Oscar Levant was the Amadeus of Hollywood, the Oscar Wilde of Broadway , the L’enfant terrible who almost single-handedly added the word “neurotic” to American vocabulary, and the most wildly self-destructive personality ever to become a household name.
An astonishingly gifted concert pianist, composer, film and stage presence, radio and television raconteur, insult wit, and bestselling author,zinging some of America’s best-loved celebrities with classic one-liners
Christopher Isherwood once compared Oscar Levant to a character out of Dostoyevsky: “completely unmasked at all times.”
Levant was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on December 27, 1906 to Rabbi Max and Annie Levant, Orthodox Russian Jews.
His first piano teacher was his brother Ben, with whom he played Beethoven Symphonies for four hands at the piano.
“You can’t possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven’s Seventh and go slow.”
(Oscar trying to talk his way out of a speeding ticket)
His talent with music was recognized early in his life, but he was a troublesome child to his music teachers and his parents, displaying a constant aversion to people who represented authority.
His father, a demanding parent, insisted that all of his sons receive musical training and perform at family recitals, exactly as he commanded.
His father was meticulous in dictating what each boy would play, and how each piece should be performed.
In one instance, Levant rebelled, performing a piece of his own choice as an encore.
His father’s anger resulted in a humiliating slap in the face, and the beginning of his life-long loathing of authority figures.
A fortuitous event for Levant, he first heard the music of George Gershwin at the age of 12 and fell in love with it.
Young George Gershwin, In 1916, he composed his first published song, ‘When You Want ’Em You Can’t Get ’Em.’ His first big hit was ‘Swanee’, composed in 10 min on a bus. Not long afterwards, it sold a million sheet music copies, and an estimated two million records. It became the biggest-selling song of Gershwin’s career.
He was soon inspired to compose his own music.
After studying with Martin Miessler, a pupil of the Leipzig Conservatory who specialized in Czerny piano method.
Then he studied with Sigismund Stojowski, a pupil of Paderewski.
He recalls a lesson where he told his teacher,
“I think I’ll play Debussy’s Reflets dans L’Eau, or Poissons d’Or.
To which Stokowski, after looking at him intently for a moment, responded,
“Your piano playing has not improved, but your French has.”
Levant’s formal education concluded at the age of 15 when his father died and he moved to New York in order to find the freedom to pursue his music in his own way.
“I’m a concert pianist, that’s a pretentious way of saying I’m unemployed at the moment.”
It was 1921, the Great Depression was still a song away, and Broadway was thriving, although trained in classical music, Levant quickly picked up current musical trends and played them to his advantage.
He was quick to find work in the Prohibition nightclubs and speakeasies of New York and before Levant became a regular at Lindy’s, one of the more popular city nightspots.
“When I was young I looked like Al Capone, but I lacked his compassion.” Oscar Levant at 17 (right), with his brother Howard on the boardwalk in Atlantic City
His satiric wit and skills at the keyboard soon became fodder for gossip columnists such as Walter Winchell, who recognized the value of Levant’s caustic remarks.
“It’d be nice to please everyone but I thought it would be more interesting to have a point of view.”
Oscar Levant, had his first “extended engagement” at the Mikado Inn in 1922.
In his 1965 book, The Memoirs of an Amnesiac, Levant wrote about those days, which must have been quite an experience for a young man who was then just 16 years old.
A three-piece orchestra played on weekends but during the week, it was just the piano and violin.
We alternated between classical and popular music.
The place was called Mikado Inn. The rival restaurant . . . was the Nikko Inn.
Japanese restaurants were comparatively scarce, so it was ironic that the leading proponents of Japanese cuisine should have been within such a short distance of each other.
Consequently, the rivalry was keen.“
During my 2nd year in New York I played the piano in a Japanese roadhouse in the town of Harmon-on-the-Hudson, where I shared sleeping quarters with 20 or 30 Japanese waiters in the cellar. . . .
Mikado Inn, built around 1920 by “Admiral” George T. Moto. A year before the crash Moto was acquitted “after five minutes deliberation” in what newspaper accounts at the time called the first case to be tried in Westchester County for an alleged violation of the New York State liquor law.11
The upright piano on which I played had a horizontal string across it, on which hung a one-dollar bill—a not too subtle hint for tips, which were mostly forthcoming as the evening progressed and the clientele grew boisterous and drunk.
… For dinner we played concert music.
The proprietor, a rotund, jovial Japanese whom we addressed as Admiral Moto, was completely dominated by his forbidding Irish wife, a tall, dictatorial and quite respectable woman.
Every Saturday night Admiral Moto would get loaded . …
There was great activity in the vast kitchen where the chef was a twenty-year-old Italian boy from nearby Croton.
He had achieved his Oriental culinary skill under the tutelage of his predecessor, a Japanese chef who had left after a fight with Admiral Moto.
This was an interesting anomaly: an Italian chef running a kitchen which served only sukiyaki.”
Admiral Moto’s “forbidding” wife saved his life—”grapples with attempted murderer [and] . . . chokes him into unconsciousness.”
The New York Times New York, New York 15 Sep 1922, Fri • Page 9
Years later she’s named in a New York Times article on the case against an ex-detective who is “vague on $99,240 in deposits” collected from “speakeasies” when he was a “plain-clothes man in the Eighth Inspection District in the Bronx.”
In 1925, Brunswick Records decided to make a recording of the Rhapsody in Blue, but on the day of the session the soloist failed to turn up.
Oscar stepped in and became the 2nd piano part for George’s latest compositions and the 1st pianist to record the Rhapsody after Gershwin himself .
In January 1924, Gershwin reportedly learned from a newspaper article that he was meant to be writing a ‘jazz concerto’ for a programme of new American music to be given by the popular dance band leader Paul Whiteman a month later. Rhapsody in Blue, written at manic pace, Gershwin composed a two piano version, which was then orchestrated by Whiteman’s arranger, with Gershwin as soloist, was a triumph and today it is hailed as a landmark in American music.
Gershwin began his career as a song plugger in New York’s Tin Pan Alley. To earn extra, he also worked as a rehearsal pianist for Broadway singers.
It was not surprising Levant and Gershwin would later strike up a friendship.
They came from similar backgrounds.
Also, most people would agree if George Gershwin had an alter-ego it would be Oscar Levant.
Levant was born of immigrant Jewish parents and raised in Pittsburgh, while Gershwin was an immigrant boy raised on New York’s Lower East Side.
Levant knew that Gershwin could never change what he was,
Still, Gershwin astutely understood he would have quicker success if he cast off his background, affecting an upper-class bearing, but that was little comfort to a man who remained trapped in the insecurities of his own immigrant background.
Levant, on the other hand, remained the rumpled sidekick with the European accent.
George Gershwin
Throughout his life, Levant was incapable of moving out of Gershwin’s shadow, a fact that caused him considerable frustration and fed his neuroses.
Levant used to say their relationship of a love-hate dependence on both sides, established 2 characteristics he nurtured all his life: jealousy and revenge.
His association with Gershwin was a blend of envy and hero worship; though they had a deep mutual regard for one another that thrived on competitiveness.
Both were successful (though Levant only produced one breakout song, Blame It On My Youth), but they had one particularly prickly exchange at a party, with Gershwin definitely coming out the winner:
Levant: “George, if you had to do it all over, would you still fall in love with yourself?”
Gershwin: “Oscar, why don’t you play us a medley of your hit?”
The sheet music ‘All Dressed Up and No Place To Go’ is published by Chappell circa 1925 in New York City. (Photo by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)
In 1926, he toured London in cabaret, then in 1928 Levant traveled to Hollywood, where his career took a turn for the better.
He earned several roles in major films at a time when the Hollywood musicals reigned supreme.
Radio personality Oscar Levant attending a party celebrating the anniversary of his show Information Please. (Photo by Ralph Morse/Pix Inc./The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images)
In just 20 years, 1929-1948, he would go on to compose the music for more than 20 movies.
Night Parade (1929) Ann Pennington , Oscar Levant
Oscar Levant “Dick Rayburn” Costume A Designed By Edith Head made for Kiss The Boys Goodbye.
Having been the pianist in the Broadway show ‘Burlesque’, he was also in its movie ‘The Dance of Life’ in 1929.
In 1930, Levant wrote “Lady, Play Your Mandolin!” a Latin-inflected melody which inspired the first Warner Brothers, Merrie Melodies cartoon and co-composed the music for ‘Ripples’ plus wrote the lyrics for the musical revue ‘Sweet and Low’.
He also wrote many popular songs, often with one-time Gershwin collaborator Irving Caesar, and several film scores.
In the early ’30s, Oscar studied composition with Joseph Schillinger and was ranked alongside Charles Ives and Henry Cowell in new music circles.
His work included two Sonatinas for piano, two string quartets, orchestral pieces: ‘Nocturne’, ‘Caprice’ and ‘Dirge’ in memory of Gershwin.
In 1932 Oscar married Barbara Wooddell, a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl.
Walter Winchell wrote in his newspaper column,
“Barbara, who is lovely and nice, is marrying Oscar Levant, who isn’t.”
Oscar and Barbara were divorced less than 9 months after getting married.
Oscar said later that,
“Besides incompatibility, we hated each other.”
He also wrote classical music; Levant’s “Sonatina for Piano” which intrigued the composer Aaron Copland, who invited Levant to give its world premiere at a 1932 festival for contemporary American music.
Back in Hollywood, he evidently wrote a parody of French opera, Le Crayon est sur la table.
In Levant’s description, it was written “using all the Debussy clichés from Pelléas – the descending fourth in the voice parts, the parallel seventh chords, and the interrogatory ‘Pour-quoi?'” No written trace of this opera has survived.
His rueful jazz standard “Blame it on my Youth” (1934) was performed by Carmen McRae, Chet Baker, and Nat King Cole.
Not content with keyboard mastery, Levant also studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg in California from 1935 to 1937.
In October 1936, Levant’s ‘opera’ appeared within the 20th Century Fox film Charlie Chan At The Opera, and stars Boris Karloff and series regular Warner Oland.
The opera attended in the film was called Carnaval, and many music cues have survived
. The clichéd libretto was written by William Kernell, and then translated into Italian for authenticity’s sake.
Levant’s “Wacky Dust,” a 1938 cautionary ode to cocaine, was recorded by Ella Fitzgerald.
After Gershwin’s death an admirer with musical aspirations wrote an elegy for him and took it to Oscar Levant.
Levant reluctantly agreed to hear the piece. After the man had finished playing it, he turned to Levant, looking for his approval.
“I think,” said Levant, “it would have been better if you had died and Gershwin had written the elegy.”
It was after Gershwin’s untimely death at age 38, that Levant the premier interpreter of George Gershwin’s concert works.
It also made him one of the highest-paid artists in America.
Levant made a national reputation as a brash, brilliant “expert” , in 1938, after an article in the New York Post declared Oscar to be “the wag of Broadway”, and gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen devoted a New York Journal piece to “Town Wit – Oscar Levant”, the producers of a new radio show called “Information, Please!” hired Oscar to appear as a guest.
Levant ,John Kieran , Clifton Fadiman ,and Franklin P. Adams, Information Please
The response to Oscar’s spontaneous wit during this program that challenged “experts” to answer questions sent in by listeners was so phenomenal that he was immediately hired to be one of the show’s four regulars.
Due to the success of this show, his concert career began to take off at last.
Although Oscar did not exclude George from his satiric remarks, his real feeling for George was “undiluted idolatry”.
To the question of whether Gershwin’s music would still be played in fifty years’ time, he reportedly replied :
“If he’s still alive it will be.”
In the film biography Rhapsody in Blue he literally played himself: Oscar Levant, best friend to George Gershwin, a role he knew all too well.
Rhapsody In Blue, US lobbycard, from left: Robert Alda, Oscar Levant, 1945. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Rhapsody in Blue (1945)“I played an unsympathetic part — myself.” — Oscar Levant
He made his debut as a Broadway conductor in 1938 and served in 65 performances of Kaufman and Hart’s ‘The Fabulous Invalid’, which was followed by another Kaufman and Hart production ‘The American Way’ in 1939.
Levant stretched his talents to include authorship when he wrote A Smattering of Ignorance in 1940.
In it’s brief introduction S. N. Behrman attempted to sum up Oscar Levant with two anecdotes.
The first: Oscar declares a mutual acquaintance “agreeable and intelligent.” But wasn’t that fellow a particular object of Oscar’s antipathy? Oscar replies: “Well, you know I hate ’em till they say hello to me.”
The second: Fired from a radio job, a “shambling Mercutio,” Oscar is effusively greeted by a young acquaintance but flees abruptly. “That’s my protégé,” he says. “When I’ve just been fired, […] I don’t feel like being a patron!”
“I never read bad reviews about myself, because my friends invariably tell me about them.” — Oscar Levant
Behrman observes “a hard-bitten integrity in Oscar which if it does not spare his friends, does not spare himself either.”
His stories cherish Levant’s lurking humanity and also point to a public community of erudition that no longer exists.
Humoresque 1946, Joan Crawford , Oscar Levant
The rest of the decade saw him acting in several movies including Rhythm on the River (1940) .Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1941) ,Humoresque (1946) Romance on the High Seas (1948 )You Were Meant for Me’ (1948), and ‘The Barkleys of Broadway’ (1949).
Romance on the High Seas (1948) Doris Day and Oscar Levant Doris Day’s first picture
In 1949, he also finally made his Carnegie Hall debut, playing Gershwin and other composers with Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic. “His singing tone is melting and beautiful … he could go far as a virtuoso,” wrote Olin Downes, the renowned New York Times music critic.
Fred Astaire and Oscar Levant with crew on the set of The Barkleys of Broadway, 1948
He made regular appearances on NBC radio’s ‘Kraft Music Hall’ which also featured Al Jolson from 1947 to 1949. He performed his popular songs and cracked jokes with Al and the guests.
He worked with conductors such as Fritz Reiner, Pierre Monteux, Arturo Toscanini, Erich Leinsdorf, Eugene Ormandy and, on one occasion at the Hollywood Bowl, with a young conductor called Leonard Bernstein.
This was one of Oscar’s less successful collaborations (he called it “a marriage of egomaniacs.”)
Levant’s intimates were a vividly star-studded panorama of an era:
George and Ira Gershwin, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Becall, Charlie Chaplin, Dorothy Parker, Arturo Toscanini, Candice Bergen, Joan Collins, Vincente Minnelli, Harpo Marx, Gene Kelly – all tolerant victims of Levant’s rapier wit .
He appeared in 13 films, usually as a best friend/ “Oscar Levant” type, where his sardonic wit played well against the hero.
Levant and Bing Crosby
He was always cast to type and audiences identified him with objects such as smoldering ashtrays and full coffee cups.
An American in Paris’ 1951 Gene Kelley , Oscar Levant
He played Gene Kelly’s sidekick in An American in Paris.
In this he played a concert pianist just like Oscar Levant and got the chance to sing with Gene Kelly as well as play all the instruments and conduct the last movement of the Gershwin Piano Concerto.
In true Levant style, he also applauded enthusiastically at the end from his seat in the box, as Levant the pianist and Levant the conductor took their bows together.
Levant was always open about his neuroses and hypochondria.
Nanette Fabray,Fred Astaire, Nanette Fabray, and Oscar Levant :The Band Wagon
The 1920s and 1930s wit Alexander Woollcott, once said of him: “There isn’t anything the matter with Levant that a few miracles wouldn’t cure.”
After a heart attack, Levant fell prey to hypochondria, drug dependency and clinical depression.
The same year, he played a lovable hypochondriac in The Band Wagon, 1952
He would act in the films,O. Henry’s Full House (1952) The I Don’t Care Girl (1953), and The Cobweb (1955)
On December 1, 1939 Levant married his second wife, June.
June accompanied him when he was invited to play for President Truman at the White House.
She exaggerated a little about the first five years of their often stormy marriage, claiming to have uttered only two words: “I’m leaving.”
But the quip fits the context of their relationship.
The marriage was often explosive and the couple frequently found their private lives the topic of newspaper articles.
The couple had had three daughters Marcia Ann, Lorna, and Amanda.
(Levant’s wife, June, and his oldest eldest daughter, Marcia, are both now deceased.)
For his two surviving children, Amanda Carmel and Lorna Clements, Levant’s recently re-released recordings are a gratifying reminder of his musical genius, but also prompt thoughts about his legacy and the troubles that haunted their family as his mental condition worsened.
“My sister and I agree that the more famous my dad became, with movies and TV and books and appearances, the less his musical gift was known,” said Carmel, who lives in Los Angeles and went on to a career in TV production.
“All of that other stuff eclipsed the thing he really cared about, the gift that really made him who he was.”
“He was a very sensitive person, for all his problems. Once sent me a copy of the score to Parsifal, and wrote in the inscription, ‘For Lorna, the jewel in my diadem. Love, Daddy.’
Clements, who lives in upstate New York and worked in public relations at Julliard, said the box set recalls the many hours her father would spend at his piano, behind closed doors in the den of their North Roxbury Drive home.
“We always knew when his practice was coming to an end,” she said.
“We’d be playing in the house after school and the signal that the practice session was ending was when he hit the last notes of the Chopin Etude in C Sharp Minor
We’d run for cover when we heard it.”
It was in 1952, when faced with an immense concert schedule, playing six different concertos on tour as well as giving recitals and appearing in films, that he had a heart attack.
Kino. Vorhang Auf, Band Wagon, The, Vorhang Auf, Band Wagon, The, Nanette Fabray, Oscar Levant Das New Yorker Ehepaar Lily (Nanette Fabray) und Lester Marton (Oscar Levant) schreibt fuer den gemeinsamen alten Freund Tony Hunter ein Musical. , 1953. (Photo by FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images)
Just 6 weeks after his heart attack Levant filmed the strenuous “That’s Entertainment ” secne in The Bandwagon.
Jack Buchanan , Nanette Fabray, Fred Astaire , Oscar Levant
Already hobbled by complex superstitions meant to ward off the terrors of performing, Levant was almost destroyed by his addictions.
Oscar Levant playing the piano as Mitzi Gaynor dances in a scene from the film ‘I Don’t Care Girl’, 1953. (Photo by 20th Century-Fox/Getty Images)
As Levant walked onstage at the Hollywood Bowl for his final concert, he was battling drug addiction, manic depression and stage fright.
There were questions about whether he’d be able to finish the performance.
Fortified by a backstage injection of Demerol, he got through Gershwin’s “Concerto in F” and won a standing ovation.
He then entered the hospital a short time later.
Then he had to forget any dreams of continuing his concert career, as his earlier shock treatments resulted in a severe memory loss and his career began to fade.
For the next 10 years, he was in and out of psychiatric hospitals, fighting a battle against drug addiction and his own neuroses.
Star-Gazette Elmira, New York Thu, Feb 25, 1954 · Page 1 “I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on.”
However things soon changed when television in its infancy needed an experienced Levant.
He was chosen to host a talk show in an era of live free-wheeling broadcasts.
He was impatient first producer (at channel 13) was local sports announcer Cleve Hermann.
. One afternoon he was at Levant’s home, planning the first week’s show. The phone began to ring.
And ring, and ring and ring.
Cleve said he asked him, “Do you want me to get that, Oscar?”
The reply: “No, who would want to talk to you?”
Cleve lasted two weeks with Oscar.
Though considered a pill-popping actor, concert pianist, composer and wit, he was given a talk show by courageous KCOP-TV Channel 13 in 1958.
Still no one could be sure what Levant would do or say.
Neither pacing nor concision were encouraged, but rather, an intimate live audience adored unadulterated Levant at his Steinway with wife, June Gale, by his side .
Levant’s antics often got him into trouble.
According to a Los Angeles Times article, “On any night, [Levant] might walk off in the middle of the program (if he had even bothered to show up) ,Or smash a sponsor’s product on the stage, Or direct insults at spectators.
Arguments with wives, on and off the air, occasionally broke out – and only occasionally featured firearms.
Once, newspaper columnist Roger Grace recalled, Levant asked her to read letters from her fans on the air. As the praise poured out, the insecure Levant stormed off the stage, yelling at her on the way.
But as the program progressed, his show was often considered “must see TV” for everyone in Hollywood.
1956 – The Oscar Levant Show lost its sponsor and was canceled by KHJ-TV after Levant made a series of jokes about Vice President Richard Nixon.
Lauren Bacall, John Kerr, Levant
As his bouts with depression progressed, he turned them into strengths with biting commentary about himself, drawing out his lack of self-confidence for the world to see.
“Self-pity – it’s the only pity that counts.” — Oscar Levant
He even brought his own psychiatrist, Dr. George Wayne, on the show from time to time.
Even though, June was integral part of the show,acting as a sort of “straight man” to Levant‘s frothy banter, and as an 18 yr veteran of an embattled marriage, she as caught off guard in July 1958.
According to her she was willing to forget their latest domestic spat until she saw a Thursday paper, where Levant charged she physically abused him and threatened him with scissors.
After their very public fight and his accusations led her to leave her co-host role on The Oscar Levant Show, she begin her own show.
Just as Edgy and unhinged, returned to air, however, his outrageous statements about politicians and celebrities proved too shocking for MGM.
“Once he makes up his mind, he’s full of indecision. – On Dwight D. Eisenhower”
“A politician is a man who will double cross that bridge when he comes to it.”
“The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.”
He was a brilliant, rumpled, chain-smoking man who coinded the name ” Tinseltown” for Hollywood. His stinging one-liners about showbiz would still make him a social media star today.
“strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you’ll find the real tinsel underneath”
Levant enjoyed throwing barbs at other celebrities
” I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin.”
“Elizabeth Taylor should divorce and settle down.”
“When I can’t sleep, I read a book by Steve Allen.”
“Harpo, she’s a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one.”
And even hosts…
‘The Jerry Lewis Show,’ he said,“has all the suspense of a Hitchcock thriller — the suspense of wondering when the first laugh will come.”
His wit was notorious and, while he frequently used it against others, he more often used it against himself.
Ginger Rogers Oscar Levant
Mitzi Gaynor and Oscar Levant
Though , Oscar wasn’t exactly anyone’s idea of handsome, he had a “something”,( no one could figure out exactly what ), some odd kind of charisma or tidal force that dragged people into his sphere of influence and wouldn’t let them go.
He would come up to women and drape his arm around them and murmur to them in that distinctive low tough-guy voice, and they’d melt.
These weren’t necessarily affairs according to him , but rather Levant experiments to see how far he could get: and he often got pretty far.
He was the inspiration for the neurotic, womanizing pianist “Henry Orient” in Nora Johnson’s novel and subsequent Hollywood film The World of Henry Orient (1964)
Levant’s dedication in The Memoirs of an Amnesia was, To my wife June who picked up the pieces.
Though they had marital problems that racked their life together, Levant’s wife of 33 years remained with him until his death.
Although Levant had the potential for becoming a success in this new medium, his increasing episodes of depression took their toll on his career.
He recognized the affect his addictions had on his health and checked himself into Mt. Sinai Hospital each day after his show, but with little or no positive effects.
Al Burton was Levant’s next (and final) producer. By this time, Oscar was self-committed to the psych ward at what today is Cedars Sinai.
Burton tells the story of how on the night of each show, he’d sign Oscar out of the ward, take him to KCOP to do the show, and then drive him back to the hospital and check him back in.
It was as a patient on the Cedars-Sinai psychiatric ward that Dr. Lionel Margolin, then a resident, encountered him.
“Even at his lowest moments, he had a wit that wouldn’t stop,” says Margolin, now a practicing psychoanalyst. ”
It was Levant’s ability to scrutinize the system and offer his own sharp insight into a patient’s hospital experience that benefited the staff so much, he recalled.
“We all got into the habit of listening to him,” he says, “as the inmate uttering words of sanity.”
Oscar Levant who was taken off the air twice for making comments about Marilyn Monroe and Mae West.
The week Authur Miller and Marylin Monroe got married by a Rabbi he said, “Now that Marilyn Monroe has converted to Judaism, Arthur Miller can eat her!”
Later he said it was said in a subconscious rambling, stream – of – consciousness type way and didn’t mean it that way.
But unrestrained witticisms had gotten him in trouble before on the air, therefore, the network decided to add a safety net by taping the syndicated “Oscar Levant Show,” to enable the engineers to weed out the outrageous.
Probably aware that his shocking off-the-cuff opinions were the very reason viewers tuned in from 1958 — 1960 to his 10 PM program.
Movie star Mae West was known as the “Queen of Sex, and “The Statue of Libido.”
She has been credited with doing more for the country than then U.S. President Calvin Coolidge did, with her 2nd highest salary in the country proving it.
Mae set new trends for women and lowered standards for men.
Of her extremist sexual image, West stated: This work helped to topple the Biblical sexual barriers that were still largely intact in the early twentieth century.
Bizarrely, in 1960 Mae West, also goes for Marilyn Monroe saying, ” I thought Marilyn Monroe was just fine in her first couple of pictures, and then someone told her to wiggle and waggle.
At the start she had a refreshing childlike innocence.
Oscar Levant’s scatological comments and controversial wisecracks about Mae West’s sex life got his talk show cancelled for good in 1960.
But he ignited the feud way back in 1958, when he said Mae West was too old to give advice on love.
West was not just a dabbler in the occult but was sold out lock stock and barrel.
Her first experience came when an occult healer was summoned to treat intense stomach pains.
Oscar riffed on Mae’s enema habits or speculate on her lovers and her bi-racial open-door policy.
“Zsa Zsa Gabor is busy again, doing social work among the rich!”; and “Mae West, of course, is a pro’s pro. Mae would never give it away!” — — and one final crack about Mae’s bed partners got the TV executives to pull the plug.
One individual claimed to recall a few of Oscar’s offensive one-liners: ;
Zsa Zsa has discovered the secret of perpetual middle age.
The only person who ever left the Iron Curtain wearing it. Oscar Levant (about Zsa Zsa Gabor)
She not only worships the golden calf, she barbecues it for lunch. Oscar Levant (about Zsa Zsa Gabor)
He once again began to fade from the public’s view, but his uncensored comments on The Jack Paar Show and on his own local Los Angeles talk show made national news .
Parr variously called Levant “a man for whom living is a sideline,” “my favorite far-outpatient,” and “one of America’s true geniuses.”
He also quipped: “He’s as nervous as he is clever — for every pearl that comes out of his mouth, a pill goes in.” He enjoined his audience to bear in mind that “appearing here is good for Oscar; he looks forward to it. He enjoys an audience’s warmth again. Just coming here is therapy for him.”
The object of these observations would sit slumped in a chair, his legs carelessly crossed to disclose a swath of flesh above the sock.
He smoked and grimaced helplessly and continuously. His discourse consisted entirely of impromptu one-liners, delivered offhandedly with occasional eye contact.
His thick features were saggy and sleep-deprived. That he was self-evidently a wreck of a man excited Paar’s interest and compassion in equal measure.
Levant said: “You know, the only reason I’m appearing here is there are no more beds in the mental institution.”
Informed that “we have a bunch of pills here,”…. he interrupted impatiently: “I took them, they’re nothing.”
Then in Jack Parr brought him onto “The Tonight Show.”
Levant talked openly and hilariously about his depression, his addiction, his shock treatments – the whole range of his neuroses.
That may be commonplace today, but in the late ’50s, it was a new phenomenon, edgy, and audiences were both shocked and titillated.
Here’s a clip from one of those appearances.
( From a Soundbite of “The Tonight Show“)
Mr. JACK PARR (Host): You’re going to be all right. Listen, you’re going to be swell.
We just keep moving around. What do you do for exercise?
Mr. OSCAR LEVANT: I stumble and then I fall into a coma.
(audience laughter and applause)
Mr. LEVANT: I really am suffering from amnesia, because I took shock treatments, and it reminds me I was – I came back from the hospital, and I was watching a television – an old picture with Ralph Richardson in where he’s suffering from amnesia. And my wife came in, my wonderful wife, she really is, and said what are you watching? I said there’s a movie with Ralph Richardson in it about amnesia. He’s suffering from amnesia. I want to see how it turns out. She said but you saw it last week.
(audience laughter)
Mr. LEVANT: So consequently, I’ve been devoting my time to writing a book called “Memoirs of a Man Suffering from Amnesia,” and I don’t have a page filled.
( audience laughter)
Mr. LEVANT: There was one patient who was euphoric, and we were having lunch at an awful place, and he said what do you want, lemon juice or orange juice? He said what’s the difference?
( audience laughter)
Mr. LEVANT: You know, when you’re suffering from deep depression, you cannot make a decision. I first had deep apathy, then relapsed into deep depression. Gee, how I long for those deep apathy days.
( audience laughter)
For the next 6 years the composer appeared with regularity, amusing viewers with his neurotic satire.
Levant both shocked and intrigued viewers with his open discussions about his neuroses and his addiction to painkillers.
He released his Memoirs of an Amnesiac in 1965, and The Unimportance of Being Oscar in 1968.
He contributed to such magazines as Good Housekeeping, Harper’s, Town & Country, and Vogue.
Regardless of his many talents and throughout his multi-faceted career, Levant never stayed with one thing long enough to build his reputation beyond that of second string.
“It’s not what you are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.” — Oscar Levant
His death, at the age of 65, left the entertainment community shocked – largely with amazement that a four-pack-a-day smoker with a history of drug abuse and mental illness had lasted as long as he did.
While his illnesses became more apparent with each appearance as his speech slowed, his wit remained as sharp as ever.
His openness about his illnesses was unheard of during these early years of television and Paar was severely criticized for allowing Levant to appear when his deteriorating mental condition seemed at its worst.
However, Levant’s self-deprecating comments seemed to endear him to the public.
He spoke at a time when others hid their problems or those of their families, and his frank approach to his addictions and illnesses was curious, amusing, and often sad.
“I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.”
Fans could view their own problems through his eyes, a means of avoiding the essential confrontation at home.
“Schizophrenia beats dining alone.”
“Happiness isn’t something you experience; it’s something you remember.”
In her biographyA Talent for Genius, co-author Nancy Schoenberger described Levant as “the first public dysfunctional celebrity … that shocked and also amused because Oscar was funny when he talked about … group therapy.”
Schoenberger repeats Levant’s satiric reference to a group trip to Disneyland:
“To hell with Disneyland. I have my own hallucinations.”
Life then sent Bergen to Walter and Carol Matthau’s house in the Pacific Palisades to photograph a fabulous garden party the Matthaus were throwing for Chaplin’s return.
She was the only photographer invited.
“Everybody came—Groucho Marx, Cary Grant, the Henry Fondas, William Wyler, Rosalind Russell, Danny Kaye,” she recalls.
Fort Lauderdale News Fort Lauderdale, Florida 06 Jul 1962, Fri • Page 3
While there, Bergen stumbled upon a scowling Oscar Levant, the celebrated pianist and wit, seated in a rocking chair among the hyacinths and wearing “a black, three-piece, New York suit and black, shiny wing-tip shoes.
Everybody else was in their L.A., open-collar pastel.”
She asked him if she could take his picture, and if she could do a piece on him for Esquire.
Bergen spent about two hours interviewing him at home on North Roxbury Drive.
On August 14, 1972, Levant, a man who spoke openly about the devils that plagued him, died peacefully.
For a return visit, she called him and asked, “Oscar, is three-o’clock still O.K.?” He said, “No, no, that’s too late.
“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ― Oscar Levant
You come over right now.”
By the time she arrived, he was dead.
It was the first dead person she had ever seen.
He was buried in Westwood Memorial Park, West Los Angeles, California.
In citing an old joke, comics tell an apocryphal story about Levant: that his epitaph reads,
“I told them I was ill.”
A man who never got beyond the shadow of his best friend during his lifetime, may well have taken that very step with the legacy he left behind.
He would have enjoyed that irony.
Sources: Oscar Levant. A Smattering of Ignorance. New York: Garden City, 1940. Oscar Levant. The Memoirs of an Amnesiac. New York: Putnam, 1965. Oscar Levant. The Unimportance of Being Oscar. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968. The Times (GB) August 16 1972, pg. 12:8, “Oscar Levant” Variety (US) August 16 1972, pg. 63:1, “Oscar Levant” New York Times (US) August 15 1972, pg. 38:1, “Oscar Levant, Wit and Pianist, Is ‘Dead” Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger. A Talent for Genius: the life and times of Oscar Levant. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1998. Harvey, Steve. Local Talk-show Hosts’ Barbs, Onstage and Off, Hooked Viewers.Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 24 Jan. 2010. Web. 29 Feb. 2012. http://maewest.blogspot.com/2011/12/mae-west-oscar-levant.html
Kashner, S., & Schoenberger, N. (1998). A talent for genius: The life and times of Oscar Levant. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press.
Hollywood’s First Celebrity Meltdown: Oscar Levant
Oscar Levant was the Amadeus of Hollywood, the Oscar Wilde of Broadway , the L’enfant terrible who almost single-handedly added the word “neurotic” to American vocabulary, and the most wildly self-destructive personality ever to become a household name.
An astonishingly gifted concert pianist, composer, film and stage presence, radio and television raconteur, insult wit, and bestselling author,zinging some of America’s best-loved celebrities with classic one-liners
Christopher Isherwood once compared Oscar Levant to a character out of Dostoyevsky: “completely unmasked at all times.”
Levant was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on December 27, 1906 to Rabbi Max and Annie Levant, Orthodox Russian Jews.
His first piano teacher was his brother Ben, with whom he played Beethoven Symphonies for four hands at the piano.
His talent with music was recognized early in his life, but he was a troublesome child to his music teachers and his parents, displaying a constant aversion to people who represented authority.
His father, a demanding parent, insisted that all of his sons receive musical training and perform at family recitals, exactly as he commanded.
His father was meticulous in dictating what each boy would play, and how each piece should be performed.
In one instance, Levant rebelled, performing a piece of his own choice as an encore.
His father’s anger resulted in a humiliating slap in the face, and the beginning of his life-long loathing of authority figures.
A fortuitous event for Levant, he first heard the music of George Gershwin at the age of 12 and fell in love with it.
He was soon inspired to compose his own music.
After studying with Martin Miessler, a pupil of the Leipzig Conservatory who specialized in Czerny piano method.
Then he studied with Sigismund Stojowski, a pupil of Paderewski.
He recalls a lesson where he told his teacher,
“I think I’ll play Debussy’s Reflets dans L’Eau, or Poissons d’Or.
To which Stokowski, after looking at him intently for a moment, responded,
“Your piano playing has not improved, but your French has.”
Levant’s formal education concluded at the age of 15 when his father died and he moved to New York in order to find the freedom to pursue his music in his own way.
“I’m a concert pianist, that’s a pretentious way of saying I’m unemployed at the moment.”
It was 1921, the Great Depression was still a song away, and Broadway was thriving, although trained in classical music, Levant quickly picked up current musical trends and played them to his advantage.
He was quick to find work in the Prohibition nightclubs and speakeasies of New York and before Levant became a regular at Lindy’s, one of the more popular city nightspots.
His satiric wit and skills at the keyboard soon became fodder for gossip columnists such as Walter Winchell, who recognized the value of Levant’s caustic remarks.
Oscar Levant, had his first “extended engagement” at the Mikado Inn in 1922.
In his 1965 book, The Memoirs of an Amnesiac, Levant wrote about those days, which must have been quite an experience for a young man who was then just 16 years old.
A three-piece orchestra played on weekends but during the week, it was just the piano and violin.
We alternated between classical and popular music.
The place was called Mikado Inn. The rival restaurant . . . was the Nikko Inn.
Japanese restaurants were comparatively scarce, so it was ironic that the leading proponents of Japanese cuisine should have been within such a short distance of each other.
Consequently, the rivalry was keen.“
During my 2nd year in New York I played the piano in a Japanese roadhouse in the town of Harmon-on-the-Hudson, where I shared sleeping quarters with 20 or 30 Japanese waiters in the cellar. . . .
The upright piano on which I played had a horizontal string across it, on which hung a one-dollar bill—a not too subtle hint for tips, which were mostly forthcoming as the evening progressed and the clientele grew boisterous and drunk.
… For dinner we played concert music.
The proprietor, a rotund, jovial Japanese whom we addressed as Admiral Moto, was completely dominated by his forbidding Irish wife, a tall, dictatorial and quite respectable woman.
Every Saturday night Admiral Moto would get loaded . …
There was great activity in the vast kitchen where the chef was a twenty-year-old Italian boy from nearby Croton.
He had achieved his Oriental culinary skill under the tutelage of his predecessor, a Japanese chef who had left after a fight with Admiral Moto.
This was an interesting anomaly: an Italian chef running a kitchen which served only sukiyaki.”
Admiral Moto’s “forbidding” wife saved his life—”grapples with attempted murderer [and] . . . chokes him into unconsciousness.”
Years later she’s named in a New York Times article on the case against an ex-detective who is “vague on $99,240 in deposits” collected from “speakeasies” when he was a “plain-clothes man in the Eighth Inspection District in the Bronx.”
In 1925, Brunswick Records decided to make a recording of the Rhapsody in Blue, but on the day of the session the soloist failed to turn up.
Oscar stepped in and became the 2nd piano part for George’s latest compositions and the 1st pianist to record the Rhapsody after Gershwin himself .
It was not surprising Levant and Gershwin would later strike up a friendship.
They came from similar backgrounds.
Also, most people would agree if George Gershwin had an alter-ego it would be Oscar Levant.
Levant was born of immigrant Jewish parents and raised in Pittsburgh, while Gershwin was an immigrant boy raised on New York’s Lower East Side.
Levant knew that Gershwin could never change what he was,
Still, Gershwin astutely understood he would have quicker success if he cast off his background, affecting an upper-class bearing, but that was little comfort to a man who remained trapped in the insecurities of his own immigrant background.
Levant, on the other hand, remained the rumpled sidekick with the European accent.
Throughout his life, Levant was incapable of moving out of Gershwin’s shadow, a fact that caused him considerable frustration and fed his neuroses.
Levant used to say their relationship of a love-hate dependence on both sides, established 2 characteristics he nurtured all his life: jealousy and revenge.
His association with Gershwin was a blend of envy and hero worship; though they had a deep mutual regard for one another that thrived on competitiveness.
Both were successful (though Levant only produced one breakout song, Blame It On My Youth), but they had one particularly prickly exchange at a party, with Gershwin definitely coming out the winner:
Levant: “George, if you had to do it all over, would you still fall in love with yourself?”
Gershwin: “Oscar, why don’t you play us a medley of your hit?”
In 1926, he toured London in cabaret, then in 1928 Levant traveled to Hollywood, where his career took a turn for the better.
He earned several roles in major films at a time when the Hollywood musicals reigned supreme.
In just 20 years, 1929-1948, he would go on to compose the music for more than 20 movies.
Having been the pianist in the Broadway show ‘Burlesque’, he was also in its movie ‘The Dance of Life’ in 1929.
In 1930, Levant wrote “Lady, Play Your Mandolin!” a Latin-inflected melody which inspired the first Warner Brothers, Merrie Melodies cartoon and co-composed the music for ‘Ripples’ plus wrote the lyrics for the musical revue ‘Sweet and Low’.
He also wrote many popular songs, often with one-time Gershwin collaborator Irving Caesar, and several film scores.
In the early ’30s, Oscar studied composition with Joseph Schillinger and was ranked alongside Charles Ives and Henry Cowell in new music circles.
His work included two Sonatinas for piano, two string quartets, orchestral pieces: ‘Nocturne’, ‘Caprice’ and ‘Dirge’ in memory of Gershwin.
In 1932 Oscar married Barbara Wooddell, a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl.
Walter Winchell wrote in his newspaper column,
Oscar and Barbara were divorced less than 9 months after getting married.
Oscar said later that,
“Besides incompatibility, we hated each other.”
He also wrote classical music; Levant’s “Sonatina for Piano” which intrigued the composer Aaron Copland, who invited Levant to give its world premiere at a 1932 festival for contemporary American music.
Back in Hollywood, he evidently wrote a parody of French opera, Le Crayon est sur la table.
In Levant’s description, it was written “using all the Debussy clichés from Pelléas – the descending fourth in the voice parts, the parallel seventh chords, and the interrogatory ‘Pour-quoi?'” No written trace of this opera has survived.
His rueful jazz standard “Blame it on my Youth” (1934) was performed by Carmen McRae, Chet Baker, and Nat King Cole.
Not content with keyboard mastery, Levant also studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg in California from 1935 to 1937.
In October 1936, Levant’s ‘opera’ appeared within the 20th Century Fox film Charlie Chan At The Opera, and stars Boris Karloff and series regular Warner Oland.
The opera attended in the film was called Carnaval, and many music cues have survived
. The clichéd libretto was written by William Kernell, and then translated into Italian for authenticity’s sake.
Levant’s “Wacky Dust,” a 1938 cautionary ode to cocaine, was recorded by Ella Fitzgerald.
After Gershwin’s death an admirer with musical aspirations wrote an elegy for him and took it to Oscar Levant.
Levant reluctantly agreed to hear the piece. After the man had finished playing it, he turned to Levant, looking for his approval.
“I think,” said Levant, “it would have been better if you had died and Gershwin had written the elegy.”
It was after Gershwin’s untimely death at age 38, that Levant the premier interpreter of George Gershwin’s concert works.
It also made him one of the highest-paid artists in America.
Levant made a national reputation as a brash, brilliant “expert” , in 1938, after an article in the New York Post declared Oscar to be “the wag of Broadway”, and gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen devoted a New York Journal piece to “Town Wit – Oscar Levant”, the producers of a new radio show called “Information, Please!” hired Oscar to appear as a guest.
The response to Oscar’s spontaneous wit during this program that challenged “experts” to answer questions sent in by listeners was so phenomenal that he was immediately hired to be one of the show’s four regulars.
Due to the success of this show, his concert career began to take off at last.
Although Oscar did not exclude George from his satiric remarks, his real feeling for George was “undiluted idolatry”.
To the question of whether Gershwin’s music would still be played in fifty years’ time, he reportedly replied :
“If he’s still alive it will be.”
In the film biography Rhapsody in Blue he literally played himself: Oscar Levant, best friend to George Gershwin, a role he knew all too well.
Rhapsody in Blue (1945)“I played an unsympathetic part — myself.”
— Oscar Levant
He made his debut as a Broadway conductor in 1938 and served in 65 performances of Kaufman and Hart’s ‘The Fabulous Invalid’, which was followed by another Kaufman and Hart production ‘The American Way’ in 1939.
Levant stretched his talents to include authorship when he wrote A Smattering of Ignorance in 1940.
In it’s brief introduction S. N. Behrman attempted to sum up Oscar Levant with two anecdotes.
The first: Oscar declares a mutual acquaintance “agreeable and intelligent.” But wasn’t that fellow a particular object of Oscar’s antipathy? Oscar replies: “Well, you know I hate ’em till they say hello to me.”
The second: Fired from a radio job, a “shambling Mercutio,” Oscar is effusively greeted by a young acquaintance but flees abruptly. “That’s my protégé,” he says. “When I’ve just been fired, […] I don’t feel like being a patron!”
Behrman observes “a hard-bitten integrity in Oscar which if it does not spare his friends, does not spare himself either.”
His stories cherish Levant’s lurking humanity and also point to a public community of erudition that no longer exists.
The rest of the decade saw him acting in several movies including Rhythm on the River (1940) .Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1941) ,Humoresque (1946) Romance on the High Seas (1948 )You Were Meant for Me’ (1948), and ‘The Barkleys of Broadway’ (1949).
In 1949, he also finally made his Carnegie Hall debut, playing Gershwin and other composers with Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic. “His singing tone is melting and beautiful … he could go far as a virtuoso,” wrote Olin Downes, the renowned New York Times music critic.
He made regular appearances on NBC radio’s ‘Kraft Music Hall’ which also featured Al Jolson from 1947 to 1949. He performed his popular songs and cracked jokes with Al and the guests.
He worked with conductors such as Fritz Reiner, Pierre Monteux, Arturo Toscanini, Erich Leinsdorf, Eugene Ormandy and, on one occasion at the Hollywood Bowl, with a young conductor called Leonard Bernstein.
This was one of Oscar’s less successful collaborations (he called it “a marriage of egomaniacs.”)
Levant’s intimates were a vividly star-studded panorama of an era:
George and Ira Gershwin, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Becall, Charlie Chaplin, Dorothy Parker, Arturo Toscanini, Candice Bergen, Joan Collins, Vincente Minnelli, Harpo Marx, Gene Kelly – all tolerant victims of Levant’s rapier wit .
He appeared in 13 films, usually as a best friend/ “Oscar Levant” type, where his sardonic wit played well against the hero.
He was always cast to type and audiences identified him with objects such as smoldering ashtrays and full coffee cups.
Gene Kelley , Oscar Levant
He played Gene Kelly’s sidekick in An American in Paris.
In this he played a concert pianist just like Oscar Levant and got the chance to sing with Gene Kelly as well as play all the instruments and conduct the last movement of the Gershwin Piano Concerto.
In true Levant style, he also applauded enthusiastically at the end from his seat in the box, as Levant the pianist and Levant the conductor took their bows together.
Levant was always open about his neuroses and hypochondria.
The 1920s and 1930s wit Alexander Woollcott, once said of him: “There isn’t anything the matter with Levant that a few miracles wouldn’t cure.”
After a heart attack, Levant fell prey to hypochondria, drug dependency and clinical depression.
The same year, he played a lovable hypochondriac in The Band Wagon, 1952
He would act in the films,O. Henry’s Full House (1952) The I Don’t Care Girl (1953), and The Cobweb (1955)
On December 1, 1939 Levant married his second wife, June.
June accompanied him when he was invited to play for President Truman at the White House.
She exaggerated a little about the first five years of their often stormy marriage, claiming to have uttered only two words: “I’m leaving.”
But the quip fits the context of their relationship.
The marriage was often explosive and the couple frequently found their private lives the topic of newspaper articles.
The couple had had three daughters Marcia Ann, Lorna, and Amanda.
(Levant’s wife, June, and his oldest eldest daughter, Marcia, are both now deceased.)
For his two surviving children, Amanda Carmel and Lorna Clements, Levant’s recently re-released recordings are a gratifying reminder of his musical genius, but also prompt thoughts about his legacy and the troubles that haunted their family as his mental condition worsened.
“My sister and I agree that the more famous my dad became, with movies and TV and books and appearances, the less his musical gift was known,” said Carmel, who lives in Los Angeles and went on to a career in TV production.
“All of that other stuff eclipsed the thing he really cared about, the gift that really made him who he was.”
“He was a very sensitive person, for all his problems. Once sent me a copy of the score to Parsifal, and wrote in the inscription, ‘For Lorna, the jewel in my diadem. Love, Daddy.’
Clements, who lives in upstate New York and worked in public relations at Julliard, said the box set recalls the many hours her father would spend at his piano, behind closed doors in the den of their North Roxbury Drive home.
It was in 1952, when faced with an immense concert schedule, playing six different concertos on tour as well as giving recitals and appearing in films, that he had a heart attack.
Just 6 weeks after his heart attack Levant filmed the strenuous “That’s Entertainment ” secne in The Bandwagon.
Already hobbled by complex superstitions meant to ward off the terrors of performing, Levant was almost destroyed by his addictions.
As Levant walked onstage at the Hollywood Bowl for his final concert, he was battling drug addiction, manic depression and stage fright.
There were questions about whether he’d be able to finish the performance.
Fortified by a backstage injection of Demerol, he got through Gershwin’s “Concerto in F” and won a standing ovation.
He then entered the hospital a short time later.
Then he had to forget any dreams of continuing his concert career, as his earlier shock treatments resulted in a severe memory loss and his career began to fade.
For the next 10 years, he was in and out of psychiatric hospitals, fighting a battle against drug addiction and his own neuroses.
Star-Gazette Elmira, New York Thu, Feb 25, 1954 · Page 1 “I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on.”
However things soon changed when television in its infancy needed an experienced Levant.
He was chosen to host a talk show in an era of live free-wheeling broadcasts.
He was impatient first producer (at channel 13) was local sports announcer Cleve Hermann.
. One afternoon he was at Levant’s home, planning the first week’s show. The phone began to ring.
And ring, and ring and ring.
Cleve said he asked him, “Do you want me to get that, Oscar?”
The reply: “No, who would want to talk to you?”
Cleve lasted two weeks with Oscar.
Though considered a pill-popping actor, concert pianist, composer and wit, he was given a talk show by courageous KCOP-TV Channel 13 in 1958.
Still no one could be sure what Levant would do or say.
Neither pacing nor concision were encouraged, but rather, an intimate live audience adored unadulterated Levant at his Steinway with wife, June Gale, by his side .
Levant’s antics often got him into trouble.
According to a Los Angeles Times article, “On any night, [Levant] might walk off in the middle of the program (if he had even bothered to show up) ,Or smash a sponsor’s product on the stage, Or direct insults at spectators.
Arguments with wives, on and off the air, occasionally broke out – and only occasionally featured firearms.
Once, newspaper columnist Roger Grace recalled, Levant asked her to read letters from her fans on the air.
As the praise poured out, the insecure Levant stormed off the stage, yelling at her on the way.
But as the program progressed, his show was often considered “must see TV” for everyone in Hollywood.
As his bouts with depression progressed, he turned them into strengths with biting commentary about himself, drawing out his lack of self-confidence for the world to see.
“Self-pity – it’s the only pity that counts.”
— Oscar Levant
He even brought his own psychiatrist, Dr. George Wayne, on the show from time to time.
Even though, June was integral part of the show,acting as a sort of “straight man” to Levant‘s frothy banter, and as an 18 yr veteran of an embattled marriage, she as caught off guard in July 1958.
According to her she was willing to forget their latest domestic spat until she saw a Thursday paper, where Levant charged she physically abused him and threatened him with scissors.
“strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you’ll find the real tinsel underneath”
” I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin.”
“Elizabeth Taylor should divorce and settle down.”
“When I can’t sleep, I read a book by Steve Allen.”
“Harpo, she’s a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one.”
‘The Jerry Lewis Show,’ he said,“has all the suspense of a Hitchcock thriller — the suspense of wondering when the first laugh will come.”
His wit was notorious and, while he frequently used it against others, he more often used it against himself.
Mitzi Gaynor and Oscar Levant
Though , Oscar wasn’t exactly anyone’s idea of handsome, he had a “something”,( no one could figure out exactly what ), some odd kind of charisma or tidal force that dragged people into his sphere of influence and wouldn’t let them go.
He would come up to women and drape his arm around them and murmur to them in that distinctive low tough-guy voice, and they’d melt.
These weren’t necessarily affairs according to him , but rather Levant experiments to see how far he could get: and he often got pretty far.
He was the inspiration for the neurotic, womanizing pianist “Henry Orient” in Nora Johnson’s novel and subsequent Hollywood film The World of Henry Orient (1964)
Levant’s dedication in The Memoirs of an Amnesia was, To my wife June who picked up the pieces.
Though they had marital problems that racked their life together, Levant’s wife of 33 years remained with him until his death.
Although Levant had the potential for becoming a success in this new medium, his increasing episodes of depression took their toll on his career.
He recognized the affect his addictions had on his health and checked himself into Mt. Sinai Hospital each day after his show, but with little or no positive effects.
Al Burton was Levant’s next (and final) producer. By this time, Oscar was self-committed to the psych ward at what today is Cedars Sinai.
Burton tells the story of how on the night of each show, he’d sign Oscar out of the ward, take him to KCOP to do the show, and then drive him back to the hospital and check him back in.
It was as a patient on the Cedars-Sinai psychiatric ward that Dr. Lionel Margolin, then a resident, encountered him.
“Even at his lowest moments, he had a wit that wouldn’t stop,” says Margolin, now a practicing psychoanalyst. ”
It was Levant’s ability to scrutinize the system and offer his own sharp insight into a patient’s hospital experience that benefited the staff so much, he recalled.
“We all got into the habit of listening to him,” he says, “as the inmate uttering words of sanity.”
Oscar Levant who was taken off the air twice for making comments about Marilyn Monroe and Mae West.
The week Authur Miller and Marylin Monroe got married by a Rabbi he said, “Now that Marilyn Monroe has converted to Judaism, Arthur Miller can eat her!”
Later he said it was said in a subconscious rambling, stream – of – consciousness type way and didn’t mean it that way.
But unrestrained witticisms had gotten him in trouble before on the air, therefore, the network decided to add a safety net by taping the syndicated “Oscar Levant Show,” to enable the engineers to weed out the outrageous.
Probably aware that his shocking off-the-cuff opinions were the very reason viewers tuned in from 1958 — 1960 to his 10 PM program.
Movie star Mae West was known as the “Queen of Sex, and “The Statue of Libido.”
She has been credited with doing more for the country than then U.S. President Calvin Coolidge did, with her 2nd highest salary in the country proving it.
Mae set new trends for women and lowered standards for men.
Of her extremist sexual image, West stated: This work helped to topple the Biblical sexual barriers that were still largely intact in the early twentieth century.
Bizarrely, in 1960 Mae West, also goes for Marilyn Monroe saying, ” I thought Marilyn Monroe was just fine in her first couple of pictures, and then someone told her to wiggle and waggle.
At the start she had a refreshing childlike innocence.
Oscar Levant’s scatological comments and controversial wisecracks about Mae West’s sex life got his talk show cancelled for good in 1960.
But he ignited the feud way back in 1958, when he said Mae West was too old to give advice on love.
West was not just a dabbler in the occult but was sold out lock stock and barrel.
Her first experience came when an occult healer was summoned to treat intense stomach pains.
Oscar riffed on Mae’s enema habits or speculate on her lovers and her bi-racial open-door policy.
“Zsa Zsa Gabor is busy again, doing social work among the rich!”; and “Mae West, of course, is a pro’s pro. Mae would never give it away!” — — and one final crack about Mae’s bed partners got the TV executives to pull the plug.
One individual claimed to recall a few of Oscar’s offensive one-liners: ;
Zsa Zsa has discovered the secret of perpetual middle age.
The only person who ever left the Iron Curtain wearing it. Oscar Levant (about Zsa Zsa Gabor)
She not only worships the golden calf, she barbecues it for lunch. Oscar Levant (about Zsa Zsa Gabor)
He once again began to fade from the public’s view, but his uncensored comments on The Jack Paar Show and on his own local Los Angeles talk show made national news .
Parr variously called Levant “a man for whom living is a sideline,” “my favorite far-outpatient,” and “one of America’s true geniuses.”
He also quipped: “He’s as nervous as he is clever — for every pearl that comes out of his mouth, a pill goes in.” He enjoined his audience to bear in mind that “appearing here is good for Oscar; he looks forward to it. He enjoys an audience’s warmth again. Just coming here is therapy for him.”
The object of these observations would sit slumped in a chair, his legs carelessly crossed to disclose a swath of flesh above the sock.
He smoked and grimaced helplessly and continuously. His discourse consisted entirely of impromptu one-liners, delivered offhandedly with occasional eye contact.
His thick features were saggy and sleep-deprived. That he was self-evidently a wreck of a man excited Paar’s interest and compassion in equal measure.
Levant said: “You know, the only reason I’m appearing here is there are no more beds in the mental institution.”
Informed that “we have a bunch of pills here,”…. he interrupted impatiently: “I took them, they’re nothing.”
Then in Jack Parr brought him onto “The Tonight Show.”
Levant talked openly and hilariously about his depression, his addiction, his shock treatments – the whole range of his neuroses.
That may be commonplace today, but in the late ’50s, it was a new phenomenon, edgy, and audiences were both shocked and titillated.
Here’s a clip from one of those appearances.
( From a Soundbite of “The Tonight Show“)
Mr. JACK PARR (Host): You’re going to be all right. Listen, you’re going to be swell.
We just keep moving around. What do you do for exercise?
Mr. OSCAR LEVANT: I stumble and then I fall into a coma.
(audience laughter and applause)
Mr. LEVANT: I really am suffering from amnesia, because I took shock treatments, and it reminds me I was – I came back from the hospital, and I was watching a television – an old picture with Ralph Richardson in where he’s suffering from amnesia. And my wife came in, my wonderful wife, she really is, and said what are you watching? I said there’s a movie with Ralph Richardson in it about amnesia. He’s suffering from amnesia. I want to see how it turns out. She said but you saw it last week.
(audience laughter)
Mr. LEVANT: So consequently, I’ve been devoting my time to writing a book called “Memoirs of a Man Suffering from Amnesia,” and I don’t have a page filled.
( audience laughter)
Mr. LEVANT: There was one patient who was euphoric, and we were having lunch at an awful place, and he said what do you want, lemon juice or orange juice? He said what’s the difference?
( audience laughter)
Mr. LEVANT: You know, when you’re suffering from deep depression, you cannot make a decision. I first had deep apathy, then relapsed into deep depression. Gee, how I long for those deep apathy days.
( audience laughter)
For the next 6 years the composer appeared with regularity, amusing viewers with his neurotic satire.
Levant both shocked and intrigued viewers with his open discussions about his neuroses and his addiction to painkillers.
He released his Memoirs of an Amnesiac in 1965, and The Unimportance of Being Oscar in 1968.
He contributed to such magazines as Good Housekeeping, Harper’s, Town & Country, and Vogue.
Regardless of his many talents and throughout his multi-faceted career, Levant never stayed with one thing long enough to build his reputation beyond that of second string.
“It’s not what you are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.”
— Oscar Levant
His death, at the age of 65, left the entertainment community shocked – largely with amazement that a four-pack-a-day smoker with a history of drug abuse and mental illness had lasted as long as he did.
While his illnesses became more apparent with each appearance as his speech slowed, his wit remained as sharp as ever.
His openness about his illnesses was unheard of during these early years of television and Paar was severely criticized for allowing Levant to appear when his deteriorating mental condition seemed at its worst.
However, Levant’s self-deprecating comments seemed to endear him to the public.
He spoke at a time when others hid their problems or those of their families, and his frank approach to his addictions and illnesses was curious, amusing, and often sad.
“I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.”
Fans could view their own problems through his eyes, a means of avoiding the essential confrontation at home.
“Schizophrenia beats dining alone.”
“Happiness isn’t something you experience; it’s something you remember.”
In her biography A Talent for Genius, co-author Nancy Schoenberger described Levant as “the first public dysfunctional celebrity … that shocked and also amused because Oscar was funny when he talked about … group therapy.”
Schoenberger repeats Levant’s satiric reference to a group trip to Disneyland:
“To hell with Disneyland. I have my own hallucinations.”
Life then sent Bergen to Walter and Carol Matthau’s house in the Pacific Palisades to photograph a fabulous garden party the Matthaus were throwing for Chaplin’s return.
She was the only photographer invited.
“Everybody came—Groucho Marx, Cary Grant, the Henry Fondas, William Wyler, Rosalind Russell, Danny Kaye,” she recalls.
While there, Bergen stumbled upon a scowling Oscar Levant, the celebrated pianist and wit, seated in a rocking chair among the hyacinths and wearing “a black, three-piece, New York suit and black, shiny wing-tip shoes.
Everybody else was in their L.A., open-collar pastel.”
She asked him if she could take his picture, and if she could do a piece on him for Esquire.
Bergen spent about two hours interviewing him at home on North Roxbury Drive.
On August 14, 1972, Levant, a man who spoke openly about the devils that plagued him, died peacefully.
For a return visit, she called him and asked, “Oscar, is three-o’clock still O.K.?” He said, “No, no, that’s too late.
― Oscar Levant
You come over right now.”
By the time she arrived, he was dead.
It was the first dead person she had ever seen.
He was buried in Westwood Memorial Park, West Los Angeles, California.
In citing an old joke, comics tell an apocryphal story about Levant: that his epitaph reads,
“I told them I was ill.”
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