I do not think that Jenny Joy's comments about "Standard Speech" are quite correct, at least insofar as the concept of "Midatlantic" or "Standard" is fairly recent in the teaching of actors. It does seem that in early sound cinema there are very distinctive ways of speaking that are no longer identifiable solely with regional or national accents: Cary Grant is anything but Cockney; Cagney's accents involves bits of New York patterns but not entirely. I *am* convinced that there were distinctive ways of speaking associated particularly with the New York stage on which people like Edward G. Robinson had experience. There were teachers of speech in this period, but they did not teach exactly what is now taught as "Standard"--which is actually closer to a British accent than to, say, a Midwestern accent (which itself has changed significantly over the course of the century). In any case, this is my opinion after some investigations of the history of acting teaching in New York, of speech textbooks from the '20's forward, and various other sources. A really thorough discussion of the topic is difficult, if only because of the impressionistic nature of the perception of accents. Certainly an expert in intonation patterns would have something to say after doing some work on recordings, but otherwise I think such a discussion is hobbled by lack of precision. Cordially, Edward R. O'Neill, UCLA PS The rise of the Method and the Actor's Studio after the second World War has something to do with the decline of earlier stage speech patterns, as technical vocal training was often in practice less important for Brando, Dean, Monroe, etc. ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]