The Mid-Atlantic accent was artificially created and popularized to project eloquence and grandeur in Hollywood. Prominent figures like Katharine Hepburn upheld the accent's prestige in the film industry. The birth and eventual decline of the Mid-Atlantic accent reflect shifting societal values in post-WWII America.
Katherine Hepburn suffered from essential tremor, which affected her head and larynx and was the reason for the distinct sound and nature of her voice.
Throughout the Golden Age of Hollywood, stars including Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, and Orson Welles employed what's known as a “Mid-Atlantic accent,” a sort of American-British hybrid of speaking that relies on tricks like dropping “R” sounds and softening vowels, in order to convey wealth and ...
The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a consciously learned accent of English, fashionably used by the American upper class and entertainment industry of the late 19th century to mid-20th century, that blended elements from both American and British English.
So, even though the country of Midatlantia doesn't exist, the mid Atlantic accent does (or at least it did). It was made famous by actors like Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Eleanor Parker, and Grace Kelly, just to name a few.
Where Does That Katharine Hepburn Accent Come From?
Did Katharine Hepburn have an accent?
The Big Picture. The Mid-Atlantic accent was artificially created and popularized to project eloquence and grandeur in Hollywood. Prominent figures like Katharine Hepburn upheld the accent's prestige in the film industry.
When did actors stop using the Transatlantic accent?
Why did the Transatlantic accent end? The public stopped using the Transatlantic accent toward the end of World War II, when public schools began to phase it out. Still, actors who wanted to align their name with swankiness continued to use it.
Throughout the Golden Age of Hollywood, stars including Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, and Orson Welles employed what's known as a “Mid-Atlantic accent,” a sort of American-British hybrid of speaking that relies on tricks like dropping “R” sounds and softening vowels, in order to convey wealth and ...
Yes, Marilyn Monroe had a recognizable accent and speaking voice. Her accent, which was frequently described as a blend of the typical American accent with a subtle breathiness and softness, was a product of her birth and upbringing in Los Angeles, California.
According to Distractify, while Child was raised for the most part in California, her voice may have been inspired by Mid-Atlantic accents while attending Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
I'm curious because his mid atlantic accent is one of the things he is famous for. He was born and raised in England and then spent his adult life in American movies, so he tried to imitate the American accent and the result was a very unique form of pronunciation that he is famous for.
On June 29, 2003, Katharine Hepburn—a four-time Academy Award winner for Best Actress and one of the greatest screen legends of Hollywood's golden era—dies of natural causes at the age of 96, at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
And then there is the accent. Morely is from the city of Leeds, in Yorkshire in northern England, so Brooklyn-born Hathaway had to learn a specific regional dialect for the role.
Katherine Hepburn never had children. She was married once briefly, but then only had affairs, the most famous being with Spencer Tracy who was married. She personally felt that she would have been a terrible mother because she was unashamedly “selfish.” She was dedicated to her career.
The "Transatlantic" accent, a deliberate construct that blended American and British English, emerged as a hallmark of sophistication and authority. Predominantly adopted by the American upper class in New York around the 20th century's turn, it found a natural home in theater, a realm patronized by society's elite.
To rid herself of her Southwestern accent, Crawford tirelessly practiced diction and elocution. She said: If I were to speak lines, it would be a good idea, I thought, to read aloud to myself, listen carefully to my voice quality and enunciation, and try to learn in that manner.
Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, at the Los Angeles General Hospital in Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker (née Monroe; 1902–1984), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico to a poor Midwestern family who migrated to California at the turn of the century.
Any actor or actress of her period would have spoken in much the same accent, the mid-Atlantic accent, as that is the accent actors would have been trained in at the time. Grace Kelly needed lessons to get rid of her Philadelphia accent, not a British accent.
Strange, then, that other famed male actors at the time—Jimmy Stewart and Humphrey Bogart—had wildly unencumbered manners of speaking. Their accents were very much their own: the former's a rural dialect of Pennsylvania; the latter's a spin on a regional New York accent.
Considering all of this and his farmer upbringing, it is safe to speculate that Washington's natural accent was, as Morse portrays it, predominantly American with a detectable English influence.
Does anyone still speak with a Transatlantic accent?
But, by the end of World War II, American elites and even Hollywood stars stopped speaking the swanky Mid-Atlantic English. Yet, some people, like the American author William F. Buckley and the Hollywood leading lady Katharine Hepburn, still used the consciously learned accent to emphasize their way of speaking.
sometime between the late 16th and early 19th centuries, but a more accurate answer is never. Colonial Americans didn't really lose their accent. They developed a new one. And incidentally, so did the British.
Actress Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) had an essential tremor, possibly inherited from her grandfather, that caused her head—and sometimes her hands—to shake. The tremor was noticeable by the time of her performance in the 1979 film The Corn Is Green, when critics mentioned the "palsy that kept her head trembling".
