Few could give a toast or tell a story with equal humor. The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. It was a great partyraucous and long. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. During my fight, my nose got badly broken in the second round, but I did last all four scheduled rounds, though I lost. Lewis Lapham, editor, Harpers Magazine:Georges immense enthusiasm was his primary characteristic. Anyhow, I asked Terry Gross from Fresh Air and George Plimpton to be auctioneers. 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 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). Talking about sports with Georgeor, even better, reading George about sportswas more fun than sports themselves. George was the one who read my name out to the commissioner. If you are in the big league, God help us all. Its strange to think, but he would have been eighty-five this year: fourteen years older than my mom, fifty years older than me. If he couldnt be taken quite seriously, that was fine with him (he took himself lightly, and relished being in on the joke). 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. Kaltenborn was a famous mid . It was always a surprise. He was "George Plimpton"-editor, host . Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. Plimpton entered Harvard as a member of the Class of 1948, but did not graduate until 1950 due to intervening military service. 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. We made $15,000-20,000. That was the last party for a while., I just got back from a road trip from Michigan. 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. Here are five things you may not have known about him. LL is typified, I think, but an almost clenching of the teeth while talking, producing a mushy sound, if you will. He was smooth. 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. 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. 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. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. Larchmont Lockjaw? [2][43], An oral biography titled George, Being George was edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., and released on October 21, 2008. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. 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? Whats the matter?, Well, he said. 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. He got the personality totally wrong, too. 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. 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. What fine manners he had! On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? In the April 1, 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated, Plimpton pulled off a widely reported April Fools' Day prank. Even Orson Welles on occasion. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. **Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? 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. Queen Elizabeth doesnt say car, and neither did Franklin D. Roosevelt, nor did the newsreel announcers or movie actors of his day. [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. 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?. (This is not to belittle Lowell Thomas, but to recognize the artifice that served him so well in his career). NEW YORK -- George Plimpton, the self-deprecating author of "Paper Lion" and other sporting adventures and a patron to Philip Roth, Jack Kerouac and countless other writers, has died. Ive always heard it referred to as a patrician accent. After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. You can. Are you saying that the denizens of Larchmont sound like Plimpton did? But looking back on it, its funny, too. OK? For it was George Plimpton the writer, not the editor nor the celebrity, who was honored here . Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. Plimpton has grown. He is also credited with saving, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Plimpton! The fake English announcer voice lingered on sporadically until the end of the Johnson administration in newsreels, which themselves ceased production around the same time, but Rod Serlings decision sounded the death knell for that accent. Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. "[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. After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. expelled from the very expensive, very WASP-y Philips Look out, Wilson! George Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. Hear Stories By George Plimpton. What stood in our way? *Originally posted by bordelond * And similarly on the role of ridicule in speeding the move away from this accent: This is only partly facetious, but I think I know who was the American to speak "Announcer." 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. 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. Why couldnt we have a good time, too? 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. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. 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. He was respected by all. He had a way of putting it all together, of understanding fighters in the ring; he was a good analyst of boxing. In early 1959, George Plimpton was preparing to watch an execution in Cuba. He modestly shrugged off the compliment, but his bright smile betrayed his pleasureand ours. He appeared in the PBS American Masters documentary on Andy Warhol. A heuristic approximation! But he came right down to our level. Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? I think the term Old Money or patrician pretty much says it. One night Joe DiMaggio was here, and they had never met, so I introduced them. George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a journalist and the first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review. The title of the PBS documentary - "Plimpton! 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. Plimpton was .the public face of the New York intellectual: tweedy, eclectic and with a plummy accent he himself described as "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan." . Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. George Plimpton boxed with Archie Moore, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions, and played percussion for the New York Philharmonic. In this campaign, Plimpton touted the superiority regarding the graphics and sounds of Intellivision video games over the Atari 2600.[24]. He had, for instance, a series of antiquated phrases and terms of affection. 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. $ 3.99 - $ 27.44. Now the interview is perfect!. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the Paris Review, and tried his hand at everything from quarterbacking for the Detroit Lions (which he wrote about in Paper Lion), boxing with light-heavyweight champ Archie Moore (which became Shadow Box), and becoming New Yorks unofficial official fireworks commissioner. His exploits were such that at one point, The New Yorker ran a cartoon in which a patient eyed a surgeon with misgiving and said, But how do I know youre not George Plimpton?, But perhaps foremost among his accomplishments was his elevation of the interview to a literary form, both in the Paris Review and in his two superb works of oral history, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career, and Edie, a biography of Edie Sedgwick, which he and Jean Stein compiled. From looking at Labovs study, I know today, as I didnt know yesterday, that linguists use the term rhotic to describe whether a person pronounces, or doesnt, the R sound before a consonant or at the end of a word. Well, perhaps it's more accurate to say that the book provided entertaining confirmation to millions of people that they -- like the author . And the role of Katharine Hepburn, whose Locust Valley Lockjaw accent was a cousin of announcer-speak: I was just discussing this not a week ago with a friend who has done voice work in film and television, and can adopt this accent in an instant to evoke that period, much to my amusement. Norman Mailer, author:George had a rare gift. At Harvard, Plimpton was a classmate and close personal friend of Robert F. Kennedy. Ill try to give a representative range, and I am grateful for the care and thought that have gone into these responses. 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. In that vein, here is an oral biography of George Plimpton. Plimpton also appeared in the closing credits of the 2006 film Factory Girl. 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. George Plimpton, the New York aristocrat and literary journalist whose career was a happy lifelong competition between scholarly pursuits and madcap attempts -- chronicled in self-deprecating. "[27], Plimpton was a member of the cast of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (200102). I only wish I could not tell him again, just one more time. For such admissions to escape my fathers lips, they always had to be a little removed somehow. 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. Old money, would never say the word spanky, and certainly had more money than God could count. Were taking off from Teterburo, N.J., at 4 a.m. tomorrow. Losing, he knew, always makes a better story than winning. Final Twist of the Drama. 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. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. Please educate me. And he told everyone that night, and for many years after, that hed diverted me from a career of filling prescriptions. 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. Plimpton's remarkable life is showcased in a documentary that is. [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. Prestigious prep schools and ivy league institutions (though Gore Vidal never went to college). Vault. My dad and I could not lose each other, but we could never quite find each other, either. rejoiced in the name of Euphemia van Renssalaer Wyatt. Plimpton himself described it as a "New England cosmopolitan accent"[36] or "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan" accent. And George had written it straight. 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. I have worked as poetry editor with editors on other magazines; only with George has the experience been entirely agreeable. 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 have a memory of George emerging out of the bush, with a terrible sunburn on his nose and face and legs; he was in safari gear, none of it hanging together very well, and over it all he was wearing a nice blue blazer. 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 came from a family where such endearments were not expressed, and phone conversations were curt. 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? [35], Plimpton was known for his distinctive accent which, by Plimpton's own admission, was often mistaken for an English accent. 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. He had it, as does/did William Buckley, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Julia Child. [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. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. I didnt know he was from the Larchmont area. Update: This post is #2 in the announcer-speak series. 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. Plimpton also appeared in a number of feature films as an extra and in cameo appearances. 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. They all gathered there. 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. How widespread, numerically and geographically? Jay McInerney, author:Arriving in Manhattan as a young writer, nothing was more thrilling or daunting than attending my first Paris Review party at Georges townhouse on East 72nd in the fall of 1984. 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. Shoot! hed hiss, when he was mad. [citation needed], In the movie Plimpton! 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". Was it him? His final interview appeared in The New York Sports Express of October 2, 2003 by journalist Dave Hollander. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * [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. Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many. The young Paris Review editor and other New York literary figures arrived during a period marked by hope for a democratic Cuba. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. 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 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. 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. George was not vainhe didnt care a whit about his image. 2023 Cond Nast. 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. 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). The 16th at Cypress Point is one of the famous golf holes of the world, certainly one of the most difficult and demanding par 3's. I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 September 25, 2003) was an American writer. 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. It is the kind of study . Peter even came with us on our honeymoon in Ravello, though George didnt. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. Cambridge. Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. And I, of course, was looking them over, too. Plimpton scowled, and said he was perfectly capable of running for himself. "He speaks with an oddly mannered accent, sounding as though on the verge of a stammer, polite, genteel, perhaps just a little Woosterish. **Get a life. Yes he is gone. 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. He once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. As a result, this American version of a posh accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. George Plimpton. All the good guys have got to go. [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]. Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? He would have a beer with you. 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. Read more in this thread (long). My fathers voice was like one of those supposedly extinct deep-sea creatures that wash up on the shores of Argentina every now and then. Read more. At one point, there was a tremendous Wagnerian thunder and lighting storm. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. The primary reason [for the accent] was primitive microphone technology: "natural" voices simply did not get picked up well by the microphones of the time, and people were instructed to and learned to speak in such a way that their words could be best transmitted through the microphone to the radio waves or to recording media. In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. 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. Peter Matthiesen, author, co-founder of the Paris Review:I was in Liberia, of all places, and George met me in Monrovia. Suddenly, a New York cop remembered a long-ago murder. Articles From This Author. This was his habit. 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. [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.