The Moth | The Art and Craft of Storytelling 2) The Role of Broadway and Hollywood, and the Shift from Jimmy Cagney to Marlon Brando. 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. 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. 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. 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. As such, it was popular in the theatre and other forms of elite culture in that region. His dish was Spaghetti Bolognese. I have decided, he said, that I have got to jump from a plane. 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 This periodical has carried great weight in the literary world, but has never been financially strong; for its first half-century, it was allegedly largely financed by its publishers and by Plimpton. He modestly shrugged off the compliment, but his bright smile betrayed his pleasureand ours. . 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. [5][6][7][8][9][10] His father was a successful corporate lawyer and partner of the law firm Debevoise and Plimpton; he was appointed by President John F. Kennedy as U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations, serving from 1961 to 1965. His friendships testified to what an eclectic man he was. George Plimpton | The New Yorker [33] A later attempt, fired at Cape Canaveral, rose approximately 50 feet (15m) into the air and broke 700 windows in Titusville, Florida. [Then] this August he showed up, pulled the shirt over his head, and said he was ready to bat. What was our problem? This book is the party that was George's life-and it's a big one-attended by scores of famous people, as well as. 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. 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. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". 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. Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . Revolutionary musket, a stairwell and a housemaster), But he came right down to our level. 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. I enjoy doing it. Thats it, George cried out. Future Poet Laureate Donald Hall, who had met Plimpton at Exeter, was Poetry Editor. George Plimpton boxed with Archie Moore, played quarterback for the Detroit Lions, and played percussion for the New York Philharmonic. 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. Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. ESPN.com: GEN - George Plimpton dies 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. A few days after, I went to a Paris Review party and showed off my damaged nose and two black eyes to George. 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. Katharine Hepburn spoke this way, on and off screen until she died. He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. George Plimpton: what kind of accent? - Straight Dope Message Board He was smooth. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. 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. The Blacklisted Journalist,George Plimpton, 76 Death Claims Another of For more than five decades, author and journalist George Plimpton delved deeply into an array of high-profile and often physically grueling experiences, including professional baseball, boxing . To me, it meant admission to this little exclusive club at the Paris Review. Lewis Lapham, editor, Harpers Magazine:Georges immense enthusiasm was his primary characteristic. They were born to Plimpton and his second wife, Sarah Dudley, 26 years younger than he, who is chairwoman of the East Harlem Tutorial Program, for which he was a trustee. I think it was an affectation people adopted because they thought it made them sound much more intelligent! He loved the ones that made a lot of noise and racket and excitement. [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. He smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. 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. 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. Finally I did. Besides, third is a very respectable showing! 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. 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. Her mother, a writer and critic for Commonweal and Catholic World. My Father's Voice | The New Yorker "[25] He had a recurring role as the grandfather of Dr. Carter on the NBC series ER. 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. [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." 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! 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. 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.. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. [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 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. Read more in this thread (long). On Saturday Night Live, even the great impersonator Dana Carvey couldnt get it quite right. 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. . (He intended to face both line-ups, but tired badly and was relieved by Ralph Houk.) All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 429-432. If he couldnt be taken quite seriously, that was fine with him (he took himself lightly, and relished being in on the joke). 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. 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. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. I have worked as poetry editor with editors on other magazines; only with George has the experience been entirely agreeable. An Oral History of George Plimpton: The Man Does Everything - Observer What accent does Logan have in the show? : r/SuccessionTV Call me back.. He did these jobs, and many others, as an amateur.. Mia had the perfect model! We were bound to play the roles of father and son, unable to simply be ourselves. These events were recalled in his best-known book Paper Lion, which was later adapted into the 1968 feature film starring Alan Alda. And his apartment, with those windows that looked out onto the East River, became a famous landmark in NYC. **. 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. [19] Another sports book, Open Net, saw him train as an ice hockey goalie with the Boston Bruins, even playing part of a National Hockey League preseason game. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. Billy Collins, poet:Im one of these people who went from crashing Georges parties in the 70s to being invited in the 80s. George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. When Plimpton, the co-founder of The Paris Review, died in 2003 at age 76, The New York Times . **, In this case, Mid-Atlantic refers to speech in which the attributes of British English and American English meet halfway. George Plimpton | Military Wiki | Fandom See Inside George Plimpton's Upper East Side Duplex Old money, would never say the word spanky, and certainly had more money than God could count. Vault. 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. Plimpton has grown. George . The last time I heard my fathers voice, it was over the telephone. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? Plimpton was married twice. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little I think he came down [to the shooting of Paper Lion in] Florida once. George Plimpton The Movie Database (TMDB) With 'Paper Lion,' George Plimpton Played Pro Football So We Didn't Have To George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. $ 4.19 - $ 17.92. We were going to go looking for strange birds. Whee!! George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. He would have a beer with you. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. "He speaks with an oddly mannered accent, sounding as though on the verge of a stammer, polite, genteel, perhaps just a little Woosterish. You heard it and it could only be him. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? YESTERDAY IS NOT FAR AWAY. By strange coincidence, I actually became quite good friends with his (ex-)in-laws here in Manhattan. In all my years, Ive never heard this accent in person. In early 1959, George Plimpton was preparing to watch an execution in Cuba. He hosted Disney Channel's Mouseterpiece Theater (a Masterpiece Theatre spoof which featured Disney cartoon shorts). 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. OK? When I eventually went back to be an editor at Harpers, I arrived at his flat, not having been in New York for eight years. BTW, I cant imagine a presidential candidate today getting anywhere close to a nomination with FDRs accent, cigarette holder, and aristocratic bearing. (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? Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? "[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. 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. 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. Best-selling author George Plimpton shares his experience as a "Storyteller For Life" with Dean Nelson of Point Loma Nazarene University as part of PLNU's 5th Annual Writer's Symposium By The. The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a . Hed have that and a scotch on the rocks, his favorite drink. One reader writes: I've wondered whether that "announcer English" was at least partly caused by poor loudspeakers and microphones. George Plimpton is beautifully connected. 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. Im having a harder time coming up with clear examples from the other side of the Atlantic, but Ive heard Alfred Molina (Londoner), and Catherine Zeta-Jones (Welsh) put on a Mid-Atlantic accent from time to time.. Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. He wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, Pi Eta, the Signet Society, and the Porcellian Club. The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. Showdown in the Pits. 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 could as easily have been my grandfather as father. [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. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. 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. George Plimpton - Biography - IMDb Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? 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. You should be very grateful. (Newsreels ran in movie theaters, of course: what better critique of the high newsreel style than the new movies that jarred against it?). #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. & FDR, George Plimpton, William F. Buckley, etc. 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. Plimpton also appeared in the closing credits of the 2006 film Factory Girl. And here for the full interview). In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. So we got together and, after some preliminaries, he popped the question that he was really there to ask. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. The Very Good Life Of George Plimpton - The Washington Post George A. Plimpton Papers, 1634-1956 | Rare Book & Manuscript Library George Plimpton Detroit Lions | The Pop History Dig Kim Noble, one of the announcers on the NPR affiliate in Kansas City, KCUR, speaks with a very affected Connecticut Lockjaw accent. The s. George Plimpton, Author And Editor, Is Dead at 76 Buckley clearly flaunts it, probably to set himself apart from the hoi polloi of his contemporaries. The Scout Is a Lonely Hunter. For such admissions to escape my fathers lips, they always had to be a little removed somehow. Here's a look inside the space, where the Paris Review editor hosted legendary parties. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. 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. [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. After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. I had George tell him the story of Sidd Finch. The Cuban revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, had just marched on Havana and ousted the US-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista. 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. 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. Too old-fashioned. He Was Shot by John Wayne. 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. Its our anniversary. Plimpton! The Great Quarterback Sneak - YouTube He was 76.. 2) Truman v. Kaltenborn, 1949. Indeed, the police deposition the filmmakers managed to uncover may be the only time my dad ever spoke about the tragedy, publicly or privately. List of books by author George Plimpton - ThriftBooks Hows your mom? hed always ask me. The Detroit Lions let a reporter play QB. Can you guess how it went He was also an accomplished birdwatcher. 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). His final interview appeared in The New York Sports Express of October 2, 2003 by journalist Dave Hollander. He just did it because Columbia was another literary magazine. By George Plimpton. George Ames Plimpton (1927 - 2003) - Genealogy - geni family tree Vault. But the gentleman amateur - a Harvard. George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003. George was the one who read my name out to the commissioner. And bolstering this last point, a reader who grew up in Depression-era Chicago writes: All I can think of is that people were imitating FDR. Thurston Howell III had the Larchmont Lockjaw accent. After finishing at Harvard in 1950, he attended King's College, Cambridge, from 1950 to 1952, and graduated with third class honors in English. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 September 25, 2003) was an American writer. In the "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can" episode of The Simpsons, he hosts the "Spellympics" and attempts to bribe Lisa Simpson to lose with the offer of a scholarship at a Seven Sisters College and a hot plate; "it's perfect for soup! April Fool's Day: Throwback to the time George Plimpton fooled the Even if it had nothing else going for itsomething very far from the truth Shadow Box by George Plimpton will forever remain a bastion of boxing literature because of the image it contains of the "Near Room," a place of dreadful foreboding which Muhammad Ali once described to the famed . 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. That was the last party for a while., I just got back from a road trip from Michigan. (The filmmakers assembled his voice-over from recorded speeches and other archival footage.) 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.. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. Why Did William F. Buckley Jr. Talk Like That? - Slate Magazine Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. Peter even came with us on our honeymoon in Ravello, though George didnt. NEW YORK -- George Plimpton, the self-deprecating author of "Paper Lion" and other sporting adventures and a patron to Philip Roth, Jack Kerouac and countless other writers, has died. Jean Stein became his co-editor. George Plimpton: what kind of accent? 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. My dad could never say what he feltnot reallyand neither can any of us. An Evening With George Plimpton - 2000 - YouTube Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. Exeter Academy after an incident involving a 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. 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. Shadow Box: An Amateur In The Ring -- George Plimpton On Boxing 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. I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. Queen Elizabeth doesnt say car, and neither did Franklin D. Roosevelt, nor did the newsreel announcers or movie actors of his day. George Plimpton. 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". Look out, Wilson! 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. Plimpton would not boast of his feat, so we did. 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. 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. H.V. The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. 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.
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