He had a small role in the Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting,[22] playing a psychologist. Billy Collins, poet:Im one of these people who went from crashing Georges parties in the 70s to being invited in the 80s. BTW, I cant imagine a presidential candidate today getting anywhere close to a nomination with FDRs accent, cigarette holder, and aristocratic bearing. He joined us in Monte Carlo when we won the international [fireworks] competition. George Plimpton | About the Film | American Masters | PBS He was 76.. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. We were going to go looking for strange birds. So think of Margaret Anderson or Amanda and you can place George. expelled from the very expensive, very WASP-y Philips 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. Besides, third is a very respectable showing! A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didnt, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brandos. The funny thing about Harris was that he did not start out with that accent - as I suspect George Gershwin did not. Archie Moore, after all, had broken his nose. By George Plimpton. No, my fathers voice was not an act, something chosen or practiced in front of mirrors: he came from a different world, where people talked differently, and about different things; where certain things were discussed, and certain things were notand his voice simply reflected this. I want you to go [to the shop] pull out the biggest firework you have and go out and light it up, because you just won the firework contest in Monaco!, I was so stunned, all I could think to say was, I dont think I can get a permit that fast!, Alice Quinn, director of the Poetry Society of America, poetry editor, The New Yorker:When I was an adviser at Columbia Magazine [a journal run out of Columbia University], we were scraping barrel, with no money in the bank, and I said to the students we should have a benefit auction. I do believe his accent was decidedly Swamp Yankee. During my fight, my nose got badly broken in the second round, but I did last all four scheduled rounds, though I lost. He got the personality totally wrong, too. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, "George Plimpton, Urbane and Witty Writer, Dies at 76", "Obituary: Frances T. P. Plimpton, 82, Dies", "Obituary: Pauline A. Plimpton, 93, Author Of Works on Famed Relatives", "Milton at the Midpoint of the Last Century: One Collection of Memories", "How Failing at Exeter made a Success of George Plimpton", "Legendary Humorist, Poonster Dies at 76 | News | The Harvard Crimson", "George Plimpton, Paris Review Founder, Pitches 1980s Video Games for the Mattel Intellivision", "The Simpsons: I'm Spelling As Fast As I Can", "George Plimpton, Author And Editor, Is Dead at 76", "Professor Muhammed Ali Delivers Lecture; Poems and Parables Fill Talk on Friendship | News | The Harvard Crimson", "George Plimpton | Full Film | American Masters | PBS", "George Plimpton, Still Burning His Punk at Both Ends, Finds a Sport in Which He Can Sparkle", "George Plimpton: The Professional Amateur", "Some Really Dangerous Jobs For George Plimpton", "Being, And Appreciating, George Plimpton", "Obituary: Willard Espy, Who Delighted In Wordplay, Is Dead at 88", "George Plimpton, Writer and editor, Is Wed to Sarah W. Dudley, a Writer", "Obituary: James C. Dudley, 77, Investment Adviser", "Naming the Sky: The true story of one man's quest to give George Plimpton a permanent presence in orbit", "DEAD END-DRIVE-IN | Plimpton! (Newsreels ran in movie theaters, of course: what better critique of the high newsreel style than the new movies that jarred against it?). 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. **. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". 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 never went all the way, though his authenticity and newly-downstyle speaking could probably be marked in the crisis/triumph stages of his reporting: the death of JFK; the Vietnam report; the moon landing. Friends were almost always happy to see him because you knew he was bound to improve your mood. His response was "no, just affected.". 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. George Plimpton - Wikipedia Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . But he came right down to our level. Ive lived in Boston for 30 years and have never heard a George Plimpton accent; so I guess it must be a Larchmont accent, *Originally posted by Carnac the Magnificent! It was so violent that it brought a lot of people to the windows. May a diseased yak squat in your hot tub. [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. 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. 'Plimpton!' documentary looks at George Plimpton's lives George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. ESPN.com: GEN - George Plimpton dies tweedy demeanor and Oxford accent. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. On one website, I read about a Choate alumn saying one can still hear the LL (see above thread) accent on campus. 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. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! Plimpton didnt die. 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. *Originally posted by CBCD * This speech pattern might be common among US expatriates in the UK, of which Grossman would seem to represent just the most ostentatious example. One night Joe DiMaggio was here, and they had never met, so I introduced them. He was immensely generous in every waygenerous about sharing the work and about giving one a chance to edit things. 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. He plays the 'fancy pants' to our outhouse Americana," Flaherty asserted. [Then] this August he showed up, pulled the shirt over his head, and said he was ready to bat. 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). I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. Elaine Kaufman, owner of Elaines restaurant:Over the 40 years I knew him, George came in often, sometimes twice a week, usually on his way back from a cocktail party. An Evening With George Plimpton - 2000 - YouTube 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. George A. Plimpton Papers, 1634-1956 | Rare Book & Manuscript Library Jean Harlow, one of my favorites, is all over the map with this, sometimes sounding like a tough streetwalker, other times like a society matron, and, oddly, slipping in and out of both dialects in the same role, or even in one sentence. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. 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. 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. Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many. Plimpton was married twice. Please educate me. Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. 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. The responses fall into interesting categories: linguistic descriptions of this accent; sociological and ethnic explanations for its rise and fall; possible technological factors in its prominence and disappearance; explanations rooted in the movie industry; nominees for who might have been the last American to talk this way; and suggestions that a few rare specimens still exist. But the gentleman amateur - a Harvard. George Plimpton. In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. Were taking off from Teterburo, N.J., at 4 a.m. tomorrow. If you didnt know the man, you could, I think, be fooled by the voice. Kaltenborn was a famous mid . She was the daughter of writers Willard R. Espy[39] and Hilda S. Cole, who had, earlier in her career, been a publicity agent for Kate Smith and Fred Waring. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. [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. After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. He once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. My Father's Voice | The New Yorker Besides, third is a very respectable showing! Mia had the perfect model! 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?. The Scout Is a Lonely Hunter. I remember getting the news: It was my wife Madeleines birthday, Aug. 7. The Cuban revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, had just marched on Havana and ousted the US-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista. 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. Middle class? Thats a common name for such an accent. How to find out, and whether you should care. 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 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. The guys here in Detroit treated him like one of us. Harris trained himself as a young man to lose his native Bronx accent - to the point that he was asked if he were British. He majored in English. Sidd Finch: A pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. - Sports Illustrated Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. Cambridge. [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. See Inside George Plimpton's Upper East Side Duplex Several readers wrote in with specimens of Americans who had gone to England and ended up speaking in this mid-Atlantic way. He was a Wasp (both of his parents came from old New England families, and had ancestors on the Mayflower). 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. Articles From This Author. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. Look out, Wilson! He was also an accomplished birdwatcher. Plimpton was an omnipresence for much of American cultural lifeboth high and lowin the last third of the 20th century. 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. And I, of course, was looking them over, too. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. 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. Old money, would never say the word spanky, and certainly had more money than God could count. 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. 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. Between 1945 and 1948, Plimpton was a soldier in the United States Army. Plimpton and Dudley were the parents of twin daughters Laura Dudley Plimpton and Olivia Hartley Plimpton. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. The title of the PBS documentary - "Plimpton! The clearest example of the Mid-Atlantic accent is the accent of the Frasier & Niles Crane characters on the TV show Frasier. 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"). We worked at the Paris Review on the Rue Garanere for several years together. Vault. Are you saying that the denizens of Larchmont sound like Plimpton did? He watched the first pitch sail high for a ball, and then hit a rope into left field. In this campaign, Plimpton touted the superiority regarding the graphics and sounds of Intellivision video games over the Atari 2600.[24]. We were bound to play the roles of father and son, unable to simply be ourselves. Plimpton has grown. With such a useful explanation, why do I gripe about the name? Larchmont Lockjaw? :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! I never thought that George slept. 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. *Originally posted by Phlosphr * So it went in late 1960 at one of George Plimpton's legendary soirees at 541 E. 72nd St., New York. 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. Gay Talese, author:As a young man not long out of university, at 26, 27 years of age, George Plimpton went with his friends to Paris to be benighted in the tradition of Paris culture. George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003. Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the lasta figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. His high Boston accent might have been heard as an influential transitional hybrid, and its interesting how prominent parodies of the speech of Brando, Dean, and Kennedy were at the time: seems a sign that we were noticing a marked change. Medical Record Retention Requirements By State, North Seattle Shooting, What Happened To The Headless Guy On Ghosts 2021, Articles G