I'm a stutterer. Although I've mostly outgrown the affliction, it took several years of speech therapy before I stopped dreading sentences that began with certain vowel sounds. I can still recall the terror of having to read aloud in class, staring a text that was filled with phonetic speed bumps and stop signs.

My history of stuttering made me particularly interested in seeing The King's Speech, the critically acclaimed film about the stammer of King George VI. (On Saturday, the movie received the top prize from the Producers...