The Word is Out.

“He took the South away from Julia Roberts. He exorcised New York from Robert De Niro’s speech… He teaches senators how to drop their regional accents when they are in Washington, and how to pick them up again on the campaign trail… ‘I have a great deal of job satisfaction because people show results very quickly,’ [says Sam Chwat, founder of the Sam Chwat Speech Center].
- The New York Times

“It’s a challenge few would undertake: Erase all traces of actor Tony Danza’s heavy-as-lead Brooklyn accent for his current four-episode stint as a smooth-talking lawyer on ABC’s The Practice. Even the former Taxi star, who has made a career out of saying ‘don’t bodder’ instead of ‘don’t bother,’ knew it wouldn’t be easy. ‘PEOPLE Magazine once called me the preeminent dese, dem and doser,’ Danza, 47, admits with a hearty laugh. ‘I was looking for someone to take that out of my speech, so it wasn’t the only thing I was known for.’
“Who did he call? Speech pathologist Sam Chwat (pronounced schwah), a modern-day Henry Higgins who de-Brooklynized Danza’s diction in a month… ‘He makes it easy,’ says Danza. “And that’s what a great teacher does.”
- People Magazine

“When actors come in to learn a dialect, the sessions can last anywhere from a few hours to a few months… More often than not, he knows the accent from memory. ‘Sam has a command of every accent,’ says English actor Alan Bates, who went to Chwat for the villainous Viennese purr he uses in The Sum of All Fears. “It’s a bit of magic…”
With Chwat’s guidance, Marcia Gay Harden perfected the rough cadences of artist Lee Krasner in Pollock. “A character’s accent is the front door to that person, and Sam gave me the key,’ says Harden, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the role.”
- USA Weekend

“… [Scott Hirsch’s] speech became an issue again as he worked his way up the ladder at Forest Electric Corp., a major Manhattan electrical contracting firm. As he rose from electrician to vice president in charge of sales, Hirsch began to worry about what kind of image his dese’s and dem’s were projecting, especially when he had to speak in front of groups.
“You can put a suit on and a nice tie, and you can keep yourself groomed, but if you open your mouth and it doesn’t come out right, it’s not a whole package,’ he says…
After a couple months of work with speech coach Sam Chwat, he started asking for a glass of water, not watah, and referring to electricians rather than electrizhuns. The difference in the image he projects is profound, he believes.
- The New York Post

"In every culture, your verbal expression is considered an index of how smart you are,… Your speech pattern, your word choice and your grammar are all considered indications of your intelligence and sophistication. It's a false assumption, but it's a popular one."
- The Los Angeles Times