Pert Kelton was an American actress yet Mrs. Paroo was played (and I assume written) as an Irish woman. Did Pert Kelton ever speak about how she decided on the particular accent? I am just finding out about the geographic variation in Irish accents.
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Ms. Kelton was a veteran performer, beginning in vaudeville, so one assumes she'd played a variety of ethnic characters before TMM. She was also the original "Alice" opposite Jackie Gleason's Ralph in the earliest "Honeymooners" sketches (done as part of Gleason's variety program, not as a separate sitcom, ala the "classic 39.") Her accent in those shows is pure, old-time Brooklynese. And she was much thinner.
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
It was pure vaudeville "Officer O'Hara"-style Irish. Really bad and inaccurate, but considered humorous in those days. Actually since the movie was made in the early 1960s, those were the dying days of goofy ethnic humor- but in 1912 when the movie is set was mainstream in entertainment.
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