Here's the answer: Brian Keith was an American, as were both his parents. None of his family on either side knew Russian, or had any connection to Russia or Russians, so it is safe to presume that he could not have been a fluent Russian speaker.
The sentence in IMDb’s Trivia section that said that Brian Keith could speak fluent Russian in real life has now been corrected.
Brian Keith faking it as ‘Meteor’ Russian
- Daily News, Kentucky, November 13, 1979 – Copley News Service
HOLLYWOOD – Even though Brian Keith really doesn’t speak Russian, you’d never guess it when you hear him rattling away in “Meteor”.
“Unless you’re Russian,” Natalie Wood points out.
Keith’s role in the big AIP movie about impending collision between a five-mile-wide meteor and Earth is that of a Russian scientist who speaks only Russian throughout the film, and, considering the circumstances, he does it admirably.
But Natalie, who’s of Russian extraction and learned Russian when she was learning English, does it better, and, from her expertise, noted flaws in Keith’s pronunciation.
“He was wonderful,” says Natalie, one of Keith’s co-stars in the picture, “but he spoke with an American accent. However, only a Russian would notice that.”
That Keith could deliver his lines in any kind of Russian, American-accented or otherwise, was amazing, because he doesn’t know the language and had to learn his role phonetically.
Nevertheless, he not only managed to say what had to be said, but did it with appealing warmth and humor.
His performance is particularly remarkable since he was a latecomer to the cast, called in when Donald Pleasance, who’d been set, was trapped in another production which ran longer than scheduled.
“We got lucky with Brian,” says satisfied Samuel Arkoff, AIP president. “”His innuendos were wonderful.”
Having accepted the role, Keith was turned over to a Russian teacher who polished his pronunciation.
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PaladinNJ (20310)
4 years ago
I don't know what source the person who wrote this article used but Brian Keith was fluent in Russian. I read that he learned it in the Army. He used it in the movies Meteor and World War III. When filming The Russians are Coming, he and Alan Arkin would talk during breaks in Russian.
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