The Troubled Genius Of Oscar Levant

 

Today we remember the American entertainer, Oscar Levant, who was born in 1906 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on December 27. It's been almost sixty years since his last appearances - he died in 1972 - on stage and film. He's likely unknown to a generation of Americans now but that doesn't mean his endearing role as a comedy genius is ready for history's dustbin.

Although Levant's presence on the entertainment spectrum is broad, his greatest impact was as a concert pianist, comedian, and author. He was trained in classical music in Pittsburgh and New York and divided his musical time between Hollywood and Broadway as a young performer and composer. He became a close friend and associate of George Gershwin and his extended family of stars and admirers. With Gershwin's early death in 1937, Levant would become known as the finest interpreter of his work for almost two decades until the end of his own career as a performer. Levant's Hollywood association not only led to his role as a composer but also as an actor. Although his filmography is short it contains a host of memorable, mostly comedic scenes involving song, dance and wit. Here are two clips of Levant at his best:

From the 1951 film, An American in Paris,

and from the 1953 film, The Band Wagon.

Finally, there is Levant, the writer. He wrote three memoirs, two of them best-sellers. His Memoirs of An Amnesiac (1965) is a recollection of his often weird and tattered life as well as a tour de force of wit and wisdom aimed at Hollywood's famous and infamous personalities beginning in the 1930's. It's no wonder he was a highly sought guest for society dinner parties amd other occasions from coast to coast. His second book, The Unimportance of Being Oscar, appeared in 1968. Although both books are a bit dated, readers with some knowledge of popular culture and politics from the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930's to the entertainment world of the 1960's would certainly find both books entertaining reads.

Levant's bitter humor in his later career came with the high cost of mental illness. It was a thread that moved throughout his life and a condition that eventually became the core of his stage persona. Odd as it may seem, Levant saw it as therapeutic and his self deprecating appearances brought laughter to millions. By the late 1960's Levant's mental and physical condition deteriorated significantly, his drug dependency increased, and he withdrew from public life.

If readers want to explore Levant's life in greater detail there is no finer source at hand than a 1994 biograph, A Talent For Genius: The Life and Times of Oscar Levant, by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger. The book is also an outstanding exploration of the entertainment industry and its place in American culture in the first half of the 20th century.


There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

                                                         Oscar Levant, 1959

Indeed there will never be another like him.



Sources

ClassicalNet biography, Oscar Levant
wikipedia.org, Oscar Levant