He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. [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. When he was on the scene, everything was a big happeningan event. (A variation is the Locust Valley Lockjaw.). This was his habit. [citation needed] In 1958, prior to a post-season exhibition game at Yankee Stadium between teams managed by Willie Mays (National League) and Mickey Mantle (American League), Plimpton pitched against the National League. His father co-founded the law firm Debevoise Plimpton. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. We had the book party for my selected poems, Sailing Alone Around the Room, at Georges house on Sept 10, 2001. Plimpton was married twice. He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. He was very understanding of what we did and how we did it. Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. [citation needed] Some of these events, such as his stint with the Colts, and an attempt at stand-up comedy, were presented on the ABC television network as a series of specials. 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. **. (Every now and then he also called me Sweet Prince, as in Goodnight, Sweet Prince.), Of course, my fathers voice was odd not just in what it said, but in what it couldnt. Listen to Caruso singing or Bix Beiderbecke playing his cornet to hear how muffled was the recording of those sounds. 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. Another entertainment-related explanation for the shift, right about the time of the Eisenhower-Kennedy transition: The plumby announcer voice that hovers over the Atlantic midway between the Eastern Seaboard and England was mortally wounded in 1959. 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. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. His friendships testified to what an eclectic man he was. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. Robert Silvers, editor, the New York Review of Books:I met George on the Ile Saint-Louis in 1953 as I was leaving NATO headquarters. Whom is it spoken bymerely the elite, old-money types? Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. Plimpton was associated with the literary magazine in Paris, Merlin, which folded because the State Department withdrew its support.[why?] 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. They all gathered there. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. 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! George . And so fuck was definitely out of the question, but what about I love you? Was it him? George Plimpton Broke My Arm. The risky pleasures of Plimpton's | by Somehow Georgehad gotten it into his head that I was on the verge of becoming a pharmacist before he had called me up a year earlier to tell me the Paris Review was publishing a story I had submittedperhaps because of the pharmacological bent of the subject matter. The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. Plimpton didnt die. Vault. Mid-Atlantic accent - Wikipedia The Moth | The Art and Craft of Storytelling In 2013, the documentary Plimpton! Actors Nathan Lane (from Jersey City, NJ) and Robin Williams (grew up in SF Bay area) often adopt this accent. 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. Would you admit to there being symbolism in your novels? Return of the Big Bopper. 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. Lionel on Twitter: "News children today have no concept of the Mid Its a shot from a YouTube video that itself is a fascinating time-capsule portrait of language change. Premiring on June 21st at the SilverDocs festival, in Washington, D.C., and directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, the film contains interviews with notable friends and peers like Hugh Hefner, Peter Matthiessen, and James Lipton, though the majority of this remarkable account is narrated by none other than George Plimpton. 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. [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. At Harvard, Plimpton was a classmate and close personal friend of Robert F. Kennedy. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. Plimpton! The Great Quarterback Sneak - YouTube He could as easily have been my grandfather as father. The young Paris Review editor and other New York literary figures arrived during a period marked by hope for a democratic Cuba. The guys here in Detroit treated him like one of us. Quite sad, as he just had a daughter not many years back. He also served as editor of the Harvard Lampoon. Vault. [47][48] The journal, which had operated out of his home, moved downtown. Please educate me. "[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. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? 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. In no way do I recall Plimpton talking in a way that is typically associated with LLa style which, as I understand it, is associated with unclear pronunciation of most consonant cluster. Plimpton had a quasi-Brit patrician accent, which in no way corresponds with the official descriptions of LL that Ive read on the Net. In his July 1936 obituary, the New York Times described George Arthur Plimpton (13 July 1855-1 July 1936) as an "internationally known publisher and collector, college trustee and philanthropist." As the materials in the George A. Plimpton Papers testify, those four areas of activity dominated Plimpton's public and private lives. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. At least, not to me, nor even to my sister, a fact she mentions in the movie. Over the years, we held a lot of dinner parties for him, and he brought a lot of people inmany, many writers. Archie Moore, after all, had broken his nose. Along with all the other things he does, George is an editor of the Paris Review, a literary quarterly published by the Aga Khan's uncle, Sadrudin, and his apartment is overstuffed with the comforts and legends of its use as a literary salon. You heard it and it could only be him. Ive always heard it referred to as a patrician accent. Katharine Hepburn spoke this way, on and off screen until she died. History / Biographical Note Biographical Note. (He intended to face both line-ups, but tired badly and was relieved by Ralph Houk.) This brings us back to the why things changed question. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a journalist and the first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review. And George had written it straight. They spoke in this manner, and it seemed perfectly natural, evocative of a background spent among the gentry of the northeast. George Plimpton. I believe the accent was at one time known as Larchmont Lockjaw. I had George tell him the story of Sidd Finch. **Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? (Why do I even bother?) Between 1945 and 1948, Plimpton was a soldier in the United States Army. He was a Wasp (both of his parents came from old New England families, and had ancestors on the Mayflower). Plimpton sparred for three rounds with boxing greats Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson while on assignment for Sports Illustrated. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. I thought Id died and gone to Olympus. After the technology improved the need to speak so histrionically went away, and so did "announcer English.". [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." #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. [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. The Sidd Finch story was accompanied by a series of photos which managed to convince even the eagle-eyed fans . 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. Butch, he says, because he always called me Butch. Read more in this thread (long). Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. (And, OK, Im not a linguist, but Im married to one!) Billy Collins, poet:Im one of these people who went from crashing Georges parties in the 70s to being invited in the 80s. George Plimpton: what kind of accent? I live in Connecticut which is both the richest and poorest state in the union - I think we still are - and we have our fair share of extremely rich folk who sit around all day in their large victorians wearing rockport loafers, no sox, khaki pants and a polo-shirt with the collar up. Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. 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. 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. I mean, if George Plimpton wasnt my father and Id never met him, and I heard that voice emerge from his lips and matched it with his severe Roman features and his usual blue blazer, oxford shirt, and tie, I might have assumed that he was a little pompous or snooty or affected. Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? Were taking off from Teterburo, N.J., at 4 a.m. tomorrow. He modestly shrugged off the compliment, but his bright smile betrayed his pleasureand ours.