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I only wish I could not tell him again, just one more time. Plimpton has grown. 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. [23] He was also notable for his appearance in television commercials during the early 1980s, including a memorable campaign for Mattel's Intellivision. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. 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. 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. Peter even came with us on our honeymoon in Ravello, though George didnt. [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. She would not even say goodbye. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . Why couldnt we have a good time, too? They were divorced, and had been for a while, but they still talked, and visited every now and then, and they would sit on my moms porch on Long Island and look out over the pond at the birds and tell each other stories and laugh until the tears came to their eyes, but he could not ask her this directlyHow are you, Freddy? He had lost my mom, at least in part because he had been unable to communicate with her, to show his love. 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. [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? 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. Plimpton and Dudley were the parents of twin daughters Laura Dudley Plimpton and Olivia Hartley Plimpton. But the gentleman amateur - a Harvard. The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. What will you be mad about ten years after youre gone?). Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? Are you saying that the denizens of Larchmont sound like Plimpton did? 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. . It was a great partyraucous and long. Everything he did was like this, just a bit odd. 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. George . 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. And George had written it straight. And what have we here? My moms initial impression was that he was a little hoity-toityI mean, who did this guy think he was?, But the second time they met, it was, in fact, my fathers voice that won her over. [35], Plimpton was known for his distinctive accent which, by Plimpton's own admission, was often mistaken for an English accent. [citation needed]. In 1992, Plimpton married Sarah Whitehead Dudley, a graduate of Columbia University and a freelance writer. 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. He came from a family where such endearments were not expressed, and phone conversations were curt. Even the most basic conversation was often a struggle. Macklem . He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He rounded first as if he were about to go for a double, then glided back to the base, with fans waving and cheering. If you listen to Grossman (who is originally from Boston) starting about 15 seconds into the clip below, youll see that he uses a split-the-difference UK/US hybrid that is literally mid-Atlantic, in the sense of combining accents from both countries, but is different from the newsreel announcer voice: You should talk to William Labov [JF: I will try] , pioneering sociolinguist, whose landmark study into New York City speech led him to ask the same question you have. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. He had a small role in the Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting,[22] playing a psychologist. Of course, I think he enjoyed the odd persona his voice and mannerisms conferred on him. 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." *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * George was the one who read my name out to the commissioner. The coach for the Writers team announced that Plimpton would pinch-hit for the first batter of the game, Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica, and the crowd roared. Labov suspected that WWII had something to do about it. By George Plimpton. He smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. [3] During the summers, he lived in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Suffolk County on Long Island. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. Puss, and my father enjoyed nothing more than holding the beast high in the air and making strange, affectionate sounds in that distinguished voice: Yeanngghh, Puss Yeaannngh Puss Puss Puss.) He called my sister Puss, too, sometimes, though mostly I think with her it was Kiddo, which he also called me, though there was a period in which he occasionally called me Ernie, which was the dogs name. Finally I did. Exeter Academy after an incident involving a It's a Scottish accent that's been modified somewhat for a mainstream audience that tends to associate them with Groundskeeper Willie. Manhattan DVD. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. Showdown in the Pits. Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. Of course, my dad had tried out for the role of himself and not gotten it, though he would go on to have a steady film career playing one version or another of a striking white-haired figure with a distinguished, chivalrous voice in bit roles in some twenty or so movies, including Reds and Good Will Hunting. Fortunately, in the upcoming film Plimpton! H.V. All rights reserved. We made $15,000-20,000. Discussing the accent he used for Washington in an interview with The Onion AV Club, he explained: The accent back then was probably nothing like what we think of as a Southern accent now or a New England accent now, so we tried to find the root of the accents. Harris trained himself as a young man to lose his native Bronx accent - to the point that he was asked if he were British. Greetings From the Vortex of Unpredictability, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. Prestigious prep schools and ivy league institutions (though Gore Vidal never went to college). Thurston Howell III had the Larchmont Lockjaw accent. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. [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. Plimpton, George 1927-2003(George Ames Plimpton) Source for information on Plimpton, George 1927-2003: Concise Major 21st Century Writers dictionary. So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. He said, You better stay here, and I did, for a while. Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. 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. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He was a Wasp (both of his parents came from old New England families, and had ancestors on the Mayflower). We were going to go looking for strange birds. Buckley clearly flaunts it, probably to set himself apart from the hoi polloi of his contemporaries. As such, it was popular in the theatre and other forms of elite culture in that region. Was this sheer affectation? 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. 1 draft choice of the Lions in 1965. As an old film buff, I am used to this voice, though it figures unevenly in old movies. Revolutionary musket, a stairwell and a housemaster), 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. 3: Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Larchmont Lockjaw? But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. Where are you?, Im at dinner with my wife, I said. The guys here in Detroit treated him like one of us. Tom Nowatzke, fullback, Detroit Lions (In the 1960s, Plimpton briefly played with the Detroit Lions asresearch for the best-selling book Paper Lion, which was later made into a film):I was the No. Ive rarely heard this accent in real life but its often used by actors doing a stereotype character based on other actors impersonations! 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. He was equally at home on a bicycle or getting out of a limousine with a Saudi Arabian prince. But it didnt define him, much the way he refused to be defined by the stiff, upper-crust world from which hed come. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. You're going to play for us-making some sort of big comeback." "That's right," Plimpton replied in his patrician accent. We were bound to play the roles of father and son, unable to simply be ourselves. In fact, my dads farewells seemed loquacious in comparison to his mothers. I feel that his work on this and many other language-related matters should be far more widely known than it is. Plimpton's The Bogey Man chronicles his attempt to play professional golf on the PGA Tour during the Nicklaus and Palmer era of the 1960s. 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 I eventually went back to be an editor at Harpers, I arrived at his flat, not having been in New York for eight years. Never heard of this decidedly imprecise term. If you were making a speech in a large hall, or speaking on the radio, you needed to enunciate very clearly and use a lot of emphases to be sure your audience could understand what you were saying. He had it all going! Somehow Georgehad gotten it into his head that I was on the verge of becoming a pharmacist before he had called me up a year earlier to tell me the Paris Review was publishing a story I had submittedperhaps because of the pharmacological bent of the subject matter. These interviews are a collaborative effort, and, I believe, a fascinating contribution to literary history. (Why do I even bother?) For his grandfather, the publisher and philanthropist, see, Calvin Gay Plimpton and Priscilla G. Lewis were the parents of, He was widely reviled for years after the war by Southern whites, who gave him the nickname "Beast Butler." Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . George Plimpton was a literary man about town who did it all, from co-founding The Paris . The opposing team: the Detroit Lions. Daniel Kunitz, managing editor of the Paris Review from1995-2000: I once heard George joking with William F. Buckley on the phone about how they had the last affected accents in New York. This brings us back to the why things changed question. 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. Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the lasta figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! 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. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. Could it be fairly said that Plimptom had it? Whom is it spoken bymerely the elite, old-money types? He Was Shot by John Wayne. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? It was as if some old gentlemans code prohibited us from interacting as human beings. And they founded this thing called the Paris Review and published poetry and short story writers and did interviews. I enjoy doing it. Thats it, George cried out. There was one more matter I never heard my dad discuss. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to these men speak. "[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. [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. 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. The name George Plimpton is synonymous with a kind of all-in participatory journalism. 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. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. I have decided, he said, that I have got to jump from a plane. Family (1) Spouse The Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour. . It evoked a sense of Paris from a time when Paris was still the literary capital of the world, publishing literary giants who were considered obsceneHenry Miller, D.H. Lawrence. Losing, he knew, always makes a better story than winning. My dad and I could not lose each other, but we could never quite find each other, either. If you are in the big league, God help us all. His dish was Spaghetti Bolognese. Mr . Others outside the entertainment industry known for speaking Mid-Atlantic English include William F. Buckley, Jr., Gore Vidal, George Plimpton, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Norman Mailer, Diana Vreeland, Maria Callas, Cornelius Vanderbilt IV. Vault. Kim Noble, one of the announcers on the NPR affiliate in Kansas City, KCUR, speaks with a very affected Connecticut Lockjaw accent. [32] When lit, the firework remained on the ground and exploded, blasting a crater 35 feet (11m) wide and 10 feet (3.0m) deep. At Harvard, Plimpton was a classmate and close personal friend of Robert F. Kennedy. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. Orson Welles also comes to mind, though I noticed he spoke in this mode more often during his early days, on and off screen. Richard Howard, poetry editor, the Paris Review:I worked with George for 10 years on the magazine. George Plimpton was an upper-class guy with a patrician accent who partied his way through life . But he came right down to our level. Several readers wrote in with specimens of Americans who had gone to England and ended up speaking in this mid-Atlantic way. Actors Nathan Lane (from Jersey City, NJ) and Robin Williams (grew up in SF Bay area) often adopt this accent. 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. Plimpton was married twice. 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. But looking back on it, its funny, too. Back to Plimpton I dont remember the LL affect at all. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. *Originally posted by j.c. * 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. [citation needed]. You can. George had three siblings: Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Jr., Oakes Ames Plimpton,[15] and Sarah Gay Plimpton. [33] A later attempt, fired at Cape Canaveral, rose approximately 50 feet (15m) into the air and broke 700 windows in Titusville, Florida. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. So we got together and, after some preliminaries, he popped the question that he was really there to ask. George was not vainhe didnt care a whit about his image. silk-stockinged New Englander - private schools (he was 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. 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. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. . He had, for instance, a series of antiquated phrases and terms of affection. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. 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. Plimpton entered Harvard as a member of the Class of 1948, but did not graduate until 1950 due to intervening military service. The Left Bank really became East 72nd Street. He appeared in the PBS American Masters documentary on Andy Warhol. He grew up in New York City with bona fide WASP credentials; became the longtime editor of the Paris Review, working with many of the great novelists of the day; contributed to the New Journalism. I mean, if George Plimpton wasnt my father and Id never met him, and I heard that voice emerge from his lips and matched it with his severe Roman features and his usual blue blazer, oxford shirt, and tie, I might have assumed that he was a little pompous or snooty or affected. Plimpton was associated with the literary magazine in Paris, Merlin, which folded because the State Department withdrew its support.[why?] Kaltenborn was a famous mid . He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. His friendships testified to what an eclectic man he was. How to find out, and whether you should care. (And, OK, Im not a linguist, but Im married to one!) Alan Alda, portraying my dad in the movie version of Paper Lion (his book on playing quarterback for the Detroit Lions), didnt bother with his voice at all.

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