Everything about Oscar Levant totally explained
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
Born in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania into a musical and
Orthodox Jewish Russian 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 1924, Levant 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. In just twenty years, 1929-1948, he'd go on to compose 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", now considered to be a
pop music 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). 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 was also married to and divorced from 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.
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 1947-49, 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 play 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 one show is known to exist, that 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 didn't 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.
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 a notorious
hypochondriac, Levant was in later life addicted to prescription drugs and was frequently committed to mental hospitals by his wife, June. 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've 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, some comics have claimed, apocryphally, and citing an old joke, that hypochondriac Levant's epitaph was inscribed, "I
told them I was ill."
Filmography
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
Quotations
More examples of his controversial repartée:
"Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm 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'm 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."
"I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin." (Levant was in the cast of Doris Day's first film, Romance on the High Seas, in which Day 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's a transvestite."
"It's not a pretty face, I grant you but underneath its flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character."
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."
Work on Broadway
Burlesque (1927) - musical play - performer
Ripples (1930) - musical - co-composer
The Fabulous Invalid (1938) - musical play - conductor
The American Way (1939) - musical play - composerFurther Information
Get more info on 'Oscar Levant'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://oscar_levant.totallyexplained.com">Oscar Levant Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
