Profile of Oscar Levant on Famous Like Me

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 got married for the second time to singer and actress June Gale (Gilmartin), part of the singing foursome, The Gale Sisters (besides June, there was 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, finally 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.

The 1920s and 1930s wit Alexander Woollcott once said about Levant: "There's absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle can't fix."

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.

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

• Humoresque (1945)
• Rhapsody in Blue (1945)
• The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)
• An American in Paris (1951) where he played a bohemian pianist.
• O. Henry's Full House (1952)
• The Band Wagon (1953) where his songwriter character was based on the movie's own co-screenwriter — songwriter Adolph Green.

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 repertoire:

"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."

"I only make jokes when I am feeling insecure."

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