Musicians - Oscar Levant

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	Musicians - Oscar Levant

Oscar Levant (December 27, 1906 - August 14, 1972) was an American pianist, composer, author, comedian, and an actor, better known for his mordant character and witticisms, on the radio and in movies and television, than his music.

Life

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, into a musical and Orthodox Russian Jewish family, Levant moved to New York with his mother, Annie, in 1922 after the death of his father, Max. He began studying under Zygmunt Stojowski, a well-established piano pedagogue.

In 1928 Levant traveled to Hollywood where his career turned for the better. During his stay, he met and befriended George Gershwin. In just twenty years, 1929-1948, he would go on to compose the music for more than twenty movies.

Around 1932 Levant began composing on a serious note. This 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, Sinfonietta. He was also married and divorced to actress Barbara Woodell in 1932.

In 1939, Levant married for the second time, to singer and actress June Gale (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.

During the years of 1958-1960, 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. The show was highly controversial, eventually being taken from the air after a comment about Marilyn Monroe: "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; now 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 a member of the Algonquin Round Table, an informal conclave of New York wits and writers; other members were Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and Woollcott. Much later Levant was also a frequent guest on Jack Paar's talk show.

The 1920s and 1930s wit Alexander Woollcott, also a member of the Algonquin Round Table, once said about Levant: "There's absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle can't fix."

Open about his neuroses and a notorious hypochondriac, Levant was also in his later life addicted to prescription drugs and was frequently committed to mental hospitals by his wife, June Gale. Despite his afflictions, Levant was considered a genius by some, in many areas ("There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."). His playing of the Tchaikovsky and Anton Rubinstein piano concerti, as well as Gershwin, is a testimony to his talents.

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 other comics have claimed, apocryphally, that that hypochondriac Levant's epitaph was inscribed, "I told them I was ill."

Filmography

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)
Humoresque (1945)
Rhapsody in Blue (1945)
Romance on the High Seas (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)

Memoirs

A Smattering of Ignorance, New York : Doubleday, 1940
Memoirs of an Amnesiac, New York : Putnam's, 1965
The Unimportance of Being Oscar, New York : Putnam's, 1968

Quotes

More examples of his controversial repartée:

"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..."

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Oscar Levant ]

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Musicians - Oscar Levant

Life

Filmography

Memoirs

Quotes

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