Hollywood's "Fake" Mid-Atlantic Myth DEBUNKED!

Video Description

80,000 Hours is a nonprofit offering free research-based help on careers that make a difference. Get their in-depth guide at https://80000hours.org/drgeofflindsey. Want to know why actors in Golden Age Hollywood movies sound different from people today? A legend has grown up that it was all because an Australian and a Canadian invented a fake accent that studios forced their stars to use. Here I'll try to show why that's a load of you know what, and get closer to the fascinating reality. (Just to be clear: Wikipedia, which I support, is an invaluable resource on languages and linguistics, but this Wikipedia article cited a lot of sources by non-linguists.) 0:00 Introduction 3:21 Hollywood's beginnings 4:20 William Tilly 5:16 Problems with the 'fake' story 5:48 Rhoticity 6:58 Northeastern Elite 7:55 On stage and in public speaking 8:55 Edith Skinner 9:33 Katharine Hepburn 12:31 Intermission 14:33 Aspirational Hollywood 16:00 Cary Grant & Brits 16:44 Various other accents 20:16 Nasal nonsense 21:03 Kenyon & Knott's dictionary 22:18 Towards GenAm 23:50 The monster accent 24:17 Magnificence John McWhorter and Jessica Drake interviewed: https://www.mobituaries.com/news/death-of-an-accent John McWhorter on American non-rhoticity: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19486 Dudley Knight's article on Tilly & co: https://ktspeechwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Standard-Speech-The-Ongoing-Debate.pdf Hepburn interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqFzFyWnnhs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfT_XWTldlo Drone footage of oil fields courtesy of Alexander X https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaDDtimvUUQ Thank you to the Cinema Museum http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/ Los Angeles crew: Stewart Hoke and Steven Angelo