He had it, as does/did William Buckley, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Julia Child. He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. He Was Shot by John Wayne. You should be very grateful. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? [citation needed], Outside the literary world, Plimpton was famous for competing in professional sporting events and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur. 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.. Hearing the words Dammit, Im mad as a hornet! uttered in George Plimptons voice made anger sound totally ridiculous, which is exactly what it most often is. $ 9.19 - $ 32.19. $ 3.99 - $ 27.44. 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. 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! What stood in our way? 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. I think he came down [to the shooting of Paper Lion in] Florida once. But the average person never talked that way. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. tweedy demeanor and Oxford accent. At Harvard, Plimpton was a classmate and close personal friend of Robert F. Kennedy. Even Orson Welles on occasion. He was a Wasp (both of his parents came from old New England families, and had ancestors on the Mayflower). He got the personality totally wrong, too. By George Plimpton. He came from a family where such endearments were not expressed, and phone conversations were curt. And you are going to come with me. 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. 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.". And he told everyone that night, and for many years after, that hed diverted me from a career of filling prescriptions. Plimpton brought the Left Bank to NYCpeople like Peter Mathiessen, William Styron, Terry Southern. Discussing the accent he used for Washington in an interview with The Onion AV Club, he explained: The accent back then was probably nothing like what we think of as a Southern accent now or a New England accent now, so we tried to find the root of the accents. Besides, third is a very respectable showing! Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. I just knew it was going to be something terrible. 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. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Now you know! 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. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. You heard it and it could only be him. $ 4.19 - $ 17.92. *Originally posted by CBCD * NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. 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. 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. George Plimpton. 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. By strange coincidence, I actually became quite good friends with his (ex-)in-laws here in Manhattan. As a result, this American version of a posh accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. [17], In 1953, Plimpton joined the influential literary journal The Paris Review, founded by Peter Matthiessen, Thomas H. Guinzburg, and Harold L. "Doc" Humes, becoming its first editor in chief. (Newsreels ran in movie theaters, of course: what better critique of the high newsreel style than the new movies that jarred against it?). [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. Whats the matter?, Well, he said. 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. Of course, I think he enjoyed the odd persona his voice and mannerisms conferred on him. 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. George Plimpton. So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. 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. I had George tell him the story of Sidd Finch. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". Big, tall, good-looking guy, easy-going. 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. The flipped prestige markers point here is fascinating. Plimpton's remarkable life is showcased in a documentary that is. The guys here in Detroit treated him like one of us. That he died in his sleep was impressive. He was "George Plimpton"-editor, host . For instance: The American-British television presenter Loyd Grossman, who has described his accent as Mid-Atlantic. A few days after, I went to a Paris Review party and showed off my damaged nose and two black eyes to George. And I, of course, was looking them over, too. . The clearest example of the Mid-Atlantic accent is the accent of the Frasier & Niles Crane characters on the TV show Frasier. 3 people found this helpful . He was so open to life and all its new and unexpected situations. Besides, third is a very respectable showing! 1 draft choice of the Lions in 1965. George also approved, I think, of the fact that I lost. Just when Jim and I thought we had finished, and we had been working a long time, George, who loved the result of our efforts, decided he wanted to talk to me as well. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. Plimpton was .the public face of the New York intellectual: tweedy, eclectic and with a plummy accent he himself described as "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan." . Would you admit to there being symbolism in your novels? She would not even say goodbye. That made him a great storyteller. He liked the fact that I had broken my nose in defeat. Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! It was then that the majority of audiences first heard Hollywood actors speaking predominantly in Mid-Atlantic English, British expatriates John Houseman, Henry Daniell, Anthony Hopkins, Camilla Luddington, and Angela Cartwright exemplified the accent, as did [a long list of North Americans, from Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly to Richard Chamberlain and Christopher Plummer]. 3: Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". **. George had three siblings: Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Jr., Oakes Ames Plimpton,[15] and Sarah Gay Plimpton. Ad Choices. The risky pleasures of Plimpton's classic of participatory sportswriting, Paper Lion. Plimpton would not boast of his feat, so we did. I want you to go [to the shop] pull out the biggest firework you have and go out and light it up, because you just won the firework contest in Monaco!, I was so stunned, all I could think to say was, I dont think I can get a permit that fast!, Alice Quinn, director of the Poetry Society of America, poetry editor, The New Yorker:When I was an adviser at Columbia Magazine [a journal run out of Columbia University], we were scraping barrel, with no money in the bank, and I said to the students we should have a benefit auction. Manhattan DVD. These experiences served as the basis of another football book, Mad Ducks and Bears, although much of the book dealt with the off-field escapades and observations of football friends Alex Karras ("Mad Duck") and John Gordy ("Bear"). Whether on the football field or on a golf course or in a poem or an essay, the notion of human talent in whatever form excited him. 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. [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. [3] During the summers, he lived in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Suffolk County on Long Island. Its a shot from a YouTube video that itself is a fascinating time-capsule portrait of language change. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He was a great addition to the human race. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. He just did it because Columbia was another literary magazine. Is it in evidence among the Gen X set of Boston, or a passing phenomenon? He was also an accomplished birdwatcher. 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. All rights reserved. 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. **Get a life. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. It was a hot, sweltering day. Plimpton's most memorable writings involved him inserting himself into a daunting situation about which he knew . Plimpton was an optimist, a teller of amusing and amazing stories. Thurston Howell III had the Larchmont Lockjaw accent. Shadow Box. I think that perhaps Harris' portrayal of Dr. Smith made the accent so identified with cowardly buffoonery that no one in the baby boom generation and later would want to use the accent as anything other than a joke. 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! People two or three deep stood looking out at the East River. 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. Never heard of this decidedly imprecise term. Havent heard that term in years. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. [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.