george plimpton accent

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. [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. Jean Stein became his co-editor. And George had written it straight. 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. He wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, Pi Eta, the Signet Society, and the Porcellian Club. Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback: Plimpton, George When he found a story to be short of the mark, he rejected it no matter who the author wasan old friend, a Pulitzer winner, an unknown. #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. The Moth | The Art and Craft of Storytelling Old money, would never say the word spanky, and certainly had more money than God could count. That was the last party for a while., I just got back from a road trip from Michigan. Okay, then, are you saying that Plimpton has such as accent? Ill try to give a representative range, and I am grateful for the care and thought that have gone into these responses. [23] He was also notable for his appearance in television commercials during the early 1980s, including a memorable campaign for Mattel's Intellivision. The clearest example of the Mid-Atlantic accent is the accent of the Frasier & Niles Crane characters on the TV show Frasier. Plimpton has grown. Just listen to very early recordings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, back even before microphones, when singers had to yell directly into a large cone and over-enunciate so that their voices would be recorded into something intelligible on a spinning wax cylinder or disk. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Famed participatory journalist George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a writer, editor, amateur sportsman, actor, and friend to many. George Plimpton was an upper-class guy with a patrician accent who partied his way through life . He was previously married to Sara Whitehead Dudley and Freddy Medora Espy. Spoke in a mid-Atlantic accent, reflecting a privileged Upper East Side (in New York City) upbringing. An oral history of George Plimpton. - Slate Magazine The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Actors Nathan Lane (from Jersey City, NJ) and Robin Williams (grew up in SF Bay area) often adopt this accent. He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . Kennedy died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital. Bill Buckley, Gore Vidal, George Plimpton. Plimpton didnt die. During my fight, my nose got badly broken in the second round, but I did last all four scheduled rounds, though I lost. It came from a different era, shouldn't have still existed, but nevertheless, there it wasold New England, old New York, tinged with a hint of King's College King's English. Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. One reader writes: I've wondered whether that "announcer English" was at least partly caused by poor loudspeakers and microphones. We were bound to play the roles of father and son, unable to simply be ourselves. So think of Margaret Anderson or Amanda and you can place George. He had it all going! Plimpton was associated with the literary magazine in Paris, Merlin, which folded because the State Department withdrew its support.[why?] 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. Plimpton died on September 25, 2003, in his New York City apartment from a heart attack later determined to have been caused by a catecholamine surge. **Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. After his discharge, Plimpton returned to Harvard and finished his undergraduate education. The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? Been there, done that | Books | The Guardian Interesting that the two competitors for his anchor chair were both fully vernacular speakers from the South and West: Mudd and Rather. [3] During the summers, he lived in the hamlet of West Hills, Huntington, Suffolk County on Long Island. What accent does Logan have in the show? : r/SuccessionTV Plimpton himself described it as a "New England cosmopolitan accent"[36] or "Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan" accent. "[27], Plimpton was a member of the cast of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (200102). But he could easily have said, Alice, I have enough trouble raising money for my magazine.. How widespread, numerically and geographically? 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. 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. A heuristic approximation! I just knew it was going to be something terrible. 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. It was a hot, sweltering day. Hear Stories By George Plimpton. If you are in the big league, God help us all. **Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? We worked at the Paris Review on the Rue Garanere for several years together. He was a Wasp (both of his parents came from old New England families, and had ancestors on the Mayflower). Showdown in the Pits. I remember getting the news: It was my wife Madeleines birthday, Aug. 7. He joined us in Monte Carlo when we won the international [fireworks] competition. Plimpton played Tom Hanks's antagonistic father in Volunteers. A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. I saw him [last] Wednesday night at a party; we rode home together, and he told me that he was planning to go down to Cuba, to revisit the site of his famous interview with Hemingway. 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. 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. As Poling puts it, George was known as an unrivaled raconteur and, in making a film of his life story, it only seemed natural to allow him to tell it.. Plimpton's The Bogey Man chronicles his attempt to play professional golf on the PGA Tour during the Nicklaus and Palmer era of the 1960s. Between 2000 and 2003, Plimpton wrote the libretto to a new opera, Animal Tales, commissioned by Family Opera Initiative, with music by Kitty Brazelton directed by Grethe Barrett Holby. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? Thats where there was that cross-section you once found in Parisof literary people, of people who were illiterate, of people down on their luck, and people of status. But Labov said that in post-World War II New York, fancier people started becoming rhotic, and recovering their Rs. The Mid-Atlantic accent, or Transatlantic accent, is a . So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. We made $15,000-20,000. 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! Look out, Wilson! He had a way of putting it all together, of understanding fighters in the ring; he was a good analyst of boxing. He knew we were just as good as he was, but in a different field. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, directed by Tom Bean and Luke Poling, was released. Ill pick you up., I had a hard time sleeping that night, as you might imagine. What was our problem? Hes just trying it out and will come back and write a book about his experiences. So it was that George Plimptons accent could not be imitated. While I don't normally think of Lithgow as speaking with a Mid-Atlantic accent, he does a great job affecting one for the role. 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. These experiences served as the basis of another football book, Mad Ducks and Bears, although much of the book dealt with the off-field escapades and observations of football friends Alex Karras ("Mad Duck") and John Gordy ("Bear"). An Evening With George Plimpton - 2000 - YouTube His father co-founded the law firm Debevoise Plimpton. He had, for instance, a series of antiquated phrases and terms of affection. 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. But looking back on it, its funny, too. Except at parties. Vault. Firstly, then-managing director of SI, Mark Mulvoy, gave Plimpton the liberty to create a hoax.Secondly, SI photographer Lane Stewart recruited his friend, Joe Berton to play the part of Sidd Finch. 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? For such admissions to escape my fathers lips, they always had to be a little removed somehow. The picture at the top of this post is of the same Westbrook Van Voorhis who epitomized FDR-era announcer-speak but didnt fit the sensibility of the early-cool-cat-era Twilight Zone. I can understand your frustration, but celebrities die every day. Macklem . Please educate me. This speech pattern might be common among US expatriates in the UK, of which Grossman would seem to represent just the most ostentatious example. 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. Being, And Appreciating, George Plimpton : NPR 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. As a result, this American version of a posh accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. Oh, I suppose we should all just lavish praise upon Carnac the Magnificent now for bringing this to your attention, is that it? **. 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. 08:37 Dinner at Elaine's. by George Plimpton. Whom is it spoken bymerely the elite, old-money types? Again with thanks to Jonathan Fields, here's the continuation of George Plimpton's famous interview of Ernest Hemingway from the Paris Review, Summer 1958. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to these men speak. That he died in his sleep was impressive. 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.". 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. Self-help author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has a unique accent that, . (Why do I even bother?) I thought they were terrific. Plimpton revisited pro football in 1971,[18] this time joining the defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Colts and seeing action in an exhibition game against his previous team, the Lions. Mr. Plimpton was born in Manhattan in 1927 and raised in Huntington, L.I. Listen to Caruso singing or Bix Beiderbecke playing his cornet to hear how muffled was the recording of those sounds. Puss, and my father enjoyed nothing more than holding the beast high in the air and making strange, affectionate sounds in that distinguished voice: Yeanngghh, Puss Yeaannngh Puss Puss Puss.) He called my sister Puss, too, sometimes, though mostly I think with her it was Kiddo, which he also called me, though there was a period in which he occasionally called me Ernie, which was the dogs name. He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. Book excerpt - George Plimpton on why Hole 16 at Cypress Point is one (And, OK, Im not a linguist, but Im married to one!) And he told everyone that night, and for many years after, that hed diverted me from a career of filling prescriptions. It's a Scottish accent that's been modified somewhat for a mainstream audience that tends to associate them with Groundskeeper Willie. The wife is also old money, as Phlosphr mentions, and she talks exactly the same way. I always thought it sounded similar to the accent of William F. Buckley, Jr., who I believe was not reared in Boston. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the Paris Review, and tried his hand at everything from quarterbacking for the Detroit Lions (which he wrote about in Paper Lion), boxing with light-heavyweight champ Archie Moore (which became Shadow Box), and becoming New Yorks unofficial official fireworks commissioner. His exploits were such that at one point, The New Yorker ran a cartoon in which a patient eyed a surgeon with misgiving and said, But how do I know youre not George Plimpton?, But perhaps foremost among his accomplishments was his elevation of the interview to a literary form, both in the Paris Review and in his two superb works of oral history, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career, and Edie, a biography of Edie Sedgwick, which he and Jean Stein compiled. 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. NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. ), this isnt some kind of morbid contest to see who can be the first to inform the board of some celebritys death. He was "George Plimpton"-editor, host . That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. They all gathered there. Plimpton played quarterback for the Detroit Lions and triangle for the New York Philharmonic, an. Writing Wednesdays: Hemingway on Fiction, Part Two - Steven Pressfield That made him a great storyteller. In all my years, Ive never heard this accent in person. He smiled broadly, signaled for the coach to send Lupica in to run for him, and trotted back to the sidelines. Several readers wrote in with specimens of Americans who had gone to England and ended up speaking in this mid-Atlantic way. Isnt that what they call it. With 'Paper Lion,' George Plimpton Played Pro Football So We Didn't Have To [30] Plimpton later wrote the book Fireworks, and hosted an A&E Home Video with the same name featuring his many fireworks adventures with the Gruccis of New York in Monte Carlo and for the 1983 Brooklyn Bridge Centennial. A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didnt, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brandos. The film used archival audio and video of Plimpton lecturing and reading to create a posthumous narration. From looking at Labovs study, I know today, as I didnt know yesterday, that linguists use the term rhotic to describe whether a person pronounces, or doesnt, the R sound before a consonant or at the end of a word. *Originally posted by bordelond * For more than fifty years, his friends made a circle whose circumference was vast and whose center was a fashionable tenement on New York's East Seventy-second street. 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. Think of the accent of Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies. Starring George Plimpton as Himself, which documents his life, adventures, and work as participatory journalist and editor of the Paris Review, my dad will be playing himself one more time. rejoiced in the name of Euphemia van Renssalaer Wyatt. After returning to New York from Paris, he routinely launched fireworks at his evening parties. 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! Sidd Finch: A pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. - Sports Illustrated Ive always heard it referred to as a patrician accent. Here's how Geroge Plimpton and his team created a prodigious pitcher out of thin air. And bolstering this last point, a reader who grew up in Depression-era Chicago writes: All I can think of is that people were imitating FDR. George had three siblings: Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Jr., Oakes Ames Plimpton,[15] and Sarah Gay Plimpton. [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. 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. There was one more matter I never heard my dad discuss. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. I enjoy doing it. Thats it, George cried out. He plays the 'fancy pants' to our outhouse Americana," Flaherty asserted. And I felt such love for my sweet old excited dad at that moment that I thought I would do him the favor of not telling him so, of leaving it unsaid. The Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour.

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