Word: lisp
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...movie about Churchill, even a standard patch-up of newsreel clips and familiar speeches, could fail to be moving and dramatic, for he was one of the few consciously theatrical performers in the history of democratic government. His grave and measured voice, somehow made even more sonorous by his lisp, and his majestic, defiant prose gave each of his countrymen a sense of historic purpose and helped keep alive a reassuring belief in the possibility of individual heroism throughout the mass slaughter of World War II. To see a film clip of, say, Neville Chamberlain...
...likable Tennessee politician, who became a state circuit judge at 32, served 24 years in Congress and was elected Senator in 1930. Frail but craggy in appearance, he struck people as the solidest of citizens. He looked dignified, even saintlike. He spoke with gravity and with a slight, endearing lisp. When he helped put Roosevelt over at the 1932 Democratic Convention, he was practically assured appointment as Secretary of State. He brought to the job a conviction that all the world's ills could be cured by lowering tariffs and living up to the principles of international...
...Talk to Me, Baby ("Tell me lies, lies, lies"), Robert Emmett Dolan's score is rather do-re-mealy for Johnny Mercer's lyrics, which are at their cleverest in Bon Vivant, delivered by Lahr impersonating a British peer with mauve tweeds and a stiff upper lisp. In fact, without Bert Lahr's vintage hokum, Foxy would be earthbound, not mirthbound...
...ensues, in which she barters for his body and he gambles to save her soul. On the surface, Milk Train is Flora's story and incontestably Hermione Baddeley's vehicle. She can put the chill of mortality into a sibilant whisper, all vanity into a grandiose Churchillian lisp, all lechery into a creamy smirk. As she coughs, groans and rages about the stage, she is larger than death...
Then came her first success with The Children's Hour. During the rehearsals for that play, Miss Hellman made a diary entry which remains a summation of the theater for her: "Lisp, lisp, lisp, and Thomas Wolfe." She explained that "lisp" refers to a character whose manner of speech she refused to change despite continued harrying from her director and others. Thomas Wolfe represents the endless complaints she heard from Aline Bernstein, her set designer and Wolfe's mistress...