Plimpton, along with former decathlete Rafer Johnson and American football star Rosey Grier, was credited with helping wrestle Sirhan Sirhan to the floor when Kennedy was assassinated following his victory in the 1968 California Democratic primary at the former Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. It was always a surprise. Now, in George, Being George, 200 friends, lovers and rivals detail Plimpton's remarkable exploits. Mr. Plimpton was born in Manhattan in 1927 and raised in Huntington, L.I. For his grandfather, the publisher and philanthropist, see, Calvin Gay Plimpton and Priscilla G. Lewis were the parents of, He was widely reviled for years after the war by Southern whites, who gave him the nickname "Beast Butler." 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. Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the lasta figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. The clipped English of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley, Jr. were vestigial examples.. The Wikipedia entry is indeed delightful. Wed gone to dinner and the maitre d comes over and says, Felix, I got a call for you from Monaco., I pick up the phone, and I hear Georges Bostonian accent. The Sidd Finch story was accompanied by a series of photos which managed to convince even the eagle-eyed fans . That made him a great storyteller. I dont give a rats ass about informing anyone about the death of Plimpton. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. Researcher and writer Samuel Arbesman filed with NASA to name an asteroid after Plimpton; NASA issued the certificate 7932 Plimpton in 2009. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? The point of the flipped prestige markers is that generally the fewer the Rs, the fancier the person. NYC speech in the sixties, in some ways, flipped prestige markers. With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. He thought Castro might come. What exactly is a Boston Brahmin accent? See below!) Peter Matthiesen, author, co-founder of the Paris Review:I was in Liberia, of all places, and George met me in Monrovia. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. George Plimpton, who has died aged 76, became a best-selling author by not only writing about sporting heroes but by participating in those sports as well. He has the same type of patrician upper-class New Yorker accent as Jane Wyatt. Hed ask what was new in fireworks business and doodle around the facility with my dad, and he would always leave with a package of fireworks, to put on his own show. Vault. In it Van Voorhis has the formal delivery that would have seemed familiar to many mid-century listeners but which in retrospect we know was on the way out. & FDR, George Plimpton, William F. Buckley, etc. I think he came down [to the shooting of Paper Lion in] Florida once. 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? Norman Mailer said that George Plimpton was the best-loved man in New York. He had a way of putting it all together, of understanding fighters in the ring; he was a good analyst of boxing. Bill, who was from the South, kept saying to me, Can you believe Georges not English? (To read Part One, click here. When he was on the scene, everything was a big happeningan event. (A variation is the Locust Valley Lockjaw.). The Cuban revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, had just marched on Havana and ousted the US-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista. Now you know! He knew we were just as good as he was, but in a different field. The guys here in Detroit treated him like one of us. He majored in English. Cambridge. The Writers won the game with a home run in extra innings, but the highlight was Plimptons hit. Here's how Geroge Plimpton and his team created a prodigious pitcher out of thin air. Yes indeed, George Plimpton is a man for all seasons. Both of Plimpton's maternal grandparents were born with the surname Ames; his mother was the granddaughter of Medal of Honor recipient Adelbert Ames (1835-1933), an American sailor, soldier, and politician, and Oliver Ames, a US political figure and the 35th Governor of Massachusetts (18871890). It came from a different era, shouldnt have still existed, but nevertheless, there it wasold New England, old New York, tinged with a hint of Kings College Kings English. George Plimpton. That he died in his sleep was impressive. Greetings From the Vortex of Unpredictability, Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. He had it, as does/did William Buckley, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Julia Child. He joined us in Monte Carlo when we won the international [fireworks] competition. Buckley clearly flaunts it, probably to set himself apart from the hoi polloi of his contemporaries. I think that perhaps Harris' portrayal of Dr. Smith made the accent so identified with cowardly buffoonery that no one in the baby boom generation and later would want to use the accent as anything other than a joke. Daniel Kunitz, managing editor of the Paris Review from1995-2000: I once heard George joking with William F. Buckley on the phone about how they had the last affected accents in New York. expelled from the very expensive, very WASP-y Philips The title of the PBS documentary - "Plimpton! [23] He was also notable for his appearance in television commercials during the early 1980s, including a memorable campaign for Mattel's Intellivision. George Plimpton gives an auction winner a star-studded walk through the legendary NYC eatery Elaine's. Butch, he says, because he always called me Butch. A heuristic approximation! Back to Plimpton I dont remember the LL affect at all. For instance: The American-British television presenter Loyd Grossman, who has described his accent as Mid-Atlantic. As such, it was popular in the theatre and other forms of elite culture in that region. Others outside the entertainment industry known for speaking Mid-Atlantic English include William F. Buckley, Jr., Gore Vidal, George Plimpton, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Norman Mailer, Diana Vreeland, Maria Callas, Cornelius Vanderbilt IV. As an old film buff, I am used to this voice, though it figures unevenly in old movies. George Plimpton, the New York aristocrat and literary journalist whose career was a happy lifelong competition between scholarly pursuits and madcap attempts -- chronicled in self-deprecating. 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. Over the years, we held a lot of dinner parties for him, and he brought a lot of people inmany, many writers. Along with all the other things he does, George is an editor of the Paris Review, a literary quarterly published by the Aga Khan's uncle, Sadrudin, and his apartment is overstuffed with the comforts and legends of its use as a literary salon. Hearing the words Dammit, Im mad as a hornet! uttered in George Plimptons voice made anger sound totally ridiculous, which is exactly what it most often is. Talking about sports with Georgeor, even better, reading George about sportswas more fun than sports themselves. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. Read more in this thread (long). Heres a sampling for today, with more planned in the days ahead. When George told the story, DiMaggio laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall on the floor. The Wikipedia entry for it is quite detailed. 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. Brown & Co. Re-issued George Plimpton Sports Books, 2016. Its something different, and Ive not encountered that in the mid-Atlantic. All rights reserved. . Timothy Seldes, George Plimptons literary agent:Whenever George wanted me to do something for him, he would call me up and say, Hello, Old Tim. One day, I got a call, and heard his voice, and my heart sank. Her mother, a writer and critic for Commonweal and Catholic World. She would not even say goodbye. I never thought that George slept. In 1992, Plimpton married Sarah Whitehead Dudley, a graduate of Columbia University and a freelance writer. Dan Rather certainly marks the definitive end of the newsreel style and the ascendance of the folksy vernacular: those rustic analogies! George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 - September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. He got the personality totally wrong, too. 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. 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 is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review. 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. She was also the great-granddaughter on her father's side of Oakes Ames (18041873), an industrialist and congressman who was implicated in the Crdit Mobilier railroad scandal of 1872; and Governor-General of New Orleans Benjamin Franklin Butler, an American lawyer and politician who represented Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives and later served as the 33rd Governor of Massachusetts. [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]. Mia had the perfect model! George Plimpton (1927-2003) George Plimpton was the editor of The Paris Review from its founding in 1953 until his death in 2003. 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. The most recent was about how to extend the swing though impact, and the trick, George said, was to station an imaginary dwarf several feet in front of your ball and then (you have to re-create those broad Plimptonian vowels here) smack the dwarf in the ass. I dont know whether it works, because I cant think of it without laughing. I just knew it was going to be something terrible. . George Plimpton. 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.. [citation needed], In the movie Plimpton! **Your transparent jealousy is very unbecoming, Carnac. And they founded this thing called the Paris Review and published poetry and short story writers and did interviews. And his apartment, with those windows that looked out onto the East River, became a famous landmark in NYC. **Get a life. 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. People two or three deep stood looking out at the East River. The clipped, non-rhotic English accents of George Plimpton and William F. Buckley Jr. were vestigial examples. 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. The Paris Review was a testimony to his literary taste and his sense of glamour. Hed done it in Amsterdam, Moscow, and London; hed done it at a PEN benefit; and now he and Norman were going to do it in Cuba. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. [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." To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. The journal, which had operated out of his home, moved downtown. Even the manliest actors, such as Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable sometimes slipped into this voice-coach mode. 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. Quite sad, as he just had a daughter not many years back. George . The name George Plimpton is synonymous with a kind of all-in participatory journalism. :rolleyes: Ive got news for you, buddy, youre not even second in line! **. Thanks for the scores of replies that have arrived in the past day, in response to my post asking why the stentorian, phony-British Announcer Voice that dominated newsreel narration, stage and movie acting, and public discourse in the United States during the first half of the 20th century had completely disappeared. [33] A later attempt, fired at Cape Canaveral, rose approximately 50 feet (15m) into the air and broke 700 windows in Titusville, Florida. He was a Wasp (both of his parents came from old New England families, and had ancestors on the Mayflower). They spoke in this manner, and it seemed perfectly natural, evocative of a background spent among the gentry of the northeast. . He also appeared in the 1996 documentary When We Were Kings about the "Rumble in the Jungle" 1974 Ali-Foreman Championship fight opposite Norman Mailer crediting Muhammad Ali as a poet who composed the world's shortest poem: "Me? Typical of George to laugh about something others saw as a defining traithe never took himself all that seriously. 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 . Louis Begley, novelist:Jim Atlas interviewed me for an Art of Fiction piece in the Paris Review, a feature of the magazine that George invented and brought to perfection. 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. Jay McInerney, author:Arriving in Manhattan as a young writer, nothing was more thrilling or daunting than attending my first Paris Review party at Georges townhouse on East 72nd in the fall of 1984. George had three siblings: Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton Jr., Oakes Ames Plimpton,[15] and Sarah Gay Plimpton. We were both excitedId just come back from a weekend in Las Vegas, and hed just come back from celebrating the fortieth anniversary reunion of his Detroit Lions team at Ford Field, where the fans had given him a standing ovation, and he had raised his hatand for a moment we were no longer father and son, but just two big excited boys, each comparing adventures, and I could hear the pride in his voice, the happiness. This kept his magazine fresh for 50 years. The book offers memories of Plimpton from among other writers, such as Norman Mailer, William Styron, Gay Talese and Gore Vidal, and was written with the cooperation of both his ex-wife and his widow. George Plimpton. 3: Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". His dish was Spaghetti Bolognese. Oh now, Im joking, Carnac ( see? From what other people had told me, I knew a little bit about itthat my father (and mother) had been right by Bobbys side in California when he was shot, that my father had tackled Sirhan Sirhan to the ground, and wrestled the gun from his handbut not a word of it came from my dad himself. [2] His first wife, whom he married in 1968[38] and divorced in 1988, was Freddy Medora Espy, a photographer's assistant. That was when Westbrook van Voorhis, the famous March of Time voice, did the intro narration of the pilot episode of The Twilight Zone. During my fight, my nose got badly broken in the second round, but I did last all four scheduled rounds, though I lost. 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. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Of course, I think he enjoyed the odd persona his voice and mannerisms conferred on him. So it was that my father played himself not just in movies and on TV, but in life, too. George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 September 25, 2003) was an American writer. Plimpton appeared in the 1989 documentary The Tightrope Dancer which featured the life and the work of the artist Vali Myers. Description above from the Wikipedia article George Plimpton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of . * 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! How to find out, and whether you should care. A little before my time, but Kennedy certainly didnt, even if his vernacular was more formal than Brandos. [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. He looked like a very eccentric old Englishman. (Did Eisenhower speak the newsreel style? Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. Now the interview is perfect!. We made $15,000-20,000. $ 3.99 - $ 27.44. My dad could never say what he feltnot reallyand neither can any of us. Ill try to give a representative range, and I am grateful for the care and thought that have gone into these responses. 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. What stood in our way? Its strange to think, but he would have been eighty-five this year: fourteen years older than my mom, fifty years older than me. Return of the Big Bopper. If you say, I parked my car in Harvard Yard, you are being rhotic. Orson Welles notably spoke in a mid-Atlantic accent in the 1941 film Citizen Kane, as did many of his co-stars, such as Joseph Cotten. [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. He could as easily have been my grandfather as father. His experience was captured in the book Out of My League. Peter Matthiessen took the magazine over from Humes and ousted him as editor, replacing him with Plimpton, using it as his cover for Matthiessen's CIA activities. A friend of the New England Sedgwick family, Plimpton edited Edie: An American Biography with Jean Stein in 1982. [26] He also appeared in an episode of the NBC sitcom Wings. He loved the ones that made a lot of noise and racket and excitement. Gay Talese, author:As a young man not long out of university, at 26, 27 years of age, George Plimpton went with his friends to Paris to be benighted in the tradition of Paris culture. In 2013, the documentary Plimpton! [28], Plimpton was a demolitions expert in the post-World War II Army. Congratulations Carnac, for posting about George Plimptons death at 3:44 PM. Ive known him forsix months and I just now learned hes not English!. $ 4.19 - $ 17.92. By George Plimpton. (The filmmakers assembled his voice-over from recorded speeches and other archival footage.) 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. With a little more practice, you could give us boys in the big leagues a run for our money. **. *Originally posted by Phlosphr * 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. He would have a beer with you. We were bound to play the roles of father and son, unable to simply be ourselves. He was so open to life and all its new and unexpected situations. Hear Stories By George Plimpton. **Thats a common name for such an accent. I received many notes like this one: The variety of English you are referring to has a name in linguistics: "Mid-Atlantic English". He was a great addition to the human race. Id like to offer a speculation, for what its worth. 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! At one point, there was a tremendous Wagnerian thunder and lighting storm. Anyhow, I asked Terry Gross from Fresh Air and George Plimpton to be auctioneers. I'm not an expert, but Bill Labov from UPenn is, and he is quoted thusly: According to William Labov, teaching of this pronunciation declined sharply after the end of World War II. [40] They had two children: Medora Ames Plimpton and Taylor Ames Plimpton, who has published a memoir entitled Notes from the Night: A Life After Dark. He was an actor and writer, known for Good Will Hunting (1997), Nixon (1995) and Just Cause (1995). I havent heard that he is dead, but if so RIP George. Youll get another shot at the big time, trust me. Archie Moore, after all, had broken his nose. I had George tell him the story of Sidd Finch. Please educate me. The funny thing about Harris was that he did not start out with that accent - as I suspect George Gershwin did not. Read more. George was the one who read my name out to the commissioner. Plimpton was a writer-raconteur and dilettante in the best sense of the word: He co-founded an important literary magazine, the . His friendships testified to what an eclectic man he was. 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! Even the most basic conversation was often a struggle. 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. George Plimpton, Out of My League: The Classic Account of an Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball, 2016, Little 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. George was a little more in-depth than a lot of us, of course, with his education and all. He did these jobs, and many others, as an amateur.. He appeared in commercials for Oldsmobile and Intellivision, and appeared. 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. Losing, he knew, always makes a better story than winning. What was our problem? Ever. As a result, this American version of a posh accent has all but disappeared even among the American upper classes. Macklem . Vault. He was also known for "participatory journalism," including accounts of his active involvement in professional sporting events, acting in a Western, performing a comedy act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and playing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra[1] and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur. [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. One of the magazine's most notable discoveries was author and screenplay writer Terry Southern, who was living in Paris at the time and formed a lifelong friendship with Plimpton, along with writer Alexander Trocchi and future classical and jazz pioneer David Amram. But he could easily have said, Alice, I have enough trouble raising money for my magazine.. Off screen, George Plimpton and Gore Vidal come to mind. George Plimpton, journalist extraordinaire, trains with and then performs as Quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. The Left Bank really became East 72nd Street. 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. LL is typified, I think, but an almost clenching of the teeth while talking, producing a mushy sound, if you will. Jean Stein became his co-editor. But he would do this in the most charming and agreeable way. Middle class? And he told everyone that night, and for many years after, that hed diverted me from a career of filling prescriptions. Whats the matter?, Well, he said. That tension between what was in his heart and what his voice allowed him to express is the basic tension of language we all face, only heightened. He once said that, in writing Paper Lion, he wanted to reveal the "humor and grace" of football. One night Joe DiMaggio was here, and they had never met, so I introduced them. 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. Shed wandered out to the balcony of a lonely Manhattan cocktail party, and was standing out there, smoking a cigarette and looking down mournfully at the street far below, when from behind her she heard a voice: I know a better way down.. Just in time for the Sixties, with all their other pressures towards some kind of anti-Eisenhower authenticity. The risky pleasures of Plimpton's classic of participatory sportswriting, Paper Lion. "I've decided to stay over here in . 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.