It took the form of a statement: I dont know writers who write about sex better than you. I rose to the bait and answered saying, Thank you. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. 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. [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. He also appeared in the 1996 documentary When We Were Kings about the "Rumble in the Jungle" 1974 Ali-Foreman Championship fight opposite Norman Mailer crediting Muhammad Ali as a poet who composed the world's shortest poem: "Me? Thanks for the scores of replies that have arrived in the past day, in response to my post asking why the stentorian, phony-British Announcer Voice that dominated newsreel narration, stage and movie acting, and public discourse in the United States during the first half of the 20th century had completely disappeared. He was also an accomplished birdwatcher. George Plimpton. 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. Vault. The Sidd Finch story was accompanied by a series of photos which managed to convince even the eagle-eyed fans . H.V. [citation needed], In 1963, Plimpton attended preseason training with the Detroit Lions of the National Football League as a backup quarterback, and he ran a few plays in an intrasquad scrimmage. 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). Ive rarely heard this accent in real life but its often used by actors doing a stereotype character based on other actors impersonations! 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. George Plimpton was born on March 18, 1927 in New York City, New York, USA. Its our anniversary. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. In most situations, he had the remarkable quality of making everyone he talked to feel at ease, at home, welcome, no matter who they were or what they didbut for whatever strange reason there wasnt this effortlessness with me, this warmth. We all just had our own regional accentor non accent, like the flat midwest speak. I received many notes like this one: The variety of English you are referring to has a name in linguistics: "Mid-Atlantic English". Youd be on the phone with him and get to the end of the conversation, and youd say I love you, Dad, and at most, hed reply, without subject or object, Love, like he was signing a letter. He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. Norman Mailer, author:George had a rare gift. Macklem . 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]. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. He had been in the war, if briefly (stationed in Italy towards the end of it, hed missed action, but met the Pope, an early sign of the great good fortuneone of his favorite phrasesthat marked his life). Ill try to give a representative range, and I am grateful for the care and thought that have gone into these responses. [32] When lit, the firework remained on the ground and exploded, blasting a crater 35 feet (11m) wide and 10 feet (3.0m) deep. Thurston Howell III had the Larchmont Lockjaw accent. [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. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. And you are going to come with me. We worked at the Paris Review on the Rue Garanere for several years together. [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. I never thought that George slept. How to find out, and whether you should care. And the many candidates for the crown of Last American to Speak This Way. $ 4.19 - $ 17.92. George Plimpton: what kind of accent? OK? Vault. [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]. Kaltenborn was a famous mid . 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. Return of the Big Bopper. George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. Several weeks later at a book party, he spotted two writers who had played in that game. Rose Styron, wife of William Styron and former Paris Review editor:My husband Bill was with George when he started the Paris Review. All rights reserved. He was a great addition to the human race. (What else happened that year??? George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a journalist and the first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review. The Wikipedia entry is indeed delightful. He was stationed primarily in Italy, where he worked as a tank driver. Plimpton entered Harvard as a member of the Class of 1948, but did not graduate until 1950 due to intervening military service. It was always as if one were setting out with him on a special adventure. . Interesting that the two competitors for his anchor chair were both fully vernacular speakers from the South and West: Mudd and Rather. 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. George Plimpton is beautifully connected. 1. That he died in his sleep was impressive. But he would do this in the most charming and agreeable way. 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. Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . Just in time for the Sixties, with all their other pressures towards some kind of anti-Eisenhower authenticity. (My dads been dead nearly ten years: not that he held many in his life, but what grudges could he possibly be holding on to now? Lewis Lapham, editor, Harpers Magazine:Georges immense enthusiasm was his primary characteristic. Revolutionary musket, a stairwell and a housemaster), So it went in late 1960 at one of George Plimpton's legendary soirees at 541 E. 72nd St., New York. The film used archival audio and video of Plimpton lecturing and reading to create a posthumous narration. 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?. 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. Showdown in the Pits. Shadow Box. Plimpton scowled, and said he was perfectly capable of running for himself. What fine manners he had! 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. Cambridge. As a result, this American version of a posh accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. The opposing team: the Detroit Lions. He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. His friendships testified to what an eclectic man he was. History / Biographical Note Biographical Note. 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[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. Hows your mom? hed always ask me. Read more in this thread (long). [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. 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. **Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. George was not vainhe didnt care a whit about his image. 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. Tom Nowatzke, fullback, Detroit Lions (In the 1960s, Plimpton briefly played with the Detroit Lions asresearch for the best-selling book Paper Lion, which was later made into a film):I was the No. With such a useful explanation, why do I gripe about the name? Where are you?, Im at dinner with my wife, I said. **. [47][48] Of the Murrow Boys, Eric Sevareid held on to the newsreel style the longest; relying on memory, Im betting that we could actually watch the transition away from that to a more vernacular style in the long career of Walter Cronkite. If you say, I pahked my cah in Hahvahd Yahd, like some vaudeville version of a Boston accent, you are non-rhotic. There was one more matter I never heard my dad discuss. It was as if some old gentlemans code prohibited us from interacting as human beings. 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. By George Plimpton. Plimpton was an omnipresence for much of American cultural lifeboth high and lowin the last third of the 20th century. Plimpton, George 1927-2003(George Ames Plimpton) Source for information on Plimpton, George 1927-2003: Concise Major 21st Century Writers dictionary. To me, Mid-Atlantic English is the nom juste for a related but distinct phenomenon (which is also mentioned in Wikipedia). 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. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. By George Plimpton. He wanted to play his own part, but they wouldnt let him. This was his habit. He wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, Pi Eta, the Signet Society, and the Porcellian Club. . He was one of her original supporters and had published an article about her work in The Paris Review. His experience was captured in the book Out of My League. 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. Ill pick you up., I had a hard time sleeping that night, as you might imagine. He thought Castro might come. This periodical has carried great weight in the literary world, but has never been financially strong; for its first half-century, it was allegedly largely financed by its publishers and by Plimpton. 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. 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. 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. The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. They spoke in this manner, and it seemed perfectly natural, evocative of a background spent among the gentry of the northeast. Big, tall, good-looking guy, easy-going. Ever. [citation needed]. He got the personality totally wrong, too. 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. 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 Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour. 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! Richard Howard, poetry editor, the Paris Review:I worked with George for 10 years on the magazine. Peter Matthiesen, author, co-founder of the Paris Review:I was in Liberia, of all places, and George met me in Monrovia. He was 76.. He was equally at home on a bicycle or getting out of a limousine with a Saudi Arabian prince. Quite sad, as he just had a daughter not many years back. [Then] this August he showed up, pulled the shirt over his head, and said he was ready to bat. I only wish I could not tell him again, just one more time. Even the manliest actors, such as Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable sometimes slipped into this voice-coach mode. Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? George Plimpton. But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. Could it be fairly said that Plimptom had it? That phony-baloney feigned British pronunciation thing. Vault. 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. "[44], In 2006, the musician Jonathan Coulton wrote the song entitled "A Talk with George", a part of his 'Thing a Week' series, in tribute to Plimpton's many adventures and approach to life. In that regard, Plimpton is the perfect candidate, and the proof is in "George, Being George," the compulsively readable oral biography edited by his friend Nelson W. Aldrich Jr. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. [31][32][33] His firework, a Roman candle named "Fat Man",[31][32][33] weighed 720 pounds (330kg)[31] and was expected to rise to 1,000 feet (300m)[33] or more[31] and deliver a wide starburst. Family (1) Spouse During my fight, my nose got badly broken in the second round, but I did last all four scheduled rounds, though I lost. Back to Plimpton I dont remember the LL affect at all. [3], He was the son of Francis T. P. Plimpton[4] and the grandson of Frances Taylor Pearsons and George Arthur Plimpton. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . Middle class? [17], In 1953, Plimpton joined the influential literary journal The Paris Review, founded by Peter Matthiessen, Thomas H. Guinzburg, and Harold L. "Doc" Humes, becoming its first editor in chief. The journal, which had operated out of his home, moved downtown. 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. **. How widespread, numerically and geographically? Look out, Wilson! Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? A heuristic approximation! In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. LL is typified, I think, but an almost clenching of the teeth while talking, producing a mushy sound, if you will. 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, 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. For instance: The American-British television presenter Loyd Grossman, who has described his accent as Mid-Atlantic. He did these jobs, and many others, as an amateur.. He watched the first pitch sail high for a ball, and then hit a rope into left field. It was always a surprise. Hed ask what was new in fireworks business and doodle around the facility with my dad, and he would always leave with a package of fireworks, to put on his own show. When he was on the scene, everything was a big happeningan event. He was respected by all. I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. At least, not to me, nor even to my sister, a fact she mentions in the movie. You're going to play for us-making some sort of big comeback." "That's right," Plimpton replied in his patrician accent. I enjoy doing it. Thats it, George cried out. This speech pattern might be common among US expatriates in the UK, of which Grossman would seem to represent just the most ostentatious example. He could have been a fight trainer, a fight manager! One night Joe DiMaggio was here, and they had never met, so I introduced them. Everything he did was like this, just a bit odd. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at
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