Characters in ANTR

[Jim Kalafus]

>worst American accent by a British actor, but Michael Caine in Hurry Sundown must be a contender.

You've SEEN that! 1938's most hard hitting film, unfortunately shot and released circa 1967. Caine's accent was bad, but fit the film. Who could forget the richly symbolic sequence in which Jane Fonda plays his saxophone in a manner so...symbolic... that all it lacks to complete the director's vision is flashing red letters reading "Symbolism! Symbolism!" and a flashing pointer aimed at the sax. Bad enough that Jane Fonda is given an "Ol' Black Mammy" in a 1967 film, but worse that she kills her by provoking a heart attack.

Worst JUXTAPOSED accents? Well....remember back in the cold war 1970s when an attempt at "thaw" was made, and Maeterlinck's The Bluebird (which had failed for Shirley Temple- her first ever bomb)was filmed using A List American stars in the the Soviet Union with a Soviet film crew? MAJOR stench emanated forth, with Liz Taylor (in 4 parts!) Ava Gardner, James Coco, Jane Fonda, Elliot Gould and MANY others in what is generally agreed to be the worst children's film ever....

....the Russian Peasant Children who set forth to find The Bluebird of Happiness (after grandfather-Will Geer-sings a pert song about how boring it is to be dead)are played by Patsy Kensit and Todd Lookinland, brother of Mike "Bobby Brady" Lookinland. One Russian peasant child has very precise,clipped, English diction, while the other has a nascent "Like, Oh my GAWD!" 1980s Californian inflection. The script, of course, makes no effort to explain these polar opposite accents, or why they have manifested themselves in Russian Peasant Children. Oh, and the Bluebird has been hiding in their back yard all along. I've now ruined the ending.

Gone with the Wind a potpourri of fair to bad accents. Olivia deHavilland comes closer to what cultured Southerners from Georgia and the Carolinas sound like~ without really putting on an accent at all, and Alicia Rhett-India Wilkes- still alive- truly WAS upper class coastal Southern, and so with her the accent is the real deal. Listen to her. Listen to Miss Leigh. Mr. Howard's accent was a bit of a stretch.

Oh...WAIT! Who could forget Al "No Gesture Too Hammy" Pacino speaking with a Scottsman's burr in Revolution? That's okay, because Nastassia Kinski played the rebel daughter of upper class New York Tories in the same film. Does THAT count?

 

[John Lynott]

...not Titanic-related but in the same spirit...nominations in the cod Oirish accent category would include Julia Roberts as Kitty Kiernan in Michael Collins and Ward Bond as Father Lornegan in The Quiet Man!

 

[Bob Godfrey]

Roberts and Bond are contenders sure enough, but can they beat the entire cast of Finian's Rainbow?

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

Thinking, for a change, in terms of good actors producing appropriate accents I thought that the patrician accents adopted by Connie Nielson and Joaquin Pheonix in Gladiator were so convincing that they both must have been British actors! Similarly, Madeleine Stowe’s British accent was so good in Last of the Mohicans that I thought she had been brought up in England rather than the USA (although it was a little odd that the father was a Scotsman, whereas his two daughters were apparently English).

Reverting to strictly Titanic accents, I believe that Bernard Hill was just about right as Captain Smith in Cameron’s Titanic, and although Kenneth More, in A Night to Remember, played second officer Lightoller as a typical “officer type”, it is noticeable that in one scene he addresses Mrs Lightoller in an assumed North-of-England accent, as though he was consciously recalling his Lancashire childhood as a sort of private joke. The Northern Irish accent adopted by Helen Mirren as stewardess Mary Sloan in SOS Titanic was also quite effective — but then British actors can usually manage Irish accents (must be something inherited as a result of the Irish diaspora).

 

[Inger Sheil]

quote:

Julia Roberts as Kitty Kiernan in Michael Collins

Oh oh oh...too painful for words! Mind you, I never really understood what the Big Fellow saw in Kitty anyway - I assume she must have had something - and had it in spades - for both Collins and Boland to be so drawn to her, but somehow it just eludes me. Particularly when he had contact in the course of his work with some truly remarkable, intelligent, courageous and physically beautiful women. Neil Jordan, in his shooting diary, mentioned knowing it was time to wrap after a particular hard day's work when Roberts' accent started to slip. I wondered how he could tell.

quote:

Also, about Lowe, I don't like how he wasn't present much in ANTR. They didn't even show him coming back to rescue survivors. I thought that was a crucial aspect of that night, although that may be my own biased thinking, having seen Cameron's Titanic. However, I still have my issues with the Lowe in that movie as well. The actor didn't really look like Lowe. He was too baby-faced. Other than the aspect of looking like the real Lowe, I thought he did a great job.

Oh yes! Lowe's brief depiction in ANTR is one of the best to date. Informing those in his flotilla that his boat is returning to pick up survivors and he will be transferring some of his passengers into the other boats, a voice protests that they're already full up. Lowe snaps "Rubbish! You've room for about twenty more. Now hold your tongue and do as you're told." The real Lowe might have been a bit rougher in both tone and words, but it does somewhat capture the moment.

Lowe aged quite well, and retained a rather round, youthful face for much of his 20s - some of the photos from c. 1907 - 1910 show him as having what you might call a 'baby face', although it was looking leaner in some photos around the time of the disaster. Rene Harris described him on the morning of April 15 as looking like a college boy out on a lark.​

 

[John Lynott]

Mind you, I never really understood what the Big Fellow saw in Kitty anyway -

Maybe the hotel and the shops the family owned in Granard in Co Longford, Inger?

Returning to Titanic and ANTR and accents good, bad and indifferent, I am always intrigued by the lady who runs across the Third Class well deck after she and her fellow passengers have made it 'up top'. She is carrying a bed roll or something. An eastern European passenger sees the lifeboats disappear into the darkness and exclaims in heavily-accented but perfect English: "All the boats have gone!" She replies in cut-glass tones: "There are only four. There must be more." Not saying that English third class passengers would not have perfect diction, but I reckon they didn't sound like Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter or In Which We Sink...er Serve! More indicative of voice training that British actors underwent before the advent of kitchen sink dramas and the British new wave of films in the 60s.
And I have mentioned in an earlier post many moons ago that I was slightly peeved by Cameron's 1997 portayal of British deckhands voicewise as something akin to football hooligans or extras from Snatch, Lock Stock and other 'mockney' garbage. Most of the deck crew did not come from Romford or Dagenham!

 

[Bob Godfrey]

"There are only four. There must be more." She was a poet. And she didn't know it.

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

John Lynott was “slightly peeved by Cameron's 1997 portrayal of British deckhands voice wise as something akin to football hooligans or extras from Snatch, Lock Stock and other 'mockney' garbage”. But of course they did, because the Cameron film needed some bad guys in the form of incompetent, tea-sipping officer types and “white trash” deckhands.

For reasons of political correctness these could only have been white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, because WASPS are now Hollywood’s stock-villains. Imagine the furore there would be if Black, Jewish or Catholic characters were portrayed in a less-than-perfect light. The Catholic Irish, in particular, are all rosy-faced, smiling salt-of-the-earth types — saints really. Or possibly victims, imprisoned below decks and callously shot by WASP officers as depicted in Cameron’s Titanic. Compare this with A Night to Remember, a British film made in the aftermath of World War II in which (again by convention) all classes and creeds are treated equally — indeed, it could be argued that the third class Irish passengers in ANTR are meant to represent “everyman”, with whom we can all identify.

As a matter of interest, and on a slightly different subject, has anyone yet pointed out that one of the Irish travellers in A Night to Remember was played by Milo O’Shea, who later played Duran Duran in Barbarella?

 

[John Lynott]

Let's not be too hard on Hollywood Stanley, it has produced wondrous stuff and I don't want this debate to go down a US film bad, British film good ping-pong match. What annoys me is that Cameron trumpeted up how accurate his film would be, down to the White Star luggage labels and the tea cups in Second Class. But he skimped on the accuracy levels of the crew. His Lightoller is vocally miscast, you must have heard the original Lights on CD from a BBC recording in the 1930s, a mixture of West Lancs/West Country.
Kenneth More's Lights is no more accurate voice-wise but that was 1950s British films for you - juzt look at the 'comic' portayal of the lost third class passengers prior to the ship hitting the iceberg. Like something out of a Robb Wilton film...It were the day war broke out!
PS: Where can you see Milo in ANTR?

 

[Bob Godfrey]

Can't say I've noticed Milo O'Shea in ANTR, but I'm more familiar with him in his later years so I'd find it hard to spot him as a young man. Which scene(s) does he appear in, Stanley?

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

John,
I have never regarded any discussion concerning Cameron’s Titanic versus A Night to Remember as in any war a USA versus UK contest. For one thing, both films had international casts, while Pinewood Studios and the Rank Organisation were run by Earl St. John (1892-1968), an American film producer who, in his role as Executive Producer, was in overall charge of the entire operation. Also, A Night to Remember was of course based on Walter Lord’s book of the same name, and so there was a significant American input into ANTR. Having said that, the latter film was an archetypal British film, whereas Cameron’s Titanic seems to me to be the epitome of everything that is annoying about modern Hollywood.

Bob,
I may well be wrong here, but I have always assumed that one of the Irish passengers in A Night to Remember was played by Milo O’Shea. If it was NOT Milo O’Shea in certainly looked very much like him. The Irish party appear throughout the film, and the character in question is in several scenes (he is the one with the huge, bushy black eyebrows).

 

[Bob Godfrey]

As far as I can see there are only three men in the main Irish group, two young and one middle-aged, and none of those was Milo O'Shea. Are you perhaps thinking of Joseph Tomelty, who played ship's surgeon Dr O'Laughlin? Tomelty looked a lot like the middle-aged Milo (who was a young man at the time ANTR was made).

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

Hello Bob. No, I am not thinking of the doctor, who I think was played by Frances Tomelty’s father Joseph. The character with the big eyebrows is one of the Irish group who we first see leaving their supposed village (which looks suspiciously like Denham). I think he is in the boat deck scene as well. I will have to look very closely next time A Night to Remember appears on television. I have checked some cinema web sites, but there appear to have been quite a number of bit-part players in ANTR and these are not listed separately.

 

[Bob Godfrey]

Too many scenes to check them all, Stanley, but I had another look at the first one in the village. Most of the people in that scene are there to see off the five who actually leave for Queenstown on a cart. These are the Farrell family (middle-aged couple plus daughter) and the two young men, Murphy (dark) and Gallagher (fair). Milo isn't any of those. I can't see his eyebrows among the bystanders either, and they'd be hard to miss!