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. Jean Harlow, one of my favorites, is all over the map with this, sometimes sounding like a tough streetwalker, other times like a society matron, and, oddly, slipping in and out of both dialects in the same role, or even in one sentence. Plimpton[2] was born in New York City on March 18, 1927, and spent his childhood there, attending St. Bernard's School and growing up in an apartment duplex on Manhattan's Upper East Side located at 1165 Fifth Avenue. George Plimpton Biography - life, family, children, wife, school, son He was going to put on a reading of his play Zelda, Scott, and Ernest. 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]. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? That was the last party for a while., I just got back from a road trip from Michigan. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. For instance: Mid-Atlantic English was the dominant dialect among the Northeastern American upper class through the first half of the 20th century. If you say, I parked my car in Harvard Yard, you are being rhotic. I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. 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. The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. That he died in his sleep was impressive. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. [13], Plimpton's son described him as a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant and wrote that both of Plimpton's parents were descended from Mayflower passengers.[14]. They all gathered there. George Plimpton was an upper-class guy with a patrician accent who partied his way through life . There was one more matter I never heard my dad discuss. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. "I've decided to stay over here in . **. 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. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. **Mid-Atlantic. 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 Plimpton - Biography - IMDb Elaine Kaufman, owner of Elaines restaurant:Over the 40 years I knew him, George came in often, sometimes twice a week, usually on his way back from a cocktail party. He also appeared in the 1996 documentary When We Were Kings about the "Rumble in the Jungle" 1974 Ali-Foreman Championship fight opposite Norman Mailer crediting Muhammad Ali as a poet who composed the world's shortest poem: "Me? 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". I knew that between the time Id asked Plimpton to do the auction and the night itself, he had probably received five invitations for a better evening, but he would never have reneged. [31][32][33] His firework, a Roman candle named "Fat Man",[31][32][33] weighed 720 pounds (330kg)[31] and was expected to rise to 1,000 feet (300m)[33] or more[31] and deliver a wide starburst. And George had written it straight. I only wish I could not tell him again, just one more time. It was so tiny that if you saw him in it, you couldnt believe hed be able to get himself out of it. Could it be fairly said that Plimptom had it? Macklem . I feel that his work on this and many other language-related matters should be far more widely known than it is. 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. Several weeks later at a book party, he spotted two writers who had played in that game. Lionel on Twitter: "News children today have no concept of the Mid Hear Stories By George Plimpton. By George Plimpton. In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. Family (1) Spouse Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. Where are you?, Im at dinner with my wife, I said. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yogaand his future in baseball. George Plimpton, Author And Editor, Is Dead at 76 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. 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. George . You can. A similar phenomenon can be noted in the use, well into the 1980s, of the recorded sound of teletype machines in the background of newscasts, a sound still faintly evoked by the bip-bip-bip patterns of music that often introduces news broadcasts, even though teletype machines are long gone The subconscious association of this pattern of sound with news is fading fast with the passing of the years and will undoubtedly disappear entirely in the coming decade as surely as the over-enunciated style of radio speech of the 30s disappeared within a generation of its no longer being needed. "[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. He had, for instance, a series of antiquated phrases and terms of affection. 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. George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little Are you saying that the denizens of Larchmont sound like Plimpton did? To me, Mid-Atlantic English is the nom juste for a related but distinct phenomenon (which is also mentioned in Wikipedia). What fine manners he had! Kennedy died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital. A Final Party at George Plimpton's Storied Apartment Revolutionary musket, a stairwell and a housemaster), The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. Call me back.. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. 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. But it didnt define him, much the way he refused to be defined by the stiff, upper-crust world from which hed come. Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback Yes indeed, George Plimpton is a man for all seasons. 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 was immensely generous in every waygenerous about sharing the work and about giving one a chance to edit things. With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. Did he have the celebrated "Boston Brahmin" accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? A heuristic approximation! Update: This post is #2 in the announcer-speak series. 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. 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. 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. [3], He was the son of Francis T. P. Plimpton[4] and the grandson of Frances Taylor Pearsons and George Arthur Plimpton. 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). In that vein, here is an oral biography of George Plimpton. A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didnt, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brandos. Plimpton entered Harvard as a member of the Class of 1948, but did not graduate until 1950 due to intervening military service. Vault. It was a hot, sweltering day. A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. All rights reserved. When Muhammad Ali was fighting, George Plimpton was always there. [35], Plimpton was known for his distinctive accent which, by Plimpton's own admission, was often mistaken for an English accent. Its strange to think, but he would have been eighty-five this year: fourteen years older than my mom, fifty years older than me. 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. 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. George Ames Plimpton (1927 - 2003) - Genealogy - geni family tree No, my fathers voice was not an act, something chosen or practiced in front of mirrors: he came from a different world, where people talked differently, and about different things; where certain things were discussed, and certain things were notand his voice simply reflected this. Richard Howard, poetry editor, the Paris Review:I worked with George for 10 years on the magazine. Showdown in the Pits. "He speaks with an oddly mannered accent, sounding as though on the verge of a stammer, polite, genteel, perhaps just a little Woosterish. [2], In 1975, in Bellport, Long Island, Plimpton, with Fireworks by Grucci attempted to break the record for the world's largest firework. Was it him? (The filmmakers assembled his voice-over from recorded speeches and other archival footage.) Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. Return of the Big Bopper. Plimpton himself described it as a "New England cosmopolitan accent"[36] or "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan" accent.

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