AFFECTED SPEECH.

Waikato Times, Volume 111, Issue 18524, 2 January 1932, Page 14

AFFECTED SPEECH.

BRITISH FILM STARS. CRITICISM* IN LONDON. Seton Margrave writes In the London Dally Mail— A friend of mine who is a regular and enthusiastic fllmgoer complains most bitterly of the voices of many of tiie younger players in Rritisli talking pictures. He quotes example after example. Ho Is particularly savage over an incident of last Saturday. Becauso his small daughter demanded an ice and insisted on eating it with a maximum of leisure he had to sit. through part of such a film for a second time, with the. result that, the ice that cooled the daughter made the father boil. I agreed with him, and heartily. I find tho speeoh of most of our younger talking-picture players Insufferable In Its affectation. It is a menace potentially as disastrous as the vulgar slang and twang which did irreparable damage to the earlier talking pictures made In Hollywood. Deaf Producers. Hollywood quickly corrected itself. Scouts were instructed to report from all parts of the English-speaking world. Lists of slang words to he avoided were speedily prepared, and expert teachers wero employed to take the rawest of the edges off the voices of the stars. Even so, I am convinced that any general dislike of American talking pictures is traceable to that first blunder. Equally I am convinced that a great part of the opportunity now presented to our own producers is being frittered away by their deafness to an accent whch is less an inflection than an affliction. Something very drastlo will have to be done if the efforts of our studios are to escape scathing criticism, and it will have to be done quickly, because this simpering substitute for honest speeoh Is common to all our studios. Its origin is difficult to trace. Some of it may have been borrowed from the more precious precincts of the London stage. Some of it may be in languid imitation of the Bwithish Bwoadkestin Kempiny. Anyhow, the result is so refeened that British talking pictures are getting the bird from Dundee to Dunediu.

Willlo and Truly. Personally, when 1 hear these mincing mummers talking of a hawse, I really do not know whether they are talking of a house or a horse. Continually 1 am mistaking really for Willie. Still, I am getting on. I know’ that end means and, that bln is been, that may is my, and that the missing end cf dear regularly turns up in idea. With the aid of some twenty phonetic symbols belonging to English, French, and German, I tried the other day to set down the mutations of vowel sounds In British talking pictures. I had to give it up. The Stage Again. 1 telephoned Mr Christopher Mann, llio discoverer of Madeleine Carroll, and asked him to help me. He said: "I cannot. I am besieged by girls who think they should be in 'talking pictures. I have to tell nine out of ten 1o go away for a year and learn to speak without affectation." He puls Ihe disease down to fashionable academies. I think this matter Is all the more serious in view of the persistence with which most of our studios continue to photograph stage plays. Not only do our producers deal in tihls absurd speech, but they aggravate) their offence by using It to the exclusion of aotlon.