george plimpton accent

He had a small role in the Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting,[22] playing a psychologist. Hed go on to move freely through so many worlds and circles, without ever not speaking in that singular accentthough it probably would have made life easier for him if hed adopted a new way of talking (after all, as a journalist in the locker rooms, where slang and cursing were art-forms, my dads stiff, formal tongue made him stick out like an egret among ducks). It was a hot, sweltering day. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . How do I know you're not George Plimpton? His experience was captured in the book Out of My League. Return of the Big Bopper. Look out, Wilson! He said, You better stay here, and I did, for a while. My dad and I could not lose each other, but we could never quite find each other, either. I want you to go [to the shop] pull out the biggest firework you have and go out and light it up, because you just won the firework contest in Monaco!, I was so stunned, all I could think to say was, I dont think I can get a permit that fast!, Alice Quinn, director of the Poetry Society of America, poetry editor, The New Yorker:When I was an adviser at Columbia Magazine [a journal run out of Columbia University], we were scraping barrel, with no money in the bank, and I said to the students we should have a benefit auction. Final Twist of the Drama. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. 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. Here are five things you may not have known about him. In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. Over the years, we held a lot of dinner parties for him, and he brought a lot of people inmany, many writers. 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." For it was George Plimpton the writer, not the editor nor the celebrity, who was honored here . He was 76. And being good at losing was one of Georges many gifts. But the average person never talked that way. He had it, as does/did William Buckley, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Julia Child. . It was horrifying.. 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). Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. Typical of George to laugh about something others saw as a defining traithe never took himself all that seriously. Family (1) Spouse 2) The Role of Broadway and Hollywood, and the Shift from Jimmy Cagney to Marlon Brando. We were bound to play the roles of father and son, unable to simply be ourselves. 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. The s. He very much approved. Yes indeed, George Plimpton is a man for all seasons. [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. George Plimpton was born on March 18, 1927 in New York City, New York, USA. Except at parties. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. Did he have the celebrated "Boston Brahmin" accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? Here's a look inside the space, where the Paris Review editor hosted legendary parties. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. All rights reserved. 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. So it was that George Plimptons accent could not be imitated. I have worked as poetry editor with editors on other magazines; only with George has the experience been entirely agreeable. 3 people found this helpful . Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 429-432. Its a joke to say 500 of my closest friends, but that would have been true with George1,000 of his closest friends, actually. The funny thing about Harris was that he did not start out with that accent - as I suspect George Gershwin did not. What was our problem? He wanted to play his own part, but they wouldnt let him. 1 draft choice of the Lions in 1965. He thought Castro might come. After several problems with transporting and preparing the fireworks, Plimpton and Grucci became the first competitors from the United States to win the event. This brings us back to the why things changed question. Brown & Co. Re-issued George Plimpton Sports Books, 2016. So we got together and, after some preliminaries, he popped the question that he was really there to ask. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. A lordly accent acquired at St. Bernard's and burnished later at Cambridge, in England, enhanced his distinguished aura, as did elevated stature and a silver head of hair which might have encouraged a career in politics but mercifully did not. But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. (He intended to face both line-ups, but tired badly and was relieved by Ralph Houk.) Besides, third is a very respectable showing! It's a Scottish accent that's been modified somewhat for a mainstream audience that tends to associate them with Groundskeeper Willie. 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 the April 1, 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated, Plimpton pulled off a widely reported April Fools' Day prank. George Plimpton. Peter even came with us on our honeymoon in Ravello, though George didnt. Almost twenty years ago, writing quirky sports pieces for the Village Voice, I decided to enter the world of championship arm wrestling.Like many young writers, I was inspired by the sports adventures of the gaunt but game George Plimpton, who had made a literary career out of placing himself in . 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. We were going to go looking for strange birds. I mean, if George Plimpton wasnt my father and Id never met him, and I heard that voice emerge from his lips and matched it with his severe Roman features and his usual blue blazer, oxford shirt, and tie, I might have assumed that he was a little pompous or snooty or affected. But he could easily have said, Alice, I have enough trouble raising money for my magazine.. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. 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. 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. To me, it meant admission to this little exclusive club at the Paris Review. 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. 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. Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. 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. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. Mr . 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. For more than five decades, author and journalist George Plimpton delved deeply into an array of high-profile and often physically grueling experiences, including professional baseball, boxing . Wed gone to dinner and the maitre d comes over and says, Felix, I got a call for you from Monaco., I pick up the phone, and I hear Georges Bostonian accent. 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. This kept his magazine fresh for 50 years. 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. Besides, third is a very respectable showing! (And, OK, Im not a linguist, but Im married to one!) My fathers voice was like one of those supposedly extinct deep-sea creatures that wash up on the shores of Argentina every now and then. [3] During the summers, he lived in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Suffolk County on Long Island. December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. Shadow Box. 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. Plimpton scowled, and said he was perfectly capable of running for himself. In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. (Newsreels ran in movie theaters, of course: what better critique of the high newsreel style than the new movies that jarred against it?). George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a journalist and the first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review. Losing, he knew, always makes a better story than winning. Hear Stories By George Plimpton. 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! Whats the matter?, Well, he said. He is also credited with saving, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Plimpton! The clipped, non-rhotic English accents of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley Jr. were vestigial examples. One of the magazine's most notable discoveries was author and screenplay writer Terry Southern, who was living in Paris at the time and formed a lifelong friendship with Plimpton, along with writer Alexander Trocchi and future classical and jazz pioneer David Amram. He liked the fact that I had broken my nose in defeat. [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]. Whee!! In the 50s Plimpton and staff came to New York, where they kept the Review going for half a century. George Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. Several readers wrote in with specimens of Americans who had gone to England and ended up speaking in this mid-Atlantic 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. George had three siblings: Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Jr., Oakes Ames Plimpton,[15] and Sarah Gay Plimpton. 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.. Peter Matthiessen took the magazine over from Humes and ousted him as editor, replacing him with Plimpton, using it as his cover for Matthiessen's CIA activities. 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. Hed have that and a scotch on the rocks, his favorite drink. **. Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didnt, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brandos. 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 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, George 1927-2003(George Ames Plimpton) Source for information on Plimpton, George 1927-2003: Concise Major 21st Century Writers dictionary. 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. Hes just trying it out and will come back and write a book about his experiences. Of course, I think he enjoyed the odd persona his voice and mannerisms conferred on him. **. George Plimpton. He could have been a fight trainer, a fight manager! George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little What will you be mad about ten years after youre gone?). I just knew it was going to be something terrible. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. Future Poet Laureate Donald Hall, who had met Plimpton at Exeter, was Poetry Editor. How widespread, numerically and geographically? . And I, of course, was looking them over, too. Sidd Finch was a fictional character George had created for a Sports Illustrated story, supposedly the greatest and fastest pitcher in the world. tweedy demeanor and Oxford accent. If you didnt know the man, you could, I think, be fooled by the voice. 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. 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. And he stood there ebullient and charming all night; he bid on many items himself. Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many. 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. The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a . 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. He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. The book offers memories of Plimpton from among other writers, such as Norman Mailer, William Styron, Gay Talese and Gore Vidal, and was written with the cooperation of both his ex-wife and his widow. Look out, Wilson! Mr. Plimpton was born in Manhattan in 1927 and raised in Huntington, L.I. Richard Howard, poetry editor, the Paris Review:I worked with George for 10 years on the magazine. He was immensely generous in every waygenerous about sharing the work and about giving one a chance to edit things. He was a great addition to the human race. And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you? The guys here in Detroit treated him like one of us. 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. "I've decided to stay over here in . It is the kind of study . **Thats a common name for such an accent. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. & FDR, George Plimpton, William F. Buckley, etc. Self-help author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a unique accent that, . Finally I did. "[27], Plimpton was a member of the cast of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (200102). And George had written it straight. Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? Vault. He also appeared in a featurette about Edie Sedgwick found on the Ciao! During my fight, my nose got badly broken in the second round, but I did last all four scheduled rounds, though I lost. The clenched jaw tight-bite bit: the lockjaw dentiloquist. Bill and I met in Rome, several months after the Paris Review was startedwe were, as they say, courtingand he drove me to Paris so George and Peter [Mathiessen] could look me over. [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. I thought they were terrific. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. Vault. He was 76.. Was this sheer affectation? 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. He was respected by all. H.V. They all gathered there. He came from a family where such endearments were not expressed, and phone conversations were curt. 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. It was so violent that it brought a lot of people to the windows. A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. *Originally posted by CBCD * [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. 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. Her mother, a writer and critic for Commonweal and Catholic World. 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. Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. In that vein, here is an oral biography of George Plimpton. George Plimpton's duplex apartment on the Upper East Side hit the market for $5.495 million on April 18. The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch. I didnt know he was from the Larchmont area. How to find out, and whether you should care. And he told everyone that night, and for many years after, that hed diverted me from a career of filling prescriptions. * Even Orson Welles on occasion. Larchmont Lockjaw? Read more. These interviews are a collaborative effort, and, I believe, a fascinating contribution to literary history. 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. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? [citation needed]. The picture at the top of this post is of the same Westbrook Van Voorhis who epitomized FDR-era announcer-speak but didnt fit the sensibility of the early-cool-cat-era Twilight Zone. The 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. For instance: Mid-Atlantic English was the dominant dialect among the Northeastern American upper class through the first half of the 20th century. The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. 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. 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. [29], His enthusiasm for fireworks grew, and he was appointed Fireworks Commissioner of New York by Mayor John Lindsay,[29][30] an unofficial post he held until his death. Update: This post is #2 in the announcer-speak series. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. Was it me? He was stationed primarily in Italy, where he worked as a tank driver. [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. In 2013, the documentary Plimpton! George . George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Now you know! Yes he is gone. "[25] He had a recurring role as the grandfather of Dr. Carter on the NBC series ER. 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. Plimpton entered Harvard as a member of the Class of 1948, but did not graduate until 1950 due to intervening military service. George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003. Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? When Plimpton, the co-founder of The Paris Review, died in 2003 at age 76, The New York Times . . What fine manners he had! 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. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. 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. Plimpton sparred for three rounds with boxing greats Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson while on assignment for Sports Illustrated. 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. History / Biographical Note Biographical Note. Kennedy died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital. He was smooth. 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. [citation needed] Some of these events, such as his stint with the Colts, and an attempt at stand-up comedy, were presented on the ABC television network as a series of specials. Everything he did was like this, just a bit odd. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. He hosted Disney Channel's Mouseterpiece Theater (a Masterpiece Theatre spoof which featured Disney cartoon shorts). What stood in our way? So, pairing the Cagney hint with the Kennedy Inaugural, could we date the changeover to 1961? At the time, he was getting ready to pitch for the Yankees,and we would throw pitches across 72nd Street in preparation. He just did it because Columbia was another literary magazine. Indeed, the police deposition the filmmakers managed to uncover may be the only time my dad ever spoke about the tragedy, publicly or privately. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . 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. He was an actor and writer, known for Good Will Hunting (1997), Nixon (1995) and Just Cause (1995). Premiring on June 21st at the SilverDocs festival, in Washington, D.C., and directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, the film contains interviews with notable friends and peers like Hugh Hefner, Peter Matthiessen, and James Lipton, though the majority of this remarkable account is narrated by none other than George Plimpton. Aldas version was always angry or consternated, like a character in a Woody Allen film, while my dad, though he certainly faced hurdles as an amateur in the world of the professional, bore his humiliations with a comic lightness and charmmuch of which emanated from that befuddled, self-deprecating professors voice. Ad Choices. 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. He could have done whatever he wanted. If you were making a speech in a large hall, or speaking on the radio, you needed to enunciate very clearly and use a lot of emphases to be sure your audience could understand what you were saying. Jean Harlow, one of my favorites, is all over the map with this, sometimes sounding like a tough streetwalker, other times like a society matron, and, oddly, slipping in and out of both dialects in the same role, or even in one sentence. But he came right down to our level. With the evolution of talkies in the late 1920s, voice was first heard in motion pictures. 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. My dad could never say what he feltnot reallyand neither can any of us. If you are in the big league, God help us all. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. Plimpton's remarkable life is showcased in a documentary that is.