george plimpton accent

By George Plimpton. Isnt that what they call it. We all just had our own regional accentor non accent, like the flat midwest speak. One night Joe DiMaggio was here, and they had never met, so I introduced them. Richard Howard, poetry editor, the Paris Review:I worked with George for 10 years on the magazine. Thats a common name for such an accent. You can. Well, perhaps it's more accurate to say that the book provided entertaining confirmation to millions of people that they -- like the author . 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. NEW YORK -- George Plimpton, the self-deprecating author of "Paper Lion" and other sporting adventures and a patron to Philip Roth, Jack Kerouac and countless other writers, has died. Hes just trying it out and will come back and write a book about his experiences. 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. News children today have no concept of the Mid-Atlantic accent. She would not even say goodbye. Could it be fairly said that Plimptom had it? Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . George Plimpton was an upper-class guy with a patrician accent who partied his way through life . For it was George Plimpton the writer, not the editor nor the celebrity, who was honored here . I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. 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?. Ive rarely heard this accent in real life but its often used by actors doing a stereotype character based on other actors impersonations! He was one of her original supporters and had published an article about her work in The Paris Review. 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. 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. Call me back.. Would you admit to there being symbolism in your novels? George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a journalist and the first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review. With the evolution of talkies in the late 1920s, voice was first heard in motion pictures. But the gentleman amateur - a Harvard. Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 429-432. Kaltenborn was a famous mid . 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. That life couldnt contain him, hed burst its seams like it was an old coat two sizes too small. 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. We made $15,000-20,000. Queen Elizabeth doesnt say car, and neither did Franklin D. Roosevelt, nor did the newsreel announcers or movie actors of his day. Sidd Finch was a fictional character George had created for a Sports Illustrated story, supposedly the greatest and fastest pitcher in the world. The funny thing about Harris was that he did not start out with that accent - as I suspect George Gershwin did not. Plimpton also appeared in a number of feature films as an extra and in cameo appearances. Besides, third is a very respectable showing! He did not appear last year, or the year before, and we feared he was done with us. The risky pleasures of Plimpton's classic of participatory sportswriting, Paper Lion. At least, not to me, nor even to my sister, a fact she mentions in the movie. . In the 50s Plimpton and staff came to New York, where they kept the Review going for half a century. *Originally posted by bordelond * He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. A lifelong New Yorker, he never tasted a bagel or an olive, and he never chewed a stick of gum. [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. George had three siblings: Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Jr., Oakes Ames Plimpton,[15] and Sarah Gay Plimpton. Of course, I think he enjoyed the odd persona his voice and mannerisms conferred on him. 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. Lewis Lapham, editor, Harpers Magazine:Georges immense enthusiasm was his primary characteristic. Heres a sampling for today, with more planned in the days ahead. Macklem . 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. And they founded this thing called the Paris Review and published poetry and short story writers and did interviews. Quite sad, as he just had a daughter not many years back. 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. 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. Prestigious prep schools and ivy league institutions (though Gore Vidal never went to college). And here for the full interview). Middle class? In early 1959, George Plimpton was preparing to watch an execution in Cuba. He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003. Vault. Again with thanks to Jonathan Fields, here's the continuation of George Plimpton's famous interview of Ernest Hemingway from the Paris Review, Summer 1958. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. 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. Discussing the accent he used for Washington in an interview with The Onion AV Club, he explained: The accent back then was probably nothing like what we think of as a Southern accent now or a New England accent now, so we tried to find the root of the accents. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. And his apartment, with those windows that looked out onto the East River, became a famous landmark in NYC. **Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. Are you saying that the denizens of Larchmont sound like Plimpton did? He died on September 26, 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. How to find out, and whether you should care. So it was that George Plimptons accent could not be imitated. Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. He is also credited with saving, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Plimpton! Actors Nathan Lane (from Jersey City, NJ) and Robin Williams (grew up in SF Bay area) often adopt this accent. After St. Bernard's School, Plimpton attended Phillips Exeter Academy (from which he was expelled just shy of graduation), and Daytona Beach High School, where he received his high school diploma,[16] before entering Harvard College in July 1944. What will you be mad about ten years after youre gone?). For such admissions to escape my fathers lips, they always had to be a little removed somehow. O ne afternoon this summer, I sat in George Plimpton's study waiting for the gentleman editor, participatory journalist, and beloved gadfly of American letters to arrive. Did he have the celebrated "Boston Brahmin" accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? Between 1945 and 1948, Plimpton was a soldier in the United States Army. This was his habit. That is the tendency of Americans trying to sound more British, or Brits trying to sound more Yank, to split the difference and speak in an accent whose home ground is no real country but somewhere in the middle of the sea. Archie Moore, after all, had broken his nose. By George Plimpton. (The filmmakers assembled his voice-over from recorded speeches and other archival footage.) He had the bearing of Gen. MacArthur, but the soul of Charlie Chaplin. I thought Id died and gone to Olympus. No one realized till the next day that this was the weather that created the extreme blue skies of Sept. 11a condition I since learned that pilots call severe clear. The next day, friends called and said, That was the last party. 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. But he has never employed that voice professionally, and certainly does not speak that way in real life. 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. That tension between what was in his heart and what his voice allowed him to express is the basic tension of language we all face, only heightened. Its a shot from a YouTube video that itself is a fascinating time-capsule portrait of language change. 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. [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. It was always as if one were setting out with him on a special adventure. In it Van Voorhis has the formal delivery that would have seemed familiar to many mid-century listeners but which in retrospect we know was on the way out. He was a great addition to the human race. 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. So it went in late 1960 at one of George Plimpton's legendary soirees at 541 E. 72nd St., New York. 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. *Originally posted by j.c. * **Thats a common name for such an accent. The opposing team: the Detroit Lions. But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. He rounded first as if he were about to go for a double, then glided back to the base, with fans waving and cheering. Articles From This Author. 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." By George Plimpton. He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. He modestly shrugged off the compliment, but his bright smile betrayed his pleasureand ours. What stood in our way? And I, of course, was looking them over, too. 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. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. The Dudleys established the 36-acre (15ha) Highstead Arboretum in Redding, Connecticut. Interesting that the two competitors for his anchor chair were both fully vernacular speakers from the South and West: Mudd and Rather. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. He knew we were just as good as he was, but in a different field. History / Biographical Note Biographical Note. 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. YESTERDAY IS NOT FAR AWAY. 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. 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. Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. 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. Plimpton also appeared in the closing credits of the 2006 film Factory Girl. silk-stockinged New Englander - private schools (he was He was also an accomplished birdwatcher. 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. [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. This periodical has carried great weight in the literary world, but has never been financially strong; for its first half-century, it was allegedly largely financed by its publishers and by Plimpton. Is your language rhotic? I enjoy doing it. Thats it, George cried out. These experiences served as the basis of another football book, Mad Ducks and Bears, although much of the book dealt with the off-field escapades and observations of football friends Alex Karras ("Mad Duck") and John Gordy ("Bear"). 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. Larchmont Lockjaw? 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. The Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour. Ill try to give a representative range, and I am grateful for the care and thought that have gone into these responses. [citation needed]. 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.. I have decided, he said, that I have got to jump from a plane. He watched the first pitch sail high for a ball, and then hit a rope into left field. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 September 25, 2003) was an American writer. [41] She is the daughter of James Chittenden Dudley,[42] a managing partner of Manhattan-based investment firm Dudley and Company, and geologist Elisabeth Claypool. 2) Truman v. Kaltenborn, 1949. Ill pick you up., I had a hard time sleeping that night, as you might imagine. Harris trained himself as a young man to lose his native Bronx accent - to the point that he was asked if he were British. That was the last party for a while., I just got back from a road trip from Michigan. 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. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. He was "George Plimpton"-editor, host . Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. This kept his magazine fresh for 50 years. 3 people found this helpful . On one website, I read about a Choate alumn saying one can still hear the LL (see above thread) accent on campus. The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. [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. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. Of course, my dad had tried out for the role of himself and not gotten it, though he would go on to have a steady film career playing one version or another of a striking white-haired figure with a distinguished, chivalrous voice in bit roles in some twenty or so movies, including Reds and Good Will Hunting. Fortunately, in the upcoming film Plimpton! 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. Hemingway on Fiction, Part Two. [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. 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). With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. [13], Plimpton's son described him as a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant and wrote that both of Plimpton's parents were descended from Mayflower passengers.[14]. Family (1) Spouse George Plimpton: what kind of accent? His friendships testified to what an eclectic man he was. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. 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. I remember the Lowell Thomas documentary films of the 50s where Mr. Thomas' mellifluous tones and distinct radio-style pronunciation gave him a respectability that a similar huckster could hardly hope to replicate today by the mere application of such an artifice. Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . They spoke in this manner, and it seemed perfectly natural, evocative of a background spent among the gentry of the northeast.. Is it in evidence among the Gen X set of Boston, or a passing phenomenon? Plimpton didnt die. 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. Look out, Wilson! I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. Anyhow, I asked Terry Gross from Fresh Air and George Plimpton to be auctioneers. [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. The clenched jaw tight-bite bit: the lockjaw dentiloquist. Plimpton has grown. 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. If you are in the big league, God help us all. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. **. Too old-fashioned. [citation needed], In the movie Plimpton! Plimpton scowled, and said he was perfectly capable of running for himself. He was going to put on a reading of his play Zelda, Scott, and Ernest. With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. The Cuban revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, had just marched on Havana and ousted the US-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, was released. The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. Thurston Howell III had the Larchmont Lockjaw accent. He was an actor and writer, known for Good Will Hunting (1997), Nixon (1995) and Just Cause (1995). 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]. You're going to play for us-making some sort of big comeback." "That's right," Plimpton replied in his patrician accent. Finally I did. 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." These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. Sign up for the Books & Fiction newsletter. Eerily enough, one of the messages on my answering machine was from George, with that distinctive accent of his: Hallo, its George Plimpton. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * 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. "[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. Greetings From the Vortex of Unpredictability, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the lasta figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. It sounds like Somerset Maugham, was a favorite putdown. Final Twist of the Drama. People two or three deep stood looking out at the East River. Cambridge. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. He liked the fact that I had broken my nose in defeat. Plimpton was married twice. (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. 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. It was horrifying.. And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you? 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. (This is not to belittle Lowell Thomas, but to recognize the artifice that served him so well in his career). At one point, there was a tremendous Wagnerian thunder and lighting storm. December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. [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]. He thought Castro might come. rejoiced in the name of Euphemia van Renssalaer Wyatt. 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. 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. These interviews are a collaborative effort, and, I believe, a fascinating contribution to literary history. Several readers wrote in with specimens of Americans who had gone to England and ended up speaking in this mid-Atlantic way. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. [47][48] But looking back on it, its funny, too. To me, it meant admission to this little exclusive club at the Paris Review. $ 3.99 - $ 27.44. [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. Read more. Harvard (where he edited the Lampoon), Kings College, George Plimpton was a literary man about town who did it all, from co-founding The Paris . George Plimpton. **. George Plimpton. 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. George . Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. The flipped prestige markers point here is fascinating. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. 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. It was a great partyraucous and long. Actually, thats not far off from how my mom felt when she first met him. 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. [26] He also appeared in an episode of the NBC sitcom Wings. Peter even came with us on our honeymoon in Ravello, though George didnt. On Saturday Night Live, even the great impersonator Dana Carvey couldnt get it quite right. Butch, he says, because he always called me Butch. He came from a family where such endearments were not expressed, and phone conversations were curt. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English?

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