The late George Plimpton (1927-2003) was a Renaissance Man — a writer, editor, athlete and actor.
One of the founders of The Paris Review, as well as a successful sports writer, he’s the subject of Plimpton, a PBS biopic due to be broadcast on Friday, May 16 at 9 p.m. as part of its acclaimed American Masters series.
Tall as a reed, with a plummy patrician voice, Plimpton was a “universal amateur” and a collector of experiences. As he put it, “You become what you want to become.”
In that freewheeling spirit, Plimpton exercised his imagination to the fullest, editing a first-class literary magazine, playing professional football and baseball and writing bestsellers.
Born to the manor, he was a Harvard graduate from whom great things were expected. To a degree, he fulfilled these expectations.
In 1952, he was invited to France to edit The Paris Review, whose mission was to publish new fiction and poetry. He accepted the invitation because he had been an editor and had nothing better to do. Throwing himself into it with gusto, he made a success of it.
The Paris Review published up-and-coming writers like Philip Roth and Nadine Gordimer and ran a popular feature called Writers at Work. Yet the magzine would always remain a shoestring operation in terms of its finances.
Returning to the United States, while still maintaining his status as its editor, Plimpton joined the staff of Sports Illustrated, a Time/Life publication owned by Henry Luce. In a moment of inspiration, he pitched a great idea to his editor. Why not play for a professional team and write about it?
And so he launched a career as a “participatory journalist,” which was apparently a new concept.
Plimpton, briefly, was a baseball pitcher, boxer, football quarterback, circus performer and hockey goalkeeper. He kept meticulous notes and recreated his experiences in books like Out of My League and Paper Lion, which, one critic said, was a classic of reporting and an exemplar of the emerging New Journalism.
Plimpton also explores his relationship with the Kennedy clan (he was friends with Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert Kennedy) and his foray into the movies (he’s seen introducing himself to John Wayne on the set of a Western).
At the day of the end, as his second and last wife says, he was a “natural performer” and storyteller who loved life and lived it with zest.