One night Joe DiMaggio was here, and they had never met, so I introduced them. He was not himself interested in poetry, but he read all of the poems every quarter, and he would tell me what he thought of them. With such a useful explanation, why do I gripe about the name? 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. I think it was an affectation people adopted because they thought it made them sound much more intelligent! **Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? Did he have the celebrated "Boston Brahmin" accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? They all gathered there. Ken Auletta, author:Sometime after age 70, when his reflexes dulled, George took to the sidelines in the Artists and Writers softball game in Easthampton, N.Y. Each year his name was announced, and each year he was hailed by the crowd, who paid more attention to him than to the game. The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a . This kept his magazine fresh for 50 years. What fine manners he had! His experience was captured in the book Out of My League. George Plimpton. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. Cambridge. 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. Among other challenges for Sports Illustrated, he attempted to play top-level bridge, and spent some time as a high-wire circus performer. Ad Choices. **. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Never heard of this decidedly imprecise term. **. Almost twenty years ago, writing quirky sports pieces for the Village Voice, I decided to enter the world of championship arm wrestling.Like many young writers, I was inspired by the sports adventures of the gaunt but game George Plimpton, who had made a literary career out of placing himself in . Between 1945 and 1948, Plimpton was a soldier in the United States Army. That he died in his sleep was impressive. These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. When Plimpton, the co-founder of The Paris Review, died in 2003 at age 76, The New York Times . The Sidd Finch story was accompanied by a series of photos which managed to convince even the eagle-eyed fans . He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. (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? But the average person never talked that way. 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. Vault. 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. They were divorced, and had been for a while, but they still talked, and visited every now and then, and they would sit on my moms porch on Long Island and look out over the pond at the birds and tell each other stories and laugh until the tears came to their eyes, but he could not ask her this directlyHow are you, Freddy? He had lost my mom, at least in part because he had been unable to communicate with her, to show his love. Ill try to give a representative range, and I am grateful for the care and thought that have gone into these responses. How to find out, and whether you should care. He hosted Disney Channel's Mouseterpiece Theater (a Masterpiece Theatre spoof which featured Disney cartoon shorts). And the many candidates for the crown of Last American to Speak This Way. 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. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? 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. Plimpton didnt die. 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. Plimpton himself described it as a "New England cosmopolitan accent"[36] or "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan" accent. Vault. He majored in English. Family (1) Spouse 3 people found this helpful . #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. 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?. YESTERDAY IS NOT FAR AWAY. 1 draft choice of the Lions in 1965. Plimpton, George 1927-2003(George Ames Plimpton) Source for information on Plimpton, George 1927-2003: Concise Major 21st Century Writers dictionary. And I, of course, was looking them over, too. 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. [citation needed], In the movie Plimpton! "[27], Plimpton was a member of the cast of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (200102). :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! A graduate of Harvard University and King's College, Cambridge, Plimpton was recruited to Paris by Peter Matthiessen in 1952 and signed on to the project shortly thereafter. The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. I only wish I could not tell him again, just one more time. Please educate me. 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. 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. 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. He did these jobs, and many others, as an amateur.. Ive known him forsix months and I just now learned hes not English!. "He speaks with an oddly mannered accent, sounding as though on the verge of a stammer, polite, genteel, perhaps just a little Woosterish. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. Future Poet Laureate Donald Hall, who had met Plimpton at Exeter, was Poetry Editor. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. The 16th at Cypress Point is one of the famous golf holes of the world, certainly one of the most difficult and demanding par 3's. That made him a great storyteller. The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. 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! He looked for ways in which he could make himself a ridiculous figure, and not only on the football field, but in all walks of life. He had a way of putting it all together, of understanding fighters in the ring; he was a good analyst of boxing. And being good at losing was one of Georges many gifts. 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? Could it be fairly said that Plimptom had it? He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. "[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. **Get a life. And he stood there ebullient and charming all night; he bid on many items himself. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. 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. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * 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. Butch, he says, because he always called me Butch. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. Look out, Wilson! As such, it was popular in the theatre and other forms of elite culture in that region. He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. He was 76. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. Was it me? 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.. "[44], In 2006, the musician Jonathan Coulton wrote the song entitled "A Talk with George", a part of his 'Thing a Week' series, in tribute to Plimpton's many adventures and approach to life. George Plimpton. Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. The Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour. BTW, I cant imagine a presidential candidate today getting anywhere close to a nomination with FDRs accent, cigarette holder, and aristocratic bearing. He was an actor and writer, known for Good Will Hunting (1997), Nixon (1995) and Just Cause (1995). If you say, I pahked my cah in Hahvahd Yahd, like some vaudeville version of a Boston accent, you are non-rhotic. . 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. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? Plimpton also appeared in a number of feature films as an extra and in cameo appearances. She would not even say goodbye. Lewis Lapham, editor, Harpers Magazine:Georges immense enthusiasm was his primary characteristic. He could have done whatever he wanted. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? 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. A few days after, I went to a Paris Review party and showed off my damaged nose and two black eyes to George. Interesting that the two competitors for his anchor chair were both fully vernacular speakers from the South and West: Mudd and Rather. He was smooth. (Why do I even bother?) In 2013, the documentary Plimpton! 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. Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. He had, for instance, a series of antiquated phrases and terms of affection. Brown & Co. Re-issued George Plimpton Sports Books, 2016. But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. 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.". She was also the great-granddaughter on her father's side of Oakes Ames (18041873), an industrialist and congressman who was implicated in the Crdit Mobilier railroad scandal of 1872; and Governor-General of New Orleans Benjamin Franklin Butler, an American lawyer and politician who represented Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives and later served as the 33rd Governor of Massachusetts. Plimpton also appeared in the closing credits of the 2006 film Factory Girl. To me, Mid-Atlantic English is the nom juste for a related but distinct phenomenon (which is also mentioned in Wikipedia). 2023 Cond Nast. rejoiced in the name of Euphemia van Renssalaer Wyatt. **Mid-Atlantic. This brings us back to the why things changed question. 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. Sign up for the Books & Fiction newsletter. 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. He wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, Pi Eta, the Signet Society, and the Porcellian Club. But the gentleman amateur - a Harvard. 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. It was a hot, sweltering day. [23] He was also notable for his appearance in television commercials during the early 1980s, including a memorable campaign for Mattel's Intellivision. 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. During our time in Paris, he had a famous little car, a dark blue Peugeotit was mine originally; I sold it to himand it had to be seen to be believed. "I've decided to stay over here in . Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . George Plimpton boxed with Archie Moore, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions, and played percussion for the New York Philharmonic. Heres a sampling for today, with more planned in the days ahead. Mr . I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. By strange coincidence, I actually became quite good friends with his (ex-)in-laws here in Manhattan. 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 gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. Look out, Wilson! When he found a story to be short of the mark, he rejected it no matter who the author wasan old friend, a Pulitzer winner, an unknown. I enjoy doing it. Thats it, George cried out. In all my years, Ive never heard this accent in person. As an old film buff, I am used to this voice, though it figures unevenly in old movies. 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. expelled from the very expensive, very WASP-y Philips [29], His enthusiasm for fireworks grew, and he was appointed Fireworks Commissioner of New York by Mayor John Lindsay,[29][30] an unofficial post he held until his death. 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. It's a Scottish accent that's been modified somewhat for a mainstream audience that tends to associate them with Groundskeeper Willie. If you are in the big league, God help us all. For it was George Plimpton the writer, not the editor nor the celebrity, who was honored here . Mr. Plimpton was born in Manhattan in 1927 and raised in Huntington, L.I. 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. He is also credited with saving, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Plimpton! [33] A later attempt, fired at Cape Canaveral, rose approximately 50 feet (15m) into the air and broke 700 windows in Titusville, Florida. Share; Copied! We had the book party for my selected poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room, at Georges house on Sept 10, 2001. I never thought that George slept. Realizing that I probably didnt know anyone, George took me around the room to introduce me to his guestsWilliam Styron, Norman Mailer, Robert Stone, and Gay Talese among them. The name George Plimpton is synonymous with a kind of all-in participatory journalism. [citation needed]. I had made about five thousand egg and tuna sandwiches. The risky pleasures of Plimpton's classic of participatory sportswriting, Paper Lion. 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. *Originally posted by j.c. * His final interview appeared in The New York Sports Express of October 2, 2003 by journalist Dave Hollander. *Originally posted by cuauhtemoc * Ill pick you up., I had a hard time sleeping that night, as you might imagine. Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! 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. Hed have that and a scotch on the rocks, his favorite drink. 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! 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. During a career that spanned the second half of the 20th century, Plimpton was a quarterback for the Detroit Lions, pitched at Yankee Stadium, sparred with Archie Moore, played the triangle with. We made $15,000-20,000. Ever. Prestigious prep schools and ivy league institutions (though Gore Vidal never went to college).