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June 9, 2015 3:31 PM

Is there a name for this movie accent?

Is there a name for a common movie accent that has seemed to last through the ages?

It is the accent that Audrey Hepburn has in Breakfast at Tiffanys, across various actors/actresses in old movies through the present. It almost sounds like a watered down British, but clearly is not British, Aussie, South African, Indian...purely a Hollywood accent.

More recently I feel like it is used by characters who are more refined or uppity and is sometimes a bit breathless in women characters (maybe even Marilyn Monroe?) It's killing me!

What is it called and where the heck did it come from and why??

posted by floweredfish to Media & Arts (15 answers total)

Mid-Atlantic English?
posted by bluecore at 3:33 PM on June 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

You may be thinking of Mid-Atlantic English.
posted by griphus at 3:33 PM on June 9, 2015

Mid-Atlantic English
posted by fox problems at 3:33 PM on June 9, 2015

There's also the closely-related American Theater Standard.
posted by griphus at 3:34 PM on June 9, 2015

I'd call it an educated or refined drawl, too.
posted by bearwife at 3:57 PM on June 9, 2015

This video has a really interesting history of the mid-atlantic accent. Basically, it was taught to folks at boarding or acting schools in sort of a similar way that received pronunciation might be taught, and fell out of favor after WW2 (when more regional accents started to appear in cinema).
posted by superlibby at 4:00 PM on June 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

Yes! I just came across this article today (I saw it linked to in The Toast) about that accent and how it came about and then fell out of favor. So interesting, I'd always wondered about it!
posted by stellaluna at 4:10 PM on June 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Locust Valley Lockjaw?
posted by Zonker at 4:19 PM on June 9, 2015

It's also sometimes referred to, especially in highlighting class distinctions, a "patrician accent."
posted by klangklangston at 6:17 PM on June 9, 2015

I don't think Marilyn Monroe ever sounds like Audrey Hepburn. in Breakfast at Tiffanys, Hepburn is white trash who was taught French, so she has a vaguely ladidah accent that could be from anywhere.
Monroe's usual speech pattern is that she's slightly out of breath, exhaling as she delivers her lines. In All About Eve, she's a chorus girl with an actress accent, but Bette Davis is much closer to Mid-Atlantic.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:44 PM on June 9, 2015

Bette Davis was educated New England without the misplaced r's.
posted by brujita at 12:41 AM on June 10, 2015

Agreeing that you probably mean Mid-Atlantic English, which is very much in the Katherine Hepburn vein.

Audrey Hepburn sounded British because, you know, she WAS British.
posted by kuanes at 8:32 AM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I always called that a Continental accent, but a bit of googling tells me it's the same as a mid-Atlantic.
posted by Specklet at 11:22 AM on June 10, 2015

Seconding that Katherine Hepburn (or pretty much the cast of the Philadelphia Story) exemplifies this
posted by hrj at 12:14 PM on June 10, 2015

Audrey Hepburn sounded British because, you know, she WAS British.

Kinda. She was a Belgian born polyglot.
posted by bearwife at 1:09 PM on June 10, 2015