george plimpton accent

This kept his magazine fresh for 50 years. 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. 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. There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. The clearest example of the Mid-Atlantic accent is the accent of the Frasier & Niles Crane characters on the TV show Frasier. At the time, he was getting ready to pitch for the Yankees,and we would throw pitches across 72nd Street in preparation. He knew we were just as good as he was, but in a different field. Whee!! She would not even say goodbye. rejoiced in the name of Euphemia van Renssalaer Wyatt. 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. This brings us back to the why things changed question. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. A graduate of Harvard University and King's College, Cambridge, Plimpton was recruited to Paris by Peter Matthiessen in 1952 and signed on to the project shortly thereafter. 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. 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. After several problems with transporting and preparing the fireworks, Plimpton and Grucci became the first competitors from the United States to win the event. 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. Was it him? The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a . 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." He once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. Plimpton was an omnipresence for much of American cultural lifeboth high and lowin the last third of the 20th century. 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. Plimpton's remarkable life is showcased in a documentary that is. Finally I did. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. *Originally posted by CBCD * George Plimpton: what kind of accent? Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. tweedy demeanor and Oxford accent. The funny thing about Harris was that he did not start out with that accent - as I suspect George Gershwin did not. Hed have that and a scotch on the rocks, his favorite drink. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. How do I know you're not George Plimpton? [2][43], An oral biography titled George, Being George was edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., and released on October 21, 2008. Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. 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. He modestly shrugged off the compliment, but his bright smile betrayed his pleasureand ours. Discussing the accent he used for Washington in an interview with The Onion AV Club, he explained: The accent back then was probably nothing like what we think of as a Southern accent now or a New England accent now, so we tried to find the root of the accents. 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 Here are five things you may not have known about him. Whats the matter?, Well, he said. 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. Ken Auletta, author:Sometime after age 70, when his reflexes dulled, George took to the sidelines in the Artists and Writers softball game in Easthampton, N.Y. Each year his name was announced, and each year he was hailed by the crowd, who paid more attention to him than to the game. He could have been a fight trainer, a fight manager! (This is not to belittle Lowell Thomas, but to recognize the artifice that served him so well in his career). Archie Moore, after all, had broken his nose. He was smooth. George Plimpton. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, was released. Ever. George was the one who read my name out to the commissioner. So it went in late 1960 at one of George Plimpton's legendary soirees at 541 E. 72nd St., New York. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. I received many notes like this one: The variety of English you are referring to has a name in linguistics: "Mid-Atlantic English". . 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. 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. **. At Harvard, Plimpton was a classmate and close personal friend of Robert F. Kennedy. In that vein, here is an oral biography of George Plimpton. Plimpton was an optimist, a teller of amusing and amazing stories. With the help of the New York Mets organization and several Mets players, Plimpton wrote a convincing account of a new unknown pitcher in the Mets spring training camp named Siddhartha Finch, who threw a baseball over 160mph, wore a heavy boot on one foot, and was a practicing Buddhist with a largely unknown background. Is your language rhotic? I just heard that George Plimpton has died. 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. Except at parties. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Even the manliest actors, such as Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable sometimes slipped into this voice-coach mode. 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"). It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. [citation needed], In the movie Plimpton! NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. Plimpton has grown. You heard it and it could only be him. Kim Noble, one of the announcers on the NPR affiliate in Kansas City, KCUR, speaks with a very affected Connecticut Lockjaw accent. 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. Future Poet Laureate Donald Hall, who had met Plimpton at Exeter, was Poetry Editor. He is also credited with saving, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Plimpton! Are you saying that the denizens of Larchmont sound like Plimpton did? Charles McGrath, editor of the New York Times Book Review:I dont think George had played golf in years, but he used to save up oddball tips for me and others. A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. You can. I do believe his accent was decidedly Swamp Yankee. Here's a look inside the space, where the Paris Review editor hosted legendary parties. It was as if he was trying out again. The limited frequency response of the recording technology of the late 19th and early 20th centuries has left us with only a pale, and sometimes caricatural image of the original sound. But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. He did not appear last year, or the year before, and we feared he was done with us. In it Van Voorhis has the formal delivery that would have seemed familiar to many mid-century listeners but which in retrospect we know was on the way out. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. 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! He called his computer the machine. At dinner, when offered seconds, he would often decline by saying, Thank you, no, Ive had a gracious plenty. He called my mom Puss (this was also the name of our fat, raccoon-striped cat, though he was Mr. Listen to Caruso singing or Bix Beiderbecke playing his cornet to hear how muffled was the recording of those sounds. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! 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. The opposing team: the Detroit Lions. He Was Shot by John Wayne. Macklem . Plimpton also appeared in the closing credits of the 2006 film Factory Girl. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. 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. 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? [3], He was the son of Francis T. P. Plimpton[4] and the grandson of Frances Taylor Pearsons and George Arthur Plimpton. 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? Kaltenborn was a famous mid . **. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, which documents his life, adventures, and work as participatory journalist and editor of the Paris Review, my dad will be playing himself one more time. His response was "no, just affected.". 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. He had a way of putting it all together, of understanding fighters in the ring; he was a good analyst of boxing. It was as if some old gentlemans code prohibited us from interacting as human beings. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * 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. I remember the Lowell Thomas documentary films of the 50s where Mr. Thomas' mellifluous tones and distinct radio-style pronunciation gave him a respectability that a similar huckster could hardly hope to replicate today by the mere application of such an artifice. Several readers wrote in with specimens of Americans who had gone to England and ended up speaking in this mid-Atlantic way. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Harvard (where he edited the Lampoon), Kings College, 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. Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. I think all the editors who worked at the magazine can recount a time when they ascended to his office to argue for a particular story that had been submitted, certain that George hadnt read it or hadnt read it closely enough, only to stand gape-mouthed as he reeled off, from memory, its every deficiency. Would you like Mike to run for you, George? the coach asked. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. He was very understanding of what we did and how we did it. Several weeks later at a book party, he spotted two writers who had played in that game. 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. George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. It was so tiny that if you saw him in it, you couldnt believe hed be able to get himself out of it. Richard Howard, poetry editor, the Paris Review:I worked with George for 10 years on the magazine. Queen Elizabeth doesnt say car, and neither did Franklin D. Roosevelt, nor did the newsreel announcers or movie actors of his day. 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.. Few could give a toast or tell a story with equal humor. I thought they were terrific. The Scout Is a Lonely Hunter. And bolstering this last point, a reader who grew up in Depression-era Chicago writes: All I can think of is that people were imitating FDR. Everything he did was like this, just a bit odd. Shed wandered out to the balcony of a lonely Manhattan cocktail party, and was standing out there, smoking a cigarette and looking down mournfully at the street far below, when from behind her she heard a voice: I know a better way down.. Havent heard that term in years. 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. [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. They spoke in this manner, and it seemed perfectly natural, evocative of a background spent among the gentry of the northeast. Plimpton scowled, and said he was perfectly capable of running for himself. 2) Truman v. Kaltenborn, 1949. Too old-fashioned. 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. If you say, I pahked my cah in Hahvahd Yahd, like some vaudeville version of a Boston accent, you are non-rhotic. People two or three deep stood looking out at the East River. Norman Mailer, author:George had a rare gift. On one website, I read about a Choate alumn saying one can still hear the LL (see above thread) accent on campus. 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. George . George Plimpton was a literary man about town who did it all, from co-founding The Paris . [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. 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. Katharine Hepburn spoke this way, on and off screen until she died. (Why do I even bother?) 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. Self-help author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a unique accent that, . [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. What fine manners he had! Return of the Big Bopper. [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. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. And George had written it straight. At least, not to me, nor even to my sister, a fact she mentions in the movie. By strange coincidence, I actually became quite good friends with his (ex-)in-laws here in Manhattan. Ive always heard it referred to as a patrician accent. By George Plimpton. 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. 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. 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. 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. Talking about sports with Georgeor, even better, reading George about sportswas more fun than sports themselves. Now you know! ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. 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. Spoke in a mid-Atlantic accent, reflecting a privileged Upper East Side (in New York City) upbringing. Why couldnt we have a good time, too? expelled from the very expensive, very WASP-y Philips I have worked as poetry editor with editors on other magazines; only with George has the experience been entirely agreeable. The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch. 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. George Plimpton's duplex apartment on the Upper East Side hit the market for $5.495 million on April 18. Her mother, a writer and critic for Commonweal and Catholic World. 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. 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! Vault. George Plimpton was an upper-class guy with a patrician accent who partied his way through life . Was this sheer affectation? Mid-Atlantic. 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. 2) The Role of Broadway and Hollywood, and the Shift from Jimmy Cagney to Marlon Brando. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. I didnt know he was from the Larchmont area. But the gentleman amateur - a Harvard. It was scary, because he was never mad, and to see this normally benevolent, white-haired figure of civility fill with pink steam, to hear this gentle man, who loved nothing more than to tell lighthearted stories and laugh, suddenly shout-whisper Dammit at some injustice on the other end of the telephone was unsettling. The film used archival audio and video of Plimpton lecturing and reading to create a posthumous narration. He was going to put on a reading of his play Zelda, Scott, and Ernest. Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature in your in-box. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. If you are in the big league, God help us all. See below!) Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. We all just had our own regional accentor non accent, like the flat midwest speak. Vault. I thought Id died and gone to Olympus. Sidd Finch was a fictional character George had created for a Sports Illustrated story, supposedly the greatest and fastest pitcher in the world. 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 very much approved. But he would do this in the most charming and agreeable way. 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. LL is typified, I think, but an almost clenching of the teeth while talking, producing a mushy sound, if you will. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. [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. [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. Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? 2023 Cond Nast. George Plimpton writer, publisher, amateur lion tamer died in 2003 after 50 years as the founding editor of The Paris Review. After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. $ 9.19 - $ 32.19. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. 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. Vault. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, the writer James Salter said of Plimpton that "he was writing in a genre that really doesn't permit greatness. Over the years, we held a lot of dinner parties for him, and he brought a lot of people inmany, many writers. Brown & Co. Re-issued George Plimpton Sports Books, 2016. But he has never employed that voice professionally, and certainly does not speak that way in real life. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! He grew up in New York City with bona fide WASP credentials; became the longtime editor of the Paris Review, working with many of the great novelists of the day; contributed to the New Journalism. Hearing the words Dammit, Im mad as a hornet! uttered in George Plimptons voice made anger sound totally ridiculous, which is exactly what it most often is. Consider his duties as host of Mousterpiece Theatre (my first intro to my father as celebrity), a childrens TV show in which he debated the adventures and psyches of Donald Duck and Goofy in that marvelously serious voice: Is Donald Duck really a strident existentialist and a hero? How wonderfulwhat fun!to have a constant reminder emerging from your lips that life was absurd, and identity, too; all of it a great game to be played at, enjoyed. Yes he is gone. George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003.