[ed. I know I just did a post by George Plimpton last week (on the occasion of his 10th year of passing), but I stumbled upon this article this morning and it's too good not to share. What a life, what a unique individual.]In that vein, here is an oral biography of George Plimpton.
Mr. Plimpton was born in Manhattan in 1927 and raised in Huntington, L.I. His father co-founded the law firm Debevoise Plimpton. Mr. Plimpton attended Phillips Exeter Academy but graduated from a high school in Daytona, Fla. He attended Harvard University, was editor of The Harvard Lampoon , graduated in 1950. He studied for two years at King’s College, Cambridge, then moved to Paris, where, with Peter Matthiessen and Harold (Doc) Humes, he founded The Paris Review . In 1955, he moved back to New York. In 23 books and countless magazine pieces, he invented a new brand of journalism: playing for both the Detroit Lions and the New York Philharmonic, circus trapezing, photographing centerfolds for Playboy . In 1968, he married his first wife, Freddy Espy, and had two children. In 1992, he married Sarah Whitehead Dudley; they had twins. He still edits The Paris Review out of his town house and gets around Manhattan on a bicycle. (...)
Nan Kempner, socialite: I met George in 1951, when I was at the Sorbonne, and he was at Cambridge. He had just been skiing in Chamonix, and he had broken his leg, and I was the date of someone else. We went punting on the Cam and, of course, by the time we got out of the punt, George and I were in love. He was one of the most dynamic, dramatic, attractive men I’d ever met. We had a little period where he would fly to Paris, and I would fly to London, and we had an awfully good time. We were both too young for it to be anything but innocent. He was a good kisser. He was good at everything.
Peter Duchin, society band leader: When he came to Paris in his early Paris Review days, George stayed with us some nights on the barge that Bob Silvers [current editor of The New York Review of Books ] and I shared near the Pont d’Alma. He slept on an army cot which wasn’t quite as long as he was. His feet stuck out the bottom. In the morning, he would walk up to the Plaza Athénée hotel, one of the fanciest in Paris, and do his correspondence on their stationery.
George Plimpton: In Paris, there was a beautiful girl who was the publisher of Merlin , a literary magazine. Jane Lougee, a very stunning girl. Her great lover at that time was Alex Trocchi, the editor of Merlin . They lived together but he was happy to pass her around to other people, I’ll guarantee you. We went to the Quat’zarts Ball, it was a group of art students, and you were supposed to have a tableau to be judged. Every balcony had one of these tableaux. So Alex Trocchi suggested that he and Jane Lougee make love on the balustrade of this balcony, and I was standing holding a fan. This was very risqué, even for Paris at that time. So there was Jane, naked, lying there getting ready, and this big searchlight was moving through, picking up tableau after tableau, and it came to ours and there I was, fanning. She was lying there naked waiting for Alex to start making love to her, and he, while running up the little stairway, knocked his head and knocked himself out, so there was nobody to make love to her, which upset him. He said “Why didn’t you take my place?” The idea never crossed my mind, I must say. (...)
Gay Talese, writer: I remember one time, at the height of Camelot, this party, a mixed bag of people, a couple black people and a couple socialites and a couple beatniks, I remember when Jacqueline Kennedy walked in. She was on George’s arm, and tall as he is, he was looking over the crowd, craning his neck, surveying, you know, a hundred people, and I watched his eyes moving around the room, and at certain points, his eyes would stop and lock on to a person he saw, and I could see registered in his brain that, “Yes, I will introduce that person to Jackie,” and, “No, I will not introduce this person to Jackie,” and “Yes, I will introduce that person to Jackie,” and it reminded me of a slot machine, because I saw the eyes rolling, rolling, and then they would stop, and you knew you had either a good or a bad reaction. In a way, he was surveying his life, he was surveying the eclectic gathering of people with whom he associates himself-but, on this occasion, he found himself looking at his collected force of friends in a way that was somewhat … I’m not saying critical … I merely saying here that he was looking upon the gathering, and into his world walks the First Lady-and I am just saying, he had to make a decision. You have to draw the line somewhere, and so he did. Certainly, he would not introduce the First Lady to Norman Mailer. That is a foregone conclusion. I mean, Mailer is out. We’re talking about the 1960′s. Do you understand? Put this in context. You don’t introduce her to this macho Mailer. God knows what he is going to say to her. I am merely saying that George Plimpton had to be an editor, not of The Paris Review , but more than that-within his own house, he had to edit out those people who were going to be risky when being introduced to the First Lady. (...)
Remar Sutton, writer: The Harvard Lampoon had decided in the early 70′s for George to build the world’s largest firework. George and I end up in Florida on a narrow sand spit in the Indian River with a two-ton steel cylinder. The Grucci family is with us, there are about 25,000 people lying along the shoreline, and a crane is putting in a 700-pound firework into this cylinder. We’re on this tiny sand spit with a lot of reporters, a lot of fancy people, having a cocktail party. Once we have the charge set, we’re supposed to start the timer and then jump on this little cabin cruiser and go. And in the midst of the cocktail party, old man Grucci accidentally sets the timer off, and he says, “Oh, my God, I’ve set the timer off.” All of a sudden, everybody’s running. Mary Bubb, a very famous reporter, refused to get her shoes wet, so George threw her over his shoulder, all 6 foot 4 of him, threw her into this boat, then he runs through the cabin, grabs a bottle of Dewar’s Scotch, he runs up to the bow and we are stuck on a sand bar. So George and I call everybody to the front of the boat and have them jumping up and down. The boat takes off, George passes around the Dewar’s, everyone’s laughing. This thing’s supposed to go up to 2,000 feet. It went up about 30. It sent a shock wave across the water into Titusville, Fla., cracked the foundations of two houses, knocked all of the windows out of the Sears Roebuck. When the boat came ashore, there were police to arrest George and me. They said, “Do you know what’s happened?” They’re telling us about this complete devastation, and George quietly turned to me and simply said, “Marvelous.”
Sarah Plimpton, Mr. Plimpton’s second wife and mother of his twins: Everybody’s first introduction to George is him walking by bleary-eyed, answering the door wearing his boxer shorts.
Jeanne McCulloch, former managing editor of The Paris Review : Everyone who has ever worked with George is familiar with his boxer shorts. It rarely dawns on him to get dressed until late in the morning, and by that time the magazine is in full swing, interns collating papers, editors checking galleys, George on the phone, but all of this is accomplished while he’s in his pale blue boxer shorts.
George Plimpton: I don’t have much to say on the boxer shorts. Once, Frank Sinatra had been here, he lived right across the street, and we’d had a big argument about Robert Kennedy, whom he didn’t like and I did like, and it got to be 4 A.M. and we finally decided to talk about it another day and I went to bed. Not more than an hour later, this cat burglar appeared in the bedroom.… I had this Luger pistol from the Army and I picked up the pistol and ran after this guy, wearing my boxer shorts. By this time, it was almost dawn, and I’d had quite a lot to drink, and I remember the enormous feeling of power running down the street with this Luger and bare feet and I chased the guy into a garage and I never found him in there. When I came out, it was 7 o’clock in the morning and people were going to work, and here I was dressed in boxer shorts and a big pistol.
by George Gurley, NY Observer | Read more:
Image: Wikipedia
