Why do they talk like that? The Mid-Atlantic Accent!

One reason movies feel a little more boring and mundane nowadays is that we no longer have a reverence for the actors, the visual effects or the process.

We’ve watched behind-the-scenes documentaries, taken studio tours, heard TMZ relationship news and seen breakdowns of the most complicated special effects.

In other words, there’s been little left to the imagination.

In contrast, the movie stars of old were so “high above us” that they even spoke in an unfamiliar way. This affected style of speaking was called the Mid-Atlantic (or Trans-Atlantic) Accent.

Watch any movie with Katharine Hepburn or Cary Grant and you’ll find yourself thinking, why do they talk like that? The truth is, they were carefully trained to do so.

Taught from the early days of film all the way through the 1940s, the Mid-Atlantic Accent rests somewhere between polite American and proper British, and sounds elite, sophisticated and like it’s spoken by people who would never invite us to any of their parties.

And just like the plot of most movies, the accent was completely made up.

Some of the best practitioners were Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, Vincent Price, Orson Welles, Christopher Plummer, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and more recently, Kelsey Grammer.

For reference, their birth places don't exactly match up with their accents. Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut; Bette Davis was born in Lowell, Massachusetts; Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was born in New York City; and Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Click here to hear them in action!

The Mid-Atlantic Accent is rhythmic, somewhat “musical,” and words are well enunciated, with an emphasis on the consonants.

Here are some tips for speaking “Mid-Atlantic”:

Say phrases like, “I beg your pardon,” “I shan’t be bothered,” etc.

Drop the “R” sound at the end of words. Try saying “actuh” instead of “actor.”

Over-enunciate the “T” sound, so the word “letter” becomes “lehhhTuh.”

Use longer vowel sounds that are softer. For instance, “rather” would become “rahhthuh.”

Speak quickly. Stars like Cary Grant and Bette Davis fired off movie lines in fast succession.

Even with these tips, you might find that you need more training.

This is definitely by design. Starting in the early 20th century, the upper class of society and educated film actors began imitating proper British accents (what was called Received Pronunciation) through training they received at preparatory and finishing schools, as well as at the best film schools.

Although it seems elitist and out of touch in today’s world, there was a certain value added when the actors in movies sounded different than the average person walking down the street.

It enhanced the idea that we were escaping into another world that had only a slight resemblance to our own.

Hollywood films weren’t the only place to hear the Mid-Atlantic Accent. Pillars of society who were educated in affluent East Coast schools also spoke this way. This included Franklin D. Roosevelt, Julia Child, Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Norman Mailer.

The accent was really perfected by phonetician William Tilly in the early 20th century. Tilly dreamed of a world where there would be a standard form of English speech meant for the educated elite that would transcend any regional dialects. If someone spoke this way, it meant they were from “proper society.”

As Hollywood stars came out of elite East Coast institutions, they sounded not American, not British, but somewhere uniquely in-between.

This further fascinated an audience for whom the film experience already felt otherworldly.

The Mid-Atlantic Accent went out of favor by the late 1940s, as the public began to see themselves on screen in actors who spoke more like Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Stewart, and new trends took over.

Cut to today, when the people we see in movies feel like they could be our buddies more than members of some elite class of trained actors. For better or worse, the Mid-Atlantic Accent went the way of the black-and-white film. But wasn’t it fun while it lasted …