Transatlantic accent curiosities

I'm watching an episode of the original Star Trek from 1968 and I just realized many of the actors are using the old transatlantic faux accent...in 1968?! I thought it died out in the late 50s or early 60s. The actress who is really over the top with it looks like she was in her early or mid-20s at the time, so she's not a relic of a bygone era.

All of a sudden, I just realized Lucille Ball was working contemporaneously with all the actors who used the transatlantic accent and she didn't really use it. Did she not get shoved through the same production studio finishing schools all the others has to go through? I know she was contracted to MGM and RKO for a decade or so throughout the 30s and 40s, and she stayed on TV through the '60s. Seems odd that she never acquired the Bette/Joan/Katharine manner of speaking. I wonder if that could have been part of her feature film career failure.

R1 That's what it's called, Bub.

What's it to ya?

MTM has it in season 1 of The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Lucy was a heavy smoker. She couldn’t do much with her voice.

The original Star Trek is still fantastic to watch, even the plainly atrocious episodes. Really captures the height of 60’s psychedelic glamour, and it looks phenomenal with the HD remastering. So colourful. It also captures that era just before screen acting went from theatrical to more dour and naturalistic.

I was born in 1970, and my grandmother had it. I think it's at least part of the reason I'm gay.

John Charles Daly had it at the start of What's My Line? circa 1950. He lost it as the series went on.

[quote]my grandmother had it. I think it's at least part of the reason I'm gay.

An accent made you gay?

Ohhh Kay. If you say so.

r9 It's a joke, hon. Do you even know what site you're on?

[quote]All of a sudden, I just realized Lucille Ball was working contemporaneously with all the actors who used the transatlantic accent and she didn't really use it. Did she not get shoved through the same production studio finishing schools all the others has to go through? I know she was contracted to MGM and RKO for a decade or so throughout the 30s and 40s, and she stayed on TV through the '60s. Seems odd that she never acquired the Bette/Joan/Katharine manner of speaking. I wonder if that could have been part of her feature film career failure.

Ball largely played dames and broads. Same reason Stanwyck never had it.

It’s Mid-Atlantic accent, dear.

R13 It's Transatlantic or Mid-Atlantic, dear.

I use Mid-Atlantic, dear, to describe my own Washington, D.C. accent. Because that's what it's called. And it's confusing to use the same term for two different accents.

I adore the fact that Bebe in Frasier spoke with a glorious transatlantic accent! “Ohh Frahhhsuuh!!”

It's funny to hear Lorne Green's accent in Bonanza, a Western. He sounds like he was actually living on Park Avenue.

Barbara Bel Geddes combined a transatlantic accent with a Southern twang as Miss Ellie on Dallas-“JAYYYYY AHHHHHRRRR.”

Tim Gunn has the accent from the middle of the Atlantic. What would you call it? He's from Washington, D.C.

I grew up about a half hour NW of DC in Virginia and I've lived in the city for 15 years. I don't speak exactly like he does (not as exuberantly!), but I enunciate similarly and some people who are from other areas have made fun of me for it. It's just how I have always spoken. I think it's just my accent. 🤷🏻‍♂️ And I think I speak the way my mom spoke. My father is from NC and he has a bit of a twang, as does my sister, who gravitated westward to work closer to West Virginia.

People have told me I have "no accent," but they've also teased me about the way I enunciate, a la Tim Gunn.

It's called Mid-Atlantic, it's a fake accent from nowhere, and it is cultivated by those who use it. William F. Buckley Jr as Exhibit A.

R19 But when did it fall out of use? 20-something actors using it on TV in 1968 seems really late.

It’s referred to as both “Trans-Atlantic” because it mixes in many British pronunciations but is is neither wholly British or American - it’s a style of speaking that was taught to upper class Americans who lived on the East Coast - usually between DC & Boston - thus “Mid-Atlantic.” It was designed to be both “placeless” and “upper crust” which is why actors also adopted it.

OP, which episode of Star Trek were you watching?

FYI, Star Trek was a Desilu production. Is that why you referenced Lucille Ball?

"Where No Man Has Gone Before."

I don't think so. It just randomly occurred to me that Lucille didn't have the Katharine accent and they acted together in Stage Door—and she was cast as low class while Katharine was upper class. But Lucille always wanted to be a headlining movie star, and it just occurred to me that perhaps her inability to pull off the accent limited her to lower-status roles as lower-class characters.

My mother was taught a mid-Atlantic / faux Brahmin accent…she was shanty Irish-Portuguese.

She trained as an “executive secretary” for New England Telephone…and she could throw that accent at you until the day she died.

1968 sure wasn't late for Arlene Francis' mid-Atlantic accent.

Here she takes it to hilarious heights.

R25 the way Arlene says "mini-ah-tYOOR" lol

OT but I didn't know that Barbra's first outfit/costume in FG was bloomers and not a schoolgirl skirt.

Kim Darby who plays the title role in the Star Trek episode "Miri"--and who was the young girl in "True Grit" (the John Wayne version)--had that accent.

Nicolas Coster aka Blair Warner’s father.

James Mason.

I feel like Captain Kirk had the accent except that he said R.

Vincent Price had a mid-Atlantic accent and career.

Did Orson Welles have this? Or was it just a more general thespian affectation?

I think it sounds goofy. It somehow aged out of society and film.

What's the name of the accent Jackie O. and the Beales had? It's similar to the transatlantic accent but different somehow. The Kennedy's were Boston Braham (I spelled that wrong or not?) with their accents and that's died out.

English is not my first language so I find these things intriguing. For film you have perhaps the de Havilland sisters doing it and Barbara Stanwyck (mentioned up thread) just not giving a darn since she had to keep her Brooklyn accent in check somewhat. Fascinating thread, OP

WTF another bloody Trans bashing thread.

James Mason, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were English, so they weren’t “faking” their accents. Olivia and Joan were both born in Tokyo to English parents. They both settled in the United States at relatively (so) young ages.

R34 If they had the Hollywood accent, then they were faking it. Cary Grant/Archie Leach was English and he certainly changed his accent to conform to the Mid-Atlantic. It wasn't just a "pretend British." It had affectations of both US and UK English.

I LOVED it. I was born in 1970, and as a gayling who's grandmothah had it, who only EVAH felt loved by his grandmothah, it was everything.

I'd love to live in a world where all the ladies spoke with it, were 50+ years old, wore fur coats, and have parties that ended up with someone playing the piano in the living room and everyone singing along.

My grandmothah lived in Rumson, NJ. The Beverly Hills of the east coast. And, she was a lady who lunched. Her luncheon friend names were Ursula, Betty Brown, and Helen George. I ADORED her and it killed me when she suddenly died when I was 11.

She took me to my first Broadway shows. We went to see Annie- and she LAUGHED so hard at Easy Street. I'd never heard her laugh like that. And if I close my eyes, I can still hear her laughing next to me in the Alvin Theater in 1978.

Life is hard. And life can be WONDAHFUL.

Soap opera actors in the 70s for sure; Viki Lord and Rachel Cory.

Btw Lucy DID have it to some extent. She always said "wondAHful." No R sound at all.

The Beatles' accent was Liverpudian, decidedly NOT Mid-Atlantic. Jackie O wasn't Mid-Atlantic either, though I can't say what her accent was.

I use the Middle Atlantic when I'm being especially condescending to the Okies, Hoosiers and Texas trash.

Agnes Moorehead probably had the most exquisite Transatlantic accent. I recall reading one interview with her in which she said many people believed she was from England, though born in Mass and grew up in the mid-west. She believed there was a mix-up since her 'Bewitched' husband Maurice Evans was from England, and in scenes which they were together, they sounded very much alike.

The Meadows sisters had it in spades. Didn't make much sense for lower class Alice Cramden to have it however.

[quote]R23: "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

Who, specifically? Sally Kellerman? Paul Fix?

R25 that’s not mid-Atlantic… it’s a New York accent polished by a decent education. Her voiceover sounds virtually identical to any clip of Bess Myerson—late of The Bronx and of Hunter College.

R36 - I saw the original run of Annie with my wonderful grandparents too, (but they both had textbook Brooklyn accents.) As democrats who had married during the Great Depression they certainly enjoyed “Easy Street” as well, but the biggest laugh out of my mom and grandparents came from the name of the radio soap Miss Hannigan is listening to before “The Hour of Smiles,” because it was my grandma’s favorite back then.

R39. Jackie’s accent was Long Island-Conn-Boston…mostly the first and third, with a little of the second tossed in. … an amalgam, or a railroad line with three stops

I love American accents and it’s a shame they’re disappearing.

There is a very specific old Virginia accent that’s a cross of midatlantic and southern twang. My grandmother had it but only with certain words.. raighht naice and Mah-ry Wahhhshington.

^^ I got my Annie songs mixed up, the one my grandparents really enjoyed was “Thank You Herbert Hoover.”

People always say Jackie / Little Edie have Long Island accents, but if you know any cops from Syosset you can tell the gals really have more of the upper-class Mid-Atlantic thing going on.

This guy demonstrates the Transatlantic accent and how it originated in Old Hollywood.

^ we don’t need some “guy” to explain the accent. Thank you.

Syosset does not speak for LI. That LI accent goes back to the old landed gentry, so to speak, not some pose-war suburb or similar. Southampton was closer to Hammersmith Farm than it was to Manhattan.

[quote]that’s not mid-Atlantic…

You are quite wrong.

James Fellows writing for the Atlantic:

"Not only will you hear what sounds like a thick Mid-Atlantic accent from the host John Charles Daly (who actually hailed from South Africa, although his accent is almost indistinguishable from the Mid-Atlantic accent, except, perhaps by the more discerning ear of a trained linguist), but a similar Mid-Atlantic accent also was heard from longtime panelist and former head of Random House Publishing, Bennett Cerf. In this particular episode, you’ll also hear that Mid-Atlantic accent in spades coming from guest panelist Tony Randall. Come to think of it, even the regular female panelists on the show, Arlene Francis and Dorothy Kilgallen, had it in varying degrees. (Although ironically, the show’s announcer, Johnny Olsen, did not.) This was the show that aired the Sunday night before President Kennedy was killed."

Tim Gunn just sounds gay. Vincent Price was from St Louis. Tony Randall was from Tulsa. Mid-Atlantic was something they probably picked up doing stage work.

[Quote] It's funny to hear Lorne Green's accent in Bonanza, a Western. He sounds like he was actually living on Park Avenue.

Born and raised in Ottawa, Canada.

James Fallows? The same James Fallows who grew up in Redlands? That one?

Bermudans have this accent and they are, quite literally, in the mid Atlantic.

You can hear Florence Henderson and Robert Reed using it slightly in the first season of The Brady Bunch.

Natalie Schaeffer owns this accent.

Jim Backus used it to comic perfection, lockjaw and all.

Boy, did this poses veer off course, to somewhere near Iceland..🤷🏻‍♂️💩🤯

Boy, did the posts veer off course, to somewhere near Iceland?🤷🏻‍♂️💩🤯

Backus said that the accent for Howell and Mr. Magoo came from his fathers' industrialist friends in Cleveland.

R55 -Everyone from debutants to politicians to actors had to pick up the accent - it was a completely fake confection taught in boarding school and later acting schools for several decades of the early 20th Cent.

OP- The accent you're referring to is also called

Standard English which is different than British English.

Billie Burke literally invented the Transatlantic accent.

[quote]What's the name of the accent Jackie O. and the Beales had? It's similar to the transatlantic accent but different somehow.

It's a mix between Mid-Atlantic Received pronunciation (appropriate to their class) and Long Island (appropriate to their location where they grew up).

[quote]The Kennedy's were Boston Braham (I spelled that wrong or not?) with their accents and that's died out.

No, it's not Boston Brahmin at all. The Kennedys were wealthy and famous, but they were absolutely never Boston Brahmin. (They were despised by the "Proper Bostonians," who were WASPs, not Irish Catholics.) It was a middle-class Boston accent of descendants of Irish immigrants, and it's still in use in Boston.

I think it's called the Mid Atlantic accent. Here's Princess Grace demonstrating.

[quote] Backus said that the accent for Howell and Mr. Magoo came from his fathers' industrialist friends in Cleveland.

How many fathers did Backus have?

Where do I fit in with thish acchent?

R65 I've never seen Glinda outside of Oz! She is much less homely when dressed as a human being.

Is her performance there meant to be funny? I honestly can't tell. She seems comically melodramatic in a way I find amusing but I'm wondering if she meant that to be serious dramatic acting.

No, the Bermudian accent is not the same as Mid-Atlantic despite the location.

R32, the Kennedys did NOT have a Brahmin accent. Nothing like it. They were Catholic.

[quote]I'm watching an episode of the original Star Trek from 1968 and I just realized many of the actors are using the old transatlantic faux accent...in 1968?!

There's a Next Generation episode called "Remember Me" with a scene that has Gates McFadden and an older actor named Bill Erwin, who has the old-fashioned "Western American" accent that a lot of character actors of his generation had. For some reason McFadden puts on a Trans-Atlantic accent while talking to him, and it is INCREDIBLY WEIRD. It's not so odd when you hear character actors in a late-60s show using it, but a relatively young actor in the early 1990s using it was strange. I don't know what she was doing.

I pronounce a few things oddly. Audience...it's the "au" part.

Eastern NC accent? (Close to Elizabethan.) Actual Bermudian ggg grandparent? (They were shipwrecked for a generation.) Or Ms. Plummer and her chorus enunciation?

Not really Southern, unless I get drunk.

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