The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. Few could give a toast or tell a story with equal humor. Plimpton also appeared in the closing credits of the 2006 film Factory Girl. And so it seemed only fitting to commemorate his death with the form he made his own.Meghan ORourke. He was 76. H.V. At least, not to me, nor even to my sister, a fact she mentions in the movie. NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. BTW, I cant imagine a presidential candidate today getting anywhere close to a nomination with FDRs accent, cigarette holder, and aristocratic bearing. **Get a life. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. 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. He said, You better stay here, and I did, for a while. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . It was scary, because he was never mad, and to see this normally benevolent, white-haired figure of civility fill with pink steam, to hear this gentle man, who loved nothing more than to tell lighthearted stories and laugh, suddenly shout-whisper Dammit at some injustice on the other end of the telephone was unsettling. 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. It was a hot, sweltering day. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? Plimpton scowled, and said he was perfectly capable of running for himself. 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. Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 429-432. Its our anniversary. rejoiced in the name of Euphemia van Renssalaer Wyatt. Mid-Atlantic. Billy Collins, poet:Im one of these people who went from crashing Georges parties in the 70s to being invited in the 80s. The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. I never thought that George slept. 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. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. 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. [11], His mother was Pauline Ames,[12] the daughter of botanist Oakes Ames (1874-1950) and artist Blanche Ames. There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. [3], He was the son of Francis T. P. Plimpton[4] and the grandson of Frances Taylor Pearsons and George Arthur Plimpton. I remember getting the news: It was my wife Madeleines birthday, Aug. 7. Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many. Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the lasta figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. It was so violent that it brought a lot of people to the windows. [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. George was the one who read my name out to the commissioner. As Poling puts it, George was known as an unrivaled raconteur and, in making a film of his life story, it only seemed natural to allow him to tell it.. 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. 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 They spoke in this manner, and it seemed perfectly natural, evocative of a background spent among the gentry of the northeast. Kaltenborn was a famous mid . A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didnt, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brandos. George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003. Big, tall, good-looking guy, easy-going. 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. [2][43], An oral biography titled George, Being George was edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., and released on October 21, 2008. Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? Hed have that and a scotch on the rocks, his favorite drink. Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. On Saturday Night Live, even the great impersonator Dana Carvey couldnt get it quite right. Harvard (where he edited the Lampoon), Kings College, He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. But looking back on it, its funny, too. Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. Archie Moore, after all, had broken his nose. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. He was 76.. **Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. Plimpton was associated with the literary magazine in Paris, Merlin, which folded because the State Department withdrew its support.[why?] 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. For it was George Plimpton the writer, not the editor nor the celebrity, who was honored here . Why couldnt we have a good time, too? And they founded this thing called the Paris Review and published poetry and short story writers and did interviews. Shoot! hed hiss, when he was mad. His experience was captured in the book Out of My League. My dad and I could not lose each other, but we could never quite find each other, either. . With the evolution of talkies in the late 1920s, voice was first heard in motion pictures. 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. 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. [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. 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. I think he came down [to the shooting of Paper Lion in] Florida once. 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. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. Whats the matter?, Well, he said. 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 intended to face both line-ups, but tired badly and was relieved by Ralph Houk.) Labov suspected that WWII had something to do about it. He had been in the war, if briefly (stationed in Italy towards the end of it, hed missed action, but met the Pope, an early sign of the great good fortuneone of his favorite phrasesthat marked his life). Typical of George to laugh about something others saw as a defining traithe never took himself all that seriously. *Originally posted by j.c. * With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. Mr . So, pairing the Cagney hint with the Kennedy Inaugural, could we date the changeover to 1961? Here are five things you may not have known about him. [41] She is the daughter of James Chittenden Dudley,[42] a managing partner of Manhattan-based investment firm Dudley and Company, and geologist Elisabeth Claypool. He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. We all just had our own regional accentor non accent, like the flat midwest speak. He was respected by all. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. 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. 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! I think that perhaps Harris' portrayal of Dr. Smith made the accent so identified with cowardly buffoonery that no one in the baby boom generation and later would want to use the accent as anything other than a joke. Yes indeed, George Plimpton is a man for all seasons. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. 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. He was a great addition to the human race. Thats where there was that cross-section you once found in Parisof literary people, of people who were illiterate, of people down on their luck, and people of status. #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. Share; Copied! Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. George also approved, I think, of the fact that I lost. Plimpton was married twice. That is, until I saw the documentarythe assassination of his dear friend Bobby Kennedy. "[27], Plimpton was a member of the cast of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (200102). This speech pattern might be common among US expatriates in the UK, of which Grossman would seem to represent just the most ostentatious example. . Plimpton was .the public face of the New York intellectual: tweedy, eclectic and with a plummy accent he himself described as "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan." . He had a way of putting it all together, of understanding fighters in the ring; he was a good analyst of boxing. Hes just trying it out and will come back and write a book about his experiences. [47][48] At the time, he was getting ready to pitch for the Yankees,and we would throw pitches across 72nd Street in preparation. It was always a surprise. It was as if some old gentlemans code prohibited us from interacting as human beings. George Plimpton's duplex apartment on the Upper East Side hit the market for $5.495 million on April 18. See below!) What was our problem? After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. "[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. I had George tell him the story of Sidd Finch. This brings us back to the why things changed question. The film used archival audio and video of Plimpton lecturing and reading to create a posthumous narration. 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. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, was released. Well have a lot more to say about Buckley and Vidal for now the leaders in the race for Last American to Talk This Way (with George Plimpton in third)in the next installment. So think of Margaret Anderson or Amanda and you can place George. Suddenly, a New York cop remembered a long-ago murder. George Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. George Plimpton was an upper-class guy with a patrician accent who partied his way through life . He modestly shrugged off the compliment, but his bright smile betrayed his pleasureand ours. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. 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. 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?. When he was on the scene, everything was a big happeningan event. He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Ad Choices. (The filmmakers assembled his voice-over from recorded speeches and other archival footage.) I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. After finishing at Harvard in 1950, he attended King's College, Cambridge, from 1950 to 1952, and graduated with third class honors in English. Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. 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 died on September 26, 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. Researcher and writer Samuel Arbesman filed with NASA to name an asteroid after Plimpton; NASA issued the certificate 7932 Plimpton in 2009. 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. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. My dad could never say what he feltnot reallyand neither can any of us. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. Mr. Plimpton was born in Manhattan in 1927 and raised in Huntington, L.I. That made him a great storyteller. We had the book party for my selected poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room, at Georges house on Sept 10, 2001. 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. All rights reserved. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. In early 1959, George Plimpton was preparing to watch an execution in Cuba. I didnt know he was from the Larchmont area. It was so tiny that if you saw him in it, you couldnt believe hed be able to get himself out of it. This was his habit. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. The title of the PBS documentary - "Plimpton! I received many notes like this one: The variety of English you are referring to has a name in linguistics: "Mid-Atlantic English". After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. But the gentleman amateur - a Harvard. 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 Orson Welles notably spoke in a mid-Atlantic accent in the 1941 film Citizen Kane, as did many of his co-stars, such as Joseph Cotten. He had it all going! Vault. (To read Part One, click here. . Please educate me. 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. [17], In 1953, Plimpton joined the influential literary journal The Paris Review, founded by Peter Matthiessen, Thomas H. Guinzburg, and Harold L. "Doc" Humes, becoming its first editor in chief. If you are in the big league, God help us all. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. I thought Id died and gone to Olympus. 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. She is the product of a line of the original Dutch settlers of New York and grew up in Tuxedo Park and the Gramercy Park area of Manhattan, very exclusive. In the April 1, 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated, Plimpton pulled off a widely reported April Fools' Day prank. Lewis Lapham, editor, Harpers Magazine:Georges immense enthusiasm was his primary characteristic. Read more in this thread (long). You can. 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 . Isnt that what they call it. The s. But the average person never talked that way. And George had written it straight. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. He did these jobs, and many others, as an amateur.. Cambridge. He thought Castro might come. Manhattan DVD. So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. 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. Well, perhaps it's more accurate to say that the book provided entertaining confirmation to millions of people that they -- like the author . He got the personality totally wrong, too. Over the years, we held a lot of dinner parties for him, and he brought a lot of people inmany, many writers. Of course, I think he enjoyed the odd persona his voice and mannerisms conferred on him. Friends were almost always happy to see him because you knew he was bound to improve your mood. 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? The funny thing about Harris was that he did not start out with that accent - as I suspect George Gershwin did not. Final Twist of the Drama. Plimpton's remarkable life is showcased in a documentary that is. Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . A few days after, I went to a Paris Review party and showed off my damaged nose and two black eyes to George. The last time I heard my fathers voice, it was over the telephone. In 1994, Plimpton appeared several times in the Ken Burns series Baseball, in which he shared some personal baseball experiences as well as other memorable events throughout the history of baseball.[20]. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. Havent heard that term in years. 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.