And Lovey!
I know a couple of older men (in their 80’s) are very wealthy who actually sound like a less exaggerated version of Thurston Howell. I assume it partly comes from going to certain prep schools and is partly an affectation.
Funny you should mention Thurston Howell III–I thought Jim Backus was doing his Roosevelt impersonation on Gilligan’s Island.
Billie Burke, although born American, was raised in London, and started her acting career in the West End at the age of 19 or so.
I have something of a mid-Atlantic accent, myself, having been exposed to Canadian influence when I was a child, having had a favorite teacher who was an Oxbridge man, having been in a high-school production of My Fair Lady, having been a semi-pro opera singer in my 30s and 40s, and having done a good amount of Renaissance faire in my 50s and 60s. Over and over there’s been something to tug in that direction.
This is a good video about that accent. It was taught to kids in some schools in the US, and to adults in broadcasting and acting schools. Not natural, completely acquired.
Are you thinking about Edward Everett Horton’s character, Lovett, in “Lost Horizon”?
Dan
No, Lovey Howell on Gilligan’s Island.
Lovey was actually a pet name. Her Christian name was Eunice.
Ah! My confusion stems from watching very little TV. Except old movies - add one of the very best antiques to your list - Lost Horizon, 1937.
Dan
I’ve seen it, thanks. Wonderful film! 
Yeah, no. No one speaks or has spoken with a transatlantic / midatlantic / midlantic accent naturally. Plenty of people have grown up with a lockjaw/Brahmin accent. The two sound very different.
I grew up one town over from Locust Valley in the 60s and 70s, and occasionally encountered middle-aged or older people with Lost Valley lockjaw. (Only occasionally because we didn’t travel in the same circles.) Their lower teeth remained in contact with their upper teeth throughout the entire conversation. IIRC, that’s what Backus was doing on Gilligan’s Island.
The midlantic accent was entirely invented by the movie studios in the 1940s (I think). People had to learn that accent, and they were free to move their jaws up and down when they spoke with it.
Actually, it just happened that to become a star, you had to learn to effect the accent. So pretty much everyone in the movies from the beginning of the talkies spoke that way. You’d even have dirt-poor characters speak that way, if they were the leads. It’s kind of like perfect, white teeth on homeless people in 21st century TV.
Irene Dunne had grown up in Kentucky, although she’d also lived a bit in a small town in Indiana, where people sounded pretty much like they did in Kentucky.
She had a perfect trans-Atlantic accent when she needed one, but there were a few times when she played a character who was trying to pretend to be either southern or from a lower class, and not necessarily doing it perfectly, and she pulled off an hysterical mix of the two accents.
I watched a video today saying that the whole trans/mid Atlantic accent narrative is a myth. Interesting stuff.
I dipped into that video, skipped around too much, and completely failed to see his point. Can you summarize in a sentence? (Is he claiming it’s not a made-up voice coach dialect, but a real one some people spoke natively?)
One of the most boring videos I’ve ever seen. Sad, I also couldn’t find his point.
I mean, you would’ve had to watch it at greater than 2X speed since I only posted an 11 minutes ago, but okay.
He’s a linguist and director, and he has two separate tracks – one is how much information is made up to support the mid Atlantic accent story, and the other track is how it’s simply not true based on chronology, extant facts, and the broad variety of accents labeled as mid Atlantic.
He was too boring for the first 6 minutes and like a reasonable person I gave up. I never said and didn’t mean to imply I watch the whole thing. The find bit was to cover the part where I too skipped around for a bit.
Thank you – actually I watched the video (parts of it, that is) shortly after he posted it on YouTube, and was only reminded by your link. I like that guy and find some of his other videos much more engaging than that one.
What is the mid Atlantic accent story?
It just occurred to me that a very young Jane Wyatt was in the original Lost Horizon. She was another actress who always spoke with a Mid-Atlantic accent (just listen to her performance in Star Trek TOS thirty years later).
She was also incredibly beautiful as a young woman.
Just wanted to comment that it took this thread for me to finally realize what the “Mid-Atlantic” is referring to in the term “Mid-Atlantic accent.”
I’d always assumed it was an actual region in the U.S. somewhere on the east coast (more specifically the northeastern U.S.) where upper-class people lived and where all of the people in that social class spoke that way a century ago. Now I see that refers to an acquired accent that blends elements from American and British accents…hence “Mid-Atlantic” as in a hypothetical place in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.