Hear Stories By George Plimpton. 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 most recent was about how to extend the swing though impact, and the trick, George said, was to station an imaginary dwarf several feet in front of your ball and then (you have to re-create those broad Plimptonian vowels here) smack the dwarf in the ass. I dont know whether it works, because I cant think of it without laughing. Manhattan DVD. Interesting that the two competitors for his anchor chair were both fully vernacular speakers from the South and West: Mudd and Rather. 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. And his apartment, with those windows that looked out onto the East River, became a famous landmark in NYC. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, the writer James Salter said of Plimpton that "he was writing in a genre that really doesn't permit greatness. 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 . **. 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. [21] The prank was so successful that many readers believed the story, and the ensuing popularity of the joke resulted in Plimpton's writing an entire book on Finch. Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many. *Originally posted by j.c. * "He speaks with an oddly mannered accent, sounding as though on the verge of a stammer, polite, genteel, perhaps just a little Woosterish. At the time, he was getting ready to pitch for the Yankees,and we would throw pitches across 72nd Street in preparation. My Father's Voice | The New Yorker 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. List of books by author George Plimpton - ThriftBooks He was very understanding of what we did and how we did it. 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. Louis Begley, novelist:Jim Atlas interviewed me for an Art of Fiction piece in the Paris Review, a feature of the magazine that George invented and brought to perfection. Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. [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. He would have a beer with you. Of course, my dad had tried out for the role of himself and not gotten it, though he would go on to have a steady film career playing one version or another of a striking white-haired figure with a distinguished, chivalrous voice in bit roles in some twenty or so movies, including Reds and Good Will Hunting. Fortunately, in the upcoming film Plimpton! On Saturday Night Live, even the great impersonator Dana Carvey couldnt get it quite right. And here for the full interview). . The Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour. He got the personality totally wrong, too. Showdown in the Pits. 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?. 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. * There was love thereactually, his inability to express it sometimes made him positively brim with itbut speak the words, his voice could not. 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. By George Plimpton. 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. 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. His dish was Spaghetti Bolognese. In the 50s Plimpton and staff came to New York, where they kept the Review going for half a century. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. They spoke in this manner, and it seemed perfectly natural, evocative of a background spent among the gentry of the northeast.. George had three siblings: Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Jr., Oakes Ames Plimpton,[15] and Sarah Gay Plimpton. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. So we got together and, after some preliminaries, he popped the question that he was really there to ask. Peter Matthiessen took the magazine over from Humes and ousted him as editor, replacing him with Plimpton, using it as his cover for Matthiessen's CIA activities. 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! You heard it and it could only be him. 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. He had a way of putting it all together, of understanding fighters in the ring; he was a good analyst of boxing. George Plimpton. You should be very grateful. Kaltenborn was a famous mid . 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. Would you admit to there being symbolism in your novels? Read more in this thread (long). Peter Matthiesen, author, co-founder of the Paris Review:I was in Liberia, of all places, and George met me in Monrovia. Was it me? 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. Peter even came with us on our honeymoon in Ravello, though George didnt. (To read Part One, click here. 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. But looking back on it, its funny, too. That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little 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. [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. All rights reserved. Did he have the celebrated Boston Brahmin accent, or was it a psuedo-Brit affectation? Plimpton was associated with the literary magazine in Paris, Merlin, which folded because the State Department withdrew its support.[why?] I believe the accent was at one time known as Larchmont Lockjaw. After running the pilot, Rod Serling realized the narration needed a less pompous sounding and more natural voice himself. I remember getting the news: It was my wife Madeleines birthday, Aug. 7. "I've decided to stay over here in . I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. Middle class? The clipped, non-rhotic English accents of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley Jr. were vestigial examples. George Plimpton, who died last week at his town house, on East Seventy-second Street near the river, was a serious man of serious accomplishments who just happened to have more fun than a van. Tom Nowatzke, fullback, Detroit Lions (In the 1960s, Plimpton briefly played with the Detroit Lions asresearch for the best-selling book Paper Lion, which was later made into a film):I was the No. 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. 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. 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. Paris Review - Writers, Quotes, Biography, Interviews, Artists That was how it was in New York in those days, George just dragged it out a bit longer." Dudley Plimpton suspects the excess contributed to Plimpton's death in his sleep in 2003, at the age of 76. The Left Bank really became East 72nd Street. 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. In fact, my dads farewells seemed loquacious in comparison to his mothers. 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 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. Cambridge. He came from a family where such endearments were not expressed, and phone conversations were curt. If you say, I parked my car in Harvard Yard, you are being rhotic. May a diseased yak squat in your hot tub. 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. "Hut-Two-Three . . Ugh" A writer proves to be a Paper Lion at QB Was it him? She would not even say goodbye. How to find out, and whether you should care. 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 now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? 'Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself' TV review - SFGATE 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. 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.". Its our anniversary. George Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. History / Biographical Note Biographical Note. Plimpton scowled, and said he was perfectly capable of running for himself. The Writer's Chapbook A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice from the Twentieth Century's Preeminent Writers. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at
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