Featuring:
The Hollywood movie: America’s big cultural gift to the world, along with jazz, rock ’n’ roll, and blue jeans. But from the beginning, even as Hollywood was becoming Hollywood, American film had a strong British accent. One of our first stars, and still among our most iconic, was Charlie Chaplin, the product of a Dickensian London childhood. Perhaps it helped that his movies were silent? Then again, the advent of talkies made no difference. Gone with the Wind, as American a novel as there is, for better or worse, was brought to the screen with three of its four principal stars—Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, and Leslie Howard—holding British passports.
As Paul Revere warned, they just keep coming, fearless in taking on even the most sacred of American roles.…
