$ 3.99 - $ 27.44. The Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour. He also served as editor of the Harvard Lampoon. If you didnt know the man, you could, I think, be fooled by the voice. 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. Few could give a toast or tell a story with equal humor. In most situations, he had the remarkable quality of making everyone he talked to feel at ease, at home, welcome, no matter who they were or what they didbut for whatever strange reason there wasnt this effortlessness with me, this warmth. Shoot! hed hiss, when he was mad. Even in the UK we sometimes subtitle various Scots dialects on the news and TV and whatnot, so it makes sense that he wouldn't go full Dundee for the show. Almost twenty years ago, writing quirky sports pieces for the Village Voice, I decided to enter the world of championship arm wrestling.Like many young writers, I was inspired by the sports adventures of the gaunt but game George Plimpton, who had made a literary career out of placing himself in . They spoke in this manner, and it seemed perfectly natural, evocative of a background spent among the gentry of the northeast. George Plimpton, journalist extraordinaire, trains with and then performs as Quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. George Plimpton was born on March 18, 1927 in New York City, New York, USA. (To read Part One, click here. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. Of course, I think he enjoyed the odd persona his voice and mannerisms conferred on him. What fine manners he had! Harvard (where he edited the Lampoon), Kings College, Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. 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. (Why do I even bother?) Ill pick you up., I had a hard time sleeping that night, as you might imagine. 2) Truman v. Kaltenborn, 1949. O ne afternoon this summer, I sat in George Plimpton's study waiting for the gentleman editor, participatory journalist, and beloved gadfly of American letters to arrive. George Plimpton. [35], Plimpton was known for his distinctive accent which, by Plimpton's own admission, was often mistaken for an English accent. Discussing the accent he used for Washington in an interview with The Onion AV Club, he explained: The accent back then was probably nothing like what we think of as a Southern accent now or a New England accent now, so we tried to find the root of the accents. [11], His mother was Pauline Ames,[12] the daughter of botanist Oakes Ames (1874-1950) and artist Blanche Ames. So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. On one website, I read about a Choate alumn saying one can still hear the LL (see above thread) accent on campus. It is the kind of study . [29], With Felix Grucci, Plimpton competed in the 16th International Fireworks Festival in 1979 in Monte Carlo. It includes clear pronunciation of each and every consonant cluster. Orson Welles also comes to mind, though I noticed he spoke in this mode more often during his early days, on and off screen. 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 could as easily have been my grandfather as father. Plimpton and Dudley were the parents of twin daughters Laura Dudley Plimpton and Olivia Hartley Plimpton. And the many candidates for the crown of Last American to Speak This Way. Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! Hed go on to move freely through so many worlds and circles, without ever not speaking in that singular accentthough it probably would have made life easier for him if hed adopted a new way of talking (after all, as a journalist in the locker rooms, where slang and cursing were art-forms, my dads stiff, formal tongue made him stick out like an egret among ducks). **. Plimpton brought the Left Bank to NYCpeople like Peter Mathiessen, William Styron, Terry Southern. All rights reserved. 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. That was when Westbrook van Voorhis, the famous March of Time voice, did the intro narration of the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone. **. (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. If you found him at a fancy restaurant, he was there as a guest: For his own meals he preferred cheap Chinese or bangers and mash at a local Irish pub. The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. He liked the fact that I had broken my nose in defeat. He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. He was respected by all. 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. [citation needed]. 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. He came from a family where such endearments were not expressed, and phone conversations were curt. People two or three deep stood looking out at the East River. [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]. [citation needed], In the movie Plimpton! When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. When I spoke to him my voice went up an octave and took on his formal tone and became careful and unnatural; his voice became like his fathersstern, authoritative, disciplinarianwhen his father was the last person in the universe he wanted to be. 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 . His final interview appeared in The New York Sports Express of October 2, 2003 by journalist Dave Hollander. 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! In the 50s Plimpton and staff came to New York, where they kept the Review going for half a century. He was one of her original supporters and had published an article about her work in The Paris Review. 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. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. To me, it meant admission to this little exclusive club at the Paris Review. 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. It was horrifying.. Was it him? He was 76.. Now you know! 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. I never thought that George slept. 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.. 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. [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." That made him a great storyteller. Showdown in the Pits. [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. It was scary, because he was never mad, and to see this normally benevolent, white-haired figure of civility fill with pink steam, to hear this gentle man, who loved nothing more than to tell lighthearted stories and laugh, suddenly shout-whisper Dammit at some injustice on the other end of the telephone was unsettling. Paul McCartney and his then-girlfriend Heather showed up. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. Was this sheer affectation? I just heard that George Plimpton has died. In the offices of the Paris Review, he displayed far more discerning tastes. He had a small role in the Oscar-winning film Good Will Hunting,[22] playing a psychologist. Plimpton was associated with the literary magazine in Paris, Merlin, which folded because the State Department withdrew its support.[why?] He was a great addition to the human race. In 1955 or 56, he went back to New York. Yes indeed, George Plimpton is a man for all seasons. "[27], Plimpton was a member of the cast of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (200102). Vault. Plimpton sparred for three rounds with boxing greats Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson while on assignment for Sports Illustrated.