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. You can. 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. 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. George Plimpton Dec 1, 2014 In which the venturous author, the rawest rookie pro football has ever known, recounts all the excruciating details of what happened when he called five plays as. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. 2023 Cond Nast. YESTERDAY IS NOT FAR AWAY. Do, Write George Plimpton Has Made A Career Throwing Himself Into George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. To me, Mid-Atlantic English is the nom juste for a related but distinct phenomenon (which is also mentioned in Wikipedia). Tom Nowatzke, fullback, Detroit Lions (In the 1960s, Plimpton briefly played with the Detroit Lions asresearch for the best-selling book Paper Lion, which was later made into a film):I was the No. [2][43], An oral biography titled George, Being George was edited by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., and released on October 21, 2008. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. He rounded first as if he were about to go for a double, then glided back to the base, with fans waving and cheering. He just did it because Columbia was another literary magazine. [citation needed] In 1958, prior to a post-season exhibition game at Yankee Stadium between teams managed by Willie Mays (National League) and Mickey Mantle (American League), Plimpton pitched against the National League. Here's how Geroge Plimpton and his team created a prodigious pitcher out of thin air. My dad and I could not lose each other, but we could never quite find each other, either. The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. The journal, which had operated out of his home, moved downtown. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! 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. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. Starring George Plimpton as Himself" - is meant as a wink-wink to Plimpton's career as a "participatory journalist." As a writer for Sports . Youd be on the phone with him and get to the end of the conversation, and youd say I love you, Dad, and at most, hed reply, without subject or object, Love, like he was signing a letter. So we got together and, after some preliminaries, he popped the question that he was really there to ask. Its strange to think, but he would have been eighty-five this year: fourteen years older than my mom, fifty years older than me. Call me back.. [citation needed], Outside the literary world, Plimpton was famous for competing in professional sporting events and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur. Eerily enough, one of the messages on my answering machine was from George, with that distinctive accent of his: Hallo, its George Plimpton. Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. It evoked a sense of Paris from a time when Paris was still the literary capital of the world, publishing literary giants who were considered obsceneHenry Miller, D.H. Lawrence. He could have been a fight trainer, a fight manager! He got the personality totally wrong, too. As a result, this American version of a posh accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. At Harvard, Plimpton was a classmate and close personal friend of Robert F. Kennedy. He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. George Plimpton Broke My Arm. The risky pleasures of Plimpton's | by Thurston Howell III had the Larchmont Lockjaw accent. Actually, thats not far off from how my mom felt when she first met him. I received many notes like this one: The variety of English you are referring to has a name in linguistics: "Mid-Atlantic English". That was when Westbrook van Voorhis, the famous March of Time voice, did the intro narration of the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone. The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. For it was George Plimpton the writer, not the editor nor the celebrity, who was honored here . The first minute is a cameo by Henry Ford II, who speaks in an utterly flat Midwest rather than Mid-Atlantic accent that no one would call elegant but that would sound perfectly natural in 2015. George Plimpton - Wikipedia 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. And the answer may explain partly why it has gone out of fashion: Jonathan Harris, the actor who played Dr. Smith on the television show "Lost in Space.". 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. Hemingway on Fiction, Part Two. [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. Hed go on to move freely through so many worlds and circles, without ever not speaking in that singular accentthough it probably would have made life easier for him if hed adopted a new way of talking (after all, as a journalist in the locker rooms, where slang and cursing were art-forms, my dads stiff, formal tongue made him stick out like an egret among ducks). That phony-baloney feigned British pronunciation thing. 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! 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. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. Never heard of this decidedly imprecise term. By George Plimpton. You heard it and it could only be him. But he could easily have said, Alice, I have enough trouble raising money for my magazine.. Plimpton played quarterback for the Detroit Lions and triangle for the New York Philharmonic, an. As an old film buff, I am used to this voice, though it figures unevenly in old movies. They all sound just like George. George also approved, I think, of the fact that I lost. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. I'm not an expert, but Bill Labov from UPenn is, and he is quoted thusly: According to William Labov, teaching of this pronunciation declined sharply after the end of World War II. Researcher and writer Samuel Arbesman filed with NASA to name an asteroid after Plimpton; NASA issued the certificate 7932 Plimpton in 2009. The last time I heard my fathers voice, it was over the telephone. 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. Larchmont Lockjaw? George A. Plimpton Papers, 1634-1956 | Rare Book & Manuscript Library LL is typified, I think, but an almost clenching of the teeth while talking, producing a mushy sound, if you will. How George Plimpton's Sports Books Presaged the First-Person Media Age It sounds like Somerset Maugham, was a favorite putdown. Of course, I think he enjoyed the odd persona his voice and mannerisms conferred on him. Archie Moore, after all, had broken his nose. #1 was Who Was the Last American to Speak This Way, #3 is Class-War Edition, and #4 is The Origin Story., Who Was the Last American to Speak This Way. In that vein, here is an oral biography of George Plimpton. He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. 'Plimpton!' documentary looks at George Plimpton's lives I have worked as poetry editor with editors on other magazines; only with George has the experience been entirely agreeable. An oral history of George Plimpton. - Slate Magazine 3 people found this helpful . George Plimpton was a literary man about town who did it all, from co-founding The Paris . Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . Vault. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. Middle class? My Father's Voice | The New Yorker The Moth | The Art and Craft of Storytelling *Originally posted by Phlosphr * George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. Even the manliest actors, such as Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable sometimes slipped into this voice-coach mode. [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 Ames Plimpton (1927 - 2003) - Genealogy - geni family tree Plimpton also appeared in a number of feature films as an extra and in cameo appearances. Was this sheer affectation? 2) The Role of Broadway and Hollywood, and the Shift from Jimmy Cagney to Marlon Brando. 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"). ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. George Plimpton, the New York aristocrat and literary journalist whose career was a happy lifelong competition between scholarly pursuits and madcap attempts -- chronicled in self-deprecating. And the many candidates for the crown of Last American to Speak This Way. Brown & Co. Re-issued George Plimpton Sports Books, 2016. George Plimpton | About the Film | American Masters | PBS Big, tall, good-looking guy, easy-going. But he came right down to our level. He saw athletes as heroes he. [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. 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. 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. 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. George Plimpton The Movie Database (TMDB) The flipped prestige markers point here is fascinating. He died on September 26, 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * 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. Vault. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. 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. Richard Howard, poetry editor, the Paris Review:I worked with George for 10 years on the magazine. George Plimpton, journalist extraordinaire, trains with and then performs as Quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. 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? How do I know you're not George Plimpton? For instance: Mid-Atlantic English was the dominant dialect among the Northeastern American upper class through the first half of the 20th century. Read more in this thread (long). Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. He also served as editor of the Harvard Lampoon. Puss, and my father enjoyed nothing more than holding the beast high in the air and making strange, affectionate sounds in that distinguished voice: Yeanngghh, Puss Yeaannngh Puss Puss Puss.) He called my sister Puss, too, sometimes, though mostly I think with her it was Kiddo, which he also called me, though there was a period in which he occasionally called me Ernie, which was the dogs name. It was as if some old gentlemans code prohibited us from interacting as human beings. With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003. 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 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. That he died in his sleep was impressive. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. We had the book party for my selected poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room, at Georges house on Sept 10, 2001. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! He very much approved. This speech pattern might be common among US expatriates in the UK, of which Grossman would seem to represent just the most ostentatious example. [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. George Plimpton : Movies - CinemaOne Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. I had George tell him the story of Sidd Finch. May a diseased yak squat in your hot tub. I think all the editors who worked at the magazine can recount a time when they ascended to his office to argue for a particular story that had been submitted, certain that George hadnt read it or hadnt read it closely enough, only to stand gape-mouthed as he reeled off, from memory, its every deficiency. Plimpton and Dudley were the parents of twin daughters Laura Dudley Plimpton and Olivia Hartley Plimpton.

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