FIGHTING ACCENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 816, 9 November 1929, Page 27

FIGHTING ACCENT

Dorothy Gish’s Long Struggle SUCCESS IN LONDON One of the latest contributions to the talkie voice discussion comes from Dorothy Gish, the more lively of the Gish sisters, who announces in large letters in the “Evening Standard” that she has fought her American accent for five years.

Dorothy Gish has lately been appearing in London at the Arts Theatre in “Young Love,” and after the first night her acting was very much praised by the critics. So much enthusiasm, indeed, was shown, that her voice was described as one of ♦ "ho mnst beautiful

the most beautuui , _ , in the world. So, naturally, she nad to write about it, with the following result, -which appeared in the “Evening Standard”: Her Ideal Voice “My voice? Well, your English critics have said some very kind things about it —much kinder things that I thought they would! For I imagined they would think it was just terrible, because of my American accent. Though I have a high ideal for my voice; very high—oh! it’s way up “When I was a child of 12 I heard Forbes-Robertson in Shaw’s ‘Caesar and Cleopatra.’ I thought he spoke the loveliest, purest English I’d ever heard . . . and his voice has been the model, and the ideal, for my voice ever since. Imagine what a great actor he must be to have made an impression tike that on a child of 12! He had no trace of any sort of accent. His voice was absolutely pure. “My stage voice, today, is different from my ordinary voice. I’ve worked for five years to conquer my American accent, going over words one by one, and practising them, and trying to get a'perfectly pure tone. Perhaps the accent comes back a little when I am playing a very moving part. I haven't conquered that yet. “But I believe that an actress can do anything with her voice if she Is not handicapped by an accent. She can piay foreign character parts, or stick to straight work, and her voice willing instrument.”