‘Whipple’s World’ Highlights Putnam Preservationist

The life of George Caroll Whipple III, a Kent native, is featured in a new documentary.

He has spent nearly three decades pointing a microphone at celebrities on New York’s red carpets but at the recent 25th annual Tribeca Festival, the camera finally turned on George Whipple.

“Whipple’s World,” a feature documentary about the NY1 entertainment reporter, Philipstown resident, and Putnam County philanthropist held its world premiere at Tribeca with screenings June 12 through 14.

The film, which is the debut feature of director Adam Paul Verity, captures the many facets of Whipple – father, Ivy League-educated lawyer, farmer, history buff, preservationist, castle-dweller, dog lover, and more – in a fun and endearing look at what life is really like rubbing elbows with the famous.

“George does everything,” Verity said on the red carpet at the premiere. “He’s an entertainment reporter, but he’s also a lawyer who lives in a castle, and he is also a farmer, and he also has this amazing heritage of American history going right back to the Declaration of Independence. When you put all of that together, that’s a unique character, and that’s why we wanted to make this film.”

Whipple became a fixture on the 24-hour cable channel, snagging passing celebrities and putting them at ease. He was so familiar a presence that he was parodied on “Saturday Night Live.”

In 2022, he won an Emmy Award with his NY1 team for their coverage of “On Stage Presents Broadway’s Revival.” The film covers everything from Whipple sparring playfully with Bryan Cranston to his coverage of New York City after Sept. 11, 2001.

Through his father, Whipple is a descendant of Declaration of Independence signers William Whipple, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and Stephen Hopkins, as well as U.S. Sen. Daniel Webster, the supposed source of those famous “Websterian” eyebrows.

Verity, who worked alongside Whipple at Spectrum News NY1, said the existing relationship was key to making the project happen. “He was a little reluctant at first, but then thankfully he agreed to let us make the film,” said Verity.

Robin Sanders and Cody Williams produced the documentary.

For Putnam folks, the real pleasure of the film is watching Whipple return home. “Whipple’s World” follows him back to the county where his family has farmed for generations. He is the third generation to have lived at Pine View Farm in Kent, where he was raised and where, as the film recounts, his ambitious father once promoted him to run for Kent town supervisor at the age of 14.

The film lingers on familiar local sights – the farm, the back roads, the long commute to the city that so many residents will recognize, and the Kent farmhouse the family returned to full-time during the pandemic.

Whipple’s name has long been synonymous with historic preservation in the county, and the film traces that legacy. In 1999, he founded the Society for the Preservation of Putnam County Antiquities & Greenways, known as Preserve Putnam. Through it he led the rescue and reconstruction of the circa-1832 Red Mills Baptist Church (now the Whipple-Feeley Chapel, named for deceased Putnam veterans) and converted an abandoned Carmel gas station into Spain Cornerstone Park, home to a memorial to county residents lost on Sept. 11.

For five years, Preserve Putnam served as steward of the county-owned Tilly Foster Farm in Brewster, where Whipple donated more than $350,000 and helped secure over $1 million in funding.

His Whipple Heritage Conservation Foundation, established with then-wife Victoria in 2019, preserves endangered North American livestock breeds. That work has placed him at the center of the county’s 250^th anniversary celebrations, serving as a volunteer committee co-chairman alongside former Gov. George Pataki and narrating “The Revolutionary Road to Putnam County,” a free drivable audio tour launched as part of the Rev250 celebration.

For all the celebrity and history, the film keeps returning to Whipple’s role as Dad. He became a father later in life, and one of the film’s most tender threads follows his morning ritual of dropping his daughter, Elizabeth, at the Garrison School in Philipstown.

There is a fitting symmetry in the premiere’s timing. Tribeca was founded by Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal to bring people back to lower Manhattan after Sept. 11 – the same downtown Whipple covered as a reporter – and the film debuted during the festival’s 25^th anniversary.

While Whipple claims in the documentary that his life makes for boring viewing, the ovation at Tribeca – and the sea of stick-on eyebrows in the crowd – suggested otherwise.

For distribution and screening details, visit whipplesworldfilm.com.