george plimpton accent george plimpton accent

She would not even say goodbye. 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. That tension between what was in his heart and what his voice allowed him to express is the basic tension of language we all face, only heightened. 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. That phony-baloney feigned British pronunciation thing. It was so violent that it brought a lot of people to the windows. Havent heard that term in years. 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. Timothy Seldes, George Plimptons literary agent:Whenever George wanted me to do something for him, he would call me up and say, Hello, Old Tim. One day, I got a call, and heard his voice, and my heart sank. George Plimpton writer, publisher, amateur lion tamer died in 2003 after 50 years as the founding editor of The Paris Review. In the early 60s, when I was working at the firework plant with my dad [Felix Grucci], George would pull up in shiny red sports car on his way to the Hamptons. **. To me, Mid-Atlantic English is the nom juste for a related but distinct phenomenon (which is also mentioned in Wikipedia). At the time, he was getting ready to pitch for the Yankees,and we would throw pitches across 72nd Street in preparation. 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.". And here for the full interview). . Listen to Caruso singing or Bix Beiderbecke playing his cornet to hear how muffled was the recording of those sounds. 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. Ive known him forsix months and I just now learned hes not English!. 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! Plimpton was married twice. You're going to play for us-making some sort of big comeback." "That's right," Plimpton replied in his patrician accent. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! Macklem . As a result, this American version of a posh accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. We were bound to play the roles of father and son, unable to simply be ourselves. He was stationed primarily in Italy, where he worked as a tank driver. 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. 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. 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. Whom is it spoken bymerely the elite, old-money types? Sign up for the Books & Fiction newsletter. 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. 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. Did he have the celebrated "Boston Brahmin" accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? But he came right down to our level. Its a joke to say 500 of my closest friends, but that would have been true with George1,000 of his closest friends, actually. They all sound just like George. But he could easily have said, Alice, I have enough trouble raising money for my magazine.. And you are going to come with me. That is the tendency of Americans trying to sound more British, or Brits trying to sound more Yank, to split the difference and speak in an accent whose home ground is no real country but somewhere in the middle of the sea. In the "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can" episode of The Simpsons, he hosts the "Spellympics" and attempts to bribe Lisa Simpson to lose with the offer of a scholarship at a Seven Sisters College and a hot plate; "it's perfect for soup! Why couldnt we have a good time, too? That was when Westbrook van Voorhis, the famous March of Time voice, did the intro narration of the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone. Would you admit to there being symbolism in your novels? He was equally at home on a bicycle or getting out of a limousine with a Saudi Arabian prince. Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. Final Twist of the Drama. Future Poet Laureate Donald Hall, who had met Plimpton at Exeter, was Poetry Editor. Look out, Wilson! 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. I do believe his accent was decidedly Swamp Yankee. He smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. 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. Read more in this thread (long). Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? Bill and I met in Rome, several months after the Paris Review was startedwe were, as they say, courtingand he drove me to Paris so George and Peter [Mathiessen] could look me over. A lordly accent acquired at St. Bernard's and burnished later at Cambridge, in England, enhanced his distinguished aura, as did elevated stature and a silver head of hair which might have encouraged a career in politics but mercifully did not. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. Too old-fashioned. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. 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". Back in the 1960s and '70s, I would nightly sit alone in front of a TV set in a darkened room in the Midwest munching on potato chips watching late night talk shows out of New York CityJohnny Carson and Dick Cavett in particularand Plimpton was a regular on those shows. [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. I received many notes like this one: The variety of English you are referring to has a name in linguistics: "Mid-Atlantic English". Well have a lot more to say about Buckley and Vidal for now the leaders in the race for Last American to Talk This Way (with George Plimpton in third)in the next installment. He majored in English. After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. 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. These interviews are a collaborative effort, and, I believe, a fascinating contribution to literary history. News children today have no concept of the Mid-Atlantic accent. But it didnt define him, much the way he refused to be defined by the stiff, upper-crust world from which hed come. When he was on the scene, everything was a big happeningan event. 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. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. "[34] A feature in Mad titled "Some Really Dangerous Jobs for George Plimpton" spotlighted him trying to swim across Lake Erie, strolling through New York's Times Square in the middle of the night, and spending a week with Jerry Lewis. He Was Shot by John Wayne. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. He had it, as does/did William Buckley, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Julia Child. Mid-Atlantic. You should be very grateful. Showdown in the Pits. (He intended to face both line-ups, but tired badly and was relieved by Ralph Houk.) 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. [33] A later attempt, fired at Cape Canaveral, rose approximately 50 feet (15m) into the air and broke 700 windows in Titusville, Florida. By George Plimpton. 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. They all gathered there. George was the one who read my name out to the commissioner. Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. We were both excitedId just come back from a weekend in Las Vegas, and hed just come back from celebrating the fortieth anniversary reunion of his Detroit Lions team at Ford Field, where the fans had given him a standing ovation, and he had raised his hatand for a moment we were no longer father and son, but just two big excited boys, each comparing adventures, and I could hear the pride in his voice, the happiness. & FDR, George Plimpton, William F. Buckley, etc. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. 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. If you are in the big league, God help us all. **. expelled from the very expensive, very WASP-y Philips I have decided, he said, that I have got to jump from a plane. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, was released. The Left Bank really became East 72nd Street. His dish was Spaghetti Bolognese. 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. [35], Plimpton was known for his distinctive accent which, by Plimpton's own admission, was often mistaken for an English accent. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. "[25] He had a recurring role as the grandfather of Dr. Carter on the NBC series ER. It was a great partyraucous and long. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. 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. **Get a life. We all just had our own regional accentor non accent, like the flat midwest speak. George Plimpton Wiki: Salary, Married, Wedding, Spouse, Family . 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! I'm not an expert, but Bill Labov from UPenn is, and he is quoted thusly: According to William Labov, teaching of this pronunciation declined sharply after the end of World War II. George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a journalist and the first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review. Larchmont Lockjaw? George Plimpton is beautifully connected. By George Plimpton. (And, OK, Im not a linguist, but Im married to one!) 1) The linguists have a name for it: they call it Mid-Atlantic English. I dont like this name, for reasons Ill explain in a minute. The s. In the 50s Plimpton and staff came to New York, where they kept the Review going for half a century. [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. The first minute is a cameo by Henry Ford II, who speaks in an utterly flat Midwest rather than Mid-Atlantic accent that no one would call elegant but that would sound perfectly natural in 2015. 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. **Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. That was the last party for a while., I just got back from a road trip from Michigan. Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the lasta figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. I only wish I could not tell him again, just one more time. [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. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 September 25, 2003) was an American writer. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. George Plimpton was a literary man about town who did it all, from co-founding The Paris . 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. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! Ill pick you up., I had a hard time sleeping that night, as you might imagine. Orson Welles also comes to mind, though I noticed he spoke in this mode more often during his early days, on and off screen. Read more in this thread (long). On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. Buckley clearly flaunts it, probably to set himself apart from the hoi polloi of his contemporaries. Plimpton was associated with the literary magazine in Paris, Merlin, which folded because the State Department withdrew its support.[why?] [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. And being good at losing was one of Georges many gifts. 1. Was it him? Here's how Geroge Plimpton and his team created a prodigious pitcher out of thin air. YESTERDAY IS NOT FAR AWAY. 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. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? The Sidd Finch story was accompanied by a series of photos which managed to convince even the eagle-eyed fans . I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. [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]. 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. 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. George was not vainhe didnt care a whit about his image. Plimpton also appeared in the closing credits of the 2006 film Factory Girl. With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. Share; Copied! This book is the party that was George's life-and it's a big one-attended by scores of famous people, as well as. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you? Peter Matthiesen, author, co-founder of the Paris Review:I was in Liberia, of all places, and George met me in Monrovia. Hed have that and a scotch on the rocks, his favorite drink. Its strange to think, but he would have been eighty-five this year: fourteen years older than my mom, fifty years older than me. Is it in evidence among the Gen X set of Boston, or a passing phenomenon? George Plimpton was an upper-class guy with a patrician accent who partied his way through life . The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. 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. "[27], Plimpton was a member of the cast of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (200102). **, In this case, Mid-Atlantic refers to speech in which the attributes of British English and American English meet halfway. The opposing team: the Detroit Lions. Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 429-432. He was not himself interested in poetry, but he read all of the poems every quarter, and he would tell me what he thought of them. Isnt that what they call it. Vault. 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. He was 76.. *Originally posted by bordelond * Vault. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? After finishing at Harvard in 1950, he attended King's College, Cambridge, from 1950 to 1952, and graduated with third class honors in English. Mr. Plimpton was born in Manhattan in 1927 and raised in Huntington, L.I. Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? It is the kind of study . 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. He could as easily have been my grandfather as father. You heard it and it. So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. 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. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. Hed done it in Amsterdam, Moscow, and London; hed done it at a PEN benefit; and now he and Norman were going to do it in Cuba. . I just heard that George Plimpton has died. 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 . Typical of George to laugh about something others saw as a defining traithe never took himself all that seriously. I think it was an affectation people adopted because they thought it made them sound much more intelligent! The clipped, non-rhotic English accents of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley Jr. were vestigial examples. Besides, third is a very respectable showing! 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. He plays the 'fancy pants' to our outhouse Americana," Flaherty asserted. He liked the fact that I had broken my nose in defeat. But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. By George Plimpton. He rounded first as if he were about to go for a double, then glided back to the base, with fans waving and cheering. Best-selling author George Plimpton shares his experience as a "Storyteller For Life" with Dean Nelson of Point Loma Nazarene University as part of PLNU's 5th Annual Writer's Symposium By The. This speech pattern might be common among US expatriates in the UK, of which Grossman would seem to represent just the most ostentatious example. Its our anniversary. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. Vault. [47][48] 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. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. 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. 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. As an old film buff, I am used to this voice, though it figures unevenly in old movies. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. Lewis Lapham, editor, Harpers Magazine:Georges immense enthusiasm was his primary characteristic. That is, until I saw the documentarythe assassination of his dear friend Bobby Kennedy. Where are you?, Im at dinner with my wife, I said. [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. His father co-founded the law firm Debevoise Plimpton. 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. 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. He was very understanding of what we did and how we did it. 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. Everything he did was like this, just a bit odd. These experiences served as the basis of another football book, Mad Ducks and Bears, although much of the book dealt with the off-field escapades and observations of football friends Alex Karras ("Mad Duck") and John Gordy ("Bear"). **. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. 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. 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. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. He died on September 26, 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, Pi Eta, the Signet Society, and the Porcellian Club. I have worked as poetry editor with editors on other magazines; only with George has the experience been entirely agreeable. 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. His response was "no, just affected.". But looking back on it, its funny, too. George had three siblings: Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Jr., Oakes Ames Plimpton,[15] and Sarah Gay Plimpton. In that vein, here is an oral biography of George Plimpton. Family (1) Spouse But he has never employed that voice professionally, and certainly does not speak that way in real life. Among other challenges for Sports Illustrated, he attempted to play top-level bridge, and spent some time as a high-wire circus performer.