During our time in Paris, he had a famous little car, a dark blue Peugeotit was mine originally; I sold it to himand it had to be seen to be believed. [21] The prank was so successful that many readers believed the story, and the ensuing popularity of the joke resulted in Plimpton's writing an entire book on Finch. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. He was very understanding of what we did and how we did it. He was a Wasp (both of his parents came from old New England families, and had ancestors on the Mayflower). . Was it him? Read more. Whee!! My suspicion is that the shift might have begun in the switch away from the two paired styles in American movies, the classical acting of the British School and the rapid patter of popular American actors (Marx Brothers, Cagney, Powell and Loy, etc), and over to the Method Acting style of the Strasberg/Brando/Dean school. How to find out, and whether you should care. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. 'Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself' review 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. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. Here's a look inside the space, where the Paris Review editor hosted legendary parties. A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didnt, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brandos. In Praise of Plimpton - Newsweek [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. Read more in this thread (long). (Newsreels ran in movie theaters, of course: what better critique of the high newsreel style than the new movies that jarred against it?). Plimpton also appeared in the closing credits of the 2006 film Factory Girl. He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. Listen to Caruso singing or Bix Beiderbecke playing his cornet to hear how muffled was the recording of those sounds. I hope not. 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. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. I remember getting the news: It was my wife Madeleines birthday, Aug. 7. Except at parties. That was how it was in New York in those days, George just dragged it out a bit longer." Dudley Plimpton suspects the excess contributed to Plimpton's death in his sleep in 2003, at the age of 76. As such, it was popular in the theatre and other forms of elite culture in that region. This periodical has carried great weight in the literary world, but has never been financially strong; for its first half-century, it was allegedly largely financed by its publishers and by Plimpton. On one website, I read about a Choate alumn saying one can still hear the LL (see above thread) accent on campus. In all my years, Ive never heard this accent in person. George Plimpton : Movies - CinemaOne George Plimpton | Sport | The Guardian And the many candidates for the crown of Last American to Speak This Way. Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . Ive always heard it referred to as a patrician accent. He knew we were just as good as he was, but in a different field. It was always as if one were setting out with him on a special adventure. It's a Scottish accent that's been modified somewhat for a mainstream audience that tends to associate them with Groundskeeper Willie. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, was released. Isnt that what they call it. Plimpton, along with former decathlete Rafer Johnson and American football star Rosey Grier, was credited with helping wrestle Sirhan Sirhan to the floor when Kennedy was assassinated following his victory in the 1968 California Democratic primary at the former Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. Whom is it spoken bymerely the elite, old-money types? Starring George Plimpton as Himself" - is meant as a wink-wink to Plimpton's career as a "participatory journalist." As a writer for Sports . When George Plimpton Met the Best Bartender in Brooklyn The Cuban revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, had just marched on Havana and ousted the US-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista. George, Being George: George Plimpton's Life as Told, Admired, Deplored The clenched jaw tight-bite bit: the lockjaw dentiloquist. Manhattan DVD. Too old-fashioned. George Plimpton boxed with Archie Moore, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions, and played percussion for the New York Philharmonic. He was "George Plimpton"-editor, host . Share; Copied! My dad and I could not lose each other, but we could never quite find each other, either. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * It is the kind of study . YESTERDAY IS NOT FAR AWAY. 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). He died on September 26, 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. If he couldnt be taken quite seriously, that was fine with him (he took himself lightly, and relished being in on the joke). The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a . Was it me? 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. Is it in evidence among the Gen X set of Boston, or a passing phenomenon? People two or three deep stood looking out at the East River. 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. Family (1) Spouse Cambridge. 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. [40] They had two children: Medora Ames Plimpton and Taylor Ames Plimpton, who has published a memoir entitled Notes from the Night: A Life After Dark. Exeter Academy after an incident involving a I just heard that George Plimpton has died. Plimpton sparred for three rounds with boxing greats Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson while on assignment for Sports Illustrated. You heard it and it could only be him. He could have been a fight trainer, a fight manager! Robert Silvers, editor, the New York Review of Books:I met George on the Ile Saint-Louis in 1953 as I was leaving NATO headquarters. He would have a beer with you. I had made about five thousand egg and tuna sandwiches. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. Are you saying that the denizens of Larchmont sound like Plimpton did? I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. And so it seemed only fitting to commemorate his death with the form he made his own.Meghan ORourke. Even if it had nothing else going for itsomething very far from the truth Shadow Box by George Plimpton will forever remain a bastion of boxing literature because of the image it contains of the "Near Room," a place of dreadful foreboding which Muhammad Ali once described to the famed . 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. Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. 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. Is your language rhotic? Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. 'Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself' TV review - SFGATE After finishing at Harvard in 1950, he attended King's College, Cambridge, from 1950 to 1952, and graduated with third class honors in English. **. The opposing team: the Detroit Lions. I never thought that George slept. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. Being, And Appreciating, George Plimpton : NPR I live in Connecticut which is both the richest and poorest state in the union - I think we still are - and we have our fair share of extremely rich folk who sit around all day in their large victorians wearing rockport loafers, no sox, khaki pants and a polo-shirt with the collar up. 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! He was 76.. 3 people found this helpful . Whats the matter?, Well, he said. But looking back on it, its funny, too. But he could easily have said, Alice, I have enough trouble raising money for my magazine.. Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! 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. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? 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. Would you like Mike to run for you, George? the coach asked. His father co-founded the law firm Debevoise Plimpton. Ive known him forsix months and I just now learned hes not English!. Archie Moore, after all, had broken his nose. What stood in our way? He wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, Pi Eta, the Signet Society, and the Porcellian Club. 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. The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. Speaking of which, didnt the young Jackie Kennedy have something of this, along with a kinda dreamy, airy, Monroe-esque (though many degrees less contrived) essence to it? Buckley clearly flaunts it, probably to set himself apart from the hoi polloi of his contemporaries. 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. These experiences served as the basis of another football book, Mad Ducks and Bears, although much of the book dealt with the off-field escapades and observations of football friends Alex Karras ("Mad Duck") and John Gordy ("Bear"). "[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. Plimpton was an omnipresence for much of American cultural lifeboth high and lowin the last third of the 20th century. 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. Nevertheless, its a strange thing that one of the great voices of modern storytelling had limitations, restrictions, words, and phrases it was incapable of uttering, matters it could not express: death, love, tragedy. That was when Westbrook van Voorhis, the famous March of Time voice, did the intro narration of the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone. . But it didnt define him, much the way he refused to be defined by the stiff, upper-crust world from which hed come. They all sound just like George. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. It was a hot, sweltering day. **Get a life. In that vein, here is an oral biography of George Plimpton. After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. In no way do I recall Plimpton talking in a way that is typically associated with LLa style which, as I understand it, is associated with unclear pronunciation of most consonant cluster. Plimpton had a quasi-Brit patrician accent, which in no way corresponds with the official descriptions of LL that Ive read on the Net. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. **. And the role of Katharine Hepburn, whose Locust Valley Lockjaw accent was a cousin of announcer-speak: I was just discussing this not a week ago with a friend who has done voice work in film and television, and can adopt this accent in an instant to evoke that period, much to my amusement. Thurston Howell III had the Larchmont Lockjaw accent. I feel that his work on this and many other language-related matters should be far more widely known than it is. That tension between what was in his heart and what his voice allowed him to express is the basic tension of language we all face, only heightened. We were going to go looking for strange birds. Were taking off from Teterburo, N.J., at 4 a.m. tomorrow. In another cartoon in The New Yorker, a patient looks up at the masked surgeon about to operate on him and asks, "Wait a minute! **Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. It was as if he was trying out again. The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch. The Blacklisted Journalist,George Plimpton, 76 Death Claims Another of He said, You better stay here, and I did, for a while. He was an actor and writer, known for Good Will Hunting (1997), Nixon (1995) and Just Cause (1995). Paris Review - Writers, Quotes, Biography, Interviews, Artists Labov suspected that WWII had something to do about it. Plimpton has grown. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, the writer James Salter said of Plimpton that "he was writing in a genre that really doesn't permit greatness. George Plimpton - Biography - IMDb silk-stockinged New Englander - private schools (he was Now the interview is perfect!. 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. And I felt such love for my sweet old excited dad at that moment that I thought I would do him the favor of not telling him so, of leaving it unsaid. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. George also approved, I think, of the fact that I lost. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. Shadow Box: An Amateur In The Ring -- George Plimpton On Boxing Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. Shadow Box. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. I'm not an expert, but Bill Labov from UPenn is, and he is quoted thusly: According to William Labov, teaching of this pronunciation declined sharply after the end of World War II. This kept his magazine fresh for 50 years. He had it, as does/did William Buckley, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Julia Child. You heard it and it. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. 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. Book excerpt - George Plimpton on why Hole 16 at Cypress Point is one I received many notes like this one: The variety of English you are referring to has a name in linguistics: "Mid-Atlantic English". The enormously popular speech styles of Brando and Dean (and I could add Elvis Presley) clearly pushed vernacular style into a kind of mainstream acceptability, then desirability. No, my fathers voice was not an act, something chosen or practiced in front of mirrors: he came from a different world, where people talked differently, and about different things; where certain things were discussed, and certain things were notand his voice simply reflected this. Timothy Seldes, George Plimptons literary agent:Whenever George wanted me to do something for him, he would call me up and say, Hello, Old Tim. One day, I got a call, and heard his voice, and my heart sank. 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. Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature in your in-box. List of books by author George Plimpton - ThriftBooks I thoroughly enjoyed listening to these men speak. & FDR, George Plimpton, William F. Buckley, etc. But the average person never talked that way. Heres a sampling for today, with more planned in the days ahead. While I don't normally think of Lithgow as speaking with a Mid-Atlantic accent, he does a great job affecting one for the role. 2) The Role of Broadway and Hollywood, and the Shift from Jimmy Cagney to Marlon Brando. [32] When lit, the firework remained on the ground and exploded, blasting a crater 35 feet (11m) wide and 10 feet (3.0m) deep. Lionel on Twitter: "News children today have no concept of the Mid (He intended to face both line-ups, but tired badly and was relieved by Ralph Houk.) The journal, which had operated out of his home, moved downtown. What was our problem? 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. 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". He was so open to life and all its new and unexpected situations. In His League: Being George Plimpton | The Nation We were bound to play the roles of father and son, unable to simply be ourselves. And you are going to come with me. Vault. Almost twenty years ago, writing quirky sports pieces for the Village Voice, I decided to enter the world of championship arm wrestling.Like many young writers, I was inspired by the sports adventures of the gaunt but game George Plimpton, who had made a literary career out of placing himself in . He wanted to play his own part, but they wouldnt let him. Just listen to very early recordings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, back even before microphones, when singers had to yell directly into a large cone and over-enunciate so that their voices would be recorded into something intelligible on a spinning wax cylinder or disk. 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. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. **, In this case, Mid-Atlantic refers to speech in which the attributes of British English and American English meet halfway. 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 Hear Stories By George Plimpton. So it was that George Plimptons accent could not be imitated. Finally I did. Friends were almost always happy to see him because you knew he was bound to improve your mood. I do believe his accent was decidedly Swamp Yankee. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. 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. He had the bearing of Gen. MacArthur, but the soul of Charlie Chaplin. And he told everyone that night, and for many years after, that hed diverted me from a career of filling prescriptions. 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. [2][43], An oral biography titled George, Being George was edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., and released on October 21, 2008. A Final Party at George Plimpton's Storied Apartment [citation needed] Some of these events, such as his stint with the Colts, and an attempt at stand-up comedy, were presented on the ABC television network as a series of specials. He smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. She would not even say goodbye. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. By George Plimpton. #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. And being good at losing was one of Georges many gifts. George A. Plimpton Papers, 1634-1956 | Rare Book & Manuscript Library He was also known for "participatory journalism," including accounts of his active involvement in professional sporting events, acting in a Western, performing a comedy act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and playing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra[1] and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur. See Inside George Plimpton's Upper East Side Duplex He had a way of putting it all together, of understanding fighters in the ring; he was a good analyst of boxing. Shed wandered out to the balcony of a lonely Manhattan cocktail party, and was standing out there, smoking a cigarette and looking down mournfully at the street far below, when from behind her she heard a voice: I know a better way down.. With 'Paper Lion,' George Plimpton Played Pro Football So We Didn't Have To BTW, I cant imagine a presidential candidate today getting anywhere close to a nomination with FDRs accent, cigarette holder, and aristocratic bearing. He also served as editor of the Harvard Lampoon. Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? My fathers voice was like one of those supposedly extinct deep-sea creatures that wash up on the shores of Argentina every now and then. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? 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. Sidd Finch: A pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. - Sports Illustrated [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. The conservative thinker may have shared an accent with some other men of the same age and social class, but his mannerisms and gestures made him entirely uniqueand occasionally prone to. He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. I just knew it was going to be something terrible. 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. [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. Between 1945 and 1948, Plimpton was a soldier in the United States Army. (Why do I even bother?) He got the personality totally wrong, too. George Plimpton, who died last week at his town house, on East Seventy-second Street near the river, was a serious man of serious accomplishments who just happened to have more fun than a van. George Plimpton is beautifully connected. Here's how Geroge Plimpton and his team created a prodigious pitcher out of thin air. 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. Plimpton, George 1927-2003(George Ames Plimpton) Source for information on Plimpton, George 1927-2003: Concise Major 21st Century Writers dictionary. 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 had three siblings: Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Jr., Oakes Ames Plimpton,[15] and Sarah Gay Plimpton. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Suddenly, a New York cop remembered a long-ago murder. But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. Articles by George Plimpton - Sports Illustrated Vault | SI.com . George was not vainhe didnt care a whit about his image. The s. If you didnt know the man, you could, I think, be fooled by the voice.

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