george plimpton accent
December 17, 2022 Rafael Garca. (What else happened that year??? What stood in our way? Peter Matthiesen, author, co-founder of the Paris Review:I was in Liberia, of all places, and George met me in Monrovia. 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. I have worked as poetry editor with editors on other magazines; only with George has the experience been entirely agreeable. . That he died in his sleep was impressive. The Wikipedia entry is indeed delightful. Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? Youd be on the phone with him and get to the end of the conversation, and youd say I love you, Dad, and at most, hed reply, without subject or object, Love, like he was signing a letter. That is the tendency of Americans trying to sound more British, or Brits trying to sound more Yank, to split the difference and speak in an accent whose home ground is no real country but somewhere in the middle of the sea. H.V. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. But the average person never talked that way. George was not vainhe didnt care a whit about his image. 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. Jean Stein became his co-editor. The title of the PBS documentary - "Plimpton! After St. Bernard's School, Plimpton attended Phillips Exeter Academy (from which he was expelled just shy of graduation), and Daytona Beach High School, where he received his high school diploma,[16] before entering Harvard College in July 1944. his prose, and his down east, cultivated accent, although perhaps a bit pretentious, will remain with me as I reread one of my favorite books. It was as if some old gentlemans code prohibited us from interacting as human beings. [23] He was also notable for his appearance in television commercials during the early 1980s, including a memorable campaign for Mattel's Intellivision. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, was released. 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. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. But he has never employed that voice professionally, and certainly does not speak that way in real life. silk-stockinged New Englander - private schools (he was The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. I feel that his work on this and many other language-related matters should be far more widely known than it is. He was going to put on a reading of his play Zelda, Scott, and Ernest. This brings us back to the why things changed question. Of the Murrow Boys, Eric Sevareid held on to the newsreel style the longest; relying on memory, Im betting that we could actually watch the transition away from that to a more vernacular style in the long career of Walter Cronkite. Im having a harder time coming up with clear examples from the other side of the Atlantic, but Ive heard Alfred Molina (Londoner), and Catherine Zeta-Jones (Welsh) put on a Mid-Atlantic accent from time to time.. We were going to go looking for strange birds. And they founded this thing called the Paris Review and published poetry and short story writers and did interviews. Plimpton has grown. Norman Mailer, author:George had a rare gift. Where are you?, Im at dinner with my wife, I said. The Dudleys established the 36-acre (15ha) Highstead Arboretum in Redding, Connecticut. And his apartment, with those windows that looked out onto the East River, became a famous landmark in NYC. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! He majored in English. Sometimes, we used to have quarrels, because he thought I took too many poems: Are you turning this magazine into a poetry magazine? he would say. Return of the Big Bopper. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. In another cartoon in The New Yorker, a patient looks up at the masked surgeon about to operate on him and asks, "Wait a minute! He had, for instance, a series of antiquated phrases and terms of affection. I do believe his accent was decidedly Swamp Yankee. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. 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. [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. Plimpton, George 1927-2003(George Ames Plimpton) Source for information on Plimpton, George 1927-2003: Concise Major 21st Century Writers dictionary. The coach for the Writers team announced that Plimpton would pinch-hit for the first batter of the game, Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica, and the crowd roared. Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. Aldas version was always angry or consternated, like a character in a Woody Allen film, while my dad, though he certainly faced hurdles as an amateur in the world of the professional, bore his humiliations with a comic lightness and charmmuch of which emanated from that befuddled, self-deprecating professors voice. News children today have no concept of the Mid-Atlantic accent. The enormously popular speech styles of Brando and Dean (and I could add Elvis Presley) clearly pushed vernacular style into a kind of mainstream acceptability, then desirability. Final Twist of the Drama. George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003. [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. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. Starring George Plimpton as Himself" - is meant as a wink-wink to Plimpton's career as a "participatory journalist." As a writer for Sports . He could have been a fight trainer, a fight manager! 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. I just knew it was going to be something terrible. The responses fall into interesting categories: linguistic descriptions of this accent; sociological and ethnic explanations for its rise and fall; possible technological factors in its prominence and disappearance; explanations rooted in the movie industry; nominees for who might have been the last American to talk this way; and suggestions that a few rare specimens still exist. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. 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. Manhattan DVD. 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. Could it be fairly said that Plimptom had it? If you listen to Grossman (who is originally from Boston) starting about 15 seconds into the clip below, youll see that he uses a split-the-difference UK/US hybrid that is literally mid-Atlantic, in the sense of combining accents from both countries, but is different from the newsreel announcer voice: You should talk to William Labov [JF: I will try] , pioneering sociolinguist, whose landmark study into New York City speech led him to ask the same question you have. 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. [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. The Sidd Finch story was accompanied by a series of photos which managed to convince even the eagle-eyed fans . [citation needed], In 1963, Plimpton attended preseason training with the Detroit Lions of the National Football League as a backup quarterback, and he ran a few plays in an intrasquad scrimmage. Ever. George Plimpton writer, publisher, amateur lion tamer died in 2003 after 50 years as the founding editor of The Paris Review. Are you saying that the denizens of Larchmont sound like Plimpton did? And he stood there ebullient and charming all night; he bid on many items himself. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. And being good at losing was one of Georges many gifts. (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. The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a . Several weeks later at a book party, he spotted two writers who had played in that game. But for now, just one more category: 3) Changing technology, changing voices. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. He Was Shot by John Wayne. George Plimpton. [Then] this August he showed up, pulled the shirt over his head, and said he was ready to bat. 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. Mr . **, In this case, Mid-Atlantic refers to speech in which the attributes of British English and American English meet halfway. 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. 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. Look out, Wilson! *Originally posted by j.c. * 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. So think of Margaret Anderson or Amanda and you can place George. I remember the Lowell Thomas documentary films of the 50s where Mr. Thomas' mellifluous tones and distinct radio-style pronunciation gave him a respectability that a similar huckster could hardly hope to replicate today by the mere application of such an artifice. Harris trained himself as a young man to lose his native Bronx accent - to the point that he was asked if he were British. Few could give a toast or tell a story with equal humor. [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. [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. Peter even came with us on our honeymoon in Ravello, though George didnt. And similarly on the role of ridicule in speeding the move away from this accent: This is only partly facetious, but I think I know who was the American to speak "Announcer." George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a journalist and the first editor-in-chief of The Paris Review. [5][6][7][8][9][10] His father was a successful corporate lawyer and partner of the law firm Debevoise and Plimpton; he was appointed by President John F. Kennedy as U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations, serving from 1961 to 1965. [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. George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. He was immensely generous in every waygenerous about sharing the work and about giving one a chance to edit things. Eerily enough, one of the messages on my answering machine was from George, with that distinctive accent of his: Hallo, its George Plimpton. For it was George Plimpton the writer, not the editor nor the celebrity, who was honored here . For instance: Mid-Atlantic English was the dominant dialect among the Northeastern American upper class through the first half of the 20th century. These are some of the things my father could not say: Shit. Fuck. I love you. His curses were never actually curse-words, though it was perhaps because of this that they held such weight. He was respected by all. They were divorced, and had been for a while, but they still talked, and visited every now and then, and they would sit on my moms porch on Long Island and look out over the pond at the birds and tell each other stories and laugh until the tears came to their eyes, but he could not ask her this directlyHow are you, Freddy? He had lost my mom, at least in part because he had been unable to communicate with her, to show his love. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at