YESTERDAY IS NOT FAR AWAY. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. 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. Family (1) Spouse We had the book party for my selected poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room, at Georges house on Sept 10, 2001. 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. Plimpton sparred for three rounds with boxing greats Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson while on assignment for Sports Illustrated. Labov suspected that WWII had something to do about it. Plimpton was .the public face of the New York intellectual: tweedy, eclectic and with a plummy accent he himself described as "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan." . 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. That was the last party for a while., I just got back from a road trip from Michigan. Kennedy died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital. People two or three deep stood looking out at the East River. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * Nevertheless, its a strange thing that one of the great voices of modern storytelling had limitations, restrictions, words, and phrases it was incapable of uttering, matters it could not express: death, love, tragedy. Now you know! But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. & FDR, George Plimpton, William F. Buckley, etc. He rounded first as if he were about to go for a double, then glided back to the base, with fans waving and cheering. 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. [3], He was the son of Francis T. P. Plimpton[4] and the grandson of Frances Taylor Pearsons and George Arthur Plimpton. One reader writes: I've wondered whether that "announcer English" was at least partly caused by poor loudspeakers and microphones. [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]. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. 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. George . Even the manliest actors, such as Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable sometimes slipped into this voice-coach mode. 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. 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. Vault. [3] During the summers, he lived in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Suffolk County on Long Island. His final interview appeared in The New York Sports Express of October 2, 2003 by journalist Dave Hollander. The Left Bank really became East 72nd Street. 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. Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. Interesting that the two competitors for his anchor chair were both fully vernacular speakers from the South and West: Mudd and Rather. "[25] He had a recurring role as the grandfather of Dr. Carter on the NBC series ER. [2], A November 6, 1971, cartoon in The New Yorker by Whitney Darrow Jr. shows a cleaning lady on her hands and knees scrubbing an office floor while saying to another one: "I'd like to see George Plimpton do this sometime." And he told everyone that night, and for many years after, that hed diverted me from a career of filling prescriptions. I thought they were terrific. 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. The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. At the time, he was getting ready to pitch for the Yankees,and we would throw pitches across 72nd Street in preparation. George Plimpton writer, publisher, amateur lion tamer died in 2003 after 50 years as the founding editor of The Paris Review. Along with all the other things he does, George is an editor of the Paris Review, a literary quarterly published by the Aga Khan's uncle, Sadrudin, and his apartment is overstuffed with the comforts and legends of its use as a literary salon. Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. Ive always heard it referred to as a patrician accent. How widespread, numerically and geographically? Prestigious prep schools and ivy league institutions (though Gore Vidal never went to college). 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. Suddenly, a New York cop remembered a long-ago murder. And so it seemed only fitting to commemorate his death with the form he made his own.Meghan ORourke. Thats a common name for such an accent. Please educate me. 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. He also appeared in the 1996 documentary When We Were Kings about the "Rumble in the Jungle" 1974 Ali-Foreman Championship fight opposite Norman Mailer crediting Muhammad Ali as a poet who composed the world's shortest poem: "Me? Sign up for the Books & Fiction newsletter. 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. She is the product of a line of the original Dutch settlers of New York and grew up in Tuxedo Park and the Gramercy Park area of Manhattan, very exclusive. In another cartoon in The New Yorker, a patient looks up at the masked surgeon about to operate on him and asks, "Wait a minute! Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 429-432. Read more in this thread (long). Besides, third is a very respectable showing! He was so open to life and all its new and unexpected situations. George Plimpton. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. 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. (He intended to face both line-ups, but tired badly and was relieved by Ralph Houk.) In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. Mia had the perfect model! There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. 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 smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. George Plimpton was born on March 18, 1927 in New York City, New York, USA. 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. Ill try to give a representative range, and I am grateful for the care and thought that have gone into these responses. And they founded this thing called the Paris Review and published poetry and short story writers and did interviews. 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). Plimpton also appeared in the closing credits of the 2006 film Factory Girl. For instance: Mid-Atlantic English was the dominant dialect among the Northeastern American upper class through the first half of the 20th century. 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. They all sound just like George. By George Plimpton. He died on September 26, 2003 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. May a diseased yak squat in your hot tub. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. He modestly shrugged off the compliment, but his bright smile betrayed his pleasureand ours. 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. Havent heard that term in years. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? He did these jobs, and many others, as an amateur.. How to find out, and whether you should care. 3 people found this helpful . Here are five things you may not have known about him. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. I only wish I could not tell him again, just one more time. Jean Stein became his co-editor. Plimpton's The Bogey Man chronicles his attempt to play professional golf on the PGA Tour during the Nicklaus and Palmer era of the 1960s. On one website, I read about a Choate alumn saying one can still hear the LL (see above thread) accent on campus. He knew we were just as good as he was, but in a different field. So it was that George Plimptons accent could not be imitated. Between 1945 and 1948, Plimpton was a soldier in the United States Army. George Plimpton, journalist extraordinaire, trains with and then performs as Quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. All rights reserved. The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. Lewis Lapham, editor, Harpers Magazine:Georges immense enthusiasm was his primary characteristic. I had George tell him the story of Sidd Finch. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? I enjoy doing it. Thats it, George cried out. 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. 1. 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. After finishing at Harvard in 1950, he attended King's College, Cambridge, from 1950 to 1952, and graduated with third class honors in English. 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. And so when it was time to say goodbye, we did so simplyno awkwardness, no strangled expressions of affectionand this is why, even though it was the last time we ever spoke, and I would never get the chance again, I do not regret not telling him that I loved him. 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. 2) Truman v. Kaltenborn, 1949. Back to Plimpton I dont remember the LL affect at all. He was very understanding of what we did and how we did it. I had made about five thousand egg and tuna sandwiches. That made him a great storyteller. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. 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. Vault. **Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. (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 dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. All rights reserved. Are you saying that the denizens of Larchmont sound like Plimpton did? In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. He liked the fact that I had broken my nose in defeat. Eerily enough, one of the messages on my answering machine was from George, with that distinctive accent of his: Hallo, its George Plimpton. Manhattan DVD. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. . George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a journalist and the first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . Final Twist of the Drama. [11], His mother was Pauline Ames,[12] the daughter of botanist Oakes Ames (1874-1950) and artist Blanche Ames. 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. In finally hearing the great storyteller tell the one story he would not tell, I could hear, too, his long, reverent silence on the subjectand it reveals his integrity as a journalist, and as a man. 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". 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.
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