Does anybody but me agree that Olivia de Haviland's accent was strange and hard to decipher what she was trying to say at times.
Her accent sort of sounded a bit Irish at times, but then it went off in a different direction.
Not having really seen other movies she has made, maybe this is her norm.
She and her sister and brother-in-law all live together before she marries Mitchum. They are all Swedish. Harry Morgan plays the brother-in-law and his Swedish accent is most amusing!
shareThanks for the clarification. I thought Mrs. Olsen and Col. Potter were playing Olivia D's parents there for a while, very strange since they were all about the same age. Speaking of, it was a little hard to accept 38-year-old Mitchum as a med student and 39-year-old Olivia as his blushing bride. Okay drama overall.
shareYes, its pseudo-Swedish. I remember her saying at one point that they had lived in Minnesota.
shareI grew up in a town full of Swedish immigrants on the Mississippi. Yah, dey had dat same accent. I got right away that Bruni and Ole were her sister and brother in law. And believe it or not, people in their 30s do get married sometimes.
shareI think her accent is quite impressive, particularly for a British actress who had grown up in America. So her accent in movies usually had a tiny Britishness to it. The lady who played her sister coached her on the accent; she later was in the Mrs. Oleson coffee commercials in the 1970's. Both Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman felt Olivia did a good job on the Swedish accent, so that should be good enough for the rest of us! I think this is one of Olivia's best movies of the 1950s. She did not make that many by then and it is a real sign of how respected she was that she got top billing over both of her leading men, who were huge stars at the time. Also interesting is that she turned down the lead in The Farmer's Daughter, where Loretta Young also played a Swedish lady (and her accent was great too!). Also the year before this film, she turned down Human Desire, which starred her co-star Gloria Grahame in one of her usual (but not usual for Olivia) steamy femme fatale roles.
shareI believe Marlon Brando and Olivia were originally offered the leads in HUMAN DESIRE but both had other plans. Olivia did NOT AS A STRANGER instead.
shareI thought her accent was pretty good. I just didn't care for the blonde hair, but she was still beautiful. I guess it was humanly impossible to make that woman ugly.
shareI totally agree with you on the accent - in the beginning of the movie it sounded more like she had a slight Irish brogue, then it evolved into more of a Swedish-sounding accent later in the film. I just watched the movie this morning and then checked this board to see if anyone else noticed that too! :)
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