Gypsy

Is this for real? If not, it's the worst bit of acting she's ever done

Chevyman

Isnt that a Pathe interview?

"Don't interrupt Pike or you'll be sent home!"

cully

I'm not sure what point you're making, Gypsy. She's not acting, she's just giving a family interview at her home to MacDonald Hobley, a well known radio personality of the time. If her voice sounds affected that's because the English upper middle classes sounded like that in 1956.

Mr Sloane

I'm sorry but I'm with Gypsy. Phyllis came from a very humble London background and while I would n't expect her to sound like Eliza Doolittle that was a little too affected.

Gypsy

The point I'm making is that she is not speaking spontaneously as interviewees usually do. She's acting. And it's not well done. I have no issues with her voice or class, that's part of Phyllis Calvert. But it looks like something done by Victoria Wood.

cully

I wasn't aware that her background was "very humble" although now that I investigate her in the www she doesn't seem as though she was especially grand either. I suspect the interview she gave simply reflects the persona that she inherited following her training at her dance school and in rep over many years. But I reiterate again the way we spoke all those years ago would come as a surprise to those of us who were around at the time if they were played back to us now even without the Rank Studio training the actors had.

Brief Encounter

Phyllis always sounded extremely posh. That clip is almost like a parody...

Gypsy

I agree. And again, my point was not that she had a posh voice. It was that she seemed to be acting in this interview and not very well.

stuart.scot

I wonder if Rosamund John would have made in the modern climate. She really did speak with a posh, rather grand accent. Having said that she was IMHO still a wonderful actress, so hopefully she would have made it anyway

Gypsy

Course she would, the lovely girl. Even the Queen has moderated her cut glass accent, so Ros would find it a cinch.

CaptainWaggett

She grew up in Tottenham and her father was a clerk. I doubt if her original accent was quite as posh as her Way to the Stars one.

Flossie 1

If I might join in on this discussion, I think women of that era were much more feminine than they are today. I loved films from that time when dresses were long and flowing and all women wore hats. All right they spoke with a plum in their mouth much of the time but it was better than the language that young women turn out today.

Joenoir

Call me old-fashioned, but I agree with you, Flossie. As for the Calvert interview I think that's the way they were conducted in the 1950s, there is one where Joan Crawford is interviewed by Peter Haigh that makes Phyllis and Mac appear cutting edge by comparison!

penfold

But she was of the generation that would have had to learn RP to succeed in life - and I don't mean just on stage or film. If you were a young woman with an 'Unrefined' accent, you would not get very far in the main employment opportunities for an intelligent woman of that class - customer service jobs, secretarial work and so on....hence the boom in elocution lessons between the wars. Which is why my mother, born and brought up in a two-up, two down in Basingstoke in the thirties, but with enough ambition and intelligence to be a Medical Secretaryall her life, speaks like Hyacinth Bucket....in fact it's probably why Hyacinth Bucket, alone of her family, does. It's not snobbery, it was as necessary as lice removal.
But it does make it doubly funny when she, under duress, comes out with a good Victorian Hampshire expletive as learnt from my Grandfather.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

CaptainWaggett

That I understand, but it was suggested that her natural accent was Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter. I'm sure it was something she had to learn (elocution lessons were very popular among the upwardly mobile) - and in fact she's not even that posh in most of her films though I don't know what she sounded like in interviews. She was a good trade unionist and old style Labour Party campaigner so she may not have put much value in that sort of thing once she had a choice in the matter.

To get back to Phyllis Calvert - Robert Donat was desperate to have Rosamund John in The Young Mr Pitt (something not unconnected with them being an item at the time) but the Gainsborough insisted on Phyllis. It was a thankless part though.