Edgar Oliver's accent

[AML]

Edgar Oliver is an American actor (mostly theater) and storyteller, and he has a most unusual accent.
Here is a story, in which Edgar is telling a funny story (click on Listen Now).
Here is a YouTube video of him telling another story.

Is it simply a Mid-Atlantic accent? It seems related, but not quite the same. It seems unique to him. William F. Buckley, Jr (sample) was one of the most famous users of the Mid-Atlantic accent, and Edgar Oliver's sounds much more extreme. From what I've been able to find, Edgar Oliver has always spoken in this manner. I believe he is from Savannah, Georgia originally, but his accent is not at all typical of that area (even the non-rhotic version), nor of anywhere in the US.

[jeff_lindqvist]

OK, I haven't heard anything really like it before. Accent? Perhaps his "theatre accent". If he's indeed speaking like this off-stage, in relaxed situations etc. I suppose it's his idiolect.

After some googling:

A classic Savannah accent is tempered by some faint echo of Edgar’s speech patterns. Hers is more of a slurred and nasal muttering, but the expressions are the same—the “Weeeell” and the “Oh, gooody!” and the vast, Germanic “Yaaaa” used for affirmation. When they were young, people called Helen and Edgar “those Transylvanian children.”

https://www.oxfordamerican.org/item/535 ... gar-oliver

Classmates tell Helen and Edgar that their mother is a witch, and the Brazier hostess says they sound like Transylvanians. Indeed, Oliver’s accent is unplaceable and inimitable, a blend of Dracula and Little Edie by way of the mid-Atlantic.

https://www.sfgate.com/performance/arti ... 397749.php

Transylvanian? Do vampires on screen speak like this?

[zenmonkey]

How did I know it was him without even clicking?
Yes, he has quite a unique accent.
Part Savannah, part sociolect, part affected-sounding, part gay North American sibilant -- in comparison listen to his sister:



I too feel that he somehow sounds like a slow dracula accent (except for the absence of the rolling r's). I love listening to his stories, even if sometimes they don't go somewhere in particular.