Florida Vacation, November, 2009

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The Transatlantic accent, also called a Mid-Atlantic accent, is a way of speaking English that is halfway between American and British. It makes you sound like you have a good education but no one can tell quite where you are from. You hear it in old Hollywood films from the 1930s and 1940s. It is the accent of Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, William F Buckley and (at least in some films) God.

It is also known as the the Boarding School Accent. It explains why very wealthy kids from Boston or Texas do not sound like they are from Boston or Texas, but rather from somewhere between Phillips Andover and Eton.

There is no town in the world where people grow up speaking English that way. Instead you get the accent in one of three ways:

1) Learn the accent on purpose (actors used to do that).
2) Grow up or live on both sides of the Atlantic (but that can lead to even stranger accents, like those of Loyd Grossman and Madonna).
3) Pick it up at a top boarding school in America before the 1960s.

The accent comes from American boarding schools in New England where students were taught to speak English in more of an RP or high-class British way.

In the 1930s and 1940s it was seen as a good accent to use in film and theatre since it sounded universal and not from any particular part of the world. That makes it a good accent for God and creatures from outer space. You do not hear it much any more because people have grown used to the general American accent, thanks in part to Humphrey Bogart and the extremely Middle American John Wayne.

Transatlantic English goes something like this:

Start with a mainstream American accent.
Drop your r’s at the end of words, like in “fear” and “winner”.
Say all your t’s as t’s not d’s (like in “water” and “butter”).
Use RP (British) vowels. So “dance” becomes “dahns”.
If you start from a British accent the rules are different. It is an Americanized RP accent.

It is a very particular accent and not just any sort of mix between British and American. There is even a book, now out of print, called “Teach Yourself Transatlantic: Theatre Speech for Actors” (1986) by Robert L. Hobbs.

It is a hard accent to do – people will laugh at you if you do not get it right. So it takes plenty of practice. But for the British it is an easier accent to master than a general American one.

It is a good accent for those foreign to English, strangely enough: since no one grows up speaking it, you will not sound to anyone like you have a foreign accent! Some learn it to go into business overseas.

Among those who speak with a Transatlantic accent or something close to it: Katherine Hepburn, Franklin Roosevelt, William F Buckley (in his own way), Niles and Frasier on “Frasier”, the millionaire on “Gilligan’s Island”, Orson Welles in “Citizen Kane”, Peter Jennings, Anthony Hopkins, Cary Grant, the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz”, Bette Davis, everyone in Hitchcock’s “Suspicion” (1941), Arlene Francis, Martin Gable, Agnes Moorehead, Vincent Price, and most British actors who try to sound American (but not, of course, Hugh Laurie of “House”).

—

Related accents:
Boston Brahmin
Eastern Preparatory School Aristocracy
Upper Class New England accent
American Theater Standard
Main Line accent
Locust Valley Lockjaw

The so-called Boston Brahmin accent and the similar accent of the New York area, within this message board also called the “Locust Valley Lockjaw,” are distinct from each other although they share a common origin. There were, at some time, kindred accents spoken in the vicinities of Baltimore and Philadelphia as well. Today, these latter two are probably entirely extinct, while the former two are nearly so.

In television, the best instance of the Boston Brahmin accent is, as previously indicated, that of M*A*S*H*’s Charles Winchester.

Of note, neither any member of the Kennedy family nor John Kerry routinely spoke or speak in this accent. At times, some of these men may affect certain elements of the accent, but the Kennedy speech is actually much more akin to the middle-class accents of Eastern Massachusetts (North and South Shore of Boston accents, the Back Bay of Boston accent, and Cape Cod accents), which, in turn, should not be confused with the working-class accents typical of the era in Dorchester, Roxbury, and South Boston. John Kerry’s speech does, in fact, recall the Boston Brahmin accent at points in recordings of the 1970s. The bulk of his speech, even within the same words that are affected in the Boston Brahmin way, is still more alike to standard American pronunciation than any characteristic regional accent.

Regarding the accents used by others, I have labored my best to respond to each previous reference.
- Thurston Howell of Gilligan’s Island speaks with an affected accent that is similar to, but not the same as, the Boston Brahmin accent. His accent is an invented one.
- Frasier Crane and Niles Crane speak with invented accents that are significantly unlike the Boston Brahmin accent. This can be established through their lack of key broad vowels and overt rhoticity.
- Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt spoke with the aforementioned “Locust Valley Lockjaw.” It should be noted that Franklin Roosevelt, without any doubt, was strongly affected by the Boston Brahmin accent from the time of his studies at Harvard University.

Another good example of the Boston Brahmin accent was the late Senator Leverett Saltonstall.

It is unfortunate, I believe, that so many accents are being confused or mistaken, mainly through the national television media and entertainment industry. With attention to recordings of older speech patterns, however, one may discern authenticity in later speakers.

—–

I think that the leading men in those old Hollywood films still sound contemporary. Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart all sound very neutral General American to me. Of course, there were exceptions like John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart who had very distinctive voices that sound quite odd by today’s standards.

But the women were something else! Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and the rest of their peers spoke in clipped, non-rhotic New England/Mid-Atlantic-style accents that they acquired in Hollywood finishing school or East Coast boarding schools. This accent makes them sound snobby, affected, and laughably old-fashioned by today’s standards. I don’t think people in the real world actually spoke this way. They also laid the drama on pretty thick and were sometimes way over-the-top. These women are still fascinating to watch, but anyone speaking and acting that way in films today would be laughed out of the business. This trend ended around the mid to late 1960s when the more naturalistic approach to acting spear-headed by Brando, Clift, and Dean in the 1950s finally caught on.

Modern Standard American English, I’m told uses the Midwest accent spoken between Pittsburg and Chicago. Before World War II it used the r-less (non-rhotic) Northeastern accent. Franklin and Elanor Roosevelt are cited as examples of people who spoke with this accent (”We have nothing to fea-uh but fea-uh itself” i.e. fear ) as well as numerous Hollywood people at the time.

Two iconic deaths on the same day. HUGE parts of my youth GONE forever.
The most important news today, to ME, was the death of Farrah Fawcett (OBVIOUSLY not the same feelings as most of America). So I post it as I see it…

Farrah Fawcett dies at 62

Her swimsuit poster launched a thousand male fantasies.
Her feathered locks made curling irons de rigueur for women and kick-started the most pervasive hair trend of the ’70s.

She was Hollywood’s penultimate golden girl. And, now, Farrah Fawcett, who epitomized the all-American ideal of beauty, has died after a three-year battle with cancer. She was 62. Her spokesman, Paul Bloch, says Fawcett died Thursday morning in a Santa Monica hospital.

In September 2006, Fawcett learned she had anal cancer. The devastating news led to a reconciliation with her on-and-off boyfriend, Ryan O’Neal, 68, the father of their troubled son, Redmond, 24. O’Neal was by her side as Fawcett went through chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and the actress was declared cancer-free in February 2007. But later that spring, she learned the cancer had returned. After growing weary of ineffective treatments in the USA, Fawcett traveled to Germany in September 2007 for alternative cancer therapies.

Her friend Craig Nevius told People that Fawcett was “discouraged by the treatments she got here. The fact that it recurred after all that she went through was heartbreaking.”

At her side throughout her final difficult years: O’Neal — who himself had battled leukemia — and their son, Redmond.

Fawcett’s tumultuous personal life belied her scrubbed, wholesome good looks. Perhaps most heartbreaking for her was Redmond’s battle with drug addiction, which led to two arrests. In September, the youngest O’Neal was arrested and charged with drug possession after methamphetamine was found in his father’s Malibu residence. And on April 5, Redmond was arrested again on suspicion of trying to sneak drugs into prison, where he had been visiting an inmate. He was sentenced to drug court, an intensive rehab program, during which he was allowed to visit his ailing mother under police supervision.

Fawcett will long be remembered as the pistol-packing blonde Jill Munroe on the ’70s classic Charlie’s Angels. But her legacy may be that she was never completely victorious in the decades-long battle she waged to overcome that enduring, indelible sex-symbol image. It is fitting that Fawcett — who launched to superstardom on the small screen — also said goodbye the same way. In May, NBC aired the documentary Farrah’s Story, which chronicled Fawcett’s battle with cancer and attracted nearly 9 million viewers.

“I’m holding on to the hope that there is some reason I got cancer and that there is something, that may not be very clear to me right now, that I will do,” Fawcett said in an interview filmed for the documentary, according to Access Hollywood.

It’s hard to believe that it took just one season — and 12 million copies of an unforgettable poster — to launch a deep-seated phenomenon that would carry on for more than two decades. After only 22 episodes, Fawcett walked away from her hit show, saying it was preventing her from growing as an actress. Producer Aaron Spelling threatened to sue her for breach of contract, she agreed to guest appearances on the series and was ultimately replaced by model Cheryl Ladd.

Fawcett had no regrets about leaving. When she hit it big on Angels, Fawcett’s life was “in great turmoil,” she told LIFE magazine in 1987. “I was locked into a character who was never changing. The producers did not really want to change. They had a successful format. But on the other hand, if I hadn’t had that show, I don’t know if I’d be where I am today, even though I couldn’t really appreciate that fact at the time. You’re just never in sync.”

It took years before Fawcett was able to gain the critical notices she yearned for as a serious actress. Yet, they still stung with an awe-inspiring tone of surprise that TV’s airheaded sex symbol, indeed, had some genuine acting chops.

Critics offered praise for her first post-Angels return to television in the 1981 film Murder in Texas. Fawcett gained more critical raves and professional cachet with her 1983 leading role as rape victim in the off-Broadway play Extremities.

With the strongest role of her career — as an abused wife in the 1984 TV movie The Burning Bed— Fawcett earned an Emmy nomination and, at last, professional respect. But it would be more than a decade before she found a taste of critical acclaim in film. Fawcett seemed poised for a movie career after earning praise as Robert Duvall’s spouse in 1997’s The Apostle. But that never materialized. By the early 2000s, Fawcett was back on TV, and she earned another Emmy nomination with her work on CBS’ The Guardian.

Behind that glossy grin, all-American good looks and acting stamina, Fawcett struggled to find personal happiness.

The daughter of James, a refinery pipe fitter, and Pauline, a homemaker, Fawcett — her real name — was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, and attended the University of Texas at Austin, where she was voted one of the campus beauties. After switching her major from biology to art, Fawcett left school in her junior year and headed to Los Angeles.

The knockout with the flawless teeth and blinding smile landed an agent in her second week in Hollywood and was soon starring in Ultra Brite toothpaste and Wella Balsam shampoo commercials. She found love, too, with the future Six Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors. The two were married in 1973, and three years later, she was cast as one of Aaron Spelling’s Angels. In 1979 Fawcett and Majors split up, and that fall, she began living with O’Neal, marking the beginning of one of Hollywood’s most memorable love stories.

O’Neal had been married twice and had three children. His reputation as a ladies’ man preceded him, but Fawcett wasn’t deterred.

“I didn’t think about that. I just took it day by day. I was so overwhelmed by this mental and physical attraction for him that I didn’t think about anything except what was happening right there,” she told LIFE. “We just eased into it. To find someone who keeps you stimulated almost all day long — if you do happen to be with him all day long — is very rare.”

The relationship was tumultuous, however, and was chronicled in his daughter Tatum O’Neal’s tell-all A Paper Life. The two were never married but seemed unable to stay apart, and on Monday, O’Neal announced they planned to marry as soon as Fawcett felt strong enough.

Fawcett herself sometimes thwarted her attempts to maintain her momentum as a serious Hollywood actress. In the face of her lifelong quest for critical respect, Fawcett was 50 when she agreed to pose for Playboy magazine. She also released a Playboy video, All of Me, in which she paints using her much-admired body as a paintbrush. She made headlines for the wrong reasons with a dazed appearance June 6, 1997, on Late Show With David Letterman and her January 1998 brawl with then-boyfriend producer James Orr, which left her bruised. A 2005 TV Land reality show, Chasing Farrah, was short-lived and quickly forgotten.

Not even Fawcett could explain her own appeal. “But it’s something I can’t escape,” she told Texas Monthly in its January 1997 issue. “I was in Houston recently visiting my parents, and we went to one of those chicken-fried-steak restaurants. Redmond and I had just been Rollerblading. I was wearing no makeup, and I hadn’t done anything to my hair, and this 175-pound woman came up to me and shouted, ‘Farrah, how can you let yourself go like this? You are Farrah Fawcett!’ Then she asked me to sign an autograph because Charlie’s Angels had been her favorite show. I thought, ‘Sometimes it isn’t worth it. The fame is just not worth it.’ “

She got sick of her own photos, telling LIFE that “there have been way too many” of them out there of her. Her looks became the curse that she could never escape, she told Entertainment Weekly in 1996.

“I see T-shirts everywhere, with my face, my poster,” she said. “In Saudi Arabia they’re using photographs of me — not only from Charlie’s Angels but from when I did ads for Faberge shampoo — to advertise everything: clothes, food, vitamins. It’s almost like I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to.”

After years of friction and fighting her Angels notoriety, Fawcett finally embraced it in recent years and reunited with her fellow Angels at the 2006 Emmys, walking out on stage with Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith.

But Fawcett’s longing to be taken seriously and escape her larger-than-life persona stayed with her to the end.

FARRAH FAWCETT, 1947-2009

http://www.anorak.co.uk/celebrities/214637.html

———————-

This afternoon Michael Jackson had been alive or dead, depending on what channel you were watching. He managed to simultaneously be alive on Fox News, in a coma on CNN and dead on MSNBC. At one point on CNN, Wolf Blitzer was saying he was alive but in a coma while the crawl at the bottom of the screen said, “Michael Jackson dead.” Eventually, they all got in sync.
Michael was dead. Apparently from acardiac arrest.

A tragedy, HOWEVER…

As long as his albums were making zillions, Michael always got his way. Like Howard Hughes squirreled away like a hermit in a Vegas penthouse, there was always someone to cater to his every whim…and no one to tell him he was crazy.

CNN is interviewed Brian Oxman, a personal friend of Michael Jackson’s and Jackson family attorney, who said he was at the hospital where Jackson was pronounced dead. Oxman said there were concerns that Jackson was taking prescription drugs and that he was recently surrounded by people who “enabled” him perhaps to over medicate himself.

Oxman went further to cite the case of Anna Nicole Smith who died of a prescription drug overdose and indicates Jackson’s situation was the worse than hers. Again, can’t confirm but this is now out there from someone who was, at least at one point, a Jackson insider.

Michael Jackson’s former publicist, Michael Levine, just released the following statement, claiming he saw today’s tragic events coming for years.

“As someone who served as Michael Jackson’s publicist during the 1st child molestation incident, I must confess I am not surprised by today’s tragic news.

Michael has been on an impossibly difficult and often self-destructive journey for years. His talent was unquestionable but so too was his discomfort with the norms of the world.

A human simply can not withstand this level of prolonged stress.”

Michael Jackson, pop music legend, dead at 50

(CNN) — Michael Jackson, the show-stopping singer whose best-selling albums — including “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad” — and electrifying stage presence made him one of the most popular artists of all time, died Thursday, CNN has confirmed.

Michael Jackson, shown in 2008, was one of the biggest pop stars in history.

He was 50.

He collapsed at his residence in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, California, about noon Pacific time, suffering cardiac arrest, according to brother Randy Jackson. He died at UCLA Medical Center.

Lt. Fred Corral of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office said an autopsy would probably be done on the singer Friday, with results expected that afternoon. Watch crowds gather at Jackson’s hospital »

“Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of color,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said. “To say an ‘icon’ would only give these young people in Harlem a fraction of what he was. He was a historic figure that people will measure music and the industry by.”

Jackson’s blazing rise to stardom — and later fall from grace — is among the most startling of show business tales. The son of a steelworker, he rose to fame as the lead singer of the Jackson 5, a band he formed with his brothers in the late 1960s. By the late ’70s, as a solo artist, he was topping the charts with cuts from “Off the Wall,” including “Rock With You” and “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” Watch Jackson perform at a 1988 concert »

In 1982, he released “Thriller,” an album that eventually produced seven hit singles. An appearance the next year on a Motown Records 25th-anniversary special cemented his status as the biggest star in the country. Timeline: The life of Michael Jackson »

For the rest of the 1980s, they came no bigger. “Thriller’s” follow-up, 1987’s “Bad,” sold almost as many copies. A new Jackson album — a new Jackson appearance — was a pop culture event. iReport: Share your memories of Michael Jackson

The pop music landscape was changing, however, opening up for rap, hip-hop and what came to be called “alternative” — and Jackson was seen as out of step.

His next release, 1991’s “Dangerous,” debuted at No. 1 but “only” produced one top-ranking single — “Black or White” — and that song earned criticism for its inexplicably violent ending, in which Jackson was seen smashing car windows and clutching his crotch.

And then “Dangerous” was knocked out of its No. 1 spot on the album charts by Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” an occurrence noted for its symbolism by rock critics.

After that, more attention was paid to Jackson’s private life than his music career, which faltered. A 1995 two-CD greatest hits, “HIStory,” sold relatively poorly, given the huge expense of Jackson’s recording contract: about 7 million copies, according to Recording Industry of America certifications.

A 2001 album of new material, “Invincible,” did even worse.

In 2005, he went to trial on child-molestation charges. He was acquitted.

In July 2008, after three years away from the spotlight, Jackson announced a series of concerts at London’s O2 Arena as his “curtain call.” Some of the shows, initially scheduled to begin in July, were eventually postponed until 2010. Watch the reaction to Jackson’s passing

Rise to stardom

Michael Jackson was born August 29, 1958, to Joe Jackson, a Gary, Indiana, steelworker, and his wife, Katherine. By the time he was 6, he had joined his brothers in a musical group organized by his father, and by the time he was 10, the group — the Jackson 5 — had been signed to Motown. Watch Michael Jackson’s life in video

He made his first television appearance at age 11.

Jackson, a natural performer, soon became the group’s front man. Music critic Langdon Winner, reviewing the group’s first album, “Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5,” for Rolling Stone, praised Michael’s versatile singing and added, “Who is this ‘Diana Ross,’ anyway?”

The group’s first four singles — “I Want You Back,” “ABC,” “The Love You Save” and “I’ll Be There” — went to No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart, the first time any group had pulled off that feat. There was even a Jackson 5 cartoon series on ABC. Watch reaction from Motown Studios »

In 1972, he hit No. 1 as a solo artist with the song “Ben.”

The group’s popularity waned as the ’70s continued, and Michael eventually went solo full time. He played the Scarecrow in the 1978 movie version of “The Wiz,” and released the album “Off the Wall” in 1979. Its success paved the way for “Thriller,” which eventually became the best-selling album in history, with 50 million copies sold worldwide.

At that point, Michael Jackson became ubiquitous.

Seven of “Thriller’s” nine cuts were released as singles; all made the Top Ten. The then-new cable channel MTV, criticized for its almost exclusively white playlist, finally started playing Jackson’s videos. They aired incessantly, including a 14-minute minimovie of the title cut. (”Weird Al” Yankovic cemented his own stardom by lampooning Jackson’s song “Beat It” with a letter-perfect parody video.)

On the Motown Records’ 25th-anniversary special — a May 1983 TV extravaganza with notable turns by the Temptations, the Four Tops and Smokey Robinson — it was Michael Jackson who stopped the show.

Already he was the most popular musician in America, riding high with “Thriller.” But something about his electrifying performance of “Billie Jean,” complete with the patented backward dance moves, boosted his stardom to a new level. Watch Jackson perform “Thiller” »

People copied his Jheri-curled hair and single-gloved, zippered-jacket look. Showbiz veterans such as Fred Astaire praised his chops. He posed for photos with Ronald and Nancy Reagan at the White House. Paul McCartney teamed with him on three duets, two of which — “The Girl Is Mine” and “Say Say Say” — became top five hits. Jackson became a Pepsi spokesman, and when his hair caught fire while making a commercial, it was worldwide news.

It all happened very fast — within a couple years of the Motown special. But even at the time of the “Motown 25″ moonwalk, fame was old hat to Michael Jackson. He hadn’t even turned 25 himself, but he’d been a star for more than half his life. He was given the nickname the “King of Pop” — a spin on Elvis Presley’s status as “the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” — and few questioned the moniker.

Relentless attention

But, as the showbiz saying has it, when you’re on top of the world, there’s nowhere to go but down. The relentless attention given Jackson started focusing as much on his eccentricities — some real, some rumored — as his music.

As the Web site Allmusic.com notes, he was rumored to sleep in a hyperbaric chamber and to have purchased the bones of John Merrick, the “Elephant Man.” (Neither was true.) He did have a pet chimpanzee, Bubbles; underwent a series of increasingly drastic plastic surgeries; established an estate, Neverland, filled with zoo animals and amusement park rides; and managed to purchase the Beatles catalog from under Paul McCartney’s nose, which displeased the ex-Beatle immensely.

In 1990s and 2000s, Jackson found himself pasted across the media for his short-lived marriages, the first to Elvis Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie; his 2002 claim that then Sony Records head Tommy Mottola was racist; his behavior and statements during a 2003 interview with British journalist Martin Bashir done for a documentary called “Living With Michael Jackson;” his changing physical appearance; and, above all, the accusations that he sexually molested young boys at Neverland. Watch report on legacy on Michael Jackson »

The first such accusation, in 1993, resulted in a settlement to the 13-year-old accuser (rumored to be as high as $20 million), though no criminal charges were filed, Allmusic.com notes.

He also fell deeply in debt and was forced to sell some of his assets. Neverland was one of many holdings that went on the block. However, an auction of material from Neverland, scheduled for April, was called off and all items returned to Jackson.

Interest in Jackson never faded, however, even if some of it was prurient. In 2008, when he announced 10 comeback shows in London, beginning in July 2009, the story made worldwide news. The number of concerts was later increased to 50.

Seventy-five thousand tickets sold in four hours when they went on sale in March.

However, when the shows were postponed until 2010, rumors swept the Internet that Jackson was not physically prepared and possibly suffering from skin cancer. Watch discussion of his tough life, brilliant career »

At the time, the president and CEO of AEG Live, Randy Phillips, said, “He’s as healthy as can be — no health problems whatsover.”

Jackson held open auditions for dancers in April in Los Angeles.

He is survived by his three children, Prince Michael I, Paris and Prince Michael II.

I wrote a letter to the idiots who ran this campaign…
and everyone else who thinks this campaign is just the silliest waste of time and space, please do so also:
Questions or comments regarding this site and the Think Before You Speak campaign may be directed to ThinkB4@glsen.org.

http://www.thinkb4youspeak.com/TheCampaign/Print_Gay.jpg

But what can we expect when one of the most OBNOXIOUS, UNTALENTED “actresses” (and that’s stretching the term a LOOOOOONG way) is in the commercial…
Wanda Sux…I mean Wanda Sykes:

My Letter:

To thinkb4youspeak campaign managers,
I have to write and say that your whole campaign is an insult. Gay has had 3 meanings for as long as I can remember. Gay meaning “happy”, gay meaning “weird or stupid” and gay meaning “homosexual.”. I don’t think that this campaign should tell me that one meaning is insulting!
I have been using the term “gay” as “stupid” since I was in high school. Not one gay person I know finds it insulting or innapropriate. Probably because It’s NOT.
The ThinkB4 campaign is GAY!
Why not start a campaign about people who use ACRONYMS instead of the english language…because I take it B4 is supposed to mean “before”.
GET A LIFE all of you and focus on REAL ISSUES facing our nation!!!
A concerned U.S. Citizen, elementary school teacher, and English major.

Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009