Arts & Entertainment
Screenwriter's stammer inspires
The King's Speech, with 12 nods
the most nominated film in this
year's Oscar race.
"I resolved that if I was going to stutter
in subtly urging his client to reveal painful
for
the rest of my life, people were going
childhood memories in order to exorcise
to
be
stuck listening to me. I had been
the cause of the impediment.
depressed,
but now I was angry — I decid-
The stakes are high as Britain is on the
n 1944, future screenwriter David
ed
I
deserved
to be heard. I learned some
cusp of war; Bertie's older brother, Edward
Seidler snooped through his father's
expletives,
and
I'd just leap around my
chest of drawers and discovered a hid- (Guy Pearce), has announced plans to
bedroom
like
Tom
Cruise in Risky Business,
abdicate the throne in order to marry an
den stash of Life magazine clippings.
shouting
the
F-word.
And when I did, I
American divorcee; and the future king will
"They were early pictures that had come
didn't
stutter
—
it
was
a huge relief:
be
required
to
deliver
crucial
wartime
broad-
out of the concentration camps': said Seidler,
Seidler
drew
upon
memories
of his own
casts — a prospect that terrifies Bertie.
whose British family had fled the Blitz in
speech
therapy
as
he
wrote
his
script
—
Seidler,
who
has
wanted
to
make
the
film
London for the United States. `And then my
including
his
own
"expletive"
cure
—
since
for
much
of
his
adult
life,
learned
that
he
father came into the room, ashen-faced, pro-
at the time he had little information about
shared more than a stutter with the king.
foundly upset, and told me never to look at
Logue's techniques. In one of the most
Both
came
from
families
where
emotional
those pictures again. Later, I learned that his
hilarious and poignant scenes in the film,
repression was required.
[own] parents had died in the camps"
the king learns to swear every time he
"Like
many
upper-middle-class
children
Seidler's relatives never spoke openly
stumbles on a word.
in
Britain
of
my
generation,
I
was
raised
by
about the tragedy; and the screenwriter
Seidler said
nannies': Seidler
of The King's Speech, nominated for 12
he
became a
First-time
Oscar
nominee
said.
One
of
his
Academy Awards including one for Best
writer
in part
David
Seidler
competes
in
Original Screenplay, says he developed what most beloved
because
in writ-
his
category
with
other
nannies disap-
may have been a response to this crippling
ing
he
could
Jewish
nominees
Mike
peared
on
the
silence: a severe stutter.
communicate
Leigh (Another Year), Lisa
eve of the Blitz;
But wartime-radio broadcasts by
fluently beyond
Cholodenko
and
Stuar
perhaps
she
England's King George VI — who himself
the spoken word.
(The
Kids
A
Blumberg
had
returned
struggled with a debilitating speech imped-
He has worked
and
Scott
All
Right)
to
her
family.
iment — gave Seidler hope.
in television and
Also
Fighter).
Silver
(The
"But
nobody
"Here was a stutterer who was a king and
wrote the film
nominated
is
Christopher
in
my
family
had to give radio speeches where everyone
Tucker: The Man
(Inception).
Nolan
explained
these
was listening to every syllable he uttered
and
His Dream
things
to
chil-
— and yet [he] did so with passion and
for
Francis
Ford
dren;
no
one
intensity," Seidler, now 73, recalled.
Coppola,
all
the
while
researching
his
King
prepared
me
for
the
loss."
"I personally knew what a strain that
George project as far back as the 1970s.
As German bombs began to fall on
could be, and in my mind he became a very
The problem was that Logue had been
London,
Seidler
and
his
family
boarded
an
brave man, indeed. It was pointed out to me
meticulously
discreet about his famous
ocean
liner
for
the
United
States
and
were
that here was a fellow stammerer and look
client,
keeping
his diaries and notes secret
shocked
mid-Atlantic
when
a
German
what he was able to achieve, so perhaps
because
Buckingham
Palace "didn't like to
submarine
sank
another
boat
in
their
there was a future for me
acknowledge
the
royal
stutterer," Seidler said.
convoy.
Seidler
began
having
recurring
Seidler's fascination with the king even-
One
break
came
in
the
early 1980s, when
nightmares
about
trying
to
escape
a
gas
tually led him to script The King's Speech,
he
was
able
to
locate
one
of
Logue's sons,
chamber,
which
continued
into
his
50s.
which chronicles how Prince Albert
who
had
kept
all
of
the
therapist's
notebooks
"I'm
pretty
sure
I
left
England
speaking
— the future George VI (Colin Firth)
and
offered
to
share
them
so
long
as
Bertie's
normally;'
he
said.
"But
I
arrived
in
America
— overcame his stutter with the help of
widow,
the
Queen
Mother,
agreed
to
the film.
as
a
stutterer."
an unorthodox speech therapist, Lionel
She
did
not
—
the
memories
were
too
By
the
time
Seidler
was
a
teenager,
he
Logue (Geoffrey Rush).
painful,
she
said
—
and
she
requested
that
was
well
aware
that
his
stammering
made
Logue, an unlicensed Australian com-
Seidler
wait
until
her
death
to
complete
others
uncomfortable
so
he
often
chose
moner, insists on calling his royal patient
the project. Seidler figured he wouldn't
by his nickname, "Bertie," while conducting to keep quiet. Numerous forms of speech
have long to delay because she was already
therapy
failed
him,
until,
at
16,
he
had
a
sessions in his shabby office, where the two
elderly, but it turned out he had to wait 28
breakthrough.
men are to be considered as equals, and
Naomi Pfefferman
Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.
I
Colin Firth (Oscar-nominated for best
actor in a leading role) as King George
VI and Geoffrey Rush (Oscar-nominated
for best actor in a supporting role) as
his speech therapist Lionel Logue
years as the Queen Mother famously lived
to be 101.
Several months after her death in 2002,
Seidler began working in earnest on the
project — first as a play and then as a
movie, rewriting drafts with the help of
director Tom Hooper (of HBO's Emmy-
winning John Adams miniseries).
The film spotlights the importance of
the king's speeches during the growing
Nazi menace, as well as how Adolf Hitler's
impassioned rants mobilized the German
masses. But the focus is on the relationship
between George VI and Logue, whose treat-
ment relies not only on speech exercises but
on the kind of "talking cure" that had been
newly popularized by Sigmund Freud.
While Logue never wrote about using a
psychoanalytic approach with his patients,
Seidler deduced that he must have done
so after reading about Logue's work with
shell-shocked World War I veterans in
Australia.
Ironically, it was Seidler's eccentric
uncle, also a stutterer, who confirmed this
fact for the screenwriter. The elderly uncle
allowed Seidler to use his country home to
write The King's Speech so he was familiar
with its characters.
"Just a few weeks before we were to
start filming, my uncle said, `The fellow in
your film — an Aussie, wasn't he? A man
named Logue, eh? I saw him for four years
because your grandfather wanted me to be
treated by the king's therapist."'
So, what, the incredulous screenwriter
asked, was the treatment like?
"The man was an Australian gangster,
absolutely a fraud," his uncle said. "All he
wanted to do was to talk about my child-
hood and my parents ... utter nonsense."
Seidler pointed out that his uncle no
longer stuttered.
"I grew out of it myself,' came his
uncle's dismissive reply. I I
The 83rd Annual Academy Awards
airs 8 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 27, on ABC.
February 24 2011
45