Nelson W. Aldrich - George, Being George: George Plimptons Life as Told, Admired, Deplored, and Envied by 200 Friends, Relatives, Lovers, Acquaintances, Rivals--and a Few Unappreciative ...

GEORGE,
BEING GEORGE

CONTENTS

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I.
GEORGES STORIED BACKGROUND

II.
SIGHTINGS OF GEORGE AT SCHOOL: 19341952

III.
CREATION MYTHS OF THE PARIS REVIEW: 19521955

IV.
MOUNTING CELEBRITY: 19551963

V.
GEORGE AGOG: 19631973

VI.
PUSS AND MISTER PUSS: 19731983

VII.
GEORGE IS GEORGE TO THE END: 19832003

For Dee and Arabella with love

GEORGE,
BEING GEORGE

PROLOGUE:
A PLAUSIBLE METAPHOR

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BUDDY BURNISKE I dont know whether most people have a yearning for ecstatic experience, but George certainly did, and it was no secret. You saw it most sensationally in his love of fireworks. He really did live a life punctuated by fireworks, his fireworks, which produced ecstatic oohs and aahs but then instead of burning out would somehow generate the energy for another explosion. Ecstasy after ecstasy. But again, there was nothing secretive about this great appetite of his. He wanted to share it with as many of his friends as possible. I remember watching him in the Hamptons at a Fourth of July picnic. Thats when George seemed to me most at peacehe was just, Look at this, golly, this is marvelous!

PIEDY LUMET Long ago, when George was in his mid-twenties and in Madrid hunting for Hemingway to do an interview for The Paris Review, he and I went out one evening and happened upon a square where four little ancient medieval streets came together. There were homemade fireworks going off, and big pieces of the shell would drop down in flames from above. I found it quite terrifying, these strange flaming particles with a lot of weight to them, falling onto the crowd, but George was transfixed with joy. I remember his face, his mouth wide open in a smile of pure delight.

Fortieth Anniversary celebration for The Paris Review,
East Hampton, 1993. Photograph Sara Barrett.

FELIX GRUCCI, JR. Our family came to know George when he used to drive out to the Hamptons during the summers in the early 1960s and stopped off at my dads fireworks factory in Bell-port. He struck up a conversation with my father and began a relationship. Eventually it grew to the point where Georgethis was when he lived in Wainscottwould have us to his Bastille Day party, and we brought a fireworks show, a little one, just a tiny backyard fireworks show. George was supposed to take care of the details of getting the permit. That never happened, but since it was little pops here and there, it never bothered anybody. But over the years it became a mammoth fireworks show in the potato fields behind his house. So much so that the municipality said to George, You cant do this anymore. And George said, Well, why not? Weve been doing it now for many years. And they got into a little bit of fisticuffs because the woman at the municipality said, If you do this, were going to arrest you, were going to arrest the Gruccis, were going to stop your party, and theres going to be lights flashing and everything else. So we get there, were setting up, and the next thing you know, as the party is unfolding, wailing fire trucks and police guards come, they hose everything down, all the fireworks, so that you cant fire them. No one got arrested, but it was the end of the fireworks behind Georges house.

WILLIAM STYRON It was just a moment which was so perfectly George. He was doing the Bicentennial of the City of New York. There was a huge parade from the Battery up to Washington Square, a monster parade. And George asked Rose and me to sit with him in a horse-drawn carriage with a sign, a very big sign on the side, saying, Fireworks Commissioner City of New York. I just recall the absolute delight that he tookthe three of us, as a matter of fact, but especially Georgein bowing to the crowd, passing people who were saying, Jesus, I dont believe it, a fireworks commissioner! I remember that as an example of Georges joy in being George.

SARAH DUDLEY PLIMPTON George loved parades. He grew up on Fifth Avenue and could see the St. Patricks Day parade from his apartment. This was close enough to his birthday, he told me once, so that he thought for a while that the parade was for him. I thought of this many years later when George had to go to MacArthur Airport to do a fireworks show, and asked me to come along. The limo arrived to pick us up with, for some reason, a motorcycle escort. Here we are screaming down Second Avenue with sirens and lights, and into the Midtown Tunnel. George was so pleased with himself. He winked at me and said, Stick with me, kiddo!

RICHARD PRICE The thing that I liked about George was that he was this combination of Long Island lockjaw and Why cant I do that? We were put on this earth to go on safari, and fly on a trapeze, and put on football helmets, and be commissioner of fireworks. I have a hard time having fun, period, and he was the paragon of fun.

REMAR SUTTON The first time I met George was back inoh God, in 71. I knew of him, of course, but we also had a good mutual friend, Bill Curry, the great football player he wrote One More July with. I invited George to fly down to Florida to have some fun. Ive always liked to do things for fun, and our county, Brevard County, where the Kennedy Space Center is, was in a lot of troublethe space program was winding down, the place was going to pot, so I decided we had to bring some good publicity to the county. So with George and the Gruccis we set off the biggest firework ever, one ton. This was the famous Fat Man [actually Georges second of that name; his first, on Long Island, had been a dud, the worlds lowest firework, according to the Guinness record book; the original, of course, exploded over Nagasaki]. We were going to hide it in the middle of the Indian River. We took the mortar out to a small sandbar, buried it, and on the appointed day we took all the press out there, along with Fat Man. It was supposed to be shot off in about ten to fifteen minutes, when all of a sudden, by mistake, one of the Gruccis accidentally hit the delay starter and he yelled, My God, its going to go! There were about fourteen of us who had to fit in one boat, which got stuck in the sand for too, too long. But then we gunned it and away we went. As were tearing away, the Fat Man explodes and sends a shock wave that cracked the foundations of two houses and broke ten thousand dollars worth of windows and set off every alarm within twenty miles. By the time we came to shore, the police were there to arrest George and me. George leaned over to me and said one word: Marvelous.

KURT ANDERSEN My family called me Explodo. I was mostly into big explosions, and thats what George planned for a Lampoon festivity in 1976. We made the largest explosive fireworks ever [Fat Man III]over Boston, anyway. It was a folly, as much of the Lampoon is a folly, in the best sense. Georges interest in pursuing beautiful, purposeless ventures of various kinds was what I admired most about him.

ROSE STYRON The first thing I remember of Georges love of fireworks was when he brought a display to John Marquands place on Marthas Vineyard. He carried the fireworks in his bag across three borders, illegallyby plane, train, and ferry. When he got to Marthas Vineyard, we went out to Marquands beach. It was the day before the Fourth of July, and we set it up on the beach, and it all went off and was tremendous fun. George was breathing a sigh of relief that nobody had arrested him. And all of a sudden, all these Army planes flew over. It was the same year they had the movie