Billy Collins, poet:Im one of these people who went from crashing Georges parties in the 70s to being invited in the 80s. Its a joke to say 500 of my closest friends, but that would have been true with George1,000 of his closest friends, actually. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? Plimpton sparred for three rounds with boxing greats Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson while on assignment for Sports Illustrated. There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. 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. 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. Mr . [45], Plimpton is the protagonist of the semi-fictional George Plimpton's Video Falconry, a 1983 ColecoVision game postulated by humorist John Hodgman and recreated by video game auteur Tom Fulp.[46]. The flipped prestige markers point here is fascinating. But he came right down to our level. 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. 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 called his computer the machine. At dinner, when offered seconds, he would often decline by saying, Thank you, no, Ive had a gracious plenty. He called my mom Puss (this was also the name of our fat, raccoon-striped cat, though he was Mr. Isnt that what they call it. He was so open to life and all its new and unexpected situations. 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. And the answer may explain partly why it has gone out of fashion: Jonathan Harris, the actor who played Dr. Smith on the television show "Lost in Space.". 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. Brown & Co. Re-issued George Plimpton Sports Books, 2016. Plimpton was married twice. Jean Stein became his co-editor. Friends were almost always happy to see him because you knew he was bound to improve your mood. Mr. Plimpton was born in Manhattan in 1927 and raised in Huntington, L.I. He hosted Disney Channel's Mouseterpiece Theater (a Masterpiece Theatre spoof which featured Disney cartoon shorts). You heard it and it could only be him. 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. 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. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. By strange coincidence, I actually became quite good friends with his (ex-)in-laws here in Manhattan. Actors Nathan Lane (from Jersey City, NJ) and Robin Williams (grew up in SF Bay area) often adopt this accent. Its a shot from a YouTube video that itself is a fascinating time-capsule portrait of language change. What was our problem? 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. 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. In 1966, George Plimpton's book Paper Lion, recounting his attempt to play football with the Detroit Lions, allowed millions of Americans to vicariously live out their childhood dream of playing in the NFL. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. Among other challenges for Sports Illustrated, he attempted to play top-level bridge, and spent some time as a high-wire circus performer. **. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. [citation needed], Outside the literary world, Plimpton was famous for competing in professional sporting events and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur. The Dudleys established the 36-acre (15ha) Highstead Arboretum in Redding, Connecticut. We worked at the Paris Review on the Rue Garanere for several years together. George, Being George: George Plimpton's Life as Told, Admired, Deplored Call me back.. (To read Part One, click here. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. What will you be mad about ten years after youre gone?). The Scout Is a Lonely Hunter. An Evening With George Plimpton - 2000 - YouTube People two or three deep stood looking out at the East River. The s. Kaltenborn was a famous mid . I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. **. In this campaign, Plimpton touted the superiority regarding the graphics and sounds of Intellivision video games over the Atari 2600.[24]. 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. 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. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . See below!) Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? 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. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". He was 76. They were born to Plimpton and his second wife, Sarah Dudley, 26 years younger than he, who is chairwoman of the East Harlem Tutorial Program, for which he was a trustee. Back in the 1960s and '70s, I would nightly sit alone in front of a TV set in a darkened room in the Midwest munching on potato chips watching late night talk shows out of New York CityJohnny Carson and Dick Cavett in particularand Plimpton was a regular on those shows. He was a great addition to the human race. But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. But it didnt define him, much the way he refused to be defined by the stiff, upper-crust world from which hed come. To me, Mid-Atlantic English is the nom juste for a related but distinct phenomenon (which is also mentioned in Wikipedia). He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. 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". The Left Bank really became East 72nd Street. Archie Moore, after all, had broken his nose. Plimpton embedded with the Detroit Lions for their three week training camp, an adventure which culminated with him playing quarterback in their annual intra-team preseason scrimmage. He joined us in Monte Carlo when we won the international [fireworks] competition. Besides, third is a very respectable showing! 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. So think of Margaret Anderson or Amanda and you can place George. Look out, Wilson! The risky pleasures of Plimpton's classic of participatory sportswriting, Paper Lion. Big, tall, good-looking guy, easy-going. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. One reader writes: I've wondered whether that "announcer English" was at least partly caused by poor loudspeakers and microphones. Sidd Finch was a fictional character George had created for a Sports Illustrated story, supposedly the greatest and fastest pitcher in the world. Is it in evidence among the Gen X set of Boston, or a passing phenomenon? **Thats a common name for such an accent. Vault. Never heard of this decidedly imprecise term. 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. I do believe his accent was decidedly Swamp Yankee. George Plimpton - Wikipedia "[44], In 2006, the musician Jonathan Coulton wrote the song entitled "A Talk with George", a part of his 'Thing a Week' series, in tribute to Plimpton's many adventures and approach to life. George Plimpton, journalist extraordinaire, trains with and then performs as Quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. George Plimpton was born on March 18, 1927 in New York City, New York, USA. It was then that the majority of audiences first heard Hollywood actors speaking predominantly in Mid-Atlantic English, British expatriates John Houseman, Henry Daniell, Anthony Hopkins, Camilla Luddington, and Angela Cartwright exemplified the accent, as did [a long list of North Americans, from Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly to Richard Chamberlain and Christopher Plummer]. A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. If you were making a speech in a large hall, or speaking on the radio, you needed to enunciate very clearly and use a lot of emphases to be sure your audience could understand what you were saying. Even Orson Welles on occasion. Too old-fashioned. Self-help author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a unique accent that, . He came from a family where such endearments were not expressed, and phone conversations were curt. He was one of her original supporters and had published an article about her work in The Paris Review. #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. . At Harvard, Plimpton was a classmate and close personal friend of Robert F. Kennedy. 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. 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. . [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. Angelo Dundee, trainer for Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard:George was such a great guy. Whom is it spoken bymerely the elite, old-money types? On Saturday Night Live, even the great impersonator Dana Carvey couldnt get it quite right. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. Eerily enough, one of the messages on my answering machine was from George, with that distinctive accent of his: Hallo, its George Plimpton. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. [26] He also appeared in an episode of the NBC sitcom Wings. And his apartment, with those windows that looked out onto the East River, became a famous landmark in NYC. They all gathered there. A lifelong New Yorker, he never tasted a bagel or an olive, and he never chewed a stick of gum. They all sound just like George. rejoiced in the name of Euphemia van Renssalaer Wyatt. Im having a harder time coming up with clear examples from the other side of the Atlantic, but Ive heard Alfred Molina (Londoner), and Catherine Zeta-Jones (Welsh) put on a Mid-Atlantic accent from time to time.. George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little In all my years, Ive never heard this accent in person. Ive always heard it referred to as a patrician accent. Everything he did was like this, just a bit odd. George Plimpton Net Worth Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. 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. It was as if he was trying out again. The Detroit Lions let a reporter play QB. Can you guess how it went 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. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. Writing Wednesdays: Hemingway on Fiction, Part Two - Steven Pressfield He was one of her original supporters and had published an article about her work in The Paris Review. Typical of George to laugh about something others saw as a defining traithe never took himself all that seriously. Of course, my dad had tried out for the role of himself and not gotten it, though he would go on to have a steady film career playing one version or another of a striking white-haired figure with a distinguished, chivalrous voice in bit roles in some twenty or so movies, including Reds and Good Will Hunting. Fortunately, in the upcoming film Plimpton! The limited frequency response of the recording technology of the late 19th and early 20th centuries has left us with only a pale, and sometimes caricatural image of the original sound. 5 Things You Didn't Know About George Plimpton | Mental Floss He appeared in the PBS American Masters documentary on Andy Warhol. 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. A few days after, I went to a Paris Review party and showed off my damaged nose and two black eyes to George. Announcer-Speak: The Video Highlights Reel - The Atlantic Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. Book excerpt - George Plimpton on why Hole 16 at Cypress Point is one If you say, I parked my car in Harvard Yard, you are being rhotic. His dish was Spaghetti Bolognese. I never thought that George slept. He smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. George Plimpton: what kind of accent? "Hut-Two-Three . . Ugh" A writer proves to be a Paper Lion at QB Sidd Finch: A pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. - Sports Illustrated I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. 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. 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. 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. Ill pick you up., I had a hard time sleeping that night, as you might imagine. When I spoke to him my voice went up an octave and took on his formal tone and became careful and unnatural; his voice became like his fathersstern, authoritative, disciplinarianwhen his father was the last person in the universe he wanted to be. May a diseased yak squat in your hot tub. 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. (This is not to belittle Lowell Thomas, but to recognize the artifice that served him so well in his career). His response was "no, just affected.". Talking about sports with Georgeor, even better, reading George about sportswas more fun than sports themselves. This kept his magazine fresh for 50 years. 1. He had a small role in the Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting,[22] playing a psychologist. 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. How widespread, numerically and geographically? These interviews are a collaborative effort, and, I believe, a fascinating contribution to literary history. In the April 1, 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated, Plimpton pulled off a widely reported April Fools' Day prank. Hes just trying it out and will come back and write a book about his experiences. Another entertainment-related explanation for the shift, right about the time of the Eisenhower-Kennedy transition: The plumby announcer voice that hovers over the Atlantic midway between the Eastern Seaboard and England was mortally wounded in 1959. That was when Westbrook van Voorhis, the famous March of Time voice, did the intro narration of the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone. Cambridge. As such, it was popular in the theatre and other forms of elite culture in that region. Plimpton was .the public face of the New York intellectual: tweedy, eclectic and with a plummy accent he himself described as "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan." . Of course, I think he enjoyed the odd persona his voice and mannerisms conferred on him. Actually, thats not far off from how my mom felt when she first met him. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. Hear Stories By George Plimpton. [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. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. Rose Styron, wife of William Styron and former Paris Review editor:My husband Bill was with George when he started the Paris Review. At the time, he was getting ready to pitch for the Yankees,and we would throw pitches across 72nd Street in preparation. His experience was captured in the book Out of My League. 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. Vault. The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. 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. It was as if some old gentlemans code prohibited us from interacting as human beings. 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). The title of the PBS documentary - "Plimpton! Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. He is also credited with saving, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Plimpton! Is your language rhotic? Its strange to think, but he would have been eighty-five this year: fourteen years older than my mom, fifty years older than me. I thought Id died and gone to Olympus. He was respected by all. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. 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. $ 3.99 - $ 27.44. 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. How to find out, and whether you should care. [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. He also served as editor of the Harvard Lampoon. Vault. There youd be, talking with her on the phone, and shed say, Well, tell him I called, and youd say, O.K., Grandma, good to talk to you, I Grandma?. *Originally posted by bordelond * Plimpton, George 1927-2003 | Encyclopedia.com George Plimpton boxed with Archie Moore, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions, and played percussion for the New York Philharmonic. A reader writes: Ive wondered about this myself when I see old Jimmy Cagney moviesand the date of his last starring role might give us a hint towards the date range of the change: "One, Two, Three" in 1961. 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. And so it seemed only fitting to commemorate his death with the form he made his own.Meghan ORourke. 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. [citation needed]. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. He was stationed primarily in Italy, where he worked as a tank driver. It was always a surprise. 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. George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a journalist and the first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review. In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. George Plimpton and Papa in Cuba - Guernica 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. 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? He liked the fact that I had broken my nose in defeat. I think it was an affectation people adopted because they thought it made them sound much more intelligent! So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. 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. Plimpton, George 1927-2003(George Ames Plimpton) Source for information on Plimpton, George 1927-2003: Concise Major 21st Century Writers dictionary. Plimpton's remarkable life is showcased in a documentary that is. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. Losing, he knew, always makes a better story than winning. These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. When George Plimpton Met the Best Bartender in Brooklyn When he found a story to be short of the mark, he rejected it no matter who the author wasan old friend, a Pulitzer winner, an unknown. Kim Noble, one of the announcers on the NPR affiliate in Kansas City, KCUR, speaks with a very affected Connecticut Lockjaw accent. Lionel on Twitter: "News children today have no concept of the Mid Plimpton was an optimist, a teller of amusing and amazing stories. Between 2000 and 2003, Plimpton wrote the libretto to a new opera, Animal Tales, commissioned by Family Opera Initiative, with music by Kitty Brazelton directed by Grethe Barrett Holby. George Plimpton. You're going to play for us-making some sort of big comeback." "That's right," Plimpton replied in his patrician accent. * Well, perhaps it's more accurate to say that the book provided entertaining confirmation to millions of people that they -- like the author . Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. 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. George Plimpton. **Mid-Atlantic. Where are you?, Im at dinner with my wife, I said. He was equally at home on a bicycle or getting out of a limousine with a Saudi Arabian prince. He did these jobs, and many others, as an amateur.. George Plimpton: Writer, Quarterback, Pitcher, Boxer, Triangle Player Why couldnt we have a good time, too? He once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. Thats a common name for such an accent. . George Plimpton is beautifully connected. My Father's Voice | The New Yorker 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. For his grandfather, the publisher and philanthropist, see, Calvin Gay Plimpton and Priscilla G. Lewis were the parents of, He was widely reviled for years after the war by Southern whites, who gave him the nickname "Beast Butler." He knew we were just as good as he was, but in a different field. 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! ESPN.com: GEN - George Plimpton dies Plimpton played quarterback for the Detroit Lions and triangle for the New York Philharmonic, an. I think he came down [to the shooting of Paper Lion in] Florida once. The Blacklisted Journalist,George Plimpton, 76 Death Claims Another of [2][43], An oral biography titled George, Being George was edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., and released on October 21, 2008. After finishing at Harvard in 1950, he attended King's College, Cambridge, from 1950 to 1952, and graduated with third class honors in English.
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