Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the film with it's great cast and its living-legend star Hayley Mills but the girls dialog at the camp was a little odd to me. Sure, these are upscale kids, but 14 year-old kids don't talk like they did in the movie. They didn't then and they don't do now. Maybe British kids talked like that, I don't know. I just shook my head at some of the dialog and played along with the movie's gag and enjoyed myself.
shareI just wonder why each of them has a British accent, when their parents don't, and they were raised in the U.S.
shareThe girls didn't have a British, nor an American accent. Hayley Mills was using the Mid-Atlantic English accent, or better known as the 'old movie star accent'. A lot of actors between the 1930's-1960's were trained in theatre or by their coaches to use this accent because it was pleasant to listen to and it made thir dialogue easier to understand with the primitive sound quality.
The accent was a mix of American and English which is why Americans today watch older movies and think that all of the actors have an English accent. The accent also became a sign of aristocracy since all of the actors were using it, it caught on to the politicians, wealthy people and business owners and it became a celebrity thing.
That explains why Hayley Mills had it since her father was an actor and her mom, being a playwright, was in the movie business as well. I think her dialect stands out more in the movie and is confusing, because this was made in the 60's and by then the accent was starting to disappear, so most of the other actors are just using their regular American accents.
Thank you for the informative post!
shareYes, the dialog is pretty stilted. As a shot at an explanation: in those days, movies that were made for kids didn't necessarily try to replicate reality - or at least not only to replicate reality - but to set a good example.
As for accents, that was bizarre. Maybe if the Boston one talked with the accent and the California one didn't it would've helped draw a distinction between them and been good for a joke or two ... even if it wouldn't have been all that realistic. But the California kid talking with that accent was just weird.
Sorry to deflate your lecture, but Mills was British, and in "The Parent Trap" she spoke with her natural British accent, which was different from the "Mid Atlantic" manner of speech affected by many American actors and actresses in the 1930s. As far as her characters' backgrounds were concerned, only one was raised on the east coast in an artistic family. The other grew up in Brian Keith's character's house in California. Yet they both sounded the same. British.
shareUm ... duh.
Sorry to deflate your brilliant post, but the characters were American.
No need to be sorry, you have not deflated my brilliant post.
Yes, the characters were American, which is what I carefully explained, but your reading comprehension was not good enough to understand. It was the actress who was British, and spoke in her native accent, not a "Mid Atlantic" accent.
They did both sound the same, regardless, that's still an accent Hayley uses when she performs. Like I said, it sounds similar to an English accent because it is a mix of English and American dialect.
By the way you used the term 'British accent' but that's an broad assumption that Americans make. There is no distinct British accent. Her accent is referred to as an English accent because Britain is made up of England, Scotland and Wales. So, if Hayley doesn't sound Scotish then you'd say she has an English accent. British is too broad, it doesn't give a definitive meaning to which accent it actually is.
Anyway, if you watch interviews that Hayley Mills has given she has a much sharper and more intense English accent than how she sounds in her movies, comparably.
All British accents are not English accents, but English accents are British accents. Mills's accent is English, therefore it is British.
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