He could have been a fight trainer, a fight manager! They all sound just like George. He had it, as does/did William Buckley, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Julia Child. 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. 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. By George Plimpton. George Plimpton : Movies - CinemaOne Friends were almost always happy to see him because you knew he was bound to improve your mood. Ive rarely heard this accent in real life but its often used by actors doing a stereotype character based on other actors impersonations! All rights reserved. Never heard of this decidedly imprecise term. Hed have that and a scotch on the rocks, his favorite drink. He was 76.. The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. He hosted Disney Channel's Mouseterpiece Theater (a Masterpiece Theatre spoof which featured Disney cartoon shorts). [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. Now you know! 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. 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. He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. As a result, this American version of a posh accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. George Plimpton | Military Wiki | Fandom Talking about sports with Georgeor, even better, reading George about sportswas more fun than sports themselves. He loved the ones that made a lot of noise and racket and excitement. 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. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. Typical of George to laugh about something others saw as a defining traithe never took himself all that seriously. 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. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. He also appeared in a featurette about Edie Sedgwick found on the Ciao! On one website, I read about a Choate alumn saying one can still hear the LL (see above thread) accent on campus. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . You should be very grateful. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. 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. Plimpton brought the Left Bank to NYCpeople like Peter Mathiessen, William Styron, Terry Southern. Plimpton was an omnipresence for much of American cultural lifeboth high and lowin the last third of the 20th century. tweedy demeanor and Oxford accent. These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. Losing, he knew, always makes a better story than winning. In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. Thurston Howell III had the Larchmont Lockjaw accent. . 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. 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. Against George Plimpton | Neotenianos 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. 3 people found this helpful . [3], He was the son of Francis T. P. Plimpton[4] and the grandson of Frances Taylor Pearsons and George Arthur Plimpton. Do, Write George Plimpton Has Made A Career Throwing Himself Into Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. If he couldnt be taken quite seriously, that was fine with him (he took himself lightly, and relished being in on the joke). It was always a surprise. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. 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. It was a great partyraucous and long. The s. It was a hot, sweltering day. If you say, I pahked my cah in Hahvahd Yahd, like some vaudeville version of a Boston accent, you are non-rhotic. And bolstering this last point, a reader who grew up in Depression-era Chicago writes: All I can think of is that people were imitating FDR. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. 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. An oral history of George Plimpton. - Slate Magazine In the 50s Plimpton and staff came to New York, where they kept the Review going for half a century. But he would do this in the most charming and agreeable way. Billy Collins, poet:Im one of these people who went from crashing Georges parties in the 70s to being invited in the 80s. Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! 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. 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. In early 1959, George Plimpton was preparing to watch an execution in Cuba. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. Mr. Plimpton was born in Manhattan in 1927 and raised in Huntington, L.I. [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. 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. For instance: Mid-Atlantic English was the dominant dialect among the Northeastern American upper class through the first half of the 20th century. 'Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself' review I think he came down [to the shooting of Paper Lion in] Florida once. Norman Mailer, author:George had a rare gift. And the role of Katharine Hepburn, whose Locust Valley Lockjaw accent was a cousin of announcer-speak: I was just discussing this not a week ago with a friend who has done voice work in film and television, and can adopt this accent in an instant to evoke that period, much to my amusement. I didnt know he was from the Larchmont area. So it was that George Plimptons accent could not be imitated. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? He was equally at home on a bicycle or getting out of a limousine with a Saudi Arabian prince. You heard it and it could only be him. George Plimpton, journalist extraordinaire, trains with and then performs as Quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. He liked the fact that I had broken my nose in defeat. BTW, I cant imagine a presidential candidate today getting anywhere close to a nomination with FDRs accent, cigarette holder, and aristocratic bearing. 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. Showdown in the Pits. He majored in English. (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. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. He would have a beer with you. 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. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 September 25, 2003) was an American writer. George Plimpton: what kind of accent? - Straight Dope Message Board He smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. . Plimpton himself described it as a "New England cosmopolitan accent"[36] or "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan" accent. And he told everyone that night, and for many years after, that hed diverted me from a career of filling prescriptions. The young Paris Review editor and other New York literary figures arrived during a period marked by hope for a democratic Cuba. At least, not to me, nor even to my sister, a fact she mentions in the movie. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. I feel that his work on this and many other language-related matters should be far more widely known than it is. Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many. 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. You're going to play for us-making some sort of big comeback." "That's right," Plimpton replied in his patrician accent. Are you saying that the denizens of Larchmont sound like Plimpton did? Plimpton played quarterback for the Detroit Lions and triangle for the New York Philharmonic, an. Interesting that the two competitors for his anchor chair were both fully vernacular speakers from the South and West: Mudd and Rather. 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. It was always as if one were setting out with him on a special adventure. He was a Wasp (both of his parents came from old New England families, and had ancestors on the Mayflower). 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. [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. 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. Gay Talese, author:As a young man not long out of university, at 26, 27 years of age, George Plimpton went with his friends to Paris to be benighted in the tradition of Paris culture. Yes he is gone. The guys here in Detroit treated him like one of us. George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003. So think of Margaret Anderson or Amanda and you can place George. 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. And being good at losing was one of Georges many gifts. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. To me, it meant admission to this little exclusive club at the Paris Review. 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, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". It was so tiny that if you saw him in it, you couldnt believe hed be able to get himself out of it. silk-stockinged New Englander - private schools (he was 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. See below!) My suspicion is that the shift might have begun in the switch away from the two paired styles in American movies, the classical acting of the British School and the rapid patter of popular American actors (Marx Brothers, Cagney, Powell and Loy, etc), and over to the Method Acting style of the Strasberg/Brando/Dean school. It was as if he was trying out again. 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. When George Plimpton Met the Best Bartender in Brooklyn In His League: Being George Plimpton | The Nation [3] During the summers, he lived in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Suffolk County on Long Island. 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. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. 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. George Plimpton | About the Film | American Masters | PBS By George Plimpton. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. 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. *Originally posted by Phlosphr * **Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? 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. George Plimpton The Movie Database (TMDB) (To read Part One, click here. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. He thought Castro might come. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. 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. What accent does Logan have in the show? : r/SuccessionTV Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . **. 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. For it was George Plimpton the writer, not the editor nor the celebrity, who was honored here . He was stationed primarily in Italy, where he worked as a tank driver. It was horrifying.. 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. 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.. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. He got the personality totally wrong, too. Look out, Wilson! George Plimpton | The New Yorker But the gentleman amateur - a Harvard. George Plimpton and Papa in Cuba - Guernica 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! 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". Being, And Appreciating, George Plimpton - krvs.org Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. George Plimpton - Wikipedia 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. Several weeks later at a book party, he spotted two writers who had played in that game. Even Orson Welles on occasion. * I have decided, he said, that I have got to jump from a plane. Read more in this thread (long). 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. [5][6][7][8][9][10] His father was a successful corporate lawyer and partner of the law firm Debevoise and Plimpton; he was appointed by President John F. Kennedy as U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations, serving from 1961 to 1965. The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit.