying off, I see a lot of comments from newcomers already! Oh, and 22:38 one of the crap videos confabulated a _supreme court case??_ I had no idea this narrative had gotten picked up by the regurgitators. Ouch...

[@fromchomleystreet]

I think that what you are noticing as “exaggerated delivery” is an awareness on the part of the actor that conveying a sense of realism is not the sum total of their responsibilities. They also have to be understood. The reason it’s so noticeable is because it represents such a stark contrast to many contemporary actors. The importance of articulation and intelligibility in the armory of skills an actor must possess seems to have been completely lost. And it really is a stark generational divide. I remember noticing when I watched the Harry Potter movies - in which the juvenile leads are all untrained newcomers and the adult supporting cast are almost all revered theatre actors trained at elite drama schools - that every single line spoken by a person over the age of 35 was entirely crisp and clear, but any line spoken by a person under the age of 35 would invariably include at least some unintelligibly slurred words.

[@artugert]

Another reason they spoke more clearly is the microphone technology at the time. Nowadays lapel mics pick up everything you say, so people can get away with mumbling.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

I have to cut a lot out to keep these videos to a reasonable length, but another factor is that people used a formal register more often, like men used to wear hats and ties more often, and tuck their shirts in and comb their hair. Nowadays public speakers are often conversational, but that would once have seemed strange. Or compare handwritten letters with emails and texts. The old ways weren't 'fake', they were just different.

[@skyworm8006]

​@@fromchomleystreet Not really. It's a difference in style. Because theatre has different demands. Most young actors including those Harry Potter child actors also received the same education. The reason people don't necessarily use the style is because it's not theatre and they're consciously choosing not to. Clarity is not favoured because microphones exist and a pseudo-realistic authentic style is much preferred by everyone.

[@Alex-cw3rz]

Great Video hope this blows up so people are no longer being fooled.

[@OuterGalaxyLounge]

I agree. It actually burns me that there's so much outright bunk on KZbin.

[@lflint3278]

Thank you, Geoff. I was so confused by these “fake accent” KZbin videos. My grandmother lived from 1910 to 1991. She said her teachers sounded like the old films and taught elocution. She went to a girls school in the southern Great Plains…most of her teachers were from the Northeast and the UK. Granted, she did not retain such an accent, but it was more refined than the typical “General American” we hear today.

[@angelcitystudio]

The best thing about this video is exploiting how content creators do nothing but repeat what other creators say without investigating a damn thing... Thank you for digging deeper into the topic. It is fun to ACTUALLY LEARN something real for once.

[@nimax97]

Thank you! This has been one of my pet peeves. Watch a clip from an old movie and invariably you will see people in the comments section calling the accents 'fake' and 'affected'.

[@pjperdue1293]

I'm glad I found your channel. Speech, language and accents are a passion of mine. I have an ear for accents (I'm Canadian). I can always tell when someone is from New Zealand and not Australia. We had a new customer at work and I said, "I'm getting... Edinburgh?" She was gobsmacked. Yes, Edinburgh. I did a phone survey last week and at the end I said to the woman, "I know you're American and I hope you don't mind if I ask where you live? Because I'm getting maybe the Detroit area?" She laughed and said, "I live in Florida but yes, I was born and raised in south Michigan." I find accents fascinating.

[@mikespearwood3914]

An Australian can usually tell someone is from New Zealand in about 10-20 seconds.😆

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thanks. What did you find a giveaway for Detroit?

[@pjperdue1293]

@@DrGeoffLindsey Hard to put into words. It's just minor inflections, ends of words.

[@josephang9927]

This is the main problem of internet. Content "creators" keep copying each other on innacurate information. Thank you for this video with a refreshing and professional explanation.

[@Mechanomics]

I hate to break it to you but this sort of thing was going on since loooooong before the internet.

[@josephang9927]

@@Mechanomics sure, but in the internet having so many people slightly modifying the same information gives those narratives some credit that they do not deserve,with no policing or expert filter.

[@florinivan6907]

@@josephang9927 The problem with explicit policing is that it creates temptation. Temptation to police views you don't like. Usually fake info goes away on its own eventually. There's lot of 'facts' that survive for a long time until they get debunked. The real problem is the desire to have all the facts on day one. Historians still argue about events from 4000 years ago. They'll argue about stuff from our era 4000 years from now. Stuff we assume is obvious they'll say 'but actually'.

[@josephang9927]

@@florinivan6907 yeah, it is a downside to consider.

[@camille1324]

@@florinivan6907I would like to believe that fake info dies by itself, but I think there’s something to be said for the sheer scale of the way the internet incentivizes the repetition of the most polarizing and sensationalist ideas. I don’t know if we can map the future of misinformation based on the past, because there’s this enormous engine behind it now.

[@Magnulus76]

American accents have definitely changed over time. I believe that's part of the reason people perceive a difference. At one time, more Americans come from the Mid-Atlantic and New England. As you point out, California used to be relatively uninhabited. Plenty of classic actors like Jimmy Stewart or John Wayne talked with Midwestern accents. I go to a church that has a few elderly people New England, since it's a Congregationalist church, and they do talk similar to Katherine Hepburn. It might sound formal or affected by today's standards, but that's just how people of certain ethnicities and social classes used to talk.

[@toma5153]

Twenty or so years ago I ran into an old timer at a Maine B&B, probably around 80 to 85 years old. He had an accent like Hepburn but on steroids. When I heard him I thought "Now I know where she got that accent!"

[@al-du6lb]

Thanks for making a truly original video unlike all the other regurgitated videos.

[@michaeldavidson7646]

As a Bermudian, and someone from the literal 'Mid-Atlantic', I can say we have been speaking this way for 400 years. I can't love this video more.

[@Lalalauren1117]

This is one of the most excellent KZbin videos I’ve ever seen. Well researched, well presented, and even the sponsored bit was engaging and classy. Loved it!

[@davidfranklin5426]

Random factoid: Katharine Hepburn’s mother was an aristocratic feminist who fought for the right to contraception, which eventually led to the famous case of Griswold v. Connecticut.

[@Senumunu]

"aristocratic feminist" sounds like a "black, white guy"

[@Niobesnuppa]

Badass

[@justaname999]

Thank you! Those videos always bothered me! Especially because some of them are made by linguists and they clearly didn't care to look into it. Like, there are data bases of recordings of people who grew up pre-WW2 who weren't actors and still spoke like that.

[@onemysore6120]

People still speak in a similar way in eastern North Carolina. The way FDR says “fear” is how many say “Cape Fear” and so on…

[@johnleo2668]

High Tiders. The Tidewater accent in Southeast Virginia is similar to it as well.

[@Wowzersdude-k5c]

No High Tiders sound very different. They sound like Pirates from Bristol.

[@marthaj67]

@@Wowzersdude-k5c Yes! I never would have though to put it that way, but come to think of it...they do! It's amazing how different SE Virginians and NE North Carolinians sound when we're right next door to one another!

[@sweetpurple8812]

@@marthaj67yes the tidewater accent is an enclave of thr eastern non rhotic. In central virginia/DC down to notth georgia in a thin corridor survives the old "piedmont" accent. which is non-rhotic and is stereotyped as a more eastern form of "plantation southern". Check out recordings of like women who were "that southern belle from virginia" thats it. A lot of white people west of the appalachians, more southern, still have non rhotic accents, its just in decline, just like piedmont is. You have to go more rural. Arkansas, mississipi, alabama, lousiana. A good example of that more western southern non rhotic, is the lawyer character in the bee movie

[@CanadianMonarchist]

If you hear Lady Astor, who was from a posh Virginian family, speak on KZbin, she has that sort of accent- 1/3 English, 1/3 Southern, 1/3 standard American. I love it!

[@krime2001]

I loved and really appreciated this video. I have only a general interest in accents and language, but a massive interest in the spread of internet bullshit. And your video perfectly outlines how brain-rot gets passed on. A third rate paper like The Mail writes something. A KZbinr who is desperate to produce more content (not someone with an idea who wants to expand on it) sees it and turns it directly into a video with no further research done. Once it's on KZbin it gets carved up into clips that spread around TikTok and Instagram. Other 'content creators' desperate to put out more content see the first video and basically just copy it. But it's like a game of telephone, where actual facts get left out and more generalising or just fabrication takes place to make it suit their audience. In the end, the truth just gets forgotten.

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

It does. Sad sometimes. I'm sure this was the accent my mom heard a lot growing up in the environment she was in 70+ years ago.

[@PlainsPup]

Growing up in the 80s, I used to listen to William F. Buckley, who sounded British but was American. He simply had that upper class Northeastern accent. And he wasn’t an actor trained in diction; he was a conservative commentator and public intellectual.

[@rexracernj7696]

Buckley was a Texan, son of a TX oilman, who gave his kids New England boarding school educations & insisted they speak in the "Northeast Elite" accent.

[@michaelm6948]

It's more complex, Buckley was born in Connecticut, but his first language was Spanish, which he spoke with his nanny and his father, who spent many years in Mexico. Next he spent his primary school years in France, where he almost exclusively spoke French. Next he attended an English Catholic boarding school for what would be junior high and high school years.He spent his early summers in South Carolina on the family estate. He developed a unique accent that has a strong southern undertone, plus an English and new England accent, but also hints of foreign language influence on pronunciation. The core of his accent is most strongly southern American and English.

[@garyjlabbe8050]

Thank you, R. Lindsey!! I am 70's years old. I grew up reading that Katherine Hepburn spoke with a "Bryn Mawr" accent. I remember hearing that they taught the girls to speak while holding a pencil between their teeth. Fairly recently, I decided to do searches online regarding the accents of older films (I am a film history buff). I could not find a single reference to the Bryn Mawr accent in relation to Katherine Hepburn!! Instead, I found only references to the so-called Mid Atlantic Accent, etc. I was greatly puzzled by these accounts, and they didn't sit well with me. At last, you have brought full context and clarity to this subject. I am truly grateful! PS My apologies to Gloria Upson.

[@Vox-Multis]

As a voice actor, I've been taught techniques where you practice speaking with a cork or a pencil between your teeth, but it has nothing to do with cultivating any sort of accent. It's more about training yourself to enunciate so you don't slur or trip over your own words.

[@stephanieschwartz5214]

The Gloria Upson reference....I love it!

[@thisis.michelletorres444]

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!

[@ArloMathis]

Not really important, but in fairness, Wikipedia is far better than high schools in the 2010's (which is where I personally heard from the 'don't ever touch Wikipedia' crowd) would have you believe. Now, you shouldn't take the articles at face value, but they're an enormous resource due to (usually) being one or two people's passion projects with hours and hours of research and rabbit holes, with dozens more passionate nerds debating the details. They're an excellent place to *start* your research into a topic. Broad overview and cited sources. You could do much worse, generally.

[@spOOkytimes]

It's so frustrating when you find an important piece of information on a wikipedia page and the linked source is not reliable, so you have to become an expert of this very niche topic because you have to search a bunch of literature to find what you need or be proven wrong. 😂

[@pong9000]

Naturally some people who want to stick it to the New England elite will finds ways to do that on Wikipedia. I'm afraid it takes wisdom to know which topics are targets of distortion and which are written disinterestedly.

[@shawnpatrick1877]

@@ArloMathis There's a reason why no college or high school on earth allows the use of Wikipedia as a source. It's a good resource for regular folks to start personal research into things, or to learn about obscure topics that have a lack of information out there, but that's it. It's notoriously biased in a variety of ways and sometimes filled with outright propaganda. It has literally been proven to have been influenced by paid shills, corporations, political campaigns and world governments. There have also been numerous cases of people writing about themselves and their own interests so that you're not going to get any nuanced, unbiased information. Their cited sources have been proven to be utter nonsense and BS, and you can even run into completely false, troll articles that are left up until someone finally fixes it. I have seen articles about people I know where they would not let the person edit it to give accurate information such as their own birth date because they didn't have a proper source even though it was their own birth date. Their source would have been a driver's license, but this was said to not be a legitimate source because a book said different and the source had to come from a book or news article. The book was actually written by the man that the article was about, the man arguing with the Wiki editors, and he said it was a misprint. This shows a level of almost laughable stupidity in how Wiki is either structured or run. They often let any fool write anything, and then refuse things that come directly from the people themselves or experts in their field because they don't have a book citation. I have also seen the opposite, where they actually allowed someone to remove negative details about their life and company even though it was well-established stuff with news articles and books as a source. They're not even consistent with their own rules, especially when editors and mods want to be biased. It's barely worth anything unless you just want to find out something for you're own personal amusement and you take it with a grain of salt, little different from just asking strangers on a message board for an answer.

[@zhuyu9268]

​@@ArloMathisgenerally is the key word here. For anything remotely controversial or ideological, especially current events, it is worse than worthless. But for things like history, science, art, and other academic subjects, its a great way to get a solid overview.

[@RobVollat]

These people didn't know FDR was in his 60's in the 40's 😩

[@rtphotos4691]

Or that he used a wheelchair...

[@jeff__w]

Wow, I had seen a lot of those videos “explaining” the “fake” accents and thought “How is it possible that Franklin Roosevelt adopted that contrived Hollywood accent _decades before_ it was supposedly popularized?” (He didn’t.) And it seemed equally unlikely that Katharine Hepburn, from a well-off family in Connecticut and educated at Bryn Mawr, would have learned some confected accent. And, of course, there was Cary Grant, originally, obviously, from England. It was all bogus and, well, a bit ridiculous. Thanks for confirming my suspicions and clarifying the story! _Edit:_ I will add that the debunking in the video _does_ benefit from the conspicuous choice of three examples (FDR, Katharine Hepburn, and Cary Grant) whose individual circumstances just don’t fit the facts and which make those videos touting the “fake” accent theory seem particularly clueless. But listen to any number of films from the early-to-mid 1930s and you’ll hear that accent from lots of actors (acknowledged at 2:31); Margaret Dumont and Edward Everett Horton Jr. (both from Brooklyn, New York) come to mind-I’d surmise that they were trained in American Theater Standard. (What was the connection between American Theater Standard and the supposedly contrived mid-Atlantic accent?-Wikipedia treats them as the same, redirecting the former to the latter. This video glosses over that.) It seems like the characters in these films who spoke that way were often “élites” (wealthy, as in the case of characters played by Dumont, or maybe academic) or effete (in the case of those played by Horton, Jr.)-“everyday” Americans, perhaps, did not. So it seems like this debunking boils down to the facts that (1) whatever the accent was (the trained American Theater Standard or the accent of Northeastern élites), it wasn’t foisted upon actors in Hollywood, (2) William Tilly and Edith Skinner, whatever other influence they might have had, did not have any overwhelming influence on how actors in Hollywood spoke in films in the 1930s, and (3) the three most conspicuous examples-FDR, Katharine Hepburn, and Cary Grant-of the Hollywood-enforced “transatlantic accent” in those videos fall apart under scrutiny. Well worth debunking in my opinion.

[@MrBeiragua]

​@Ter9393 everyone has an accent. You don't seem to know what an accent is.

[@dkroll92]

@Ter9393 regardless, you're still wrong on both counts

[@Revelwoodie]

Yeah, the story of the "fake" Northeastern accent is pretty baffling to anyone from the Northeast. If you're from Connecticut, you definitely had a Great Aunt Margaret with this accent, and she never went to acting school. Nor did the ladies from her bridge club with the same accent. It's a form of erasure, and delegitimization. Which would be loudly criticized on behalf of any other American culture, but for Yankees...I suppose we can just get stuffed.

[@jeff__w]

@Ter9393 Well, yes, that’s what the video says (and my comment is consistent with that): FDR didn’t have the “mid-Atlantic accent”-if that means the contrived accent promoted by William Tilly and Edith Skinner-and that accent, to the extent it was taught (e.g., in NYC public schools), wasn’t natural. As the video notes, FDR spoke what dialect coach Jessica Drake has called _Northeastern Elite_ 6:58. Thank you for the clarification.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thanks for the very considered comment. The video was made to a deadline and does gloss over several things. To a considerable extent, Northeastern Elite was like RP: its evolution was no doubt bound up with prescriptivism, but it was a real accent learned natively by many, while many others including a lot of actors skewed their speech towards it. Compare RP. British movies were full of 1. native speakers of RP, 2. non-natives who adopted it as their day-to-day accent (Kenneth Branagh's a more recent example), 3. all kinds of people skewing their accent in varying degrees towards RP. I bet that over the last century, British acting schools have transitioned gradually from 'RP is correct, you must use it' to 'RP is a useful tool that you need'. My point is that nobody, but nobody, bangs on about RP being 'fake'.

[@jasonkesser]

For this video, subscribed. As a theater student and a lover of history and period films, as well as linguistics, I was shocked to hear quotes from videos I’ve played in the past, featured in this video. I kind of doubted this ‘myth story’, but this is beyond eye opening. With such a demand for content on YT and SM, I think we’re going to get a lot more unresearched information begetting copies of itself, resounding through the echo chamber. I judge it harshly. However, “the time to make up your mind about people, is never…” ❤ Well done sir.

[@walterf5651]

Thank you for this video! This notion that Midatlantic accent was somehow fake and an affect has annoyed me tremendously, and not because it is untrue (because God knows we all think we know certain things when we are wrong and there is no shame in that) but it's the conviction with which people claim things when they are ignorant.

[@alannothnagle]

Yes, they‘re always so damn sure of themselves, whatever the topic is!

[@aryan_kumar]

I find it really annoying how this myth is so widespread and am glad that a video has been made debunking it

[@joonaa2751]

I wish he also spent time debunking the ”half-British, half-Anerican” myth, which is something that prescriptivist material of the time never refers to (they even refer to the accent by names such as ”Eastern Standard” or ”Standard American”, never ”Mid-Atlantic” or ”Transatlantic”), not to mention it’s quite obviously untrue when we consider its massive similarities to very conservative varieties of RP.

[@Iruparazzo]

My grandma is only about 82 I think, she grew up in Michigan and she absolutely has a 'mid-atlantic' accent, complete with the heavy "WH" (as in wHite and wHelp, a'la Stewie from Family Guy) so it's definitely a real accent

[@flaggerify]

I've seen this in pronunciation guides in older British dictionaries. They use "hw".

[@coolandhip_7596]

Down here in the south there's a few pockets where people still do that. One in Appalachia and one in Texas that are major, I'm sure there's smaller areas that do too.

[@alexesteh]

the whine-wine distinction is a more common feature in the US.

[@sluggo206]

Diane Rehm has the whine-wine distinction (a voiceless w transcribed hw), as do people in a certain area somewhere around DC. In her radio talk show she'd ask her guests, "HWAT is going on in ...?"

[@SamAronow]

Person whose grandmother was from Cleveland, and while she most definitely had a Midwestern accent, her intonation was distinctly upper-class (despite being the daughter of bootleggers).

[@Insanabiliter_In_Linea]

I'm glad I somehow managed to miss this myth entirely. Despite not really knowing a ton about it, I was always under the impression that the transatlantic accent was a real thing, it just slowly faded away over the ages and is significantly less common than it once was. God I can't stand the huge swaths of misinformation that are plaguing the internet these days.

[@RaptieFeathers]

Very much this. People just kinda spoke differently back then, as language is a wonderful and ever-evolving thing.

[@mynameisworld]

Yes, it seems that the natural logical assumption would be that the accent comes from a mix of birthplaces/families, due to immigration. But no, the KZbin kids have to have a conspiracy because logic doesn't get clicks.

[@grilledflatbread4692]

I was in an undergrad theater course in 1998 and I was taught the transatlantic accent was invented.

[@bespectacledheroine7292]

I've long suspected as much about the motives. People wanting to self-congratulatorily pat themselves on the back for their refusal to engage with older movies for dubious at best, antintellectual at worse rationale. I've spent the better part of my adult life showcasing what makes these movies worth watching so I thank you effusively for fighting the good fight. If people hate the accent they're just hating history, which has media with trends no more apparent than our own.

[@Vox-Multis]

Man, people are insane. Even if the mid-Atlantic accent were a hundred percent artificial, that would be a stupid reason not to watch old movies. I cannot understand this idea some people seem to have that movies have an expiration date, after which they are no longer fit for consumption.

[@bespectacledheroine7292]

@@Vox-Multis I've often put it that same way, that people very much see it, bizarrely, as expiration date based. Art belongs to all generations! I agree with you as well, I'd still love them just the same even if it was a phony accent. It's like refusing to watch movies because they have VFX. Yes, and? As if all movies today have perfect accuracy to reality? Lololol, absolutely not. It's the same thing with foreign film. Different = bad, apparently.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

​@@Vox-Multis Great point. Though I do sympathize: young people sometimes hear that something is a classic, make an effort to watch it and then find it hard to enjoy 'through' the artifice of its time. The entire art form of opera just seems ludicrous to many people. I was trying to point out that there are reasons for this. The 'fake accent' story, I think, is to a depressing extent saying 'Yes, those old movies are ridiculous, aren't they?'

[@KasumiRINA]

It's virtue signaling. These idiots also give ammo to extreme right and left wingnuts who point at them as example of liberals being "offended wokeists", but both sides mostly pretend to be offended (by people getting offended) to try to make themselves look better than others... I've seen a whole article and comments deriding Lord Byron as "he was ACHTHUALLY a bad meanie" AS IF IT WASN'T THE ENTIRE APPEAL?! So criticizing Cary Grant for sounding British or Byron for being a bad guy, is like accusing Gandalf of doing magic... like, yeah?..

[@Zlagie]

Hatred of history allows the past to be dehumanized and delegitimized!

[@mackss9468]

Wow, my $150,000 theater conservatory training taught this lie in our speech classes. Such a waste of money 😫

[@pinksalamanders]

If you listen to radio interviews with silent films stars (like Theda Bara), they spoke this "fake" way. It was just how they spoke. All the time. 24/7. Even when they weren't ever speaking on camera.

[@mhenrydunn]

As a Juilliard alumnus and classmate of Jessica Drake in Group Ten, I can confirm and endorse your clarification- I was taught this same story about Edith Skinner and Mid-Atlantic speech! (just as Miss Skinner was retiring from Juilliard herself). So refreshing to hear the story set straight! Very enjoyable and revealing. Thank you!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thanks Henry, very interesting.

[@robertjenkins6132]

Great timing. I often wander around on Wikipedia, and I had just looked at that Trans-Atlantic Accent article a couple of weeks ago. Now I know the truth.