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This kept his magazine fresh for 50 years. 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. Orson Welles notably spoke in a mid-Atlantic accent in the 1941 film Citizen Kane, as did many of his co-stars, such as Joseph Cotten. It was a hot, sweltering day. 1. He very much approved. But the average person never talked that way. "[34] A feature in Mad titled "Some Really Dangerous Jobs for George Plimpton" spotlighted him trying to swim across Lake Erie, strolling through New York's Times Square in the middle of the night, and spending a week with Jerry Lewis. 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. Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? He saw athletes as heroes he. [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. I think the term Old Money or patrician pretty much says it. (What else happened that year??? 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. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. Talking about sports with Georgeor, even better, reading George about sportswas more fun than sports themselves. Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 429-432. & FDR, George Plimpton, William F. Buckley, etc. 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. Orson Welles also comes to mind, though I noticed he spoke in this mode more often during his early days, on and off screen. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. Mia had the perfect model! Louis Begley, novelist:Jim Atlas interviewed me for an Art of Fiction piece in the Paris Review, a feature of the magazine that George invented and brought to perfection. Eerily enough, one of the messages on my answering machine was from George, with that distinctive accent of his: Hallo, its George Plimpton. When he was on the scene, everything was a big happeningan event. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. 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 . Labov suspected that WWII had something to do about it. "I've decided to stay over here in . (This is not to belittle Lowell Thomas, but to recognize the artifice that served him so well in his career). Never heard of this decidedly imprecise term. $ 3.99 - $ 27.44. December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 September 25, 2003) was an American writer. 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. He was also an accomplished birdwatcher. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. Angelo Dundee, trainer for Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard:George was such a great guy. There was one more matter I never heard my dad discuss. "[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. But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. 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 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. Brown & Co. Re-issued George Plimpton Sports Books, 2016. In all my years, Ive never heard this accent in person. He was a great addition to the human race. 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. Another entertainment-related explanation for the shift, right about the time of the Eisenhower-Kennedy transition: The plumby announcer voice that hovers over the Atlantic midway between the Eastern Seaboard and England was mortally wounded in 1959. Thurston Howell III had the Larchmont Lockjaw accent. The flipped prestige markers point here is fascinating. George Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. You can. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". 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]. 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. Anyhow, I asked Terry Gross from Fresh Air and George Plimpton to be auctioneers. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . George Plimpton. George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. Even the most basic conversation was often a struggle. In this campaign, Plimpton touted the superiority regarding the graphics and sounds of Intellivision video games over the Atari 2600.[24]. 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. 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. Its a joke to say 500 of my closest friends, but that would have been true with George1,000 of his closest friends, actually. How to find out, and whether you should care. 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. 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. Her mother, a writer and critic for Commonweal and Catholic World. 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. The s. He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. 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. The 16th at Cypress Point is one of the famous golf holes of the world, certainly one of the most difficult and demanding par 3's. Plimpton brought the Left Bank to NYCpeople like Peter Mathiessen, William Styron, Terry Southern. May a diseased yak squat in your hot tub. A heuristic approximation! He was "George Plimpton"-editor, host . Friends were almost always happy to see him because you knew he was bound to improve your mood. The clearest example of the Mid-Atlantic accent is the accent of the Frasier & Niles Crane characters on the TV show Frasier. **. Read more in this thread (long). [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. Would you admit to there being symbolism in your novels? George had three siblings: Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Jr., Oakes Ames Plimpton,[15] and Sarah Gay Plimpton. If you are in the big league, God help us all. 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. 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. BTW, I cant imagine a presidential candidate today getting anywhere close to a nomination with FDRs accent, cigarette holder, and aristocratic bearing. Vault. I just knew it was going to be something terrible. Old money, would never say the word spanky, and certainly had more money than God could count. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. What fine manners he had! 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. 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. That phony-baloney feigned British pronunciation thing. [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. George was not vainhe didnt care a whit about his image. The Wikipedia entry is indeed delightful. Several weeks later at a book party, he spotted two writers who had played in that game. 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. 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. That life couldnt contain him, hed burst its seams like it was an old coat two sizes too small. His experience was captured in the book Out of My League. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. 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. He once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. The risky pleasures of Plimpton's classic of participatory sportswriting, Paper Lion. It's a Scottish accent that's been modified somewhat for a mainstream audience that tends to associate them with Groundskeeper Willie. Please educate me. Where are you?, Im at dinner with my wife, I said. For such admissions to escape my fathers lips, they always had to be a little removed somehow. George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little It was so violent that it brought a lot of people to the windows. 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. Richard Howard, poetry editor, the Paris Review:I worked with George for 10 years on the magazine. Why couldnt we have a good time, too? Plimpton sparred for three rounds with boxing greats Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson while on assignment for Sports Illustrated. He had it all going! He is connected by blood to Benjamin "Beast" Butler, a rakish pol who told Abraham Lincoln he would be his running mate "only if you die within three. All the good guys have got to go. But he came right down to our level. (A variation is the Locust Valley Lockjaw.). (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. Peter Matthiesen, author, co-founder of the Paris Review:I was in Liberia, of all places, and George met me in Monrovia. He was equally at home on a bicycle or getting out of a limousine with a Saudi Arabian prince. 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 knew we were just as good as he was, but in a different field. The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. In the April 1, 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated, Plimpton pulled off a widely reported April Fools' Day prank. If you didnt know the man, you could, I think, be fooled by the voice. 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. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. Realizing that I probably didnt know anyone, George took me around the room to introduce me to his guestsWilliam Styron, Norman Mailer, Robert Stone, and Gay Talese among them. NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. For instance: The American-British television presenter Loyd Grossman, who has described his accent as Mid-Atlantic. At the time, he was getting ready to pitch for the Yankees,and we would throw pitches across 72nd Street in preparation. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Now the interview is perfect!. 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?