That he died in his sleep was impressive. To me, Mid-Atlantic English is the nom juste for a related but distinct phenomenon (which is also mentioned in Wikipedia). Labov suspected that WWII had something to do about it. Larchmont Lockjaw? George, Being George: George Plimpton's Life as Told, Admired, Deplored A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. He joined us in Monte Carlo when we won the international [fireworks] competition. The journal, which had operated out of his home, moved downtown. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, was released. Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. An oral history of George Plimpton. - Slate Magazine 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. After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. Starring George Plimpton as Himself" - is meant as a wink-wink to Plimpton's career as a "participatory journalist." As a writer for Sports . Plimpton would not boast of his feat, so we did. While I don't normally think of Lithgow as speaking with a Mid-Atlantic accent, he does a great job affecting one for the role. Return of the Big Bopper. 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 didnt know he was from the Larchmont area. Indeed, the police deposition the filmmakers managed to uncover may be the only time my dad ever spoke about the tragedy, publicly or privately. Here are five things you may not have known about him. Just when Jim and I thought we had finished, and we had been working a long time, George, who loved the result of our efforts, decided he wanted to talk to me as well. See below!) Brown & Co. Re-issued George Plimpton Sports Books, 2016. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? [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 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. I have worked as poetry editor with editors on other magazines; only with George has the experience been entirely agreeable. 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. 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. 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. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. 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. (This is not to belittle Lowell Thomas, but to recognize the artifice that served him so well in his career). 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." Announcer-Speak: The Video Highlights Reel - The Atlantic He had a way of putting it all together, of understanding fighters in the ring; he was a good analyst of boxing. An Evening With George Plimpton - 2000 - YouTube The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. He once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. And you are going to come with me. Now the interview is perfect!. All rights reserved. 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). That made him a great storyteller. 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. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. I remember getting the news: It was my wife Madeleines birthday, Aug. 7. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. I hope not. It was so tiny that if you saw him in it, you couldnt believe hed be able to get himself out of it. He was immensely generous in every waygenerous about sharing the work and about giving one a chance to edit things. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. Mia had the perfect model! 3 people found this helpful . Was it him? On one website, I read about a Choate alumn saying one can still hear the LL (see above thread) accent on campus. (He intended to face both line-ups, but tired badly and was relieved by Ralph Houk.) I think it was an affectation people adopted because they thought it made them sound much more intelligent! The Dudleys established the 36-acre (15ha) Highstead Arboretum in Redding, Connecticut. Big, tall, good-looking guy, easy-going. 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. Several readers wrote in with specimens of Americans who had gone to England and ended up speaking in this mid-Atlantic way. Finally I did. [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. If you are in the big league, God help us all. Hed done it in Amsterdam, Moscow, and London; hed done it at a PEN benefit; and now he and Norman were going to do it in Cuba. We were going to go looking for strange birds. So we got together and, after some preliminaries, he popped the question that he was really there to ask. What stood in our way? [2][43], An oral biography titled George, Being George was edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., and released on October 21, 2008. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? 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. Her mother, a writer and critic for Commonweal and Catholic World. 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. In 1992, Plimpton married Sarah Whitehead Dudley, a graduate of Columbia University and a freelance writer. A reader writes: Ive wondered about this myself when I see old Jimmy Cagney moviesand the date of his last starring role might give us a hint towards the date range of the change: "One, Two, Three" in 1961. There was one more matter I never heard my dad discuss. Lionel on Twitter: "News children today have no concept of the Mid He also appeared in a featurette about Edie Sedgwick found on the Ciao! Hear Stories By George Plimpton. Its strange to think, but he would have been eighty-five this year: fourteen years older than my mom, fifty years older than me. (A variation is the Locust Valley Lockjaw.). The Moth | The Art and Craft of Storytelling Share; Copied! 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 Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. 'Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself' TV review - SFGATE 1. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. He had, for instance, a series of antiquated phrases and terms of affection. His experience was captured in the book Out of My League. George Plimpton | Military Wiki | Fandom 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. Is it in evidence among the Gen X set of Boston, or a passing phenomenon? Even the manliest actors, such as Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable sometimes slipped into this voice-coach mode. Whats the matter?, Well, he said. He could have done whatever he wanted. Katharine Hepburn spoke this way, on and off screen until she died. Plimpton also appeared in a number of feature films as an extra and in cameo appearances. 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. From what other people had told me, I knew a little bit about itthat my father (and mother) had been right by Bobbys side in California when he was shot, that my father had tackled Sirhan Sirhan to the ground, and wrestled the gun from his handbut not a word of it came from my dad himself. 3: Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". You can. 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 But he could easily have said, Alice, I have enough trouble raising money for my magazine.. I had made about five thousand egg and tuna sandwiches. The flipped prestige markers point here is fascinating. 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. 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. Yes indeed, George Plimpton is a man for all seasons. She was having lunch at P. J. Clarkes with the publisher Bennet Cerf and his son Chris, and my dad swooped over to the table (he was wearing a cape) and introduced himself in that ridiculously gallant voice: Bennet, Chris, what a pleasant surprise! Interesting that the two competitors for his anchor chair were both fully vernacular speakers from the South and West: Mudd and Rather. [3] During the summers, he lived in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Suffolk County on Long Island. In the 50s Plimpton and staff came to New York, where they kept the Review going for half a century. It's a Scottish accent that's been modified somewhat for a mainstream audience that tends to associate them with Groundskeeper Willie. Plimpton scowled, and said he was perfectly capable of running for himself. Middle class? With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. Book excerpt - George Plimpton on why Hole 16 at Cypress Point is one 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. Plimpton was .the public face of the New York intellectual: tweedy, eclectic and with a plummy accent he himself described as "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan." . George . He was one of her original supporters and had published an article about her work in The Paris Review. Against George Plimpton | Neotenianos 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. 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. One night Joe DiMaggio was here, and they had never met, so I introduced them. Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 429-432. 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. The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. History / Biographical Note Biographical Note. 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. That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went At least, not to me, nor even to my sister, a fact she mentions in the movie. Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. George Plimpton | About the Film | American Masters | PBS 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 speaks with an oddly mannered accent, sounding as though on the verge of a stammer, polite, genteel, perhaps just a little Woosterish. And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you?
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