By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. And so it seemed only fitting to commemorate his death with the form he made his own.Meghan ORourke. I mean, if George Plimpton wasnt my father and Id never met him, and I heard that voice emerge from his lips and matched it with his severe Roman features and his usual blue blazer, oxford shirt, and tie, I might have assumed that he was a little pompous or snooty or affected. George Plimpton: what kind of accent? Richard Howard, poetry editor, the Paris Review:I worked with George for 10 years on the magazine. I believe the accent was at one time known as Larchmont Lockjaw. So we got together and, after some preliminaries, he popped the question that he was really there to ask. George Plimpton was a literary man about town who did it all, from co-founding The Paris . He said, You better stay here, and I did, for a while. Somehow Georgehad gotten it into his head that I was on the verge of becoming a pharmacist before he had called me up a year earlier to tell me the Paris Review was publishing a story I had submittedperhaps because of the pharmacological bent of the subject matter. In finally hearing the great storyteller tell the one story he would not tell, I could hear, too, his long, reverent silence on the subjectand it reveals his integrity as a journalist, and as a man. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. Tom Nowatzke, fullback, Detroit Lions (In the 1960s, Plimpton briefly played with the Detroit Lions asresearch for the best-selling book Paper Lion, which was later made into a film):I was the No. These are some of the things my father could not say: Shit. Fuck. I love you. His curses were never actually curse-words, though it was perhaps because of this that they held such weight. His high Boston accent might have been heard as an influential transitional hybrid, and its interesting how prominent parodies of the speech of Brando, Dean, and Kennedy were at the time: seems a sign that we were noticing a marked change. Now you know! After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. [31][32][33] His firework, a Roman candle named "Fat Man",[31][32][33] weighed 720 pounds (330kg)[31] and was expected to rise to 1,000 feet (300m)[33] or more[31] and deliver a wide starburst. [2][43], An oral biography titled George, Being George was edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., and released on October 21, 2008. Greetings From the Vortex of Unpredictability, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. The picture at the top of this post is of the same Westbrook Van Voorhis who epitomized FDR-era announcer-speak but didnt fit the sensibility of the early-cool-cat-era Twilight Zone. Harris trained himself as a young man to lose his native Bronx accent - to the point that he was asked if he were British. Ill pick you up., I had a hard time sleeping that night, as you might imagine. **. I saw him [last] Wednesday night at a party; we rode home together, and he told me that he was planning to go down to Cuba, to revisit the site of his famous interview with Hemingway. Plimpton would not boast of his feat, so we did. [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. Actually, thats not far off from how my mom felt when she first met him. It was as if some old gentlemans code prohibited us from interacting as human beings. George Plimpton was a literary man about town who did it all, from co-founding The Paris Review to boxing (and dribbling and quarterbacking) with the pros. The clenched jaw tight-bite bit: the lockjaw dentiloquist. Back to Plimpton I dont remember the LL affect at all. Plimpton brought the Left Bank to NYCpeople like Peter Mathiessen, William Styron, Terry Southern. He appeared in the PBS American Masters documentary on Andy Warhol. Sometimes, we used to have quarrels, because he thought I took too many poems: Are you turning this magazine into a poetry magazine? he would say. For it was George Plimpton the writer, not the editor nor the celebrity, who was honored here . He did not appear last year, or the year before, and we feared he was done with us. It's a Scottish accent that's been modified somewhat for a mainstream audience that tends to associate them with Groundskeeper Willie. We made $15,000-20,000. I feel that his work on this and many other language-related matters should be far more widely known than it is. Ive lived in Boston for 30 years and have never heard a George Plimpton accent; so I guess it must be a Larchmont accent, *Originally posted by Carnac the Magnificent! Eerily enough, one of the messages on my answering machine was from George, with that distinctive accent of his: Hallo, its George Plimpton. Peter Matthiesen, author, co-founder of the Paris Review:I was in Liberia, of all places, and George met me in Monrovia. The risky pleasures of Plimpton's classic of participatory sportswriting, Paper Lion. How to find out, and whether you should care. George Plimpton Dec 1, 2014 In which the venturous author, the rawest rookie pro football has ever known, recounts all the excruciating details of what happened when he called five plays as. On one website, I read about a Choate alumn saying one can still hear the LL (see above thread) accent on campus. Everything he did was like this, just a bit odd. (Newsreels ran in movie theaters, of course: what better critique of the high newsreel style than the new movies that jarred against it?). Starring George Plimpton as Himself, which documents his life, adventures, and work as participatory journalist and editor of the Paris Review, my dad will be playing himself one more time. In the "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can" episode of The Simpsons, he hosts the "Spellympics" and attempts to bribe Lisa Simpson to lose with the offer of a scholarship at a Seven Sisters College and a hot plate; "it's perfect for soup! [3] During the summers, he lived in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Suffolk County on Long Island. He is connected by blood to Benjamin "Beast" Butler, a rakish pol who told Abraham Lincoln he would be his running mate "only if you die within three. In his July 1936 obituary, the New York Times described George Arthur Plimpton (13 July 1855-1 July 1936) as an "internationally known publisher and collector, college trustee and philanthropist." As the materials in the George A. Plimpton Papers testify, those four areas of activity dominated Plimpton's public and private lives. After St. Bernard's School, Plimpton attended Phillips Exeter Academy (from which he was expelled just shy of graduation), and Daytona Beach High School, where he received his high school diploma,[16] before entering Harvard College in July 1944. *Originally posted by Phlosphr * When George Plimpton Met the Best Bartender in Brooklyn Two New York Legends Collide By Tim Sultan February 26, 2016 The only other person that I had known who possessed a similar charisma to Sunny Balzano's was my first employer in New York: George Plimpton. That is the tendency of Americans trying to sound more British, or Brits trying to sound more Yank, to split the difference and speak in an accent whose home ground is no real country but somewhere in the middle of the sea. Just when Jim and I thought we had finished, and we had been working a long time, George, who loved the result of our efforts, decided he wanted to talk to me as well. Hear Stories By George Plimpton. I thought they were terrific. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. Hearing the words Dammit, Im mad as a hornet! uttered in George Plimptons voice made anger sound totally ridiculous, which is exactly what it most often is. By George Plimpton. [citation needed], In the movie Plimpton! George Plimpton, the New York aristocrat and literary journalist whose career was a happy lifelong competition between scholarly pursuits and madcap attempts -- chronicled in self-deprecating. [29], His enthusiasm for fireworks grew, and he was appointed Fireworks Commissioner of New York by Mayor John Lindsay,[29][30] an unofficial post he held until his death. Angelo Dundee, trainer for Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard:George was such a great guy. The journal, which had operated out of his home, moved downtown. So, pairing the Cagney hint with the Kennedy Inaugural, could we date the changeover to 1961? He was equally at home on a bicycle or getting out of a limousine with a Saudi Arabian prince. O ne afternoon this summer, I sat in George Plimpton's study waiting for the gentleman editor, participatory journalist, and beloved gadfly of American letters to arrive. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. I enjoy doing it. Thats it, George cried out. "He speaks with an oddly mannered accent, sounding as though on the verge of a stammer, polite, genteel, perhaps just a little Woosterish. And George had written it straight. [citation needed]. In 1992, Plimpton married Sarah Whitehead Dudley, a graduate of Columbia University and a freelance writer. Plimpton scowled, and said he was perfectly capable of running for himself. And they founded this thing called the Paris Review and published poetry and short story writers and did interviews. What will you be mad about ten years after youre gone?). Mr. Plimpton was born in Manhattan in 1927 and raised in Huntington, L.I. George Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little At one point, there was a tremendous Wagnerian thunder and lighting storm. [32] When lit, the firework remained on the ground and exploded, blasting a crater 35 feet (11m) wide and 10 feet (3.0m) deep. At Harvard, Plimpton was a classmate and close personal friend of Robert F. Kennedy. George Plimpton. You heard it and it. Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. He could have done whatever he wanted. (What else happened that year??? After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. He watched the first pitch sail high for a ball, and then hit a rope into left field. Consider his duties as host of Mousterpiece Theatre (my first intro to my father as celebrity), a childrens TV show in which he debated the adventures and psyches of Donald Duck and Goofy in that marvelously serious voice: Is Donald Duck really a strident existentialist and a hero? How wonderfulwhat fun!to have a constant reminder emerging from your lips that life was absurd, and identity, too; all of it a great game to be played at, enjoyed. Hed done it in Amsterdam, Moscow, and London; hed done it at a PEN benefit; and now he and Norman were going to do it in Cuba. You heard it and it could only be him. Bill and I met in Rome, several months after the Paris Review was startedwe were, as they say, courtingand he drove me to Paris so George and Peter [Mathiessen] could look me over. [23] He was also notable for his appearance in television commercials during the early 1980s, including a memorable campaign for Mattel's Intellivision. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. Plimpton was an omnipresence for much of American cultural lifeboth high and lowin the last third of the 20th century. And so when it was time to say goodbye, we did so simplyno awkwardness, no strangled expressions of affectionand this is why, even though it was the last time we ever spoke, and I would never get the chance again, I do not regret not telling him that I loved him. Indeed, the police deposition the filmmakers managed to uncover may be the only time my dad ever spoke about the tragedy, publicly or privately. This book is the party that was George's life-and it's a big one-attended by scores of famous people, as well as. He never went all the way, though his authenticity and newly-downstyle speaking could probably be marked in the crisis/triumph stages of his reporting: the death of JFK; the Vietnam report; the moon landing. Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. Would you admit to there being symbolism in your novels? Even the most basic conversation was often a struggle. [33] A later attempt, fired at Cape Canaveral, rose approximately 50 feet (15m) into the air and broke 700 windows in Titusville, Florida. 1) The linguists have a name for it: they call it Mid-Atlantic English. I dont like this name, for reasons Ill explain in a minute. [30] Plimpton later wrote the book Fireworks, and hosted an A&E Home Video with the same name featuring his many fireworks adventures with the Gruccis of New York in Monte Carlo and for the 1983 Brooklyn Bridge Centennial. We had the book party for my selected poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room, at Georges house on Sept 10, 2001. But he would do this in the most charming and agreeable way. Ever. He was also an accomplished birdwatcher. Its strange to think, but he would have been eighty-five this year: fourteen years older than my mom, fifty years older than me. A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. My dad could never say what he feltnot reallyand neither can any of us. The young Paris Review editor and other New York literary figures arrived during a period marked by hope for a democratic Cuba. After it was published, all of the baseball people were trying to get in touch with Sidd, but he didnt existit was an April Fools joke! That made him a great storyteller. [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. Middle class? I think the term Old Money or patrician pretty much says it. [2], A November 6, 1971, cartoon in The New Yorker by Whitney Darrow Jr. shows a cleaning lady on her hands and knees scrubbing an office floor while saying to another one: "I'd like to see George Plimpton do this sometime." Vault. In 2013, the documentary Plimpton! It was so tiny that if you saw him in it, you couldnt believe hed be able to get himself out of it. Losing, he knew, always makes a better story than winning. (Every now and then he also called me Sweet Prince, as in Goodnight, Sweet Prince.), Of course, my fathers voice was odd not just in what it said, but in what it couldnt. As an old film buff, I am used to this voice, though it figures unevenly in old movies. His response was "no, just affected.". Plimpton played quarterback for the Detroit Lions and triangle for the New York Philharmonic, an. In it Van Voorhis has the formal delivery that would have seemed familiar to many mid-century listeners but which in retrospect we know was on the way out. George Plimpton is beautifully connected. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! He smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. If you are in the big league, God help us all. And you are going to come with me. Shadow Box. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. Mr . Heres a sampling for today, with more planned in the days ahead. Brown & Co. Re-issued George Plimpton Sports Books, 2016. Youd be on the phone with him and get to the end of the conversation, and youd say I love you, Dad, and at most, hed reply, without subject or object, Love, like he was signing a letter. A graduate of Harvard University and King's College, Cambridge, Plimpton was recruited to Paris by Peter Matthiessen in 1952 and signed on to the project shortly thereafter. That is, until I saw the documentarythe assassination of his dear friend Bobby Kennedy. For more than fifty years, his friends made a circle whose circumference was vast and whose center was a fashionable tenement on New York's East Seventy-second street. He saw athletes as heroes he. I remember getting the news: It was my wife Madeleines birthday, Aug. 7. #1 was Who Was the Last American to Speak This Way, #3 is Class-War Edition, and #4 is The Origin Story., Who Was the Last American to Speak This Way. Ad Choices. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. He was so open to life and all its new and unexpected situations. I just knew it was going to be something terrible. But he has never employed that voice professionally, and certainly does not speak that way in real life. That was the last party for a while., I just got back from a road trip from Michigan. Look out, Wilson! Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. At least, not to me, nor even to my sister, a fact she mentions in the movie. Plimpton was associated with the literary magazine in Paris, Merlin, which folded because the State Department withdrew its support.[why?] I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. 3 people found this helpful . It took the form of a statement: I dont know writers who write about sex better than you. I rose to the bait and answered saying, Thank you. I didnt know he was from the Larchmont area. She was the daughter of writers Willard R. Espy[39] and Hilda S. Cole, who had, earlier in her career, been a publicity agent for Kate Smith and Fred Waring. In this campaign, Plimpton touted the superiority regarding the graphics and sounds of Intellivision video games over the Atari 2600.[24]. And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you? Kaltenborn was a famous mid . Alan Alda, portraying my dad in the movie version of Paper Lion (his book on playing quarterback for the Detroit Lions), didnt bother with his voice at all. He wanted to play his own part, but they wouldnt let him. . Charles McGrath, editor of the New York Times Book Review:I dont think George had played golf in years, but he used to save up oddball tips for me and others. The fake English announcer voice lingered on sporadically until the end of the Johnson administration in newsreels, which themselves ceased production around the same time, but Rod Serlings decision sounded the death knell for that accent. Hed go on to move freely through so many worlds and circles, without ever not speaking in that singular accentthough it probably would have made life easier for him if hed adopted a new way of talking (after all, as a journalist in the locker rooms, where slang and cursing were art-forms, my dads stiff, formal tongue made him stick out like an egret among ducks). 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 Thanks for the scores of replies that have arrived in the past day, in response to my post asking why the stentorian, phony-British Announcer Voice that dominated newsreel narration, stage and movie acting, and public discourse in the United States during the first half of the 20th century had completely disappeared. With such a useful explanation, why do I gripe about the name? (My dads been dead nearly ten years: not that he held many in his life, but what grudges could he possibly be holding on to now? He is also credited with saving, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Plimpton! He also appeared in a featurette about Edie Sedgwick found on the Ciao! Whether on the football field or on a golf course or in a poem or an essay, the notion of human talent in whatever form excited him. Plimpton sparred for three rounds with boxing greats Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson while on assignment for Sports Illustrated. A lordly accent acquired at St. Bernard's and burnished later at Cambridge, in England, enhanced his distinguished aura, as did elevated stature and a silver head of hair which might have encouraged a career in politics but mercifully did not. Get a life. Shootout at Rio Lobo", "The Smaller the Ball, the Better the Book: A Game Theory of Literature", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Plimpton&oldid=1137974740, This page was last edited on 7 February 2023, at 10:19. Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? Billy Collins, poet:Im one of these people who went from crashing Georges parties in the 70s to being invited in the 80s. [citation needed]. Could it be fairly said that Plimptom had it? I want you to go [to the shop] pull out the biggest firework you have and go out and light it up, because you just won the firework contest in Monaco!, I was so stunned, all I could think to say was, I dont think I can get a permit that fast!, Alice Quinn, director of the Poetry Society of America, poetry editor, The New Yorker:When I was an adviser at Columbia Magazine [a journal run out of Columbia University], we were scraping barrel, with no money in the bank, and I said to the students we should have a benefit auction. George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003. Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. The last time I heard my fathers voice, it was over the telephone. Elaine Kaufman, owner of Elaines restaurant:Over the 40 years I knew him, George came in often, sometimes twice a week, usually on his way back from a cocktail party. Articles From This Author. **. Plimpton's remarkable life is showcased in a documentary that is. George . He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. Even Orson Welles on occasion. Jonathan Ames, author:Back in the fall of 1999, in preparation for my one and only boxing match, I read George Plimptons great book, Shadow Box, where he recounted his foray into the world of boxing and his famous encounter with Archie Moore. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Lewis Lapham, editor, Harpers Magazine:Georges immense enthusiasm was his primary characteristic. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * Jean Stein became his co-editor. See below!) Plimpton's The Bogey Man chronicles his attempt to play professional golf on the PGA Tour during the Nicklaus and Palmer era of the 1960s. [citation needed] In 1958, prior to a post-season exhibition game at Yankee Stadium between teams managed by Willie Mays (National League) and Mickey Mantle (American League), Plimpton pitched against the National League. . He rounded first as if he were about to go for a double, then glided back to the base, with fans waving and cheering. No matter where he was, or who he wasquarterback, trapeze artist, Philharmonic triangle-playerhis voice never changed, proving that you can be whomever you want to be without ever abandoning yourself. George Plimpton, journalist extraordinaire, trains with and then performs as Quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * From looking at Labovs study, I know today, as I didnt know yesterday, that linguists use the term rhotic to describe whether a person pronounces, or doesnt, the R sound before a consonant or at the end of a word. Would you like Mike to run for you, George? the coach asked. Yes he is gone. I only wish I could not tell him again, just one more time. When I eventually went back to be an editor at Harpers, I arrived at his flat, not having been in New York for eight years. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. But it didnt define him, much the way he refused to be defined by the stiff, upper-crust world from which hed come. His experience was captured in the book Out of My League. You should be very grateful. But looking back on it, its funny, too. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. **Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. He was a great addition to the human race. Manhattan DVD. After several problems with transporting and preparing the fireworks, Plimpton and Grucci became the first competitors from the United States to win the event. His father co-founded the law firm Debevoise Plimpton. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. Interesting that the two competitors for his anchor chair were both fully vernacular speakers from the South and West: Mudd and Rather. Plimpton died on September 25, 2003, in his New York City apartment from a heart attack later determined to have been caused by a catecholamine surge. Whee!! He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. If you found him at a fancy restaurant, he was there as a guest: For his own meals he preferred cheap Chinese or bangers and mash at a local Irish pub. He was one of her original supporters and had published an article about her work in The Paris Review. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. Look out, Wilson! The responses fall into interesting categories: linguistic descriptions of this accent; sociological and ethnic explanations for its rise and fall; possible technological factors in its prominence and disappearance; explanations rooted in the movie industry; nominees for who might have been the last American to talk this way; and suggestions that a few rare specimens still exist. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. It was horrifying.. It was a great partyraucous and long. Thats a common name for such an accent. I hope not. Plimpton was married twice. Never heard of this decidedly imprecise term. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to these men speak. Felix Grucci Jr., of Fireworks by Grucci (Plimpton wrote about the Grucci family, widely held to be the first family of fireworks, in Fireworks: A History and Celebration):George had a very big passion for fireworks. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . (A variation is the Locust Valley Lockjaw.). There was intellectual heft in the Plimpton genes too: one Ames was a Professor of Botany, another was Governor of Massachusetts, another relation was a publisher, and yet another a writer-philanthropist fascinated with the subject of how the great figures of the past were educated Young Georges educational path was precisely that of a The list of authors interviewed is extraordinary, and stretches from Hemingway years ago to Amy Hempel (in the 50th anniversary issue that has just been published). [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. It is the kind of study . Vault. Kennedy died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital. Ive known him forsix months and I just now learned hes not English!. The film used archival audio and video of Plimpton lecturing and reading to create a posthumous narration. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the Paris Review, and tried his hand at everything from quarterbacking for the Detroit Lions (which he wrote about in Paper Lion), boxing with light-heavyweight champ Archie Moore (which became Shadow Box), and becoming New Yorks unofficial official fireworks commissioner. His exploits were such that at one point, The New Yorker ran a cartoon in which a patient eyed a surgeon with misgiving and said, But how do I know youre not George Plimpton?, But perhaps foremost among his accomplishments was his elevation of the interview to a literary form, both in the Paris Review and in his two superb works of oral history, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career, and Edie, a biography of Edie Sedgwick, which he and Jean Stein compiled. [19] Another sports book, Open Net, saw him train as an ice hockey goalie with the Boston Bruins, even playing part of a National Hockey League preseason game. He joined us in Monte Carlo when we won the international [fireworks] competition. He once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. He had it all going! The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! It was always a surprise. Was it him?
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