Vault. Several weeks later at a book party, he spotted two writers who had played in that game. Harvard (where he edited the Lampoon), Kings College, To me, it meant admission to this little exclusive club at the Paris Review. LL is typified, I think, but an almost clenching of the teeth while talking, producing a mushy sound, if you will. The young Paris Review editor and other New York literary figures arrived during a period marked by hope for a democratic Cuba. It was a hot, sweltering day. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. The journal, which had operated out of his home, moved downtown. The clipped, non-rhotic English accents of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley Jr. were vestigial examples. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. We were going to go looking for strange birds. 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. [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. He was 76.. 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. December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. She was having lunch at P. J. Clarkes with the publisher Bennet Cerf and his son Chris, and my dad swooped over to the table (he was wearing a cape) and introduced himself in that ridiculously gallant voice: Bennet, Chris, what a pleasant surprise! 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. Self-help author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a unique accent that, . Billy Collins, poet:Im one of these people who went from crashing Georges parties in the 70s to being invited in the 80s. It was always a surprise. George Plimpton Dec 1, 2014 In which the venturous author, the rawest rookie pro football has ever known, recounts all the excruciating details of what happened when he called five plays as. How do I know you're not George Plimpton? "[27], Plimpton was a member of the cast of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (200102). Cambridge. 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. And here for the full interview). And George had written it straight. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. **Thats a common name for such an accent. George also approved, I think, of the fact that I lost. 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. **. Plimpton entered Harvard as a member of the Class of 1948, but did not graduate until 1950 due to intervening military service. $ 9.19 - $ 32.19. *Originally posted by bordelond * Middle class? Sign up for the Books & Fiction newsletter. 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. George Plimpton. Vault. Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. rejoiced in the name of Euphemia van Renssalaer Wyatt. [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. Premiring on June 21st at the SilverDocs festival, in Washington, D.C., and directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, the film contains interviews with notable friends and peers like Hugh Hefner, Peter Matthiessen, and James Lipton, though the majority of this remarkable account is narrated by none other than George Plimpton. Ive rarely heard this accent in real life but its often used by actors doing a stereotype character based on other actors impersonations! Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? 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. 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. 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. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. When he was on the scene, everything was a big happeningan event. It was as if he was trying out again. In 1992, Plimpton married Sarah Whitehead Dudley, a graduate of Columbia University and a freelance writer. Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. 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. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. Isnt that what they call it. Sidd Finch was a fictional character George had created for a Sports Illustrated story, supposedly the greatest and fastest pitcher in the world. But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. Were taking off from Teterburo, N.J., at 4 a.m. tomorrow. George Plimpton Wiki: Salary, Married, Wedding, Spouse, Family . NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. Besides, third is a very respectable showing! 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. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. Even in the UK we sometimes subtitle various Scots dialects on the news and TV and whatnot, so it makes sense that he wouldn't go full Dundee for the show. As such, it was popular in the theatre and other forms of elite culture in that region. [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. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. I had made about five thousand egg and tuna sandwiches. I think it was an affectation people adopted because they thought it made them sound much more intelligent! Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? [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. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. **Mid-Atlantic. Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. Eerily enough, one of the messages on my answering machine was from George, with that distinctive accent of his: Hallo, its George Plimpton. As a result, this American version of a posh accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. 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. Call me back.. Ive known him forsix months and I just now learned hes not English!. Hed have that and a scotch on the rocks, his favorite drink. Peter Matthiesen, author, co-founder of the Paris Review:I was in Liberia, of all places, and George met me in Monrovia. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. [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. 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. After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. (And, OK, Im not a linguist, but Im married to one!) 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. Isnt that what they call it. his prose, and his down east, cultivated accent, although perhaps a bit pretentious, will remain with me as I reread one of my favorite books. [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. If he couldnt be taken quite seriously, that was fine with him (he took himself lightly, and relished being in on the joke). George Plimpton was a literary man about town who did it all, from co-founding The Paris . Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. silk-stockinged New Englander - private schools (he was So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. [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. George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little With the help of the New York Mets organization and several Mets players, Plimpton wrote a convincing account of a new unknown pitcher in the Mets spring training camp named Siddhartha Finch, who threw a baseball over 160mph, wore a heavy boot on one foot, and was a practicing Buddhist with a largely unknown background. The name George Plimpton is synonymous with a kind of all-in participatory journalism. [3], He was the son of Francis T. P. Plimpton[4] and the grandson of Frances Taylor Pearsons and George Arthur Plimpton. Would you like Mike to run for you, George? the coach asked. His friendships testified to what an eclectic man he was. H.V. I think he came down [to the shooting of Paper Lion in] Florida once. Shootout at Rio Lobo", "The Smaller the Ball, the Better the Book: A Game Theory of Literature", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Plimpton&oldid=1137974740, This page was last edited on 7 February 2023, at 10:19. Wed gone to dinner and the maitre d comes over and says, Felix, I got a call for you from Monaco., I pick up the phone, and I hear Georges Bostonian accent. George Plimpton, journalist extraordinaire, trains with and then performs as Quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. It was a great partyraucous and long. That was the last party for a while., I just got back from a road trip from Michigan. Revolutionary musket, a stairwell and a housemaster), 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. If you say, I parked my car in Harvard Yard, you are being rhotic. Final Twist of the Drama. 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. Update: This post is #2 in the announcer-speak series. 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. BTW, I cant imagine a presidential candidate today getting anywhere close to a nomination with FDRs accent, cigarette holder, and aristocratic bearing. Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. And you are going to come with me. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. [13], Plimpton's son described him as a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant and wrote that both of Plimpton's parents were descended from Mayflower passengers.[14]. In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. 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. Is your language rhotic? 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.. So we got together and, after some preliminaries, he popped the question that he was really there to ask. 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. tweedy demeanor and Oxford accent. . 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. Shoot! hed hiss, when he was mad. He also appeared in a featurette about Edie Sedgwick found on the Ciao! In 2013, the documentary Plimpton! She would not even say goodbye. He was 76. 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. The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch. I remember the Lowell Thomas documentary films of the 50s where Mr. Thomas' mellifluous tones and distinct radio-style pronunciation gave him a respectability that a similar huckster could hardly hope to replicate today by the mere application of such an artifice. He could have been a fight trainer, a fight manager! Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. [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]. Plimpton himself described it as a "New England cosmopolitan accent"[36] or "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan" accent. He very much approved. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. After several problems with transporting and preparing the fireworks, Plimpton and Grucci became the first competitors from the United States to win the event. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? The Left Bank really became East 72nd Street. The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. I never thought that George slept. 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. Talking about sports with Georgeor, even better, reading George about sportswas more fun than sports themselves. In early 1959, George Plimpton was preparing to watch an execution in Cuba. And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you? 3: Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. **Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? (Why do I even bother?) 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. Firstly, then-managing director of SI, Mark Mulvoy, gave Plimpton the liberty to create a hoax.Secondly, SI photographer Lane Stewart recruited his friend, Joe Berton to play the part of Sidd Finch. That made him a great storyteller. 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! 3 people found this helpful . Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. Was this sheer affectation? Few could give a toast or tell a story with equal humor. 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. Along with all the other things he does, George is an editor of the Paris Review, a literary quarterly published by the Aga Khan's uncle, Sadrudin, and his apartment is overstuffed with the comforts and legends of its use as a literary salon. This speech pattern might be common among US expatriates in the UK, of which Grossman would seem to represent just the most ostentatious example. A few days after, I went to a Paris Review party and showed off my damaged nose and two black eyes to George. Plimpton didnt die. . But he came right down to our level. He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. He joined us in Monte Carlo when we won the international [fireworks] competition. Even Orson Welles on occasion. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. Peter even came with us on our honeymoon in Ravello, though George didnt. Well, perhaps it's more accurate to say that the book provided entertaining confirmation to millions of people that they -- like the author . Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. He was immensely generous in every waygenerous about sharing the work and about giving one a chance to edit things. You heard it and it could only be him. 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. The presentation was called Freedom of the American Road and was made 60 years ago, in 1955, as part of the campaign to build support for the new Interstate Highway system. The Sidd Finch story was accompanied by a series of photos which managed to convince even the eagle-eyed fans . *Originally posted by Phlosphr * Manhattan DVD. Future Poet Laureate Donald Hall, who had met Plimpton at Exeter, was Poetry Editor. But he has never employed that voice professionally, and certainly does not speak that way in real life. Share; Copied! *Originally posted by CBCD * Thats a common name for such an accent. [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. [citation needed], In 1963, Plimpton attended preseason training with the Detroit Lions of the National Football League as a backup quarterback, and he ran a few plays in an intrasquad scrimmage. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". This was his habit. Plimpton scowled, and said he was perfectly capable of running for himself. (To read Part One, click here. He would have a beer with you. 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 . May a diseased yak squat in your hot tub. 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. Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. 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. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, which documents his life, adventures, and work as participatory journalist and editor of the Paris Review, my dad will be playing himself one more time.
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