We were bound to play the roles of father and son, unable to simply be ourselves. 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. 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. In that vein, here is an oral biography of George Plimpton. Even the manliest actors, such as Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable sometimes slipped into this voice-coach mode. I never thought that George slept. Share; Copied! Few could give a toast or tell a story with equal humor. 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". 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! It was a great partyraucous and long. [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. 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! Vault. George Plimpton | About the Film | American Masters | PBS 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. George Plimpton. [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. I thought Id died and gone to Olympus. Showdown in the Pits. George Plimpton - Wikipedia He also served as editor of the Harvard Lampoon. Speaking of which, didnt the young Jackie Kennedy have something of this, along with a kinda dreamy, airy, Monroe-esque (though many degrees less contrived) essence to it? George Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. In 1994, Plimpton appeared several times in the Ken Burns series Baseball, in which he shared some personal baseball experiences as well as other memorable events throughout the history of baseball.[20]. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . The name George Plimpton is synonymous with a kind of all-in participatory journalism. *Originally posted by bordelond * 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. The conservative thinker may have shared an accent with some other men of the same age and social class, but his mannerisms and gestures made him entirely uniqueand occasionally prone to. In 2013, the documentary Plimpton! Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. The fake English announcer voice lingered on sporadically until the end of the Johnson administration in newsreels, which themselves ceased production around the same time, but Rod Serlings decision sounded the death knell for that accent. He thought Castro might come. 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. . The guys here in Detroit treated him like one of us. "[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. It was as if he was trying out again. Now you know! Between 1945 and 1948, Plimpton was a soldier in the United States Army. 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. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. [3] During the summers, he lived in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Suffolk County on Long Island. George Plimpton. I just knew it was going to be something terrible. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. Kim Noble, one of the announcers on the NPR affiliate in Kansas City, KCUR, speaks with a very affected Connecticut Lockjaw accent. (He intended to face both line-ups, but tired badly and was relieved by Ralph Houk.) Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. He was going to put on a reading of his play Zelda, Scott, and Ernest. She would not even say goodbye. $ 4.19 - $ 17.92. Was this sheer affectation? A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didnt, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brandos. 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! A lordly accent acquired at St. Bernard's and burnished later at Cambridge, in England, enhanced his distinguished aura, as did elevated stature and a silver head of hair which might have encouraged a career in politics but mercifully did not. How George Plimpton's Sports Books Presaged the First-Person Media Age Rose Styron, wife of William Styron and former Paris Review editor:My husband Bill was with George when he started the Paris Review. To me, it meant admission to this little exclusive club at the Paris Review. Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. (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. On Sept. 26, George Plimpton died in his sleep, at the age of 76. I only wish I could not tell him again, just one more time. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. Could it be fairly said that Plimptom had it? He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. H.V. 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. I do believe his accent was decidedly Swamp Yankee. After finishing at Harvard in 1950, he attended King's College, Cambridge, from 1950 to 1952, and graduated with third class honors in English. So, pairing the Cagney hint with the Kennedy Inaugural, could we date the changeover to 1961? George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little Labov suspected that WWII had something to do about it. If you are in the big league, God help us all. The primary reason [for the accent] was primitive microphone technology: "natural" voices simply did not get picked up well by the microphones of the time, and people were instructed to and learned to speak in such a way that their words could be best transmitted through the microphone to the radio waves or to recording media. He could have done whatever he wanted. **. [23] He was also notable for his appearance in television commercials during the early 1980s, including a memorable campaign for Mattel's Intellivision. Plimpton and Dudley were the parents of twin daughters Laura Dudley Plimpton and Olivia Hartley Plimpton. When George Plimpton Met the Best Bartender in Brooklyn #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. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, "George Plimpton, Urbane and Witty Writer, Dies at 76", "Obituary: Frances T. P. Plimpton, 82, Dies", "Obituary: Pauline A. Plimpton, 93, Author Of Works on Famed Relatives", "Milton at the Midpoint of the Last Century: One Collection of Memories", "How Failing at Exeter made a Success of George Plimpton", "Legendary Humorist, Poonster Dies at 76 | News | The Harvard Crimson", "George Plimpton, Paris Review Founder, Pitches 1980s Video Games for the Mattel Intellivision", "The Simpsons: I'm Spelling As Fast As I Can", "George Plimpton, Author And Editor, Is Dead at 76", "Professor Muhammed Ali Delivers Lecture; Poems and Parables Fill Talk on Friendship | News | The Harvard Crimson", "George Plimpton | Full Film | American Masters | PBS", "George Plimpton, Still Burning His Punk at Both Ends, Finds a Sport in Which He Can Sparkle", "George Plimpton: The Professional Amateur", "Some Really Dangerous Jobs For George Plimpton", "Being, And Appreciating, George Plimpton", "Obituary: Willard Espy, Who Delighted In Wordplay, Is Dead at 88", "George Plimpton, Writer and editor, Is Wed to Sarah W. Dudley, a Writer", "Obituary: James C. Dudley, 77, Investment Adviser", "Naming the Sky: The true story of one man's quest to give George Plimpton a permanent presence in orbit", "DEAD END-DRIVE-IN | Plimpton! But its clear that the diction I call Announcer Voice has been the object of close linguistic study. Everything he did was like this, just a bit odd. (The filmmakers assembled his voice-over from recorded speeches and other archival footage.) Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 429-432. You should be very grateful. **Those of us whose families are from Larchmont (that would be me) just call it lockjaw. That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went Next up: some sociological explanations of why someone like George Gershwin might have tried to speak like Westbrook Van Voorhis. 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.