J. Edgar Hoover did not have a low-to-middle-class New York City accent

Although Sheldon Leonard is now mostly remembered as a television producer, I get the impression that he was a fairly able actor, as evidenced by his long list of acting credits. I was recently impressed by his arrestingly naturalistic performance in the small role of Phil Church in Another Thin Man (1939).

I'm sorry to say, though, that his performance as J. Edgar Hoover in The Brink's Job struck a false note, at least insofar as Hoover's accent and what it indicates about Hoover's origins is concerned. Someone not knowing anything about Hoover's life could easily come away from this film with the impression that he arose from a low- or middle-class upbringing in the New York City area, a sort of upbringing that in reality would probably have given rise to a significantly different personality from the one he actually had.

In fact, Hoover was born and grew up in Washington, D.C., the child of parents of mostly Germanic ethnicity but with an African-American admixture on his father's side that the family was of course not eager to advertise. While I don't know the detailed history of Hoover's speech patterns--I don't know whether anyone does--in listening to recordings of his voice I get an impression that perhaps he originally had a Southern accent, but later partially suppressed it and covered it over with an adopted upper-crust East Coast accent (a type of accent that barely exists anymore, the kind that Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt had). Or perhaps his sort-of-Southern-sort-of-upper-crust-East-Coast accent was not his personal invention, but an accent that many people from the Washington, D.C. area with high social aspirations shared, whether that accent was natural, artificial, or a combination of both.

Regrettably, Sheldon Leonard didn't even try to imitate Hoover's speech, but just used his own low-to-middle-class New York City accent for the part, a most unfortunate acting choice (or acting negligence). (By contrast, Leonardo DiCaprio did try to imitate it in the 2011 film J. Edgar, though the result was a ludicrous failure.)