So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? He joined us in Monte Carlo when we won the international [fireworks] competition. 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. These are some of the things my father could not say: Shit. Fuck. I love you. His curses were never actually curse-words, though it was perhaps because of this that they held such weight. 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. The young Paris Review editor and other New York literary figures arrived during a period marked by hope for a democratic Cuba. Its a shot from a YouTube video that itself is a fascinating time-capsule portrait of language change. 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. Share; Copied! Cambridge. Mid-Atlantic. But he could easily have said, Alice, I have enough trouble raising money for my magazine.. If you are in the big league, God help us all. I just knew it was going to be something terrible. These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. Too old-fashioned. 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). They all gathered there. Everything he did was like this, just a bit odd. In 1992, Plimpton married Sarah Whitehead Dudley, a graduate of Columbia University and a freelance writer. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. Here's a look inside the space, where the Paris Review editor hosted legendary parties. 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. We were bound to play the roles of father and son, unable to simply be ourselves. What fine manners he had! The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. The Left Bank really became East 72nd Street. Thats where there was that cross-section you once found in Parisof literary people, of people who were illiterate, of people down on their luck, and people of status. He was a great addition to the human race. These interviews are a collaborative effort, and, I believe, a fascinating contribution to literary history. Kaltenborn was a famous mid . 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. **Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. Ive known him forsix months and I just now learned hes not English!. It was always as if one were setting out with him on a special adventure. 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. Except at parties. George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a journalist and the first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review. In all my years, Ive never heard this accent in person. Besides, third is a very respectable showing! So it was that George Plimptons accent could not be imitated. The limited frequency response of the recording technology of the late 19th and early 20th centuries has left us with only a pale, and sometimes caricatural image of the original sound. 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. As an old film buff, I am used to this voice, though it figures unevenly in old movies. There youd be, talking with her on the phone, and shed say, Well, tell him I called, and youd say, O.K., Grandma, good to talk to you, I Grandma?. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! (The filmmakers assembled his voice-over from recorded speeches and other archival footage.) After finishing at Harvard in 1950, he attended King's College, Cambridge, from 1950 to 1952, and graduated with third class honors in English. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. I believe the accent was at one time known as Larchmont Lockjaw. Prestigious prep schools and ivy league institutions (though Gore Vidal never went to college). It was so tiny that if you saw him in it, you couldnt believe hed be able to get himself out of it. Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature in your in-box. In fact, my dads farewells seemed loquacious in comparison to his mothers. That he died in his sleep was impressive. The list of authors interviewed is extraordinary, and stretches from Hemingway years ago to Amy Hempel (in the 50th anniversary issue that has just been published). Plimpton died on September 25, 2003, in his New York City apartment from a heart attack later determined to have been caused by a catecholamine surge. Rose Styron, wife of William Styron and former Paris Review editor:My husband Bill was with George when he started the Paris Review. (And, OK, Im not a linguist, but Im married to one!) He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. All rights reserved. Revolutionary musket, a stairwell and a housemaster), Larchmont Lockjaw? December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. He wanted to play his own part, but they wouldnt let him. Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. Plimpton didnt die. I just heard that George Plimpton has died. In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. 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. The Detroit Lions let a reporter play QB. Can you guess how it went After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. In most situations, he had the remarkable quality of making everyone he talked to feel at ease, at home, welcome, no matter who they were or what they didbut for whatever strange reason there wasnt this effortlessness with me, this warmth. George Plimpton Biography - life, family, children, wife, school, son Shed wandered out to the balcony of a lonely Manhattan cocktail party, and was standing out there, smoking a cigarette and looking down mournfully at the street far below, when from behind her she heard a voice: I know a better way down.. That is, until I saw the documentarythe assassination of his dear friend Bobby Kennedy. Brown & Co. Re-issued George Plimpton Sports Books, 2016. That life couldnt contain him, hed burst its seams like it was an old coat two sizes too small. $ 4.19 - $ 17.92. Ill pick you up., I had a hard time sleeping that night, as you might imagine. 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. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Since all we have are recordings of those long-vanished voices, we do not and cannot know whether people spoke "this way" when they were not being recorded, although I would be willing to wager that they did not. At least, not to me, nor even to my sister, a fact she mentions in the movie. Was it him? George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. 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. He was respected by all. 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. And being good at losing was one of Georges many gifts. Would you admit to there being symbolism in your novels? They all sound just like George. History / Biographical Note Biographical Note. We all just had our own regional accentor non accent, like the flat midwest speak. NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. He had it, as does/did William Buckley, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Julia Child. Family (1) Spouse 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. Angelo Dundee, trainer for Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard:George was such a great guy. Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? rejoiced in the name of Euphemia van Renssalaer Wyatt. What was our problem? He was a Wasp (both of his parents came from old New England families, and had ancestors on the Mayflower). He just did it because Columbia was another literary magazine. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . 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. **, In this case, Mid-Atlantic refers to speech in which the attributes of British English and American English meet halfway. In that vein, here is an oral biography of George Plimpton. 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. 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. "[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. Plimpton was an omnipresence for much of American cultural lifeboth high and lowin the last third of the 20th century. On Saturday Night Live, even the great impersonator Dana Carvey couldnt get it quite right. 'Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself' TV review - SFGATE George was the one who read my name out to the commissioner. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. 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." Her mother, a writer and critic for Commonweal and Catholic World. The Blacklisted Journalist,George Plimpton, 76 Death Claims Another of Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. Would you like Mike to run for you, George? the coach asked. 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. George Plimpton : Movies - CinemaOne Was this sheer affectation? Indeed, the police deposition the filmmakers managed to uncover may be the only time my dad ever spoke about the tragedy, publicly or privately. (A variation is the Locust Valley Lockjaw.). He had been in the war, if briefly (stationed in Italy towards the end of it, hed missed action, but met the Pope, an early sign of the great good fortuneone of his favorite phrasesthat marked his life). 2) Truman v. Kaltenborn, 1949. Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. He grew up in New York City with bona fide WASP credentials; became the longtime editor of the Paris Review, working with many of the great novelists of the day; contributed to the New Journalism. 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. When I spoke to him my voice went up an octave and took on his formal tone and became careful and unnatural; his voice became like his fathersstern, authoritative, disciplinarianwhen his father was the last person in the universe he wanted to be. Documentary Shows George Plimpton's Best Story Was His Own : NPR - NPR.org In this campaign, Plimpton touted the superiority regarding the graphics and sounds of Intellivision video games over the Atari 2600.[24]. Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. He thought Castro might come. Was it me? Norman Mailer, author:George had a rare gift. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. Felix Grucci Jr., of Fireworks by Grucci (Plimpton wrote about the Grucci family, widely held to be the first family of fireworks, in Fireworks: A History and Celebration):George had a very big passion for fireworks. Greetings From the Vortex of Unpredictability, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. 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.

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