“SPEAK THE SPEECH, I PRAY YOU...”

Why is it that most American actresses – and a lot of American actors – have such crappy voices? If you listen to their British and Australian counterparts, the difference is glaring.
How can they spend so much time on their talent and their appearances, and yet neglect the tool they use probably far more than any other to convey the emotion and inner life of their character?
I don't want to single anyone out, so I won't mention names, but here's a case in point: it's a B movie, direct-to-TV, but it's reasonably well done. The two big flaws were that one of the women was supposed to be Hungarian, and she couldn't produce even a bad imitation of Zsa Zsa. Every time she opened her mouth, you heard a contemporary Midwestern accent complete the whinig denasality and blurry diction. The other character was supposed to the be the ancient, ageless Queen of Vampires. As she came into the scene, she looked impressive: strong, powerful, beautiful – then she spoke, and the illusion was shattered.
Tonight's episode of “House” was a great lesson. Here was Hugh Laurie, an OxCam grad, and Jamie Bamber, fresh off “Law & Order: UK” both doing completely convincing American accents, but in pleasant-to-the-ear voices.
Listen to Hugh Jackman, Kenneth Branagh, Kate Beckinsale, Amanda Tapping, Lucy Lawless, Sam Neill. They can play anything they want: mutants, vampires, ageless scienttists, Greek warriors, master spies – kings, princes, and gods – because they have the vocal equipment to pull it off.
Part of the problem is the collapse of the studio system and the indiscriminate adoption of Stanislavsky without fully understanding what was involved. Stanislavsky taught only the master class. By the time students came to him, they already had learned the basics of speech and movement. They knew how to speak. What the American theatre ended up with was what became known as the 'Mumble and Scratch' school of 'naturalistic' actors who had great passion, but were sometimes hard to understand. When a group from the Moscow Arts Theatre came over here in the mid-1960s, they were shocked. One of them remaked to my director at CSC, “You have made Stanislavsky into a god!”
Another villain in the piece was the wireless microphone, which allowed people with untrained voices to make themselves heard without good vocal technique.
Contrariwise, the British can't seem to mike for sour owlshit. I don't know how many times I've found myself straining to hear a line in a British film because the mike isn't picking up the sound.
There are a lot of TV shows I watch these days in spite of this, because they have good writing and acting, but I would be happier if I thought they could make me believe they were anything other than 21st-century Americans.