Oscar Levant (December 27, 1906 – August 14, 1972) was an American pianist, composer, author, comedian, and actor. He was more famous for his mordant character and witticisms, on the radio and in movies and television, than for his music.
Life and career
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to an Orthodox Jewish family from Russia, Levant moved to New York with his mother, Annie, in 1922, following the death of his father, Max. He began studying under Zygmunt Stojowski, a well-established piano pedagogue. In 1924, aged 18, he appeared with Ben Bernie in a short film, Ben Bernie and All the Lads, made in New York City in the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film system.
In 1928, Levant traveled to Hollywood where his career took a turn for the better. During his stay, he met and befriended George Gershwin. From 1929 to 1948 he composed the music for more than twenty movies. During this period, he also wrote or co-wrote numerous popular songs that made the Hit Parade, the most noteworthy being "Blame It on My Youth" (1934), now considered to be a standard.
Around 1932, Levant began composing seriously. He studied under Arnold Schoenberg and impressed him sufficiently to be offered an assistantship (which he turned down, considering himself unqualified).[1] His formal studies led to a request by Aaron Copland to play at the Yaddo Festival of contemporary American music on April 30 of that year. Successful, Levant began on a new orchestral work, a sinfonietta. He married actress Barbara Woodell; they divorced in 1932.
In 1939, Levant married for the second time, to singer and actress June Gale (née Gilmartin), part of the singing foursome The Gale Sisters (besides June, there were Jane, Joan, and Jean). They were married for almost 33 years, until his death, and had three children, Marcia, Lorna, and Amanda.
At this time, Levant was perhaps best known to American audiences as one of the regular panelists on the radio quiz show Information Please. Originally scheduled as a guest panelist, Levant proved so quick-witted and popular that he became a regular fixture on the show in the late 1930s and 1940s, along with fellow panelists Franklin P. Adams and John Kieran, and moderator Clifton Fadiman. "Mr. Levant," as he was always called, was often challenged with musical questions, though he impressed audiences with his wide depth of knowledge and quickness with a joke. Kieran praised Levant as having a "positive genius for making offhand cutting remarks that couldn't have been sharper if he'd honed them a week in his mind. Oscar was always good for a bright response edged with acid."
From 1947 to 1949, Levant regularly appeared on NBC radio's Kraft Music Hall, starring Al Jolson. He not only accompanied Jolson on the piano and played classical and popular solos, but often joked and ad-libbed with Jolson and his guests. This includes comedy sketches. The pairing of the two entertainers was inspired. Their individual ties to George Gershwin --- Jolson introduced Gershwin's "Swanee" --- undoubtedly had much to do with their rapport. Both Levant and Jolson appeared as themselves in the Gershwin biopic Rhapsody in Blue (1945).
Between 1958 and 1960, Levant hosted a television talk show on KCOP-TV in Los Angeles, The Oscar Levant Show, which later became syndicated. It featured his piano playing along with monologues and interviews with top-name guests such as Fred Astaire and Linus Pauling. A full recording of only two shows is known to exist,[2] one with Astaire, who paid to have a kinescope recording of the broadcast made, so that he could assess his performance. This is likely the only Astaire performance to have imperfections, as it was live, and Levant would repeatedly change the tempo of his accompaniment to Astaire's singing during the bridges between verses, which appeared to get him quite off balance at first. He did not dance, as the studio space was extremely small.
The show was highly controversial, eventually being taken from the air after a comment about Marilyn Monroe's conversion to Judaism: "Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her". He later stated that he "hadn't meant it that way". Several months later, the show began to be broadcast in a slightly revised format—it was taped in order to provide a buffer for Levant's antics. This, however, failed to prevent Levant from making comments about Mae West's sex life that caused the show to be canceled for good. Levant was also a frequent guest on Jack Paar's talk show, prompting Paar in later years to sign off by saying, "Good night, Oscar Levant, wherever you are."
The 1920s and 1930s wit Alexander Woollcott, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, once said of him: "There's absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle can't fix."
Open about his neuroses and hypochondria, Levant, in later life became addicted to prescription drugs and was frequently committed to mental hospitals by his wife. Despite his afflictions, Levant was considered a genius by some, in many areas. (He himself wisecracked "There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.")
Levant drew increasingly away from the limelight in his later years. Upon his death in Beverly Hills, California of a heart attack at the age of 65, he was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. In their routines, some comics have claimed, apocryphally, and citing an old joke, that hypochondriac Levant's epitaph was inscribed, "I told them I was ill."
Filmography
Ben Bernie and All the Lads (1924), filmed in early DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process.
The Dance of Life (1929)
Night Parade (1929) (uncredited)
In Person (1935) (uncredited) (scenes deleted)
Rhythm on the River (1940)
Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1941)
Rhapsody in Blue (1945)
Humoresque (1946)
Romance on the High Seas (1948), Doris Day's first picture.
You Were Meant for Me (1948)
The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)
An American in Paris (1951), where he played a bohemian pianist.
O. Henry's Full House (1952)
The I Don't Care Girl (1953)
The Band Wagon (1953), where his songwriter character was based on the movie's own co-screenwriter — songwriter Adolph Green.
The Cobweb (1955)
The Oscar Levant Show (1958)
A Radios' Life (1950)
Broadway
Burlesque (1927) - musical play - performer[3]
Ripples (1930) - musical - co-composer[4]
Sweet and Low (1930) - musical revue - songwriter[5]
The Fabulous Invalid (1938) - musical play - replacement conductor[6]
The American Way (1939) - musical play - conductor[7] and composer[8]
Memoirs
A Smattering of Ignorance, New York : Doubleday, 1940
The Memoirs of an Amnesiac, New York : Putnam's, 1965
The Unimportance of Being Oscar, New York : Putnam's, 1968
Quotations
"Roses are red, violets are blue, I am schizophrenic, and so am I."
"I used to call Audrey Hepburn a walking X-ray."
"A few years ago someone suggested that I read Spinoza. The first chapter in this particular volume was about superstitions and rituals. Here was my faith! Spinoza said rituals are all based on fear. My faith destroyed, I put down the book."
"When Frank Sinatra, Jr. was kidnapped, I said, 'It must have been done by music critics.'"
"Not long ago, a well-known Hollywood savings-and-loan millionaire intruded on a conversation at my table at a restaurant. Worst still, he implied that he and I were equals. 'Compared to you, I'm a Habsburg,' I told him. But it didn't offend him. He thought Habsburg was a rival local banker."
"What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left."
"I only make jokes when I am feeling insecure."
"So little time and so little to do..."
"I'm a concert pianist, that's a pretentious way of saying I'm unemployed at the moment." (From An American in Paris)
"I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin." (Levant was in the cast of Day's first film, Romance on the High Seas (1948), in which she played a brassy showgirl very different from the virginal ingenue character that later brought her stardom.)
"I have one thing to say about psychoanalysis: fuck Dr Freud."
"The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too."
"Everyone in Hollywood is gay, except Gabby Hayes — and that's because he is a transvestite."
"It's not a pretty face, I grant you but underneath its flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character." (From An American in Paris)
When asked by Jack Paar what he does for exercise, he replied, "I stumble, then fall into a coma."
"Leonard Bernstein is revealing musical secrets that have been common knowledge for centuries."
Asked by Jack Paar to describe his reaction to Milton Berle converting to become a Christian Scientist- "Our loss is their loss."
Overheard at a dinner party: "The best kind of guests are the ones that know when to leave!"
"Strip away the false tinsel from Hollywood, and you find the real tinsel inside."
"It's not what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts."
References
Bibliography
Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger. A Talent For Genius: the Life and Times of Oscar Levant. Silman-James Press. ISBN 1-879505-39-8
Dr Charles Barber. "The Concert Music of Oscar Levant". Department of Music, Stanford University. http://www.classical.net/music/composer/works/levant/index.php
Notes
1.^ Oscar Levant, The Unimportance of Being Oscar, Pocket Books 1969 (reprint of G.P. Putnam 1968), p. 113. ISBN 0-671-77104-3.
2.^ UCLA Cinema Library archives
3.^ Burlesque at the Internet Broadway Database
4.^ Ripples at the Internet Broadway Database
5.^ Sweet and Low at the Internet Broadway Database
6.^ The Fabulous Invalid at the Internet Broadway Database
7.^ The American Way at the Internet Broadway Database
8.^ The American Way at the Internet Broadway Database
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