Against the “King Voice.” On the Evolution of Vocal Authority, from Orson Welles to Sarah Vowell

Though I have been unable to verify the quote, Orson Welles is supposed to have observed that he had a “king voice.” Welles began performing in his parents’ Kenosha, Wisconsin parlor, and toured in Shakespeare productions early in his career. Authoritative, sonorous and compelling, his is the voice that persuaded millions that the Martians had landed in Grover’s Mills, New Jersey in The War of the Worlds. As the on-the-scene reporter in The Fall of the City, the voice convincingly bore witness to a horrible power taking over civilization. And in The Hitchhiker it expresses an ordinary man plunged into an existential narrative, awaiting eternity.

No one could out class Welles, but the commanding voices of Golden Age radio dramas were generally male. And in radio, and films from the same era, vocal tone also indicated class and character. Squeaky voices were comic, or emasculated. In the great noir classic The Maltese Falcon, the gay-coded Wilma is whiny and anxious. Rough voices indicated thugs; accents reflected a barely concealed xenophobia. And there was a class one might call “the man of action” voice—detectives, policemen, classy gentlemen detectives, journalists.

When broadcast news became a dominant cultural force in the US two of its most authoritative voices were David Brinkley (born in North Carolina) and Walter Cronkite (born in Missouri). Not so much king voices, as “father knows best.”

Public radio broke the mold early—hiring Susan Stamberg, with her sharp, inflected New York accent, to anchor All Things Considered, making her the first female in this role in national broadcasting.

Lisa Napoli’s collective biography Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie chronicles the rise of the four founding mothers of NPR. Their warm, insightful tones made them worthy successors in a wide range of contexts to the most famous voice in broadcast journalism, Edward R. Murrow (another North Carolina man). Murrow’s grave baritone brought crucial moments of World War II into everyone’s living rooms.

And then, another champion of outlier voices emerged from the NPR stable. Ira Glass, who started This American Life, a wide-ranging exploration of the American experience through personal stories, in 1995. His own voice is nasal and inflected, a deft instrument that can carve a slice of experiences ranging from comic to tragic.

Speaking truth to power isn’t just about the content anymore; it’s just as much about the tone.

And he made room on the show for other non-traditional voices—Sarah Vowell, Sandra Loh, and of course, David Sedaris, whose particular genius, aside from a razor-sharp gift for narrative, was to turn his motile voice—by turns caustic, exhausted, disbelieving—into powerful instrument for memoir and social critique.

And then, it was the turn of the Millennials—a generation wary of either obeying or claiming authority. Producer Amy Tan, who emerged from an NPR internship to start the aptly named podcast Millennial in her bedroom closet, had a grip on her generation’s bemusement and lack of gravitas. But when Millennials began to enter the news arena, and report from a wide range of journalistic perspectives, there were complaints about the upspeak. Can it be irritating? Like, Yes? Does it also reflect an era in which certainty is a sham? Definitely, yes.

Also giving “voice” in both senses to broadcast’s ambivalence is someone like Lewis Raven Wallace, a transgender journalist. Speaking truth to power isn’t just about the content anymore; it’s just as much about the tone.

Podcasting has also changed the vocal hierarchy. In interview shows, in reporting, in narrative journalism, the emphasis on authenticity, intimacy, conversational tone, and constant questioning has made us listen differently, and possibly question “authority.” Marc Maron, who helmed his engaging and transgressive interview show WTF for 13 years, is a Jersey Boy who sounds plaintive and exhausted. Seth Rogen is—wait for it—Canadian, and sounds so wholesome as to be immediately suspect.

A website called YouGov ranks Rogen as “the 158th most popular contemporary actor and the 210th most popular all-time actor.” I can only imagine what Orson Welles would have made of that.

I am exploring this idea primarily in the context of media, but it’s interesting, if provocative, to look at the intersection of vocal tone and authority in light of the current political reality. Groups opposed to President Donald Trump’s sweeping and obliterating agendas have staged protests that called for “no more kings,” while Trump himself has embraced the role on social media, a platform he dominates.

However, “the man who would be king” (a sardonic tale by Rudyard Kipling by the way) is from the borough of Queens, which imparts a subtly despised accent even celebrated Trump impersonator John Di Domenico found challenging.

So maybe the reason we no longer have “king” voices, is that we no longer trust authority and its ability to deliver truth, and the crowded media landscape, from podcasts to Tik Tok, give us a tumult of voices, no one granted authority. In light of a frail democracy, we can at least count on the democratization of utterance.