Seidler himself suffered from stammering and found comfort in the story of a king who overcame the same affliction. But how could the story of a man as prominent as King George VI suffering from stammering not be known? Two reasons. The first was that, quite simply, the royal family didn't want to advertise the story any more than needed. Since the King had overcome the problem, they felt no need to discuss it and the Queen Mother even asked Seidler to refrain from publishing his writings on the subject until after she had died, which he did. But the second reason, the one really responsible for so little being publically known about King George VI and his affliction, was that George VI's brother was the very same Edward who abdicated the throne and married American divorcee Wallis Simpson. When something like that happens in the royal family, every other story takes a backseat for the next several decades.
The film opens with Prince Albert, Duke of York (Bertie to his family and the future King George VI to the rest of us), struggling through a speech at Wembley Stadium in 1925. It's painful to watch as he cannot get even a word to come out effortlessly. His wife Elizabeth sends him to a speech therapist, Lionel Logue, and the Prince is immediately offended as Logue insists on calling him Bertie. The meeting ends poorly as Bertie storms out but later, he has a change of heart when he listens to a recording that Logue made. The recording in question was one that Logue made of Bertie speaking while listening to music on headphones. It's only then, listening to the record, that Bertie realizes he was speaking perfectly when the music was playing and decides to give Logue a second chance.
The story also deals with the abdication of the throne by Edward and, of course, Britain's entry into the war against Germany, prompting that famous speech that the title refers to, at least in part. But, mainly, it deals with George VI's problem and does that by removing King George VI from history and transforming him into an everyman, faced with a personal hardship he must overcome. It also continued a fascination with the British nobility and royalty that began years before but really began to grow in the 21st century. Julian Fellowes work, from Gosford Park to Downton Abbey, and award winning movies like The Queen (2006), and The King's Speech, furthered a trend of bringing the nobility and royalty of Britain down to earth where viewers can finally recognize them on a human level.
The King's Speech took home a slew of Oscars and became a box office hit. Tom Hooper, whose most notable previous effort, the great miniseries John Adams, had dealt with American royalty in the form of the founding fathers, won Best Director and Colin Firth, excellent in so many films before and since, finally took home his first Oscar for Best Actor. Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush supplied great support as the linguistic coach that finally got the King's speech under control. But the real force behind the film is David Seidler, the writer who identified with a king and performed the deft sleight of hand that made the king identifiable as an ordinary man to all of us.
By Greg Ferrara
