A review of “The King’s Speech” starring Colin Firth, from the perspective of a stutterer

Seeing the powerful film “The King’s Speech” Christmas weekend brought up a whole slew of emotions. You see, I am a stutterer, just like King George VI, but many people don’t know it as I do a pretty good job hiding it as an adult.

What struck me about the movie were three main things. First, Colin Firth’s performance was heartfelt and true – he showed a real sense of frustration in his character’s problem and a great sense of conflict about it as well. On the one hand, Bertie, as King George was called by his family, wants nothing more than to be able to speak fluently so that he could be able to speak in public as well as his father, the King, and his brother David, the Prince of Wales. On the other hand, if he did he would have to step up to responsibilities. He could no longer hide on the sidelines, allowing his speech impediment to hold him back. This was an extremely scary prospect – that he might actually be great and that he’d have no excuse. His speech therapist Mr. Lionel Logue hits on this last part as he works with him on numerous occasions and gets closer to his client’s deepest core feelings and fears, which nearly ends the relationship.

The second thing the film infers is that there was an early childhood trauma that might have caused the king’s stuttering. He was punished for doing something bad, so they switched him from being left handed to being right handed, which Logue says is a common early childhood predicator for stuttering. His nanny was cruel to him and often didn’t feed him. Studies have shown that there is normally no correlation between early stressors and whether or not someone grows out of a childhood stutter, or keeps it into adulthood. What is more of an indicator of stuttering is if someone else in one’s family stuttered.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080419063327rn_1/www.stutteringhelp.org/Default.aspx?tabid=17

The third thing of note about the film was its honesty about stuttering and its prognosis – the film thankfully dispels the idea that one can be cured. I spoke to someone at a party a week before I saw the film, and they mentioned the movie and how the King had been cured. I guess that’s what everyone wants to believe, especially in a movie – a happy ending. But the movie shows that the therapy doesn’t cure the stutter, it just makes it easier for Bertie to manage, especially when he becomes King after his brother’s abdication. Every time he had to make a speech going forward, for example the one on the eve of England’s entering WWII, he worked with his therapist to speak more fluently. It was extremely hard work, and will be work until the end of his life. The stutter is always with him, but he has learned how to manage it.

What a stutterer wants more than anything is to be fluent. I know that I often had the hope that if I wished hard enough, I might wake up one day and no longer stutter. But of course that is not the case. I have stuttered ever since I can remember, just like Bertie reveals in the movie. My parents audio taped me at age 4 reciting a poem I had written about a doll. I seemed excited and happy – no psychological trauma had occurred – but there I was on tape stammering the words of the peom I had happily created.

I think what has shaped my life and my fluency is feeling comfortable enough to not avoid speaking in public. For years, while I was in junior high and high school, I refused to answer the phone at home – my twin brother Scott would answer it, and then hand it to me. Once I was on the line, and knew who it was I was usually fairly fluent.

My senior year in high school I had to give a Chapel Talk to the entire school – all seniors had to give one. I sang a song instead (I got special permission because I stuttered). However, in class, both in high school and in college, I refused to sit and be quiet. I always raised my hand to participate and ask questions. I often made a point of sitting in the first few rows so I would be in the teacher’s view. I performed in plays and musicals in high school, and when I had a speaking role, for example in The King and I, I learned my lines so well that I did not stutter, and of course I never stuttered when I sang.

Just like Bertie, I was conflicted on how much I wanted to avoid speaking at any given time. I both wanted to be on the sidelines, but also in the spotlight. It’s been something I’ve been dealing with my entire life. What if I never had this stutter? Would I have achieved more? Would I have become a trial lawyer, a teacher, or a journalist? Or would things have enfolded in the very same way they did?

When I was in my 20s and living in Atlanta, I enrolled in Hollins’ College, which has a world renowned stuttering program. I took off three weeks from work, flew to West Virginia, and lived on campus to take intensive behavioral therapy for about 8 hours a day. It worked when I did it, but I did not find it natural – it was a totally different way of speaking and I didn’t find it easy to maintain years later. And, if the fear of speaking took over, it all fell by the wayside. But, I am not saying that this program is not worth looking into – many people have gotten incredible help from Hollins College. It’s the best program around. But, one should go in realizing that they won’t be cured, because there is no cure for stuttering.

http://stuttering.org/hollinsfluencyprogram.php

Today I work in book publishing, in publicity, and I have to talk in public all the time. I don’t have to make a speech, like the King’s speech, to thousands of people looking for guidance in a harsh political time, so I am not nearly as brave as Bertie was. But, I try very hard not to avoid talking to people on the phone, in public, anywhere. In fact, I often make the first move, and people say I am outgoing and friendly. I may still stutter when I introduce myself to someone, which I am told is universally common. I always pause on my “out of the office” message on voice mail, and I often pause when I answer the phone, and sometimes when I have to speak to a group. But as long as you are patient with me and don’t laugh at me, you will probably hear something worth hearing. And, yes, I do want to be great, just like Bertie.