If he couldnt be taken quite seriously, that was fine with him (he took himself lightly, and relished being in on the joke). 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. Self-help author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a unique accent that, . Prestigious prep schools and ivy league institutions (though Gore Vidal never went to college). 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. Jean Stein became his co-editor. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . Isnt that what they call it. Vault. But he could easily have said, Alice, I have enough trouble raising money for my magazine.. Plimpton didnt die. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. So it went in late 1960 at one of George Plimpton's legendary soirees at 541 E. 72nd St., New York. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. 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. Call me back.. 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. He was 76. 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. Kaltenborn was a famous mid . On Saturday Night Live, even the great impersonator Dana Carvey couldnt get it quite right. . George Plimpton, who has died aged 76, became a best-selling author by not only writing about sporting heroes but by participating in those sports as well. 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 always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. 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. In no way do I recall Plimpton talking in a way that is typically associated with LLa style which, as I understand it, is associated with unclear pronunciation of most consonant cluster. Plimpton had a quasi-Brit patrician accent, which in no way corresponds with the official descriptions of LL that Ive read on the Net. Norman Mailer, author:George had a rare gift. If you are in the big league, God help us all. [3] During the summers, he lived in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Suffolk County on Long Island. 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! The young Paris Review editor and other New York literary figures arrived during a period marked by hope for a democratic Cuba. Harris trained himself as a young man to lose his native Bronx accent - to the point that he was asked if he were British. 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. Too old-fashioned. The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. In this campaign, Plimpton touted the superiority regarding the graphics and sounds of Intellivision video games over the Atari 2600.[24]. 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. They all gathered there. I remember getting the news: It was my wife Madeleines birthday, Aug. 7. And his apartment, with those windows that looked out onto the East River, became a famous landmark in NYC. 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. My suspicion is that the shift might have begun in the switch away from the two paired styles in American movies, the classical acting of the British School and the rapid patter of popular American actors (Marx Brothers, Cagney, Powell and Loy, etc), and over to the Method Acting style of the Strasberg/Brando/Dean school. Was this sheer affectation? **. . Shadow Box. George . He thought Castro might come. Articles From This Author. Ever. Isnt that what they call it. 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. In early 1959, George Plimpton was preparing to watch an execution in Cuba. [2][43], An oral biography titled George, Being George was edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., and released on October 21, 2008. He watched the first pitch sail high for a ball, and then hit a rope into left field. And the many candidates for the crown of Last American to Speak This Way. (Every now and then he also called me Sweet Prince, as in Goodnight, Sweet Prince.), Of course, my fathers voice was odd not just in what it said, but in what it couldnt. 3: Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". This brings us back to the why things changed question. A few days after, I went to a Paris Review party and showed off my damaged nose and two black eyes to George. 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. He said, You better stay here, and I did, for a while. The funny thing about Harris was that he did not start out with that accent - as I suspect George Gershwin did not. He would have a beer with you. Ive always heard it referred to as a patrician accent. Well, perhaps it's more accurate to say that the book provided entertaining confirmation to millions of people that they -- like the author . But he has never employed that voice professionally, and certainly does not speak that way in real life. 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. 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. 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. 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. And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you? Future Poet Laureate Donald Hall, who had met Plimpton at Exeter, was Poetry Editor. When he was on the scene, everything was a big happeningan event. Even the most basic conversation was often a struggle. Would you admit to there being symbolism in your novels? Are you saying that the denizens of Larchmont sound like Plimpton did? Anyhow, I asked Terry Gross from Fresh Air and George Plimpton to be auctioneers. By George Plimpton. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. 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. Among other challenges for Sports Illustrated, he attempted to play top-level bridge, and spent some time as a high-wire circus performer. NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. 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." At one point, there was a tremendous Wagnerian thunder and lighting storm. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, was released. By George Plimpton. He was immensely generous in every waygenerous about sharing the work and about giving one a chance to edit things. Whats the matter?, Well, he said. He got the personality totally wrong, too. [35], Plimpton was known for his distinctive accent which, by Plimpton's own admission, was often mistaken for an English accent. 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. "I've decided to stay over here in . To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. . 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. 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. Were taking off from Teterburo, N.J., at 4 a.m. tomorrow. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. That was when Westbrook van Voorhis, the famous March of Time voice, did the intro narration of the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone. Its a joke to say 500 of my closest friends, but that would have been true with George1,000 of his closest friends, actually. 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. Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! 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. Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? That is, until I saw the documentarythe assassination of his dear friend Bobby Kennedy. (The filmmakers assembled his voice-over from recorded speeches and other archival footage.) It was so tiny that if you saw him in it, you couldnt believe hed be able to get himself out of it. Actually, thats not far off from how my mom felt when she first met him. You can. 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. Between 1945 and 1948, Plimpton was a soldier in the United States Army. 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! Even if it had nothing else going for itsomething very far from the truth Shadow Box by George Plimpton will forever remain a bastion of boxing literature because of the image it contains of the "Near Room," a place of dreadful foreboding which Muhammad Ali once described to the famed . Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? 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. *Originally posted by bordelond * That he died in his sleep was impressive. By George Plimpton. He was very understanding of what we did and how we did it. **. Eerily enough, one of the messages on my answering machine was from George, with that distinctive accent of his: Hallo, its George Plimpton. He smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. (To read Part One, click here. When Plimpton, the co-founder of The Paris Review, died in 2003 at age 76, The New York Times . 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. [citation needed]. George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. Even the manliest actors, such as Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable sometimes slipped into this voice-coach mode. He was one of her original supporters and had published an article about her work in The Paris Review. **Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. He hosted Disney Channel's Mouseterpiece Theater (a Masterpiece Theatre spoof which featured Disney cartoon shorts). Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many. All rights reserved. There was intellectual heft in the Plimpton genes too: one Ames was a Professor of Botany, another was Governor of Massachusetts, another relation was a publisher, and yet another a writer-philanthropist fascinated with the subject of how the great figures of the past were educated Young Georges educational path was precisely that of a 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]. [32] When lit, the firework remained on the ground and exploded, blasting a crater 35 feet (11m) wide and 10 feet (3.0m) deep. 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). After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. $ 3.99 - $ 27.44. They were born to Plimpton and his second wife, Sarah Dudley, 26 years younger than he, who is chairwoman of the East Harlem Tutorial Program, for which he was a trustee. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. 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. Never heard of this decidedly imprecise term. Was it him? The flipped prestige markers point here is fascinating. 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. A heuristic approximation! George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. The last time I heard my fathers voice, it was over the telephone. George Plimpton was a literary man about town who did it all, from co-founding The Paris Review to boxing (and dribbling and quarterbacking) with the pros. Ad Choices. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. But the gentleman amateur - a Harvard. George Plimpton Dec 1, 2014 In which the venturous author, the rawest rookie pro football has ever known, recounts all the excruciating details of what happened when he called five plays as. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! Researcher and writer Samuel Arbesman filed with NASA to name an asteroid after Plimpton; NASA issued the certificate 7932 Plimpton in 2009. H.V. 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. 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! 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. There was one more matter I never heard my dad discuss. [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]. Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. 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. Showdown in the Pits. Robert Silvers, editor, the New York Review of Books:I met George on the Ile Saint-Louis in 1953 as I was leaving NATO headquarters. The list of authors interviewed is extraordinary, and stretches from Hemingway years ago to Amy Hempel (in the 50th anniversary issue that has just been published). [47][48] But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. 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." Whee!! After several problems with transporting and preparing the fireworks, Plimpton and Grucci became the first competitors from the United States to win the event. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 September 25, 2003) was an American writer. Several weeks later at a book party, he spotted two writers who had played in that game. 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 could as easily have been my grandfather as father. George Plimpton boxed with Archie Moore, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions, and played percussion for the New York Philharmonic. And he stood there ebullient and charming all night; he bid on many items himself. Between 2000 and 2003, Plimpton wrote the libretto to a new opera, Animal Tales, commissioned by Family Opera Initiative, with music by Kitty Brazelton directed by Grethe Barrett Holby. 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. Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. It came from a different era, shouldnt have still existed, but nevertheless, there it wasold New England, old New York, tinged with a hint of Kings College Kings English. $ 9.19 - $ 32.19. Quite sad, as he just had a daughter not many years back. 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. The presentation was called Freedom of the American Road and was made 60 years ago, in 1955, as part of the campaign to build support for the new Interstate Highway system. Since all we have are recordings of those long-vanished voices, we do not and cannot know whether people spoke "this way" when they were not being recorded, although I would be willing to wager that they did not. Butch, he says, because he always called me Butch. 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"). With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch. 1 draft choice of the Lions in 1965. 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. Back to Plimpton I dont remember the LL affect at all. These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. 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. **Mid-Atlantic. A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didnt, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brandos. Plimpton sparred for three rounds with boxing greats Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson while on assignment for Sports Illustrated. In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. 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. He was stationed primarily in Italy, where he worked as a tank driver. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. Just when Jim and I thought we had finished, and we had been working a long time, George, who loved the result of our efforts, decided he wanted to talk to me as well. We all just had our own regional accentor non accent, like the flat midwest speak. #1 was Who Was the Last American to Speak This Way, #3 is Class-War Edition, and #4 is The Origin Story., Who Was the Last American to Speak This Way. And you are going to come with me. Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 429-432. Im having a harder time coming up with clear examples from the other side of the Atlantic, but Ive heard Alfred Molina (Londoner), and Catherine Zeta-Jones (Welsh) put on a Mid-Atlantic accent from time to time.. Plimpton would not boast of his feat, so we did. He knew we were just as good as he was, but in a different field. I think it was an affectation people adopted because they thought it made them sound much more intelligent! And I, of course, was looking them over, too. Larchmont Lockjaw? 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?. He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. 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. Richard Howard, poetry editor, the Paris Review:I worked with George for 10 years on the magazine. How to find out, and whether you should care. The Left Bank really became East 72nd Street. During my fight, my nose got badly broken in the second round, but I did last all four scheduled rounds, though I lost. Why couldnt we have a good time, too? LL is typified, I think, but an almost clenching of the teeth while talking, producing a mushy sound, if you will. It was as if he was trying out again. Yes he is gone. So it was that George Plimptons accent could not be imitated. George Plimpton writer, publisher, amateur lion tamer died in 2003 after 50 years as the founding editor of The Paris Review. How widespread, numerically and geographically? He had the bearing of Gen. MacArthur, but the soul of Charlie Chaplin. 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. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. **, In this case, Mid-Atlantic refers to speech in which the attributes of British English and American English meet halfway. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. News children today have no concept of the Mid-Atlantic accent. The title of the PBS documentary - "Plimpton! I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. The clenched jaw tight-bite bit: the lockjaw dentiloquist. He plays the 'fancy pants' to our outhouse Americana," Flaherty asserted. Plimpton also appeared in a number of feature films as an extra and in cameo appearances. What fine manners he had! Plimpton brought the Left Bank to NYCpeople like Peter Mathiessen, William Styron, Terry Southern. (Why do I even bother?) He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. Heres a sampling for today, with more planned in the days ahead. The Dudleys established the 36-acre (15ha) Highstead Arboretum in Redding, Connecticut. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. Plimpton was married twice. 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. 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. **Get a life. [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. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Now you know! They spoke in this manner, and it seemed perfectly natural, evocative of a background spent among the gentry of the northeast. Plimpton himself described it as a "New England cosmopolitan accent"[36] or "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan" accent. Archie Moore, after all, had broken his nose. [Then] this August he showed up, pulled the shirt over his head, and said he was ready to bat. [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." The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. [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. O ne afternoon this summer, I sat in George Plimpton's study waiting for the gentleman editor, participatory journalist, and beloved gadfly of American letters to arrive.
george plimpton accent
- Published in open air artisans fairs in chile