A stutter unfit for a king

Clarence Page is a syndicated columnist.

At last, somebody has made an epic, triumphant movie about a hero with which I am personally familiar: a recovering stutterer.

In ''The King's Speech,'' Colin Firth gives an Oscar-worthy portrayal of the inconsolable despair behind the stiff upper lip of Britain's stuffy King George VI - the royal family's second banana who did not aspire to be king, but for whom fate had other plans.

In 1937, his older brother, King Edward VIII, gave up the throne to marry a divorced American, Wallis Simpson. The young Duke of York had to step up despite his debilitating stammer, a condition that severely threatened his ability to perform one of the most important duties left for a British royal: rallying his country on the brink of a world war.

As an adult, the aspiring king did what I and many of this country's other estimated 3 million stutterers have done, he sought therapy. In his case, the therapist was Lionel Logue, who actor Geoffrey Rush turns into a scene-stealing force, trying - when he is allowed - to build trust between the soon-to-be king and his commoner therapist.

"The movie helps to demystify stuttering,'' Atlanta lawyer Adam Marlowe, 31, said in a telephone interview. Marlowe is remarkable for containing his own stutter well enough to become a successful litigator, a job for which effective talking is essential.

After a stuttering eruption caused an unusually "bad meeting'' one day in New York, where he lived at the time, Marlowe sought help at the American Institute for Stuttering, a nonprofit organization of which I am a board member. He received much of what is seen in the film, treatment that probed the underlying emotions, anxieties and attitudes that undercut his ability to speak.

"A lot of people want some quick cure, a mechanical technique or a magic pill that will make everything fine,'' he recalled. "In reality, what really helped me was what you saw in the movie, a long-term therapy, working on your voice and your breathing but also on how you view yourself as a stutterer in the world.''

In my case, I thank the public grade school in my hometown, Middletown, Ohio, for providing encouraging speech pathologists. I also thank our high school's debate club, and supportive grown-ups like Fred Ross, a local attorney and family friend who coached me through what Marlowe might call a "bad speech'' during a contest at the local Optimist Club when I was 14.

After sympathetic applause from the crowd, I slumped off to a corner where my coach waited with a big smile. With his encouragement, I came back the next year and stunned the crowd with a performance that, in a moment suitable for a Disney film, won second place. I've hardly stopped talking since.

Every stuttering kid needs optimistic support like that. Iin the opening of "The King's Speech,'' the young prince faces a microphone that looks as large as the U.S. Capitol to stutter through a speech being broadcast to the entire British Empire. During the real-life 1925 speech that he failed to finish, the future king's hesitations lasted over a minute in several cases, the therapist's grandson and co-writer of the movie, Mark Logue, told an interviewer from NPR.

The prince went to Lionel Logue a year later because, as his grandson recalls, "by that stage, he was pretty desperate.'' But, as history shows, he persevered. He beat what I call "the beast.''

This is a film intended to make everyone feel good about their own potential. Most important to me is the message it sends to concerned parents like mine were. In life, King George VI never completely cured his stuttering. None of us do. Like reformed alcoholics, we are constantly recovering, learning how to subdue the beast so it does not stop us from pursing greater things.