the subject says it all really.
Was Stewart’s accent a real accent from some area of the US or was it a stage accent?
thanks,
Mogiaw
Wuh, wull, he was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania . . . but I think what you mean is his . . . ummm, not “speech impediment,” exactly, but his aw-shucks stammering. That’s not regional, it’s just a personal vocal quirk of his.
James Stewart talked the same in person as he did as an actor.
So his accent was from rural Pennsylvania?
James Steware Bio:
Not exactly rural-more like small town.
His hometown had about 15k people in a county of abt.80k.Nearest big city,Pittsburgh abt.100mi.,or so away.He graduated from Princeton,so he had an exposure to things outside that smalltown circle.
His father had a hardware store in the town’s main shopping area,and the family had been there for years before his birth.
He wasn’t exactly a rube,but played one pretty well.
Stewart says his father kept working at the hardware store until his death in 1961. He (only half-jokingly) said his father was never quite convinced that Jimmy’s acting hobby would pay off, and felt he had to have a “real” business to leave to Jimmy.
And, as others have mentioned, the town of Indiana (in the state of Pennsylvania) isn’t a major metropolis, but it’s not a tiny hick town, either.
But didn’t Stewart tone down the syncopated stammer after WWII? In a 1966 interview with Peter Bogdanovich he said “I realised I’d better do something, I couldn’t just go on hemming and hawing…I looked at an old picture of mine - Born To Dance - I wanted to vomit. I had to toughen it up.”
The hemming and hawing was a mannerism - he played heavier roles in several Westerns where it wasn’t present.
He also sang - he played piano and sang “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” on The Carol Burnett Show as a surprise for her.