Free Post: Old-Fashioned Voices, Part Two

In my previous post, I talked about the different kinds of old fashioned voices. Now I'm going to try to figure out when those kinds of voices died out.

I used clips from the movies 'Casablanca' and 'The Lady Eve' as examples of old-fashioned voices. Both of these movies were made in the early 40's, a time when old-fashioned voices were still going strong. The government video with the voice of Edward R. Murrow was made in 1951-- but Murrow was older then, and is more famous for his radio broadcasts in the 40's. So we don't know if old-fashioned voices were still used among younger people in the 50's. However, I think it is safe to say that they were, because people were still using them well into the 60's, as can be seen from this clip of the 1964 black comedy film 'Dr. Strangelove':



The accents continued on even into the 70's, as shown by this movie trailer for the 1977 'Star Wars: A New Hope' :



But by the time the 'Star Wars' saga reached 'The Phantom Menace,' old-fashioned voices were almost gone:



When I watched this clip, I was expecting no traces of any old-time accents. But to my surprise, Chancellor Palpatine (played by Ian McDiarmid) has an old-fashioned voice. However, McDiarmid was born in 1944, when old-fashioned voices were the only way people spoke. He was 55 at the time the film was made, and was probably one of the last people to have that accent. Younger people at that time did not have the accent, as can be seen from the younger characters in the movie.

I want to find out when younger people lost the old-fashioned voices. 'Phantom Menace' was made in 1999, so somewhere between then and the 70's, old-fashioned voices all but died out.

'Back to the Future' was made in 1985, and it stars mostly younger actors. This clip shows that by that time, old-fashioned voices are gone. Neither character in this clip-- even Doc, who seems old enough to have an old-fashioned voice-- has an accent:



So now we know that sometime between 1977 and 1985, people stopped being born with old-fashioned voices.

The 1980 Oscar-winning movie 'Apocalypse Now' narrows down the time frame even further. In the famous 'I love the smell of napalm in the morning' scene, there are no old-fashioned voices present:



So at some undetermined point between 1977 and 1980, old-fashioned voices died out. I doubt that anyone speaks with that kind of accent today. Yes, the voices of the past lasted longer than the technology. We heard the accents long after black-and-white film was replaced with color and record machines with tape players and later with CDs. But like everything else from that time, the voices eventually faded away, along with the people.

Free Post: Old-Fashioned Voices Part One

I really love watching old black-and-white movies--like Casablanca, North by Northwest, and other WWII-era movies are my favorites, but I also enjoy Charlie Chaplain-type silent films. What I've noticed in the films that do have sound is that the all the actors and actresses have slight accents. They're not exactly British, but not modern American either-- more like a mix that is distinctly, for lack of a better word, old. I call them 'old-fashioned voices,' and I decided--since it's Spring Break and I have the time-- to try to figure out when they started and when they stopped.

First, here are samples of different accents that all fall under my category of old-fashioned voices:

This clip from the movie 'Casablanca' has several accents in it, but the only character with the accent I'm looking for is Rick-- the other characters are not American and therefore have a different, more foreign old-fashioned voice that I'm not focusing on. Just listen to Rick's voice to hear the 'Tough American' old-fashioned voice. Humphrey Bogart, the actor who plays Rick, is the perfect example of that kind of accent:



Another common accent is the one that most women spoke with. In this clip from the movie 'The Lady Eve,' Barbara Stanwyck, the actress who plays Jeanie, is another perfect example:



The other most-heard old-fashioned accent is the more official, radio-announcer type voice as can be heard here in the voice of Edward R. Murrow in a (rather inaccurate) government safety film on atomic attack:



Murrow's accent is very apparent, but very much absent in the voice of David Strathairn, who plays him in the recently made movie 'Good Night and Good Luck':



Old-fashioned voices are the kind of voices you hear coming from record machines and grainy black-and-white films. No one speaks like that anymore. They are one of the marks of the past, and they've been washed away along with the 'inferior technology' and 'ignorance' of those times. Yes, it is easy to laugh at the government's earnest black-and-white Atomic Safety video that tells you to close your blinds in case of nuclear attack. But those times-- at least for me-- also hold a romantic, sometimes even innocent, feeling that will probably never be captured again.