Thufferin' Thukatash! Sorry, couldn't resist. I've heard he had one but never really noticed it in his films from the 40's. Is it just me or is it much more pronounced in this flick?
"That's what a gym teacher once told me."
It is, probably due to Bogart's cancer which was already eating his esophagus. He probably had more than just a sore throat during filming.
shareAs early as 1954, at least, Bogie sometimes had to do multiple takes of his scenes due to a persistent and increasingly frequent cough, a sign of his incipient esophogal cancer. His lisp may have sounded worse because he might have had an inordinate amount of saliva or sputum in his mouth due to his coughing.
shareI see. It may also be with all the coughing and whathaveyou he wasn't as focused on controlling the lisp.
Yeah, cause I had seen all his big movies; Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, etc. Then I had heard on TCM that he had a lisp and was like "Wha?". But seeing this flick it was quite noticable and really a bit distracting.
"That's what a gym teacher once told me."
He's supposed to haver gotten the lisp from a World War I injury, when a piece of shrapnel struck him on his mouth, resulting in nerve damage and paralysis to his lip that caused him to lisp slightly. But whatever the cause, you're right, it did get worse near the end, I think as a side effect of his coughing (and of course the stuff that came up with the cough). I don't know that he ever had to "control" his lisp before this period, or could have if he'd wanted to. Anyway, it wasn't too noticeable before the early-mid 50s. Not a pleasant subject, really.
shareThe truth is, there may have been a war injury, but Bogart was in a serious car accident in 1953, which knocked out several of his teeth. The accident is really what caused this, so it wasn't noticeable until afterwards. Loved this movie, BTW, and sad that it was his last. But what a way to end a distinguished career.
I'd heard about his having an accident but never knew any details. You're probably right that this is what caused the lisp to become really noticeable. You can certainly hear it more clearly in his post-'53 films such as Sabrina and The Caine Mutiny.
This is a good if depressing movie, but Bogie is one of those actors about whom I occasionally wonder what films he might have made had he lived, in his case into the 1960s or even a bit later. Sometimes some performers seem to depart at the right time for the kind of films they're known for, for the era best suited to their personality. Of course, had they lived, we would have looked at their careers a bit differently. Still, in Bogart's case, he passed while still on top, which is not a bad time to go.
A lisp is where one pronounces "s" as "th".
In my opinion, Bogie didn't do that.
He pronounced "s" as something close to "sh". And only occasionally.
It should be against the law to use "LOL" unless you really did LOL!
A lisp is where one pronounces "s" as "th".
Maybe in a dictionary definition you're right, but my guess is that if you ask 100 people what a lisp is, 95+ would tell you saying "th" instead of "s". Look at the OP.
It should be against the law to use "LOL" unless you really did LOL!
Many people believe that spiders are insects, but it's still incorrect.
The word "lisp" is used in many languages that don't know the "th" sound. The origin of the English word is the Old German word "lispen", which is onomatopoetic. While the Old German language included the sonorous version of the "th" sound, as in "that", it did not have the non-sonorous version, as in "theft". Modern German knows neither, but they know the word "Lispeln". Germans with a sigmatic lisp usually say either "sh" or "f", the latter being more common among children.
You may cross-examine.