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I enjoy doing it. Thats it, George cried out. After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. His response was "no, just affected.". Just in time for the Sixties, with all their other pressures towards some kind of anti-Eisenhower authenticity. Update: This post is #2 in the announcer-speak series. Both of Plimpton's maternal grandparents were born with the surname Ames; his mother was the granddaughter of Medal of Honor recipient Adelbert Ames (1835-1933), an American sailor, soldier, and politician, and Oliver Ames, a US political figure and the 35th Governor of Massachusetts (18871890). (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. Angelo Dundee, trainer for Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard:George was such a great guy. **Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. 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. 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. In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. 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. Friends were almost always happy to see him because you knew he was bound to improve your mood. But he would do this in the most charming and agreeable way. Self-help author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a unique accent that, . That made him a great storyteller. 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. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. They all sound just like George. 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. The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. *Originally posted by Phlosphr * . Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . Share; Copied! & FDR, George Plimpton, William F. Buckley, etc. He watched the first pitch sail high for a ball, and then hit a rope into left field. 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. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. George Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. I had made about five thousand egg and tuna sandwiches. 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. And the many candidates for the crown of Last American to Speak This Way. Jonathan Ames, author:Back in the fall of 1999, in preparation for my one and only boxing match, I read George Plimptons great book, Shadow Box, where he recounted his foray into the world of boxing and his famous encounter with Archie Moore. He had, for instance, a series of antiquated phrases and terms of affection. He was one of her original supporters and had published an article about her work in The Paris Review. George Plimpton. 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. George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. 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. Alan Alda, portraying my dad in the movie version of Paper Lion (his book on playing quarterback for the Detroit Lions), didnt bother with his voice at all. Yes he is gone. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. But it didnt define him, much the way he refused to be defined by the stiff, upper-crust world from which hed come. 1) The linguists have a name for it: they call it Mid-Atlantic English. I dont like this name, for reasons Ill explain in a minute. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. Its a shot from a YouTube video that itself is a fascinating time-capsule portrait of language change. Peter even came with us on our honeymoon in Ravello, though George didnt. Hed have that and a scotch on the rocks, his favorite drink. "[34] A feature in Mad titled "Some Really Dangerous Jobs for George Plimpton" spotlighted him trying to swim across Lake Erie, strolling through New York's Times Square in the middle of the night, and spending a week with Jerry Lewis. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, which documents his life, adventures, and work as participatory journalist and editor of the Paris Review, my dad will be playing himself one more time. He was 76. [23] He was also notable for his appearance in television commercials during the early 1980s, including a memorable campaign for Mattel's Intellivision. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? He is also credited with saving, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Plimpton! Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? We made $15,000-20,000. Several readers wrote in with specimens of Americans who had gone to England and ended up speaking in this mid-Atlantic way. (What else happened that year??? Mia had the perfect model! That was when Westbrook van Voorhis, the famous March of Time voice, did the intro narration of the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone. That is, until I saw the documentarythe assassination of his dear friend Bobby Kennedy. 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. So, pairing the Cagney hint with the Kennedy Inaugural, could we date the changeover to 1961? Plimpton was an omnipresence for much of American cultural lifeboth high and lowin the last third of the 20th century. It was horrifying.. His friendships testified to what an eclectic man he was. He had a small role in the Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting,[22] playing a psychologist. He would have a beer with you. 1. We all just had our own regional accentor non accent, like the flat midwest speak. 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. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. 1 draft choice of the Lions in 1965. Kennedy died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital. The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. Hows your mom? hed always ask me. This speech pattern might be common among US expatriates in the UK, of which Grossman would seem to represent just the most ostentatious example. 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. Return of the Big Bopper. Was this sheer affectation? I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. His dish was Spaghetti Bolognese. Isnt that what they call it. George had three siblings: Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Jr., Oakes Ames Plimpton,[15] and Sarah Gay Plimpton. 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. Did he have the celebrated "Boston Brahmin" accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. He died on September 26, 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? For it was George Plimpton the writer, not the editor nor the celebrity, who was honored here . I want you to go [to the shop] pull out the biggest firework you have and go out and light it up, because you just won the firework contest in Monaco!, I was so stunned, all I could think to say was, I dont think I can get a permit that fast!, Alice Quinn, director of the Poetry Society of America, poetry editor, The New Yorker:When I was an adviser at Columbia Magazine [a journal run out of Columbia University], we were scraping barrel, with no money in the bank, and I said to the students we should have a benefit auction. He did not appear last year, or the year before, and we feared he was done with us. Macklem . 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. [35], Plimpton was known for his distinctive accent which, by Plimpton's own admission, was often mistaken for an English accent. $ 9.19 - $ 32.19. 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. 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". 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. Buckley clearly flaunts it, probably to set himself apart from the hoi polloi of his contemporaries. Between 2000 and 2003, Plimpton wrote the libretto to a new opera, Animal Tales, commissioned by Family Opera Initiative, with music by Kitty Brazelton directed by Grethe Barrett Holby. [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]. The clipped, non-rhotic English accents of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley Jr. were vestigial examples. He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. 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. He liked the fact that I had broken my nose in defeat. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Finally I did. Well have a lot more to say about Buckley and Vidal for now the leaders in the race for Last American to Talk This Way (with George Plimpton in third)in the next installment. "[27], Plimpton was a member of the cast of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (200102). In this campaign, Plimpton touted the superiority regarding the graphics and sounds of Intellivision video games over the Atari 2600.[24]. The flipped prestige markers point here is fascinating. $ 3.99 - $ 27.44. Read more. 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. Except at parties. George Plimpton: what kind of accent? Sign up for the Books & Fiction newsletter. **. How to find out, and whether you should care. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. *Originally posted by bordelond * [Then] this August he showed up, pulled the shirt over his head, and said he was ready to bat. [33] A later attempt, fired at Cape Canaveral, rose approximately 50 feet (15m) into the air and broke 700 windows in Titusville, Florida. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. He plays the 'fancy pants' to our outhouse Americana," Flaherty asserted. 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. $ 4.19 - $ 17.92. I mean, if George Plimpton wasnt my father and Id never met him, and I heard that voice emerge from his lips and matched it with his severe Roman features and his usual blue blazer, oxford shirt, and tie, I might have assumed that he was a little pompous or snooty or affected. It was always a surprise. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! [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]. Exeter Academy after an incident involving a These interviews are a collaborative effort, and, I believe, a fascinating contribution to literary history. [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. Thats a common name for such an accent. 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. Suddenly, a New York cop remembered a long-ago murder. All rights reserved. I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. 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." Plimpton has grown. 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. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. One reader writes: I've wondered whether that "announcer English" was at least partly caused by poor loudspeakers and microphones. Peter Matthiesen, author, co-founder of the Paris Review:I was in Liberia, of all places, and George met me in Monrovia. This kept his magazine fresh for 50 years. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. 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. 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. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. To me, it meant admission to this little exclusive club at the Paris Review. Vault. Now the interview is perfect!. (To read Part One, click here. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you? Yes indeed, George Plimpton is a man for all seasons. George Plimpton was an upper-class guy with a patrician accent who partied his way through life . He was respected by all. Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. 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. He was one of her original supporters and had published an article about her work in The Paris Review. George Plimpton is beautifully connected. 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. (My dads been dead nearly ten years: not that he held many in his life, but what grudges could he possibly be holding on to now? For instance: Mid-Atlantic English was the dominant dialect among the Northeastern American upper class through the first half of the 20th century. Larchmont Lockjaw? [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. He modestly shrugged off the compliment, but his bright smile betrayed his pleasureand ours. He called his computer the machine. At dinner, when offered seconds, he would often decline by saying, Thank you, no, Ive had a gracious plenty. He called my mom Puss (this was also the name of our fat, raccoon-striped cat, though he was Mr. 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. Was it me? He smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. 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. Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the lasta figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. . *Originally posted by j.c. * 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. The primary reason [for the accent] was primitive microphone technology: "natural" voices simply did not get picked up well by the microphones of the time, and people were instructed to and learned to speak in such a way that their words could be best transmitted through the microphone to the radio waves or to recording media. expelled from the very expensive, very WASP-y Philips Firstly, then-managing director of SI, Mark Mulvoy, gave Plimpton the liberty to create a hoax.Secondly, SI photographer Lane Stewart recruited his friend, Joe Berton to play the part of Sidd Finch. After it was published, all of the baseball people were trying to get in touch with Sidd, but he didnt existit was an April Fools joke! Katharine Hepburn spoke this way, on and off screen until she died. He rounded first as if he were about to go for a double, then glided back to the base, with fans waving and cheering. 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. 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. The Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour. My dad and I could not lose each other, but we could never quite find each other, either. **Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? Between 1945 and 1948, Plimpton was a soldier in the United States Army. 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. He had it, as does/did William Buckley, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Julia Child. Big, tall, good-looking guy, easy-going. By George Plimpton. Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. . No matter where he was, or who he wasquarterback, trapeze artist, Philharmonic triangle-playerhis voice never changed, proving that you can be whomever you want to be without ever abandoning yourself. 26 Feb 2023 12:18:23 Now you know! For such admissions to escape my fathers lips, they always had to be a little removed somehow. 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. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. That he died in his sleep was impressive. 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. Whats the matter?, Well, he said. I had George tell him the story of Sidd Finch. Why couldnt we have a good time, too? That life couldnt contain him, hed burst its seams like it was an old coat two sizes too small. [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]. 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. 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.. George Plimpton. I have a memory of George emerging out of the bush, with a terrible sunburn on his nose and face and legs; he was in safari gear, none of it hanging together very well, and over it all he was wearing a nice blue blazer. 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. A few days after, I went to a Paris Review party and showed off my damaged nose and two black eyes to George. Others outside the entertainment industry known for speaking Mid-Atlantic English include William F. Buckley, Jr., Gore Vidal, George Plimpton, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Norman Mailer, Diana Vreeland, Maria Callas, Cornelius Vanderbilt IV. Plimpton didnt die. . He was also an accomplished birdwatcher. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". They spoke in this manner, and it seemed perfectly natural, evocative of a background spent among the gentry of the northeast. silk-stockinged New Englander - private schools (he was Read more in this thread (long). **. BTW, I cant imagine a presidential candidate today getting anywhere close to a nomination with FDRs accent, cigarette holder, and aristocratic bearing. 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 so violent that it brought a lot of people to the windows. George was the one who read my name out to the commissioner. Jean Stein became his co-editor. There was one more matter I never heard my dad discuss. Here are five things you may not have known about him. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. It was as if some old gentlemans code prohibited us from interacting as human beings. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? George Plimpton, who has died aged 76, became a best-selling author by not only writing about sporting heroes but by participating in those sports as well. 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. Sidd Finch was a fictional character George had created for a Sports Illustrated story, supposedly the greatest and fastest pitcher in the world. At the time, he was getting ready to pitch for the Yankees,and we would throw pitches across 72nd Street in preparation. He once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. 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! But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. Here's a look inside the space, where the Paris Review editor hosted legendary parties. I thought Id died and gone to Olympus. But the average person never talked that way. Is it in evidence among the Gen X set of Boston, or a passing phenomenon? He was smooth. The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many.