"Stage English" in Irene Worth obituary

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:44 AM -0500 3/13/02, AAllan at AOL.COM wrote:
>Steve Kl. wrote -
>
><< Someone at the recent ADS meeting (or was it 2 ago?) did a paper
>comparing the r-fulness and r-lessness of actresses over the past several
>decades... I don't know if she spoke of "stage English" per se, but it's
>that kind of thing. >>
>
>It was Nancy Elliott. Her research hasn't yet been published (I think), but
>you can find an article about it at
>
>http://home.bluemarble.net/~langmin/rless.htm
>
That's great.

I just wanted to note about Irene (pronounced, as the Times
transcribes it in their obit yesterday, "eye-REENY") Worth that her
training must have been superb.  I saw her live twice, once in
Chekhov and once Euripides, and I assumed she was British (maybe in
part from her name as well as her sound and bearing).  In fact she
was born Harriet Abrams in Lincoln, Nebraska, a very
non-trans-Atlantic location, and learned her stage English in
Hollywood (where she moved when young) from Elsie Fogerty, who (to
quote the Times obit)

'taught her to speak "stage English," as if to-the-manner -- and
manor -- born. She was soon acting on the London stage in "The Play's
the Thing" by Ferenc Molnar and then acted so frequently with the Old
Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company (and later the National
Theater) that theatergoers assumed she was English rather than
American.'

I'm glad it wasn't just me who was fooled.  (Note also the Times's
solution to the manner/manor dilemma.)

larry