Shoot! hed hiss, when he was mad. The Dudleys established the 36-acre (15ha) Highstead Arboretum in Redding, Connecticut. Back to Plimpton I dont remember the LL affect at all. It was so violent that it brought a lot of people to the windows. Its our anniversary. It's a Scottish accent that's been modified somewhat for a mainstream audience that tends to associate them with Groundskeeper Willie. In his July 1936 obituary, the New York Times described George Arthur Plimpton (13 July 1855-1 July 1936) as an "internationally known publisher and collector, college trustee and philanthropist." As the materials in the George A. Plimpton Papers testify, those four areas of activity dominated Plimpton's public and private lives. 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. Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! 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. Now you know! He died on September 26, 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. Brown & Co. Re-issued George Plimpton Sports Books, 2016. Sidd Finch was a fictional character George had created for a Sports Illustrated story, supposedly the greatest and fastest pitcher in the world. Plimpton was an optimist, a teller of amusing and amazing stories. And being good at losing was one of Georges many gifts. He wanted to play his own part, but they wouldnt let him. (He intended to face both line-ups, but tired badly and was relieved by Ralph Houk.) Actually, thats not far off from how my mom felt when she first met him. George Plimpton. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. He saw athletes as heroes he. 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. By George Plimpton. It was as if he was trying out again. 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.. That made him a great storyteller. With 'Paper Lion,' George Plimpton Played Pro Football So We Didn't Have To 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. The risky pleasures of Plimpton's classic of participatory sportswriting, Paper Lion. Whee!! In His League: Being George Plimpton | The Nation Why couldnt we have a good time, too? And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you? The last time I heard my fathers voice, it was over the telephone. That is, until I saw the documentarythe assassination of his dear friend Bobby Kennedy. 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 . The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch. He loved the ones that made a lot of noise and racket and excitement. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. You're going to play for us-making some sort of big comeback." "That's right," Plimpton replied in his patrician accent. 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. The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. The opposing team: the Detroit Lions. Ever. And the many candidates for the crown of Last American to Speak This Way. It was as if some old gentlemans code prohibited us from interacting as human beings. [19] Another sports book, Open Net, saw him train as an ice hockey goalie with the Boston Bruins, even playing part of a National Hockey League preseason game. These interviews are a collaborative effort, and, I believe, a fascinating contribution to literary history. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. $ 3.99 - $ 27.44. Just when Jim and I thought we had finished, and we had been working a long time, George, who loved the result of our efforts, decided he wanted to talk to me as well. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. There was one more matter I never heard my dad discuss. 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. After it was published, all of the baseball people were trying to get in touch with Sidd, but he didnt existit was an April Fools joke! 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. Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? Share; Copied! 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. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. At one point, there was a tremendous Wagnerian thunder and lighting storm. 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. **. Its a shot from a YouTube video that itself is a fascinating time-capsule portrait of language change. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. *Originally posted by j.c. * He once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. After St. Bernard's School, Plimpton attended Phillips Exeter Academy (from which he was expelled just shy of graduation), and Daytona Beach High School, where he received his high school diploma,[16] before entering Harvard College in July 1944. I feel that his work on this and many other language-related matters should be far more widely known than it is. 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. And you are going to come with me. Talking about sports with Georgeor, even better, reading George about sportswas more fun than sports themselves. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. All rights reserved. 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. A similar phenomenon can be noted in the use, well into the 1980s, of the recorded sound of teletype machines in the background of newscasts, a sound still faintly evoked by the bip-bip-bip patterns of music that often introduces news broadcasts, even though teletype machines are long gone The subconscious association of this pattern of sound with news is fading fast with the passing of the years and will undoubtedly disappear entirely in the coming decade as surely as the over-enunciated style of radio speech of the 30s disappeared within a generation of its no longer being needed. [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]. There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. He was also an accomplished birdwatcher. The Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour. Do, Write George Plimpton Has Made A Career Throwing Himself Into 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. George Plimpton The Movie Database (TMDB) I think the term Old Money or patrician pretty much says it. 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! On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. Havent heard that term in years. Spoke in a mid-Atlantic accent, reflecting a privileged Upper East Side (in New York City) upbringing. He looked for ways in which he could make himself a ridiculous figure, and not only on the football field, but in all walks of life. The Wikipedia entry is indeed delightful. Thats a common name for such an accent. He got the personality totally wrong, too. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? 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. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. He thought Castro might come. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. 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. And they founded this thing called the Paris Review and published poetry and short story writers and did interviews. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. It was always as if one were setting out with him on a special adventure. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. He had the bearing of Gen. MacArthur, but the soul of Charlie Chaplin. Vault. Whom is it spoken bymerely the elite, old-money types? Starring George Plimpton as Himself, "George Plimpton, Urbane and Witty Writer, Dies at 76", "Obituary: Frances T. P. Plimpton, 82, Dies", "Obituary: Pauline A. Plimpton, 93, Author Of Works on Famed Relatives", "Milton at the Midpoint of the Last Century: One Collection of Memories", "How Failing at Exeter made a Success of George Plimpton", "Legendary Humorist, Poonster Dies at 76 | News | The Harvard Crimson", "George Plimpton, Paris Review Founder, Pitches 1980s Video Games for the Mattel Intellivision", "The Simpsons: I'm Spelling As Fast As I Can", "George Plimpton, Author And Editor, Is Dead at 76", "Professor Muhammed Ali Delivers Lecture; Poems and Parables Fill Talk on Friendship | News | The Harvard Crimson", "George Plimpton | Full Film | American Masters | PBS", "George Plimpton, Still Burning His Punk at Both Ends, Finds a Sport in Which He Can Sparkle", "George Plimpton: The Professional Amateur", "Some Really Dangerous Jobs For George Plimpton", "Being, And Appreciating, George Plimpton", "Obituary: Willard Espy, Who Delighted In Wordplay, Is Dead at 88", "George Plimpton, Writer and editor, Is Wed to Sarah W. Dudley, a Writer", "Obituary: James C. Dudley, 77, Investment Adviser", "Naming the Sky: The true story of one man's quest to give George Plimpton a permanent presence in orbit", "DEAD END-DRIVE-IN | Plimpton! Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. Quite sad, as he just had a daughter not many years back. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, was released. In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. And his apartment, with those windows that looked out onto the East River, became a famous landmark in NYC. An Evening With George Plimpton - 2000 - YouTube From what other people had told me, I knew a little bit about itthat my father (and mother) had been right by Bobbys side in California when he was shot, that my father had tackled Sirhan Sirhan to the ground, and wrestled the gun from his handbut not a word of it came from my dad himself. 3 people found this helpful . [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. Return of the Big Bopper. In that vein, here is an oral biography of George Plimpton. 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. As a result, this American version of a posh accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. He was one of her original supporters and had published an article about her work in The Paris Review. But he could easily have said, Alice, I have enough trouble raising money for my magazine.. If you are in the big league, God help us all. . The Sidd Finch story was accompanied by a series of photos which managed to convince even the eagle-eyed fans . Is your language rhotic? Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . He came from a family where such endearments were not expressed, and phone conversations were curt. And I, of course, was looking them over, too. George Plimpton: what kind of accent? - Straight Dope Message Board This speech pattern might be common among US expatriates in the UK, of which Grossman would seem to represent just the most ostentatious example. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. rejoiced in the name of Euphemia van Renssalaer Wyatt. 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. But he has never employed that voice professionally, and certainly does not speak that way in real life. [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. 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. Kaltenborn was a famous mid . She would not even say goodbye. He joined us in Monte Carlo when we won the international [fireworks] competition. All the good guys have got to go. 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. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. Were taking off from Teterburo, N.J., at 4 a.m. tomorrow. It was a great partyraucous and long. Shadow Box. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Butch, he says, because he always called me Butch. 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? She was also the great-granddaughter on her father's side of Oakes Ames (18041873), an industrialist and congressman who was implicated in the Crdit Mobilier railroad scandal of 1872; and Governor-General of New Orleans Benjamin Franklin Butler, an American lawyer and politician who represented Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives and later served as the 33rd Governor of Massachusetts. 'Plimpton!' documentary looks at George Plimpton's lives At the time, he was getting ready to pitch for the Yankees,and we would throw pitches across 72nd Street in preparation. 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. A graduate of Harvard University and King's College, Cambridge, Plimpton was recruited to Paris by Peter Matthiessen in 1952 and signed on to the project shortly thereafter. So it was that George Plimptons accent could not be imitated. Of the Murrow Boys, Eric Sevareid held on to the newsreel style the longest; relying on memory, Im betting that we could actually watch the transition away from that to a more vernacular style in the long career of Walter Cronkite. His friendships testified to what an eclectic man he was. George Plimpton: Writer, Quarterback, Pitcher, Boxer, Triangle Player That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went [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. Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. Could it be fairly said that Plimptom had it? Besides, third is a very respectable showing! George Plimpton | The New Yorker When Plimpton, the co-founder of The Paris Review, died in 2003 at age 76, The New York Times . (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? One night Joe DiMaggio was here, and they had never met, so I introduced them. Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the lasta figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. Plimpton also appeared in the closing credits of the 2006 film Factory Girl. And he stood there ebullient and charming all night; he bid on many items himself. [Then] this August he showed up, pulled the shirt over his head, and said he was ready to bat. 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. I thought they were terrific. After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. (Newsreels ran in movie theaters, of course: what better critique of the high newsreel style than the new movies that jarred against it?). George Plimpton and Papa in Cuba - Guernica 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. Mia had the perfect model! He could have done whatever he wanted. George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little He rounded first as if he were about to go for a double, then glided back to the base, with fans waving and cheering. Did he have the celebrated "Boston Brahmin" accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. [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. In 2013, the documentary Plimpton! By George Plimpton. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Jean Stein became his co-editor. 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. The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. tweedy demeanor and Oxford accent. [47][48] The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. It was a hot, sweltering day. He had it all going! Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . 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. Finally I did. George, Being George: George Plimpton's Life as Told, Admired, Deplored He did these jobs, and many others, as an amateur.. 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). These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. Hows your mom? hed always ask me. My dad and I could not lose each other, but we could never quite find each other, either. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. Few could give a toast or tell a story with equal humor. To me, it meant admission to this little exclusive club at the Paris Review. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. Anyhow, I asked Terry Gross from Fresh Air and George Plimpton to be auctioneers. Hed go on to move freely through so many worlds and circles, without ever not speaking in that singular accentthough it probably would have made life easier for him if hed adopted a new way of talking (after all, as a journalist in the locker rooms, where slang and cursing were art-forms, my dads stiff, formal tongue made him stick out like an egret among ducks). Hes just trying it out and will come back and write a book about his experiences. He was 76.. I remember getting the news: It was my wife Madeleines birthday, Aug. 7. 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. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. 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. His dish was Spaghetti Bolognese. Articles From This Author. 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 the average person never talked that way. 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. Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback: Plimpton, George Plimpton didnt die. 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. At Harvard, Plimpton was a classmate and close personal friend of Robert F. Kennedy. Losing, he knew, always makes a better story than winning. Angelo Dundee, trainer for Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard:George was such a great guy. A heuristic approximation! George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. With such a useful explanation, why do I gripe about the name? 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. *Originally posted by bordelond * [citation needed]. So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. Vault. No matter where he was, or who he wasquarterback, trapeze artist, Philharmonic triangle-playerhis voice never changed, proving that you can be whomever you want to be without ever abandoning yourself. Was this sheer affectation? Been there, done that | Books | The Guardian George Plimpton. It was horrifying.. "Hut-Two-Three . . Ugh" A writer proves to be a Paper Lion at QB He was "George Plimpton"-editor, host . For such admissions to escape my fathers lips, they always had to be a little removed somehow. 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. George Plimpton boxed with Archie Moore, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions, and played percussion for the New York Philharmonic. Of course, I think he enjoyed the odd persona his voice and mannerisms conferred on him. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. Billy Collins, poet:Im one of these people who went from crashing Georges parties in the 70s to being invited in the 80s. He was immensely generous in every waygenerous about sharing the work and about giving one a chance to edit things. **. Kim Noble, one of the announcers on the NPR affiliate in Kansas City, KCUR, speaks with a very affected Connecticut Lockjaw accent. The young Paris Review editor and other New York literary figures arrived during a period marked by hope for a democratic Cuba. I think it was an affectation people adopted because they thought it made them sound much more intelligent!