# Diction by upper class "society" women in old movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 11, 2005, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667 "2005-10-11T00:49:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/1 "2005-10-11T00:49:27Z")
Is there any factual basis for the way high-bred women speak in old movies, up until about 1950? I’m talking about where they wouldn’t say “The bird has a worm”, but something like, “The behd has a wehm.” The men in these movies don’t usually talk like that, so I’m wondering whether there was a trend among the upper class of educating young women to speak that way. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/2 "2005-10-11T01:13:21Z")
I’ve always wondered about this too. The documentary recordings of women of the time don’t sound like that. I’ve always assumed it was an expected affectation, except for certain character actors (e.g., over down Brooklyn accent, etc.). ---
**Author:** ![lorinada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5e925/32.png) [@lorinada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorinada)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/3 "2005-10-11T01:15:18Z")
Hmmm…my observation is that the high-bred male characters have the same Connecticut-ish accent. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_the\_Immortal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Max\_the\_Immortal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_the_Immortal)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/4 "2005-10-11T06:43:53Z")
Could be the ol’ Standard American accent. In the early part of this century, actors learned to speak with a “mid-atlantic” or “Standard American” accent. This accent was created by voice teachers to produce the most sound for the least amount of effort. It sounds educated and “not from around here”. It doesn’t belong to any region; the idea is that if all actors speak Standard on stage, you could put on a play with actors from different parts of America with nobody sounding out of place. In the early days of cinema, many (if not most) actors were proficient in Standard, and often used it when playing high-brow types. Nowadays, some actors still use Standard on occasion, but most actors can’t. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/5 "2005-10-11T08:18:03Z")
If you ever hear Eleanor Roosevelt in a radio or television broadcast, she has that same hoity-toity diction as the society matrons in old movies. I’d have liked to hear Eleanor Roosevelt and Edna May Oliver doing a reading of _The Vagina Monologues_. ---
**Author:** ![priapus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@priapus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/priapus)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/6 "2005-10-11T08:27:52Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > If you ever hear Eleanor Roosevelt in a radio or television broadcast, she has that same hoity-toity diction as the society matrons in old movies. > > I’d have liked to hear Eleanor Roosevelt and Edna May Oliver doing a reading of _The Vagina Monologues_. How about Eleanor Roosevelt and Elly Mae Clampett? ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/7 "2005-10-11T11:56:38Z")
I always have heard it referred to as the Locust Valley Lockjaw: From Wikipedia: > [@](#): > > Locust Valley Lockjaw is the colloquial term for a stereotypical upper class American accent especially identified with members of the New England WASP aristocracy. Named for the Locust Valley region of Long Island’s affluent Gold Coast, the accent is typified by a controlled, somewhat monotonous manner of speech pronounced with the teeth slightly clenched and the lower jaw thrust forward. Individuals who have been described as affecting a recognizable lockjaw accent include U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, actress Katharine Hepburn, television personality Martha Stewart, and Thurston Howell III, the millionaire character on the television series Gilligan’s Island. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/8 "2005-10-11T18:01:11Z")
Locust valley lockjaw is quite a different upper class accent than the hoity-toity accent. As **Max the Immortal** said, the hoity-toity accent is the result of elocution lessons. And Martha Stewart? I don’t find her voice to be at all similar to the Katharine Hepburn-Thurston Howell type. She grew up in a Polish-American family in New Jersey, and while her lifestyle imitates WASP ideals, her voice thankfully has not. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/9 "2005-10-11T21:09:05Z")
I call it the Snotty American accent. It was discussed about 4-1/2 years ago in General Questions: > **[accent of frasier](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=70393)** > > What is Kelsey Grammer’s accent on Frasier? Also David Hyde Pierce’s? And if I can go a little farther, what is Don Music’s accent on Sesame Street (it reminds me of the Crane brothers)? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/10 "2005-10-11T21:25:52Z")
When I watch the Turner Classic Movies\* channel, I hear a **lot** of people talking in ways I’ve never heard any living person speak. I’ve wondered whether this represents an actual linguistic-cultural change, or whether it’s a result of the sound recording technology of the period. Not just movies, either. Ever hear the famous radio broadcast of the Hindenberg disaster? No one with a voice like that could get a radio job nowadays, except in comedy; people would think he was some kind of mutant. I started a GQ thread on this – “Why has American English changed so much in the past 80 years?” – [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=215711](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=215711) – and the answers were all over the place, but most seemed to agree that the way actors spoke in the movies back then was highly artificial and had no connection with actual conversational English in any setting. \*The other night I saw 1930 film _The Big House_ ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020686/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020686/)). In the church-service scene, the minister actually said, "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowED be thy name . . . " Jeez, was there ever a time when “hallowed” was pronounced with three syllables? ---
**Author:** ![CBCD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc348/32.png) [@CBCD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CBCD)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/11 "2005-10-11T21:31:39Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > Locust valley lockjaw is quite a different upper class accent than the hoity-toity accent. As **Max the Immortal** said, the hoity-toity accent is the result of elocution lessons. > > And Martha Stewart? I don’t find her voice to be at all similar to the Katharine Hepburn-Thurston Howell type. She grew up in a Polish-American family in New Jersey, and while her lifestyle imitates WASP ideals, her voice thankfully has not. Martha Stewart doesn’t have lockjaw. She does, however, have really good diction. She pays customary attention to detail in her pronunciation of consonant clusters at the end of words. Another well-spoken woman from New Jersey. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/12 "2005-10-11T21:44:57Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > \*The other night I saw 1930 film _The Big House_ ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020686/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020686/)). In the church-service scene, the minister actually said, "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowED be thy name . . . " Jeez, was there ever a time when “hallowed” was pronounced with three syllables? 😕 It’s said that way in every Catholic church I’ve been [del]dragged[/del] to around here (Chicagoland). Acting has fashions, like everything else. Even movies from the '70s and '80’s seems dated, acting wise. Late '80s theater and early '90s movies had a fashion of naturalistic speaking - lots of “um’s” and “uh’s” and multiple people talking at once. Think Carol Churchill or David Mamet - both of whom write “uh” and interruption points into their very scripts so the actors don’t even have to think about where to put them. The mid to late '90s changed, thanks be to Dawson and Kevin Smith (and yes, my very own beloved Joss), to having very eloquent speech filled with word-play (making adjectives nouns and vice-versa) and pop-culture references. Face it, no one really talks like Dante and Randall, and never did. The fashion in the time period you’re talking about was for a more formal speech with overly clear articulation - made popular first in theater and then in movies. Professional speakers followed suit, and then the “well-educated”, through eloqution lessons. Just like there are posters here who have incorporated some “Joss speak” into their writin’s, people would emulate the movie stars of the day. ---
**Author:** ![CBCD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc348/32.png) [@CBCD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CBCD)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/13 "2005-10-11T22:06:20Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > \*The other night I saw 1930 film _The Big House_ ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020686/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020686/)). In the church-service scene, the minister actually said, "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowED be thy name . . . " Jeez, was there ever a time when “hallowed” was pronounced with three syllables? It’s a three syllable “hallowed” in my Episcopal church in New Jersey. I just asked my teenage daughter to recite the first few lines of The Lord’s Prayer as a test case, and sure enough, she rattled off ‘hall-ow-ed.’ Between Martha Stewart and “hallowed,” I can conclude that what the rest of the country thinks of as lock-jaw or hoity-toity pronunciation is simply the way we speak in New Jersey. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/14 "2005-10-11T22:07:22Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > 😕 It’s said that way in every Catholic church I’ve been [del]dragged[/del] to around here (Chicagoland). Really? I went to an Episcopalian high school where we recited the Our Father at morning convocation, and we always pronounced “hallowed” with two syllables. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2005, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/15 "2005-10-11T23:01:12Z")
My _deah_, if you have to _ahsk_ . . . ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/16 "2005-10-12T06:01:15Z")
Hey, what if movie technology had existed in the 19th Century? Or even the 18ths? How would English-speakers of those periods sound to us today, I wonder? ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/17 "2005-10-12T11:05:26Z")
Movie technology did exist in the 1890s. So did sound recordings. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/18 "2005-10-12T11:56:37Z")
That’s why we have Hallowed-ween. In some cases (like movies), that “upper class accent” is a deliberate fake, trying to represent some sort of cross between Boston (no r’s) and England (short a’s, or is it long a’s I’m thinking of.) The same thing was often done with Southern accents, as well. The idea was to create an image of the character quickly, and “stereotyping” based on looks, dress, and accent was one fast way of doing that. I think that happened in radio days, too. Heavy stereotypical accents were one way of identifying the voice/character. Minor hijack: In terms of looks, that’s why the Hollywood studios had all those wonderful character actors: the banker, the society matron, etc. Their looks classified them right away, without the need for dumb dialog as in radio (“Look, here comes the banker now!”) ---
**Author:** ![priapus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@priapus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/priapus)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2005, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/19 "2005-10-12T21:22:55Z")
and the marx brothers loved to take them to task ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2005, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667/20 "2005-10-13T02:48:03Z")
We said the three syllable “hallowed” in rural West Tennessee Cumberland Presbyterian churches too. I didn’t know anyone said it any other way. The same is true of _beloved_. > [@](#): > > **Max the Immortal** : Could be the ol’ Standard American accent. > > In the early part of this century, actors learned to speak with a “mid-atlantic” or “Standard American” accent. This accent was created by voice teachers to produce the most sound for the least amount of effort. It sounds educated and “not from around here”. It doesn’t belong to any region; the idea is that if all actors speak Standard on stage, you could put on a play with actors from different parts of America with nobody sounding out of place. There is no “Standard American” accent. I assume that you are referring to the early part of the last century and not this one. (Don’t worry; I make the same mistake.) I know that broadcasters had a Midwestern accent since that is where the broadcasting schools were. Can you cite for the information you provided about the Mid-Atlantic states, voice teachers and “the most sound for the least amount of effort”? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diction-by-upper-class-society-women-in-old-movies/325667.md?page=2)