Hes just trying it out and will come back and write a book about his experiences. The most recent was about how to extend the swing though impact, and the trick, George said, was to station an imaginary dwarf several feet in front of your ball and then (you have to re-create those broad Plimptonian vowels here) smack the dwarf in the ass. I dont know whether it works, because I cant think of it without laughing. * Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. After her transformation, I noted that Mia sounds precisely like her mother, Maureen OSullivan, who had that patrician manner of speaking on and off screen. Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? History / Biographical Note Biographical Note. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. "[34] A feature in Mad titled "Some Really Dangerous Jobs for George Plimpton" spotlighted him trying to swim across Lake Erie, strolling through New York's Times Square in the middle of the night, and spending a week with Jerry Lewis. And later I woke upat 6 a.m. Later I called up George, I said, What happened?, I thought it over, he said, and I took mercy on you. Again with thanks to Jonathan Fields, here's the continuation of George Plimpton's famous interview of Ernest Hemingway from the Paris Review, Summer 1958. 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! Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. My Father's Voice | The New Yorker Eerily enough, one of the messages on my answering machine was from George, with that distinctive accent of his: Hallo, its George Plimpton. If you say, I pahked my cah in Hahvahd Yahd, like some vaudeville version of a Boston accent, you are non-rhotic. Share; Copied! Would you admit to there being symbolism in your novels? George Plimpton boxed with Archie Moore, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions, and played percussion for the New York Philharmonic. These interviews are a collaborative effort, and, I believe, a fascinating contribution to literary history. $ 4.19 - $ 17.92. From what other people had told me, I knew a little bit about itthat my father (and mother) had been right by Bobbys side in California when he was shot, that my father had tackled Sirhan Sirhan to the ground, and wrestled the gun from his handbut not a word of it came from my dad himself. The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. 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. Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. Typical of George to laugh about something others saw as a defining traithe never took himself all that seriously. Ive rarely heard this accent in real life but its often used by actors doing a stereotype character based on other actors impersonations! He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. Talking about sports with Georgeor, even better, reading George about sportswas more fun than sports themselves. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. George was the one who read my name out to the commissioner. His experience was captured in the book Out of My League. 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. Mid-Atlantic. His dish was Spaghetti Bolognese. On one website, I read about a Choate alumn saying one can still hear the LL (see above thread) accent on campus. Here's a look inside the space, where the Paris Review editor hosted legendary parties. Was this sheer affectation? The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. I received many notes like this one: The variety of English you are referring to has a name in linguistics: "Mid-Atlantic English". *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * And similarly on the role of ridicule in speeding the move away from this accent: This is only partly facetious, but I think I know who was the American to speak "Announcer." He grew up in New York City with bona fide WASP credentials; became the longtime editor of the Paris Review, working with many of the great novelists of the day; contributed to the New Journalism. Mr . After several problems with transporting and preparing the fireworks, Plimpton and Grucci became the first competitors from the United States to win the event. [5][6][7][8][9][10] His father was a successful corporate lawyer and partner of the law firm Debevoise and Plimpton; he was appointed by President John F. Kennedy as U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations, serving from 1961 to 1965. 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. He was very understanding of what we did and how we did it. If you listen to Grossman (who is originally from Boston) starting about 15 seconds into the clip below, youll see that he uses a split-the-difference UK/US hybrid that is literally mid-Atlantic, in the sense of combining accents from both countries, but is different from the newsreel announcer voice: You should talk to William Labov [JF: I will try] , pioneering sociolinguist, whose landmark study into New York City speech led him to ask the same question you have. Articles by George Plimpton - Sports Illustrated Vault | SI.com We were going to go looking for strange birds. I have worked as poetry editor with editors on other magazines; only with George has the experience been entirely agreeable. Among other challenges for Sports Illustrated, he attempted to play top-level bridge, and spent some time as a high-wire circus performer. And he stood there ebullient and charming all night; he bid on many items himself. Hed have that and a scotch on the rocks, his favorite drink. 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 s. Plimpton was an optimist, a teller of amusing and amazing stories. Family (1) Spouse He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. In this campaign, Plimpton touted the superiority regarding the graphics and sounds of Intellivision video games over the Atari 2600.[24]. Why couldnt we have a good time, too? During a career that spanned the second half of the 20th century, Plimpton was a quarterback for the Detroit Lions, pitched at Yankee Stadium, sparred with Archie Moore, played the triangle with. It came from a different era, shouldn't have still existed, but nevertheless, there it wasold New England, old New York, tinged with a hint of King's College King's English. 'Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself' review Plimpton would not boast of his feat, so we did. He was 76. In the April 1, 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated, Plimpton pulled off a widely reported April Fools' Day prank. OK? He was "George Plimpton"-editor, host . Its a joke to say 500 of my closest friends, but that would have been true with George1,000 of his closest friends, actually. 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. [37] His son, Taylor, described it as a mixture of "old New England, old New York, tinged with a hint of King's College King's English."[14]. [citation needed]. Greetings From the Vortex of Unpredictability, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. rejoiced in the name of Euphemia van Renssalaer Wyatt. You can. Harris trained himself as a young man to lose his native Bronx accent - to the point that he was asked if he were British. When George Plimpton Met the Best Bartender in Brooklyn If he couldnt be taken quite seriously, that was fine with him (he took himself lightly, and relished being in on the joke). The opposing team: the Detroit Lions. Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . [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." Whom is it spoken bymerely the elite, old-money types? The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. By George Plimpton. He had it, as does/did William Buckley, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Julia Child. No one realized till the next day that this was the weather that created the extreme blue skies of Sept. 11a condition I since learned that pilots call severe clear. The next day, friends called and said, That was the last party. [3], He was the son of Francis T. P. Plimpton[4] and the grandson of Frances Taylor Pearsons and George Arthur Plimpton. Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the lasta figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. Sidd Finch was a fictional character George had created for a Sports Illustrated story, supposedly the greatest and fastest pitcher in the world. George Plimpton. (To read Part One, click here. Plimpton[2] was born in New York City on March 18, 1927, and spent his childhood there, attending St. Bernard's School and growing up in an apartment duplex on Manhattan's Upper East Side located at 1165 Fifth Avenue. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? He had a way of putting it all together, of understanding fighters in the ring; he was a good analyst of boxing. The Wikipedia entry is indeed delightful. In the early 60s, when I was working at the firework plant with my dad [Felix Grucci], George would pull up in shiny red sports car on his way to the Hamptons. With 'Paper Lion,' George Plimpton Played Pro Football So We Didn't Have To Kaltenborn was a famous mid . 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 Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. But he has never employed that voice professionally, and certainly does not speak that way in real life. Puss, and my father enjoyed nothing more than holding the beast high in the air and making strange, affectionate sounds in that distinguished voice: Yeanngghh, Puss Yeaannngh Puss Puss Puss.) He called my sister Puss, too, sometimes, though mostly I think with her it was Kiddo, which he also called me, though there was a period in which he occasionally called me Ernie, which was the dogs name. 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. The risky pleasures of Plimpton's classic of participatory sportswriting, Paper Lion. Plimpton also appeared in the closing credits of the 2006 film Factory Girl. He appeared in the PBS American Masters documentary on Andy Warhol. 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. *Originally posted by j.c. * 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. The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. 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. George Plimpton | About the Film | American Masters | PBS Over the years, we held a lot of dinner parties for him, and he brought a lot of people inmany, many writers. Plimpton was associated with the literary magazine in Paris, Merlin, which folded because the State Department withdrew its support.[why?] Isnt that what they call it. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, "George Plimpton, Urbane and Witty Writer, Dies at 76", "Obituary: Frances T. P. Plimpton, 82, Dies", "Obituary: Pauline A. Plimpton, 93, Author Of Works on Famed Relatives", "Milton at the Midpoint of the Last Century: One Collection of Memories", "How Failing at Exeter made a Success of George Plimpton", "Legendary Humorist, Poonster Dies at 76 | News | The Harvard Crimson", "George Plimpton, Paris Review Founder, Pitches 1980s Video Games for the Mattel Intellivision", "The Simpsons: I'm Spelling As Fast As I Can", "George Plimpton, Author And Editor, Is Dead at 76", "Professor Muhammed Ali Delivers Lecture; Poems and Parables Fill Talk on Friendship | News | The Harvard Crimson", "George Plimpton | Full Film | American Masters | PBS", "George Plimpton, Still Burning His Punk at Both Ends, Finds a Sport in Which He Can Sparkle", "George Plimpton: The Professional Amateur", "Some Really Dangerous Jobs For George Plimpton", "Being, And Appreciating, George Plimpton", "Obituary: Willard Espy, Who Delighted In Wordplay, Is Dead at 88", "George Plimpton, Writer and editor, Is Wed to Sarah W. Dudley, a Writer", "Obituary: James C. Dudley, 77, Investment Adviser", "Naming the Sky: The true story of one man's quest to give George Plimpton a permanent presence in orbit", "DEAD END-DRIVE-IN | Plimpton! Exeter Academy after an incident involving a Actors Nathan Lane (from Jersey City, NJ) and Robin Williams (grew up in SF Bay area) often adopt this accent. Is your language rhotic? After finishing at Harvard in 1950, he attended King's College, Cambridge, from 1950 to 1952, and graduated with third class honors in English. Friends were almost always happy to see him because you knew he was bound to improve your mood. Aldas version was always angry or consternated, like a character in a Woody Allen film, while my dad, though he certainly faced hurdles as an amateur in the world of the professional, bore his humiliations with a comic lightness and charmmuch of which emanated from that befuddled, self-deprecating professors voice. Here's how Geroge Plimpton and his team created a prodigious pitcher out of thin air. Would you like Mike to run for you, George? the coach asked. Angelo Dundee, trainer for Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard:George was such a great guy. 1 draft choice of the Lions in 1965. And George had written it straight. Plimpton and Dudley were the parents of twin daughters Laura Dudley Plimpton and Olivia Hartley Plimpton. 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. Jean Harlow, one of my favorites, is all over the map with this, sometimes sounding like a tough streetwalker, other times like a society matron, and, oddly, slipping in and out of both dialects in the same role, or even in one sentence. I have decided, he said, that I have got to jump from a plane. NEW YORK -- George Plimpton, the self-deprecating author of "Paper Lion" and other sporting adventures and a patron to Philip Roth, Jack Kerouac and countless other writers, has died. [2][43], An oral biography titled George, Being George was edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., and released on October 21, 2008. He was stationed primarily in Italy, where he worked as a tank driver. He had it all going! And so it seemed only fitting to commemorate his death with the form he made his own.Meghan ORourke. Mia had the perfect model! Could it be fairly said that Plimptom had it? I enjoy doing it. Thats it, George cried out. Its a shot from a YouTube video that itself is a fascinating time-capsule portrait of language change. Whee!! And I, of course, was looking them over, too. Peter Matthiessen took the magazine over from Humes and ousted him as editor, replacing him with Plimpton, using it as his cover for Matthiessen's CIA activities. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. . [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. Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. Ive always heard it referred to as a patrician accent. George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. We all just had our own regional accentor non accent, like the flat midwest speak. A Final Party at George Plimpton's Storied Apartment How do I know you're not George Plimpton? He was also an accomplished birdwatcher. George Plimpton - American Academy of Arts and Letters He had, for instance, a series of antiquated phrases and terms of affection. How widespread, numerically and geographically? Been there, done that | Books | The Guardian George Plimpton, Author And Editor, Is Dead at 76 **. Ken Auletta, author:Sometime after age 70, when his reflexes dulled, George took to the sidelines in the Artists and Writers softball game in Easthampton, N.Y. Each year his name was announced, and each year he was hailed by the crowd, who paid more attention to him than to the game. Realizing that I probably didnt know anyone, George took me around the room to introduce me to his guestsWilliam Styron, Norman Mailer, Robert Stone, and Gay Talese among them. At one point, there was a tremendous Wagnerian thunder and lighting storm. We worked at the Paris Review on the Rue Garanere for several years together. Showdown in the Pits. The book offers memories of Plimpton from among other writers, such as Norman Mailer, William Styron, Gay Talese and Gore Vidal, and was written with the cooperation of both his ex-wife and his widow. George Ames Plimpton (1927 - 2003) - Genealogy - geni family tree George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. The first minute is a cameo by Henry Ford II, who speaks in an utterly flat Midwest rather than Mid-Atlantic accent that no one would call elegant but that would sound perfectly natural in 2015. As an old film buff, I am used to this voice, though it figures unevenly in old movies. One of the magazine's most notable discoveries was author and screenplay writer Terry Southern, who was living in Paris at the time and formed a lifelong friendship with Plimpton, along with writer Alexander Trocchi and future classical and jazz pioneer David Amram. Several weeks later at a book party, he spotted two writers who had played in that game. 'Plimpton!' documentary looks at George Plimpton's lives Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. Vault. If you are in the big league, God help us all. Ive known him forsix months and I just now learned hes not English!. Louis Begley, novelist:Jim Atlas interviewed me for an Art of Fiction piece in the Paris Review, a feature of the magazine that George invented and brought to perfection. Yes he is gone. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. He got the personality totally wrong, too. (This is not to belittle Lowell Thomas, but to recognize the artifice that served him so well in his career). One thinks of the glorious character actress, Kathleen Freeman, as the voice coach Phoebe Dinsmore in Singing in the Rain: Round tones, Miss Lamont. In Woody Allens Radio Days, Mia Farrow has an impossibly thick Brooklyn accent until she takes voice lessons and becomes a successful radio purveyor of celebrity gossip. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". George Plimpton : Movies - CinemaOne I have a memory of George emerging out of the bush, with a terrible sunburn on his nose and face and legs; he was in safari gear, none of it hanging together very well, and over it all he was wearing a nice blue blazer. He wrote, "I suppose in a mild way there is a lesson to be learned for the young, or the young at heart the gumption to get out and try one's wings". *Originally posted by CBCD * She was also the great-granddaughter on her father's side of Oakes Ames (18041873), an industrialist and congressman who was implicated in the Crdit Mobilier railroad scandal of 1872; and Governor-General of New Orleans Benjamin Franklin Butler, an American lawyer and politician who represented Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives and later served as the 33rd Governor of Massachusetts. Norman Mailer, author:George had a rare gift. George Plimpton writer, publisher, amateur lion tamer died in 2003 after 50 years as the founding editor of The Paris Review. Plimpton revisited pro football in 1971,[18] this time joining the defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Colts and seeing action in an exhibition game against his previous team, the Lions. George Plimpton Biography - life, family, children, wife, school, son His final interview appeared in The New York Sports Express of October 2, 2003 by journalist Dave Hollander. 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. I thought they were terrific. Since all we have are recordings of those long-vanished voices, we do not and cannot know whether people spoke "this way" when they were not being recorded, although I would be willing to wager that they did not. We were both excitedId just come back from a weekend in Las Vegas, and hed just come back from celebrating the fortieth anniversary reunion of his Detroit Lions team at Ford Field, where the fans had given him a standing ovation, and he had raised his hatand for a moment we were no longer father and son, but just two big excited boys, each comparing adventures, and I could hear the pride in his voice, the happiness. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. Self-help author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a unique accent that, . Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. But dying in sleep: It was as if he was doing what he did when he tried out for all those other things as an amateurballooning, acting, boxing, performing at amateur night. It was always a surprise. Labov suspected that WWII had something to do about it. Butch, he says, because he always called me Butch. [citation needed], Plimpton's studies at Harvard were interrupted by military service from 1945 to 1948, during which time he served in Italy as an Army tank driver. I didnt know he was from the Larchmont area. That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went For more than five decades, author and journalist George Plimpton delved deeply into an array of high-profile and often physically grueling experiences, including professional baseball, boxing . **Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? **. I knew that between the time Id asked Plimpton to do the auction and the night itself, he had probably received five invitations for a better evening, but he would never have reneged. 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. It evoked a sense of Paris from a time when Paris was still the literary capital of the world, publishing literary giants who were considered obsceneHenry Miller, D.H. Lawrence. Ever. YESTERDAY IS NOT FAR AWAY. In most situations, he had the remarkable quality of making everyone he talked to feel at ease, at home, welcome, no matter who they were or what they didbut for whatever strange reason there wasnt this effortlessness with me, this warmth.