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George Plimpton was an upper-class guy with a patrician accent who partied his way through life . People two or three deep stood looking out at the East River. A few days after, I went to a Paris Review party and showed off my damaged nose and two black eyes to George. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. I enjoy doing it. Thats it, George cried out. Thurston Howell III had the Larchmont Lockjaw accent. [30] Plimpton later wrote the book Fireworks, and hosted an A&E Home Video with the same name featuring his many fireworks adventures with the Gruccis of New York in Monte Carlo and for the 1983 Brooklyn Bridge Centennial. 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. [citation needed], Plimpton's studies at Harvard were interrupted by military service from 1945 to 1948, during which time he served in Italy as an Army tank driver. Harvard (where he edited the Lampoon), Kings College, That he died in his sleep was impressive. . 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. He never went all the way, though his authenticity and newly-downstyle speaking could probably be marked in the crisis/triumph stages of his reporting: the death of JFK; the Vietnam report; the moon landing. Old money, would never say the word spanky, and certainly had more money than God could count. 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. 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. He would have a beer with you. But he has never employed that voice professionally, and certainly does not speak that way in real life. With the help of the New York Mets organization and several Mets players, Plimpton wrote a convincing account of a new unknown pitcher in the Mets spring training camp named Siddhartha Finch, who threw a baseball over 160mph, wore a heavy boot on one foot, and was a practicing Buddhist with a largely unknown background. There was intellectual heft in the Plimpton genes too: one Ames was a Professor of Botany, another was Governor of Massachusetts, another relation was a publisher, and yet another a writer-philanthropist fascinated with the subject of how the great figures of the past were educated Young Georges educational path was precisely that of a Revolutionary musket, a stairwell and a housemaster), The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. Shoot! hed hiss, when he was mad. 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? In early 1959, George Plimpton was preparing to watch an execution in Cuba. 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. He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. They all gathered there. I think it was an affectation people adopted because they thought it made them sound much more intelligent! He is also credited with saving, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Plimpton! 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. If you are in the big league, God help us all. 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. Jean Stein became his co-editor. With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. George Plimpton's duplex apartment on the Upper East Side hit the market for $5.495 million on April 18. A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. Plimpton brought the Left Bank to NYCpeople like Peter Mathiessen, William Styron, Terry Southern. Norman Mailer, author:George had a rare gift. Is your language rhotic? 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. So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. 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. Whats the matter?, Well, he said. Plimpton was an omnipresence for much of American cultural lifeboth high and lowin the last third of the 20th century. But he could easily have said, Alice, I have enough trouble raising money for my magazine.. Typical of George to laugh about something others saw as a defining traithe never took himself all that seriously. News children today have no concept of the Mid-Atlantic accent. There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. He could have been a fight trainer, a fight manager! The presentation was called Freedom of the American Road and was made 60 years ago, in 1955, as part of the campaign to build support for the new Interstate Highway system. Its a shot from a YouTube video that itself is a fascinating time-capsule portrait of language change. It was as if some old gentlemans code prohibited us from interacting as human beings. So it went in late 1960 at one of George Plimpton's legendary soirees at 541 E. 72nd St., New York. 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. **Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? . And later I woke upat 6 a.m. Later I called up George, I said, What happened?, I thought it over, he said, and I took mercy on you. Now the interview is perfect!. (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? If you say, I pahked my cah in Hahvahd Yahd, like some vaudeville version of a Boston accent, you are non-rhotic. By strange coincidence, I actually became quite good friends with his (ex-)in-laws here in Manhattan. [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. 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. [Then] this August he showed up, pulled the shirt over his head, and said he was ready to bat. Shootout at Rio Lobo", "The Smaller the Ball, the Better the Book: A Game Theory of Literature", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Plimpton&oldid=1137974740, This page was last edited on 7 February 2023, at 10:19. Queen Elizabeth doesnt say car, and neither did Franklin D. Roosevelt, nor did the newsreel announcers or movie actors of his day. Call me back.. 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. I feel that his work on this and many other language-related matters should be far more widely known than it is. Friends were almost always happy to see him because you knew he was bound to improve your mood. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. And being good at losing was one of Georges many gifts. Of the Murrow Boys, Eric Sevareid held on to the newsreel style the longest; relying on memory, Im betting that we could actually watch the transition away from that to a more vernacular style in the long career of Walter Cronkite. Actors Nathan Lane (from Jersey City, NJ) and Robin Williams (grew up in SF Bay area) often adopt this accent. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. [26] He also appeared in an episode of the NBC sitcom Wings. And here for the full interview). He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. As a result, this American version of a posh accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. Katharine Hepburn spoke this way, on and off screen until she died. The most recent was about how to extend the swing though impact, and the trick, George said, was to station an imaginary dwarf several feet in front of your ball and then (you have to re-create those broad Plimptonian vowels here) smack the dwarf in the ass. I dont know whether it works, because I cant think of it without laughing. He got the personality totally wrong, too. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * We all just had our own regional accentor non accent, like the flat midwest speak. The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch. 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. But he would do this in the most charming and agreeable way. What stood in our way? In 2013, the documentary Plimpton! [23] He was also notable for his appearance in television commercials during the early 1980s, including a memorable campaign for Mattel's Intellivision. (This is not to belittle Lowell Thomas, but to recognize the artifice that served him so well in his career). [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. By George Plimpton. And you are going to come with me. Harris trained himself as a young man to lose his native Bronx accent - to the point that he was asked if he were British. His father co-founded the law firm Debevoise Plimpton. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. So think of Margaret Anderson or Amanda and you can place George. And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you? Plimpton and Dudley were the parents of twin daughters Laura Dudley Plimpton and Olivia Hartley Plimpton. May a diseased yak squat in your hot tub. She was the daughter of writers Willard R. Espy[39] and Hilda S. Cole, who had, earlier in her career, been a publicity agent for Kate Smith and Fred Waring. Consider his duties as host of Mousterpiece Theatre (my first intro to my father as celebrity), a childrens TV show in which he debated the adventures and psyches of Donald Duck and Goofy in that marvelously serious voice: Is Donald Duck really a strident existentialist and a hero? How wonderfulwhat fun!to have a constant reminder emerging from your lips that life was absurd, and identity, too; all of it a great game to be played at, enjoyed. Vault. I never thought that George slept. You heard it and it could only be him. $ 9.19 - $ 32.19. Here's how Geroge Plimpton and his team created a prodigious pitcher out of thin air. Articles From This Author. 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. 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 had, for instance, a series of antiquated phrases and terms of affection. **Mid-Atlantic. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. And he told everyone that night, and for many years after, that hed diverted me from a career of filling prescriptions. My dad and I could not lose each other, but we could never quite find each other, either. 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. The s. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many. December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. When he was on the scene, everything was a big happeningan event. 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. [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. He was stationed primarily in Italy, where he worked as a tank driver. [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. Whee!! 2) Truman v. Kaltenborn, 1949. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . 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. I have decided, he said, that I have got to jump from a plane. He was an actor and writer, known for Good Will Hunting (1997), Nixon (1995) and Just Cause (1995). Plimpton was associated with the literary magazine in Paris, Merlin, which folded because the State Department withdrew its support.[why?] As such, it was popular in the theatre and other forms of elite culture in that region. I only wish I could not tell him again, just one more time. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? I hope not. His experience was captured in the book Out of My League. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. The Dudleys established the 36-acre (15ha) Highstead Arboretum in Redding, Connecticut. He was 76. He wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, Pi Eta, the Signet Society, and the Porcellian Club. [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. *Originally posted by Phlosphr * Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. 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! [3] During the summers, he lived in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Suffolk County on Long Island. Just in time for the Sixties, with all their other pressures towards some kind of anti-Eisenhower authenticity. The Cuban revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, had just marched on Havana and ousted the US-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista. I didnt know he was from the Larchmont area. By George Plimpton. He had a small role in the Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting,[22] playing a psychologist.