My wife and I are having trouble placing Capt. Morton's accent. What sort of
accent did he have? It sounded like the accent that I could imagine somebody
affecting who wanted to sound sophisticated, but that wouldn't make any sense
for Capt. Morton, because those are exactly the people he hated.
I'm no expert, but it comes across to me as a U.S. northeastern accent, around New York City, or maybe Boston. Considering that Cagney grew up with the Irish immigrants in Yorkville in Manhattan, I'd say Cagney used his own accent.
Northeast accent? I grew up in NYC, lived outside Philadelphia, went to college in NH, and spent time in every locale between them. Trust me: There is no 'Northeast Accent." Within the NY Metro vicinity, each NYC Borough has a slightly different sound as does Long Island, Westchester/Putnam, and North Jersey. South Philly is different from Germantown and South Jersey different from the north. Certain sections of Fairfield County, CT have a neutral accent (the rich parts) while everywhere else the accent is akin to Westchester/Putnam. In eastern and Northern the blends into the Mass accent. There must be a half dozen accents in the Boston area. NH and Maine are different from Mass and each other. Vermont is sort of a blend between NH and up state NY (north of the NT metro area). Cagney was born in NYC but he didn't have a quintessential NYC accent. I always though his accent was more like Boston with many NYC city mannerisms. Interest to be sure.
By the way, Cagney died in Stanfordville NY. This is interesting because Stanfordville is a very small town in an out of the way corner of Dutchess County NY. Perhaps the main notoriety of Stanfordville is the presence of Roseland Guest Ranch. I worked at Roseland summers 1968 and 1969 and wonder how Cagney wound up there since the place didn't even have a town center to speak of. But then Claude Raines lived out his life in Center Sandwich, NH. I went to college in the adjacent township and moved to Center Harbor the September after Raines passed away. He and his wife are buried in a quiet, out of the way corner of the Center Sandwich town cemetery: The graves are marked by two black granite tombstone. Raines discovered Sandwich when he did summer stock in Center Harbor before WWII. I have no idea how Cagney found Stanfordville. Perhaps he knew the owner of Roseland, who was the NYC Director of CARE.
Anyway, accents in the Northeastern US are extremely variable and quite dissimilar.
I'm both an actor and film/TV historian and I say it was, plain and simple, Cagney doing Cagney!
shareYes it was. It sounded like James Cagney's voice and that he changed the words in the script by saying "ya see?" all the time he paused while searching for his lines. I was waiting for him to say "You dirty rat..." He sounded like a gangster in it.
shareIn all of his movies, Cagney never said "you dirty rat", exactly. See http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000010/bio and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi!.
In Taxi!, it goes:
Matt Nolan: "Come out and take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!"share
Irish tough guy accent,you dirty rat!
Its that man again!!
Throughout the movie, Morton displays the resentment of a street thug for 'college boys'. He probably resented guys like Roberts for having the opportunities he never had. That was probably a type Cagney knew well, though it was not the sort of man Cagney was in real life.
Soy 'un hijo de la playa'
I agree with the posters who feel this was the "standard" James Cagney accent. It seems that he never tried to alter what appears to be his naturally acquired accent regardless of the character he was portraying.
There is a touch of the Irish brogue and I surmise the accent was characteristic of many people of Irish descent who grew up on the East side of New York City in the early 1900s.
Definitely the James Cagney accent, the same one he used in every film which makes me wonder if he just played the same character over and over again. . . .
shareCagney used his own Irish-American accent, as he was born in New York City on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His tough guy image on screen was probably influenced by his upbringing. Anything less, wouldn't be Cagney.
"I'm using my own accent, see. If you don't like it, well that's too bad..."
(not an actual Cagney quote, but what he might have said)
He had a Jimmy Cagney accent
share