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

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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 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/deat...
John McWhorter on American non-rhoticity: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll...
Dudley Knight's article on Tilly & co: https://ktspeechwork.org/wp-content/u...
Hepburn interviews:    • Katharine Hepburn Interview 1/3 - Dic...   and    • Katharine Hepburn interviewed by Cliv...  
Drone footage of oil fields courtesy of Alexander X    • The Forgotten History of Oil in Los A...  
Thank you to the Cinema Museum http://www.cinemamuseum.org.uk/
Los Angeles crew: Stewart Hoke and Steven Angelo