Peter even came with us on our honeymoon in Ravello, though George didnt. 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. We made $15,000-20,000. He was also known for "participatory journalism," including accounts of his active involvement in professional sporting events, acting in a Western, performing a comedy act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and playing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra[1] and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur. When I eventually went back to be an editor at Harpers, I arrived at his flat, not having been in New York for eight years. December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. He just did it because Columbia was another literary magazine. 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! By George Plimpton. One reader writes: I've wondered whether that "announcer English" was at least partly caused by poor loudspeakers and microphones. In the "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can" episode of The Simpsons, he hosts the "Spellympics" and attempts to bribe Lisa Simpson to lose with the offer of a scholarship at a Seven Sisters College and a hot plate; "it's perfect for soup! Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. [citation needed]. Queen Elizabeth doesnt say car, and neither did Franklin D. Roosevelt, nor did the newsreel announcers or movie actors of his day. . For such admissions to escape my fathers lips, they always had to be a little removed somehow. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. I think it was an affectation people adopted because they thought it made them sound much more intelligent! I do believe his accent was decidedly Swamp Yankee. As such, it was popular in the theatre and other forms of elite culture in that region. George Plimpton was an upper-class guy with a patrician accent who partied his way through life . When Plimpton, the co-founder of The Paris Review, died in 2003 at age 76, The New York Times . 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? Vault. 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. A few days after, I went to a Paris Review party and showed off my damaged nose and two black eyes to George. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? And they founded this thing called the Paris Review and published poetry and short story writers and did interviews. After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. Spoke in a mid-Atlantic accent, reflecting a privileged Upper East Side (in New York City) upbringing. Isnt that what they call it. The guys here in Detroit treated him like one of us. The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. He could have done whatever he wanted. 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. [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]. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. 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. 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. Billy Collins, poet:Im one of these people who went from crashing Georges parties in the 70s to being invited in the 80s. 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. He was not himself interested in poetry, but he read all of the poems every quarter, and he would tell me what he thought of them. 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. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. Sometimes, we used to have quarrels, because he thought I took too many poems: Are you turning this magazine into a poetry magazine? he would say. Several weeks later at a book party, he spotted two writers who had played in that game. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. Was it me? ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. Several readers wrote in with specimens of Americans who had gone to England and ended up speaking in this mid-Atlantic way. If you found him at a fancy restaurant, he was there as a guest: For his own meals he preferred cheap Chinese or bangers and mash at a local Irish pub. Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? Manhattan DVD. News children today have no concept of the Mid-Atlantic accent. The Sidd Finch story was accompanied by a series of photos which managed to convince even the eagle-eyed fans . 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 "George Plimpton"-editor, host . During my fight, my nose got badly broken in the second round, but I did last all four scheduled rounds, though I lost. I had made about five thousand egg and tuna sandwiches. But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. He was respected by all. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 September 25, 2003) was an American writer. The name George Plimpton is synonymous with a kind of all-in participatory journalism. BTW, I cant imagine a presidential candidate today getting anywhere close to a nomination with FDRs accent, cigarette holder, and aristocratic bearing. George Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. 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? Few could give a toast or tell a story with equal humor. 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. We worked at the Paris Review on the Rue Garanere for several years together. Articles From This Author. As an old film buff, I am used to this voice, though it figures unevenly in old movies. 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. I didnt know he was from the Larchmont area. For instance: Mid-Atlantic English was the dominant dialect among the Northeastern American upper class through the first half of the 20th century. The Wikipedia entry is indeed delightful. (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? Labov suspected that WWII had something to do about it. . It is the kind of study . Ill pick you up., I had a hard time sleeping that night, as you might imagine. Share; Copied! Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. Ive always heard it referred to as a patrician accent. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. [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." 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. I think the term Old Money or patrician pretty much says it. And the many candidates for the crown of Last American to Speak This Way. 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. If you didnt know the man, you could, I think, be fooled by the voice. 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. He watched the first pitch sail high for a ball, and then hit a rope into left field. Katharine Hepburn spoke this way, on and off screen until she died. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Self-help author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a unique accent that, . Even the manliest actors, such as Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable sometimes slipped into this voice-coach mode. 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. [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. 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 . George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. That was when Westbrook van Voorhis, the famous March of Time voice, did the intro narration of the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone. He thought Castro might come. During our time in Paris, he had a famous little car, a dark blue Peugeotit was mine originally; I sold it to himand it had to be seen to be believed. 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. By George Plimpton. Suddenly, a New York cop remembered a long-ago murder. It was always a surprise. 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. 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. Macklem . There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. Read more. $ 3.99 - $ 27.44. 3: Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Among other challenges for Sports Illustrated, he attempted to play top-level bridge, and spent some time as a high-wire circus performer. Exeter Academy after an incident involving a He could as easily have been my grandfather as father. Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? The Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour. Ever. What stood in our way? 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. 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. Old money, would never say the word spanky, and certainly had more money than God could count. 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. Mr . 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. You can. I believe the accent was at one time known as Larchmont Lockjaw. 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. It sounds like Somerset Maugham, was a favorite putdown. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 **. At one point, there was a tremendous Wagnerian thunder and lighting storm. He had it all going! If he couldnt be taken quite seriously, that was fine with him (he took himself lightly, and relished being in on the joke). Daniel Kunitz, managing editor of the Paris Review from1995-2000: I once heard George joking with William F. Buckley on the phone about how they had the last affected accents in New York. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. 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. But he would do this in the most charming and agreeable way. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. Hear Stories By George Plimpton. A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. 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. It was a great partyraucous and long. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Its strange to think, but he would have been eighty-five this year: fourteen years older than my mom, fifty years older than me. He was smooth. If you say, I pahked my cah in Hahvahd Yahd, like some vaudeville version of a Boston accent, you are non-rhotic. **. So it went in late 1960 at one of George Plimpton's legendary soirees at 541 E. 72nd St., New York. Vault. 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. The clipped, non-rhotic English accents of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley Jr. were vestigial examples. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. We had the book party for my selected poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room, at Georges house on Sept 10, 2001. And he stood there ebullient and charming all night; he bid on many items himself. 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. Its a joke to say 500 of my closest friends, but that would have been true with George1,000 of his closest friends, actually. His friendships testified to what an eclectic man he was. [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. At least, not to me, nor even to my sister, a fact she mentions in the movie. George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. [citation needed]. **Mid-Atlantic. Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many. [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. [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. Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. expelled from the very expensive, very WASP-y Philips 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. And the answer may explain partly why it has gone out of fashion: Jonathan Harris, the actor who played Dr. Smith on the television show "Lost in Space.". Look out, Wilson! 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. LL is typified, I think, but an almost clenching of the teeth while talking, producing a mushy sound, if you will. He was stationed primarily in Italy, where he worked as a tank driver. He was equally at home on a bicycle or getting out of a limousine with a Saudi Arabian prince. 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. 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. George was not vainhe didnt care a whit about his image. Middle class? In early 1959, George Plimpton was preparing to watch an execution in Cuba. When George Plimpton Met the Best Bartender in Brooklyn Two New York Legends Collide By Tim Sultan February 26, 2016 The only other person that I had known who possessed a similar charisma to Sunny Balzano's was my first employer in New York: George Plimpton. The Left Bank really became East 72nd Street. 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.