He died on September 26, 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. So it was that George Plimptons accent could not be imitated. 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). $ 9.19 - $ 32.19. 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. Mia had the perfect model! George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. 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. He wanted to play his own part, but they wouldnt let him. 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. 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 LL is typified, I think, but an almost clenching of the teeth while talking, producing a mushy sound, if you will. During my fight, my nose got badly broken in the second round, but I did last all four scheduled rounds, though I lost. expelled from the very expensive, very WASP-y Philips I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. George Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. (To read Part One, click here. He had the bearing of Gen. MacArthur, but the soul of Charlie Chaplin. [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. 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. The young Paris Review editor and other New York literary figures arrived during a period marked by hope for a democratic Cuba. 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. And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you? **. . By George Plimpton. Over the years, we held a lot of dinner parties for him, and he brought a lot of people inmany, many writers. Of course, I think he enjoyed the odd persona his voice and mannerisms conferred on him. The Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour. If you say, I pahked my cah in Hahvahd Yahd, like some vaudeville version of a Boston accent, you are non-rhotic. Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. He was 76.. In 1994, Plimpton appeared several times in the Ken Burns series Baseball, in which he shared some personal baseball experiences as well as other memorable events throughout the history of baseball.[20]. Whee!! It's a Scottish accent that's been modified somewhat for a mainstream audience that tends to associate them with Groundskeeper Willie. You heard it and it could only be him. 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. 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. 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. You're going to play for us-making some sort of big comeback." "That's right," Plimpton replied in his patrician accent. Vault. 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. He watched the first pitch sail high for a ball, and then hit a rope into left field. 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.". 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. Katharine Hepburn spoke this way, on and off screen until she died. Butch, he says, because he always called me Butch. It is the kind of study . He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. 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. 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. A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. Yes he is gone. These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. "[27], Plimpton was a member of the cast of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (200102). Here are five things you may not have known about him. The Dudleys established the 36-acre (15ha) Highstead Arboretum in Redding, Connecticut. He joined us in Monte Carlo when we won the international [fireworks] competition. But the average person never talked that way. Rose Styron, wife of William Styron and former Paris Review editor:My husband Bill was with George when he started the Paris Review. He was immensely generous in every waygenerous about sharing the work and about giving one a chance to edit things. Plimpton was married twice. Even Orson Welles on occasion. [29], His enthusiasm for fireworks grew, and he was appointed Fireworks Commissioner of New York by Mayor John Lindsay,[29][30] an unofficial post he held until his death. Plimpton, along with former decathlete Rafer Johnson and American football star Rosey Grier, was credited with helping wrestle Sirhan Sirhan to the floor when Kennedy was assassinated following his victory in the 1968 California Democratic primary at the former Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. That made him a great storyteller. The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. Ill try to give a representative range, and I am grateful for the care and thought that have gone into these responses. He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. [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. By George Plimpton. The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a . [3], He was the son of Francis T. P. Plimpton[4] and the grandson of Frances Taylor Pearsons and George Arthur Plimpton. 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. Both of Plimpton's maternal grandparents were born with the surname Ames; his mother was the granddaughter of Medal of Honor recipient Adelbert Ames (1835-1933), an American sailor, soldier, and politician, and Oliver Ames, a US political figure and the 35th Governor of Massachusetts (18871890). He just did it because Columbia was another literary magazine. 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. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. 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. As such, it was popular in the theatre and other forms of elite culture in that region. They all gathered there. He was a great addition to the human race. 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. Hemingway on Fiction, Part Two. 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. Cambridge. His father co-founded the law firm Debevoise Plimpton. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. If you say, I parked my car in Harvard Yard, you are being rhotic. 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. After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. At the time, he was getting ready to pitch for the Yankees,and we would throw pitches across 72nd Street in preparation. He is connected by blood to Benjamin "Beast" Butler, a rakish pol who told Abraham Lincoln he would be his running mate "only if you die within three. 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. After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. Jean Stein became his co-editor. And he stood there ebullient and charming all night; he bid on many items himself. [citation needed] In 1958, prior to a post-season exhibition game at Yankee Stadium between teams managed by Willie Mays (National League) and Mickey Mantle (American League), Plimpton pitched against the National League. Exeter Academy after an incident involving a [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. Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. He could have been a fight trainer, a fight manager! Kaltenborn was a famous mid . Articles From This Author. Besides, third is a very respectable showing! Family (1) Spouse [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. 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. In 1992, Plimpton married Sarah Whitehead Dudley, a graduate of Columbia University and a freelance writer. [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. It came from a different era, shouldn't have still existed, but nevertheless, there it wasold New England, old New York, tinged with a hint of King's College King's English. 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. 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. Eerily enough, one of the messages on my answering machine was from George, with that distinctive accent of his: Hallo, its George Plimpton. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? He very much approved. 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. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. 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. In this campaign, Plimpton touted the superiority regarding the graphics and sounds of Intellivision video games over the Atari 2600.[24]. [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. . Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? If you are in the big league, God help us all. He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. 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. George Plimpton was an upper-class guy with a patrician accent who partied his way through life . 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. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Read more. "I've decided to stay over here in . The name George Plimpton is synonymous with a kind of all-in participatory journalism. 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. George Plimpton was a literary man about town who did it all, from co-founding The Paris . tweedy demeanor and Oxford accent. And the many candidates for the crown of Last American to Speak This Way. But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. 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. (Newsreels ran in movie theaters, of course: what better critique of the high newsreel style than the new movies that jarred against it?). But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. [2], A November 6, 1971, cartoon in The New Yorker by Whitney Darrow Jr. shows a cleaning lady on her hands and knees scrubbing an office floor while saying to another one: "I'd like to see George Plimpton do this sometime." George Plimpton. And being good at losing was one of Georges many gifts. Finally I did. In all my years, Ive never heard this accent in person. 1. What will you be mad about ten years after youre gone?). George Plimpton's duplex apartment on the Upper East Side hit the market for $5.495 million on April 18. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. [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. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. George Plimpton, who died last week at his town house, on East Seventy-second Street near the river, was a serious man of serious accomplishments who just happened to have more fun than a van. A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didnt, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brandos. Ive rarely heard this accent in real life but its often used by actors doing a stereotype character based on other actors impersonations! It was a great partyraucous and long. Starring George Plimpton as Himself" - is meant as a wink-wink to Plimpton's career as a "participatory journalist." As a writer for Sports . George Plimpton boxed with Archie Moore, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions, and played percussion for the New York Philharmonic. This brings us back to the why things changed question. [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]. 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. He could as easily have been my grandfather as father. **Thats a common name for such an accent. How do I know you're not George Plimpton? His response was "no, just affected.". He liked the fact that I had broken my nose in defeat. 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. 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? I do believe his accent was decidedly Swamp Yankee. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. It was horrifying.. The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. That was the last party for a while., I just got back from a road trip from Michigan. George Plimpton is beautifully connected. As Poling puts it, George was known as an unrivaled raconteur and, in making a film of his life story, it only seemed natural to allow him to tell it.. 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. Vault. (Why do I even bother?) Isnt that what they call it. My dad could never say what he feltnot reallyand neither can any of us. 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. 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. [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]. And he told everyone that night, and for many years after, that hed diverted me from a career of filling prescriptions. I didnt know he was from the Larchmont area. 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. . Hear Stories By George Plimpton. *Originally posted by bordelond * Yes indeed, George Plimpton is a man for all seasons. We made $15,000-20,000. By George Plimpton. George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. This speech pattern might be common among US expatriates in the UK, of which Grossman would seem to represent just the most ostentatious example. Why couldnt we have a good time, too? They spoke in this manner, and it seemed perfectly natural, evocative of a background spent among the gentry of the northeast.. . Actually, thats not far off from how my mom felt when she first met him. He once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. By George Plimpton. George Plimpton: what kind of accent? At least, not to me, nor even to my sister, a fact she mentions in the movie. And his apartment, with those windows that looked out onto the East River, became a famous landmark in NYC. Was it me? No one realized till the next day that this was the weather that created the extreme blue skies of Sept. 11a condition I since learned that pilots call severe clear. The next day, friends called and said, That was the last party. Middle class? Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? [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. He said, You better stay here, and I did, for a while. With the evolution of talkies in the late 1920s, voice was first heard in motion pictures. 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. Even the most basic conversation was often a struggle. After her transformation, I noted that Mia sounds precisely like her mother, Maureen OSullivan, who had that patrician manner of speaking on and off screen. He was "George Plimpton"-editor, host . He did not appear last year, or the year before, and we feared he was done with us. Larchmont Lockjaw? But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. 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. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . 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. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. [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]. 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. The title of the PBS documentary - "Plimpton! In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. I think it was an affectation people adopted because they thought it made them sound much more intelligent!
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