I know someone who lets details destroy everything when it comes to art. This is a person to whom appreciation of art does not come naturally, or at all. I avoid discussing film with this unnamed person because he immediately dismisses anything in which some detail is off or wrong. For instance, this illustrious art aficionado recently described the excellent How Green was My Valley as a “stinker.” Why? It wasn’t actually filmed in Wales. Also, the accents weren’t right. No, I’m not making this up. I wish I were. For this person, art is a puzzle box he will never solve, a labyrinth he will never penetrate or emerge from with greater understanding. And nothing’s worse than if the detail in question is the character’s accent. If the accent’s off, that’s all he’ll notice. The odd thing is, I’m not above that kind of viewpoint myself, if the movie’s bad. The problem with my friend is that he cannot see that the picture is good despite the accents being off. Me, and pretty much every other movie fan I know, goes in the opposite direction. If the movie’s good, who cares about the accent. If the movie’s bad, we think, “Well couldn’t they have at least gotten that right?!”
All this brings me around to some recent viewing on and for TCM. Just a few days ago, I took in The Mortal Storm, directed by Frank Borzage and starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Robert Young and Frank Morgan. Made in 1940 but taking place in 1933 in Germany after Hitler and the Nazi Party rise to power, The Mortal Storm is one of the best films of that year and Borzage, as always, does a superb job with everything but especially at holding emotional scenes to perfectly pitched moments of despair, never lingering long enough to turn the movie into a morbid freak show but not shying away from the pain either. In short, The Mortal Storm is excellent, with fine performances and a tight, tension-filled script. But the accents are non-existent for all the leads. Some of the supporting players use German accents. Some. Most everyone else just talks like they normally do. Jimmy Stewart sounds like Jimmy Stewart, Robert Young like Robert Young, Margaret Sullavan like Margaret Sullavan. And if you think the idea of Jimmy Stewart using his own accent while playing a German is odd, let me inform you that Ward Bond is also in the movie and, like the others, makes no effort to sound like anyone other than himself. This abandonment of proper regional accents would have driven my friend crazy.
“Was it any good?” he would be asked.
“Oh boy, what a turkey! A bunch of Hollywood actors playing Nazis and sounding like themselves,” he would reply.
He would have missed everything wonderful about the movie, including its emotionally powerful finale that really does hit the viewer right in the chest. What’s fascinating about The Mortal Storm, though, is that not only does the lack of accents not bother me, I think it works better without the accents. Frankly, had Stewart, Sullavan and the rest of the cast put on phony German accents, I think it would have distracted me much more. Robert Young, for example, plays the old love of Sullavan and old best friend of Stewart who becomes caught up in the nationalistic fervor of Nazism. His All-American look and sound made the transformation into a dangerous thug somehow more frightening than had he used an accent. Had he done so, I think it would have made him feel cartoonish, not menacing. And Jimmy Stewart, the hero you’re rooting for, feels familiar to you, like the guy next door who’s always willing to lend a hand and help the community. Having him face off against something as evil as Nazism wouldn’t have felt as risky with a forced accent. Funny how that works.
The other movie I watched, not on TCM but for it (for an article on the main site), was Paddy O’Day, starring Jane Withers, from 1935. The story concerns Paddy (Jane Withers), a little nine year old girl from Ireland, coming to America to meet up with her mother who sailed before her to find work first. Paddy befriends a Russian woman, Tamara (played by screen newcomer Rita Cansino, later to become Rita Hayworth), on board the ship headed to Ellis Island. Once docked, the audience learns the tragic news that Paddy’s mom got sick shortly after getting work and died. Paddy just thinks her mom is sick (they’ve kept the bad news from her) and escapes the orphans holding area on Ellis Island to find the house where her mom worked while Tamara tries to find Paddy so she can take care of her.
This one definitely required accents and the actors all tried their level best but succeeded only part of the time. Hayworth does the best job, holding on to her accent firmly from start to finish but Withers’ accent ebbs and flows not just from scene to scene but, quite obviously, within the scenes as well. Sometimes it’s a strong Irish brogue, other times it’s barely discernable. But guess what? Withers is excellent nonetheless. The accent may not be perfect but her performance hits every emotional note just right and, honestly, she was a hundred times the actress Shirley Temple was so her lesser fame is a bit inexplicable. There’s a scene in Paddy O’Day played between Withers and the great Jane Darwell, who plays a maid in the house where Paddy’s mom worked, that’s as heartbreaking as they come (SPOILER – it’s where the maid sits Paddy on her lap and tells her the truth, that her mother is dead) and Withers holds her own against Darwell beat for beat. It doesn’t feel like a forced tearjerker moment, not the way they play it. Mixed in with the heartbreak of the story is goofy slapstick, silly musical setups and lots of screwball plot hoops for everyone to jump through. Paddy O’Day is no masterpiece, but for all of its silliness, it still works, even without the lead actress hanging on to her accent for every line reading.
Of course, as I noted at the beginning of this post, sometimes the accent does get in the way, if the movie’s bad. It’s not a lack of accent that makes a movie bad, it’s simply that when a movie’s bad from a host of other issues, bad accents make it worse. When the movie’s good, it doesn’t really matter. There was a time when Hollywood didn’t really care one way or another about accents. Actors like Cary Grant and Ronald Colman had very distinctive accents and yet were cast in roles where they weren’t necessarily playing to the accent. In fact, Cary Grant often played the average American businessman, in movies like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, for instance, where no one ever wondered aloud why he sounded like he did if he was, in fact, an average American. In Lost Horizon, Ronald Colman, with his English accent, and John Howard, with his general American accent, played brothers with not a care as to why they sounded so very, very different from each other. And why they should they, the movie’s great as it is. I say speak how you speak, unless everyone’s great at doing accents, in which case, do the accents. One thing’s for sure: regardless of how good or bad anyone sounds, the real accent should be on quality and that should be achieved by whatever means works the best, geographic consistencies be damned.