Plimpton and Dudley were the parents of twin daughters Laura Dudley Plimpton and Olivia Hartley Plimpton. George Plimpton was a literary man about town who did it all, from co-founding The Paris . Update: This post is #2 in the announcer-speak series. 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. 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. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. During my fight, my nose got badly broken in the second round, but I did last all four scheduled rounds, though I lost. 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. In 1992, Plimpton married Sarah Whitehead Dudley, a graduate of Columbia University and a freelance writer. I received many notes like this one: The variety of English you are referring to has a name in linguistics: "Mid-Atlantic English". He looked for ways in which he could make himself a ridiculous figure, and not only on the football field, but in all walks of life. The young Paris Review editor and other New York literary figures arrived during a period marked by hope for a democratic Cuba. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? Hed have that and a scotch on the rocks, his favorite drink. 2023 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. Ever. He just did it because Columbia was another literary magazine. In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. That phony-baloney feigned British pronunciation thing. Plimpton brought the Left Bank to NYCpeople like Peter Mathiessen, William Styron, Terry Southern. They all sound just like George. 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. If you didnt know the man, you could, I think, be fooled by the voice. 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. [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]. In all my years, Ive never heard this accent in person. For instance: The American-British television presenter Loyd Grossman, who has described his accent as Mid-Atlantic. He got the personality totally wrong, too. He was immensely generous in every waygenerous about sharing the work and about giving one a chance to edit things. 'Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself' TV review - SFGATE The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. **Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, was released. He also served as editor of the Harvard Lampoon. Talking about sports with Georgeor, even better, reading George about sportswas more fun than sports themselves. That is, until I saw the documentarythe assassination of his dear friend Bobby Kennedy. It was a great partyraucous and long. 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. Lewis Lapham, editor, Harpers Magazine:Georges immense enthusiasm was his primary characteristic. Plimpton played quarterback for the Detroit Lions and triangle for the New York Philharmonic, an. News children today have no concept of the Mid-Atlantic accent. George Plimpton | Military Wiki | Fandom He majored in English. The flipped prestige markers point here is fascinating. 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." But the average person never talked that way. George, Being George: George Plimpton's Life as Told, Admired, Deplored Vault. 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. They all gathered there. Plimpton! The Great Quarterback Sneak - YouTube Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many. He was a great addition to the human race. 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. NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. 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. Paris Review - Writers, Quotes, Biography, Interviews, Artists 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. (Newsreels ran in movie theaters, of course: what better critique of the high newsreel style than the new movies that jarred against it?). He was smooth. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . 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! [19] Another sports book, Open Net, saw him train as an ice hockey goalie with the Boston Bruins, even playing part of a National Hockey League preseason game. He modestly shrugged off the compliment, but his bright smile betrayed his pleasureand ours. 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. 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. I think the term Old Money or patrician pretty much says it. 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. . The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. (This is not to belittle Lowell Thomas, but to recognize the artifice that served him so well in his career). He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. Ad Choices. Call me back.. And I felt such love for my sweet old excited dad at that moment that I thought I would do him the favor of not telling him so, of leaving it unsaid. **, In this case, Mid-Atlantic refers to speech in which the attributes of British English and American English meet halfway. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * **Get a life. For it was George Plimpton the writer, not the editor nor the celebrity, who was honored here . One thinks of the glorious character actress, Kathleen Freeman, as the voice coach Phoebe Dinsmore in Singing in the Rain: Round tones, Miss Lamont. In Woody Allens Radio Days, Mia Farrow has an impossibly thick Brooklyn accent until she takes voice lessons and becomes a successful radio purveyor of celebrity gossip. . Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. 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 once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He loved the ones that made a lot of noise and racket and excitement. Losing, he knew, always makes a better story than winning. The Scout Is a Lonely Hunter. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. He was an actor and writer, known for Good Will Hunting (1997), Nixon (1995) and Just Cause (1995). Indeed, the police deposition the filmmakers managed to uncover may be the only time my dad ever spoke about the tragedy, publicly or privately. It was so violent that it brought a lot of people to the windows. Middle class? George Plimpton - American Academy of Arts and Letters Look out, Wilson! The s. That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went I have worked as poetry editor with editors on other magazines; only with George has the experience been entirely agreeable. His friendships testified to what an eclectic man he was. He did not appear last year, or the year before, and we feared he was done with us. The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a . Plimpton sparred for three rounds with boxing greats Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson while on assignment for Sports Illustrated. Isnt that what they call it. Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . From looking at Labovs study, I know today, as I didnt know yesterday, that linguists use the term rhotic to describe whether a person pronounces, or doesnt, the R sound before a consonant or at the end of a word. 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. 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. 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. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. [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. [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. Plimpton didnt die. He very much approved. [2][43], An oral biography titled George, Being George was edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., and released on October 21, 2008. People two or three deep stood looking out at the East River. Few could give a toast or tell a story with equal humor. He was 76. It sounds like Somerset Maugham, was a favorite putdown. George Plimpton writer, publisher, amateur lion tamer died in 2003 after 50 years as the founding editor of The Paris Review. By George Plimpton. (And, OK, Im not a linguist, but Im married to one!) The title of the PBS documentary - "Plimpton! I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. 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. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". In 1966, George Plimpton's book Paper Lion, recounting his attempt to play football with the Detroit Lions, allowed millions of Americans to vicariously live out their childhood dream of playing in the NFL. Self-help author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a unique accent that, . 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 Kim Noble, one of the announcers on the NPR affiliate in Kansas City, KCUR, speaks with a very affected Connecticut Lockjaw accent. He had a way of putting it all together, of understanding fighters in the ring; he was a good analyst of boxing. A lifelong New Yorker, he never tasted a bagel or an olive, and he never chewed a stick of gum. . 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.. 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. And so it seemed only fitting to commemorate his death with the form he made his own.Meghan ORourke. 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. Quite sad, as he just had a daughter not many years back. I remember getting the news: It was my wife Madeleines birthday, Aug. 7. Articles From This Author. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. 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. I hope not. My dad and I could not lose each other, but we could never quite find each other, either. He wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, Pi Eta, the Signet Society, and the Porcellian Club. Please educate me. And later I woke upat 6 a.m. Later I called up George, I said, What happened?, I thought it over, he said, and I took mercy on you. In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. Cambridge. 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. Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. 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. [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. Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? 'Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself' review We were bound to play the roles of father and son, unable to simply be ourselves. 'Plimpton!' documentary looks at George Plimpton's lives 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. He died on September 26, 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. **. That he died in his sleep was impressive. Peter even came with us on our honeymoon in Ravello, though George didnt. With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. We were going to go looking for strange birds. 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. Whee!! By George Plimpton. 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. With 'Paper Lion,' George Plimpton Played Pro Football So We Didn't Have To Was this sheer affectation? Thats where there was that cross-section you once found in Parisof literary people, of people who were illiterate, of people down on their luck, and people of status. He hosted Disney Channel's Mouseterpiece Theater (a Masterpiece Theatre spoof which featured Disney cartoon shorts). The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch. 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. It was a hot, sweltering day. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. George was not vainhe didnt care a whit about his image. Too old-fashioned. Is your language rhotic? The funny thing about Harris was that he did not start out with that accent - as I suspect George Gershwin did not. 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. Harris trained himself as a young man to lose his native Bronx accent - to the point that he was asked if he were British. his prose, and his down east, cultivated accent, although perhaps a bit pretentious, will remain with me as I reread one of my favorite books. Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didnt, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brandos. So think of Margaret Anderson or Amanda and you can place George. Mid-Atlantic accent - Wikipedia He wrote, "I suppose in a mild way there is a lesson to be learned for the young, or the young at heart the gumption to get out and try one's wings". As such, it was popular in the theatre and other forms of elite culture in that region. 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. He thought Castro might come. 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. Somehow Georgehad gotten it into his head that I was on the verge of becoming a pharmacist before he had called me up a year earlier to tell me the Paris Review was publishing a story I had submittedperhaps because of the pharmacological bent of the subject matter. The Detroit Lions let a reporter play QB. Can you guess how it went George Plimpton - Biography - IMDb Hes just trying it out and will come back and write a book about his experiences. George Plimpton was born on March 18, 1927 in New York City, New York, USA. George Ames Plimpton (1927 - 2003) - Genealogy - geni family tree 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. He smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. It was then that the majority of audiences first heard Hollywood actors speaking predominantly in Mid-Atlantic English, British expatriates John Houseman, Henry Daniell, Anthony Hopkins, Camilla Luddington, and Angela Cartwright exemplified the accent, as did [a long list of North Americans, from Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly to Richard Chamberlain and Christopher Plummer]. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . 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. 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. George Plimpton boxed with Archie Moore, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions, and played percussion for the New York Philharmonic. May a diseased yak squat in your hot tub. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. 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. In fact, my dads farewells seemed loquacious in comparison to his mothers. (What else happened that year??? December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. There was intellectual heft in the Plimpton genes too: one Ames was a Professor of Botany, another was Governor of Massachusetts, another relation was a publisher, and yet another a writer-philanthropist fascinated with the subject of how the great figures of the past were educated Young Georges educational path was precisely that of a Mia had the perfect model! But it didnt define him, much the way he refused to be defined by the stiff, upper-crust world from which hed come. Nevertheless, its a strange thing that one of the great voices of modern storytelling had limitations, restrictions, words, and phrases it was incapable of uttering, matters it could not express: death, love, tragedy. 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 responses fall into interesting categories: linguistic descriptions of this accent; sociological and ethnic explanations for its rise and fall; possible technological factors in its prominence and disappearance; explanations rooted in the movie industry; nominees for who might have been the last American to talk this way; and suggestions that a few rare specimens still exist.