Mo Rocca's "Mobituaries"

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and yes, Mo Rocca is back with us now. You may know him from his work as a CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and a frequent panelist on NPR's weekly quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! and maybe you listen to Mobituaries, his podcast about his favorite dearly departed people and things, as he describes it. One of those things is the topic of a recent episode The Death of an Accent. Have you heard of the mid-Atlantic accent sometimes called the trans-Atlantic accent? If you don't know that accent by name, you might know it by ear.

Bette Davis: Nice speech, Eve, but I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.

Brian Lehrer: That's Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve. Here's another example.

Katharine Hepburn: We just picked the wrong first husbands, that's all.

Brian Lehrer: You can't talk Hollywood history and leave out Katharine Hepburn. You heard her as Tracy Lord there for three seconds in The Philadelphia Story. We're talking about that old-timey movie-star manner of speech heard in the performances of giants like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant. It's a relic of an older era in Hollywood when movies were called talkies. We'll talk with Mo about the origins of that accent and why it went away except, apparently, in Kelsey Grammer. We'll also spend a few minutes getting into what Mo hopes will die, the things he hopes will disappear, the topic of another episode of Mobituaries. Listeners, you can weigh in here. What petty annoyances, and we're not talking about serious things, we're talking about petty annoyances do you hope will go away? 212-433-WNYC. Hi, Mo.

Mo Rocca: Great to be here with you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] Very good. Did people outside of the movies actually talk like that?

Mo Rocca: Well, they really did. In this episode, I'm joined by linguist, John McWhorter, and dialect coach, Jessica Drake. They both explain that people really did speak this way, particularly in the Northeast. There were certain cities called non-rhotic cities, that's what they called them, where people would drop the Rs. That's the most distinguishing feature of this accent, dropping of the Rs at the end of words, but interestingly, there were cities where people retained their Rs, Philadelphia being one of them. It's funny that Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story would speak that way when in reality, that character would not have ordered a cheesesteak, she would have ordered one.

Brian Lehrer: Is it a misnomer? I hear mid-Atlantic and I think of Maryland. Of course, trans-Atlantic can mean a lot of different things like coming from somewhere in Europe.

Mo Rocca: Absolutely. Dialect coaches are very sensitive about this. Somehow along the way, it came to be called mid-Atlantic, I think the idea being that it was Americans trying to sound British. That's not correct. I will also point out that there is-- I found one city that's equidistant from New York and London. It's Narsaq, Greenland, and I don't think they say Nasaq there. Maybe if you're to the manor born there, you do say that, but no. They prefer simply, John McWhorter calls it, the way people talked in old movies.

Brian Lehrer: Really, it was an accent of the elite, wasn't it, which you get at in this clip from the episode. Listeners, here we go.

Mo Rocca: Now, it wasn't only Hollywood royalty who spoke like this, but also the political elite. Here is Teddy Roosevelt campaigning to return to the White House in 1912.

Teddy Roosevelt: These prohibitions had been given by the gods from safeguards against political and social privilege into barriers against political and social justice and advancement. Our purpose is not to impugn the gods, but to emancipate them from a position where they stand in the way of social justice.

Mo Rocca: One funny thing I should point out is when Teddy Roosevelt would go Upstate to Albany earlier in his career, he would be made fun of for his accent. They'd say, "Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker," and they'd all heckle him with-- but yes, this was a real accent that developed in the 19th century. It wasn't just for Hollywood or for the stage.

Now, it was good for the stage because pre-microphone, it was a kind of accent that also included careful attention to enunciation, elongated vowels that could reach the back of the house, could project well.

Brian Lehrer: Why did it dominate in Hollywood? Was it because people got trained in the way you were just describing, to project from the stage in the era before microphones, and so that got mingled with what was an elite form of elocution as well?

Mo Rocca: That's right. It was also a uniform way of speaking. I think that's what had happened in the theater and then happened in Hollywood as well. Then what happened after World War II, six years after World War II with Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire, that drove a stake through the heart of it. That was at least the first blow against it, I would say, when people realized that speaking like that didn't make sense, to have Stanley Kowalski sing Stella, Stella would not have made a lot of sense.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Why did it go away in movies?

Mo Rocca: Well, one of the theories put forth in the episode is that World War II you had infantrymen from all over the country commingling, so it wasn't just one accent that was dominating, and that television was also a great equalizer. You were hearing a lot of voices in the West on television, on airwaves and from other parts of the country, so no longer did that accent have a position of dominance, and tastes changed also. Jessica Drake, a very renowned Hollywood dialect coach said, "It began with Brando and then really Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice. It was so astonishing what she did with her accent work that people realized it would just be much better to have people actually portraying these characters authentically than using any uniform dialect."

Brian Lehrer: Really interesting movie history as well as American dialect history. Constance in Redding, Connecticut, I think, has something to say about this and I'm not sure what accent she is going to use. Hi, Constance.

Mo Rocca: Well, if her name is Constance I bet she has a really good old-timey accent.

Constance: Well, hello there, darling. Can you hear me, darling?

Mo Rocca: We certainly can. We certainly can.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to stay out of this.

Constance: Well, that's marvelous because I use all different kinds of accents in all different kinds of situations, but I absolutely adore the Katharine Hepburn accent. I also have a British accent. Of course, since I'm from Redding when I go down to the country club in Greenwich, I use this accent and then when I pop on the yacht and go across the to Long Island, I use this accent. I'm fascinated with accents.

Mo Rocca: Well, wait a minute--

Constance: One last thing--

Mo Rocca: Can I just ask? Is that the accent you use when you're Connie instead Constance?

Constance: Oh, I'm always Constance, darling.

Brian Lehrer: You had one more thing, Constance.

Constance: Well, yes, actually. When I go down South to my friends in Alabama, of course, I have to drop any hint of Northern supremacy because you know what will happen to you, but that's all I'm saying.

Brian Lehrer: You're so good. Are you a professional?

Constance: Depends on what profession you're talking about. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: A comeback I did not expect.

Constance: No, I'm not. I'm just always been good at mimicking, but as I said, I'm originally from Manhattan where nobody has an accent at all.

Brian Lehrer: No, of course. Constance, amazing. Caller of the week, Mo.

Mo Rocca: She really is. I'm so glad we could hear her audition reel.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Now we're going to shift gears for the last few minutes of the segment, and my guest is Mo Rocca, and talk about the topic of another episode of your podcast series Mobituaries. This is called What Mo Hopes Will Die. Listeners, as a spoiler alert, the first thing I see on the list here is buffets.

Mo Rocca: Yes. I know that this is very controversial and the board is going to light up here. Really, I don't want to get people too angry. I am really anti-buffet, specifically the entirely self-serve buffets. I just don't want to handle a pair of sticky tongs that 100 other people have just handled in the last hour. I want to be really clear, Brian, and please don't edit this in a way where I'm made to look more controversial than I'm really being, although that might not be a bad thing, I am pro-cafeteria. I'm anti-buffet, but I'm pro-cafeteria. I love a cafeteria.

Brian Lehrer: Meaning a cafeteria where you get served?

Mo Rocca: Listen, my issue with the buffet is it's democracy brought to an extreme. There's a kind of anarchy there. In a cafeteria, you have someone in a hairnet brandishing a ladle, scooping the mashed potatoes perfectly with the little sort of dip in the middle into which goes the meat or cream-based gravy. You have a guy or a gal in a paper chef's hat with a carving knife over that side of roasted beef, illuminated by that red-orange light that looks a little bit radioactive, but actually makes the meat even look more succulent. I'm not looking for a cafeteria, or a police state. I'm not saying that I just need someone in charge. I need some kind of representative because we are a republic, though it's easy to forget that.

Brian Lehrer: Let's see. Seth in Manhattan has something that he wishes would go away. Seth, you're on WNYC with Mo Rocca. Hi.

Seth: Hi, Brian. I wish people would stop using the word "literally" incorrectly. They just use it for everything, like, "I literally saw her." I explain to my students. I'm a teacher at Queens College, that it means you're not using hyperbole. It means it actually happened. I just hear people walk down the street any day. "I literally saw her. I literally did this. I literally did that." They use it as an emphasis, not for its true meaning.

Brian Lehrer: There you go, Seth. Thank you very much. There's another one that's linguistic from a listener texting us. It says, "I hope the expression, "yes, no, absolutely," goes away because it makes no sense." Yes, no, absolutely. I understand that. Don't you?

Mo Rocca: I'd like "no worries" to go away.

Brian Lehrer: Another thing you want to go away is standing ovations?

Mo Rocca: The obligatory standing ovation. The only thing that's good for, your glutes, at this point. I don't know how this happened. I don't know how it happened. It wasn't long ago that a standing ovation was reserved for extraordinary performances. Now, at award shows. You already got an award; why do you need a standing ovation on top of it? It doesn't make sense. Anyone who's been to a Broadway show recently knows you've got to be prepared to stand up.

Now, I do think a lot of this is actually no one's forcing people to stand up. There is a lot of peer pressure. I think you don't want to be left out. You don't want to be sitting there as some sort of form of protest. It will seem that way. I think probably ticket prices have a lot to do with it that people want to self-validate and say, yes, there's a reason I spent $300 for this jukebox musical. I like jukebox musicals. Don't get me wrong. Some of them are very good. Everyone's springing out of their seats at the end. It's got to stop.

Brian Lehrer: You've touched a chord here because just about every one coming in of something that people wish would die is linguistic. Another one writes, "May vocal fry die. May rising endings die. May women sounding like tweens be gone." Another one, "the use of the word like in every sentence, completely maddening." Now, I'm not sure I know vocal fry. Can you do that?

Mo Rocca: That would be like, Brian, we are here on your show, which is such a great show on WNYC. Send in your pledge because if you don't we can't do the show. I think I have that right.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, you can do anything. We got another one from a different phone number for vocal two people writing in another one, "Vocal fry, stop it." Another one, "When does the drive end?" Oh, now forget that. That's for another show.

Mo Rocca: When are we getting there? Oh, it's not that kind of dry? It would be interesting. You should have a guest host just do your show entirely in vocal fry. Because I think you will have so many people that hate listening. You should do it during a drive. You should say send in money and we'll end this vocal fry. We'll end it. We will go back to normal voice, Brian. I bet people will send in tons of money. I actually think that could work.

Brian Lehrer: The negative pitch. We're going to work on that. The threatening pitch, the holding your regular voice hostage pitch. I don't know. I'm not feeling it, Mo. We're going to leave it there with Mo Rocca, host of the podcast, Mobituaries.

Mo Rocca: Brian-

Brian Lehrer: We talked about two of the episodes in the new season. The one about the mid-Atlantic or trans-Atlantic old movie accent and what we've just been talking about now. You have a quick lesson?

Mo Rocca: Brian, you really have been marvelous. I just want to say if people listen to the episode, they will especially love listening to Ethel Roosevelt Derby, the daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, talk about all the pets they had in the White House. It's a voice you can't believe that people actually talk that way, and it's completely wonderful.

Brian Lehrer: Mo Rocca is also a CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and a frequent panelist on NPR's weekly quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! Always fun, Mo. Thanks a lot.

Mo Rocca: Thanks.

 

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