I watch a lot of old movies, and I've noticed that American actors of the 1930s and 1940s often spoke in a quasi-generic-posh-British accent. Katherine Hepburn's accent would be the perfect example. It seems exaggerated, and I imagine it was not common off the stage and screen. What was that? Was it just an accent or was it a dialect? Did real people actually speak that way?
Learn English – Did regular Americans speak the way actors in the 30s and 1940s did
accentdialects
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Best Answer
As mentioned in a previous answer to one of your questions, this is called Mid-Atlantic English and was commonly used in American films of the 1930s and 40s.
Wikipedia gives the following reasons that someone would use the accent:
So essentially, this type of speech was never common and was only natural in the case of ex-pats.
Some examples of 'Mid-Atlantic' speakers:
Katherine Hepburn
Criticised for her shrill voice, she left Baltimore and studied with an acclaimed voice coach in New York City (Frances Robinson-Duff).
Cary Grant
After moving to the United States, he managed to lose his accent, developing a clipped mid-Atlantic speaking style uniquely his own.
Claude Rains
He grew up, according to his daughter, with "a very serious cockney accent and a speech impediment". He had elocution lessons in Britain and then moved to America where he played British, American and European characters.