{"id":49059,"date":"2024-10-26T17:47:12","date_gmt":"2024-10-26T15:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/8fac151f-39e1-4883-a02c-ecaf583acf28"},"modified":"2024-10-26T18:07:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-26T16:07:15","slug":"oscar-levant-film-star-and-greatest-gershwin-pianist-of-his-generation","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/oscar-levant-film-star-and-greatest-gershwin-pianist-of-his-generation\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Levant: film star, and greatest Gershwin pianist of his generation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By <\/p>

Published: Saturday, 26 October 2024 at 15:47 PM<\/p>

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‘Upper berth \u2013 lower berth. That\u2019s the difference between talent and genius,\u2019 muttered George Gershwin<\/a><\/strong> to his friend Oscar Levant as he settled down for the night in the more comfortable lower bunk. The two musicians were on the sleeper from New York to Pittsburgh, where Gershwin was due to perform his iconic, jazz<\/a><\/strong>-infused Rhapsody in Blue<\/a><\/strong><\/em> and Concerto in F. The conductor Bill Daly had been held up in New York, and Levant was to help out by playing the solos while Gershwin rehearsed the orchestra.\u00a0<\/p>

From jazz to classical: five surprising classical albums from jazz greats<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>
If Oscar Levant was no genius on the level of Gershwin, he was nothing if not multi-talented. Pianist, composer, actor, writer, radio show host \u2013 he managed all those careers throughout his life. As a Gershwin performer, Levant was second only to the composer himself. <\/p>
George Gershwin: six of his best works<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>
<\/div><\/figure><p>At the peak of his career, in the early 1940s, Levant’s concert fee was higher than those commanded by Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein, two of the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/20-greatest-pianists-all-time\">greatest pianists of all time<\/a><\/strong>. That wasn’t because he was regarded as a finer pianist (he wasn\u2019t), but because his radio show <em>Information Please<\/em> had a regular audience of 12 million in the US. \u00a0<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Who was Oscar Levant?<\/h2><p>Oscar Levant was born in Pittsburgh on 27 December 1906, the youngest son of an Orthodox Jewish family. He received his first piano lessons from one of his brothers, and soon developed into a prodigy. On the day before his first lesson at high school, the pianist, composer and future Polish Prime Minister Ignacy Jan Paderewski was to give a recital in Pittsburgh. <\/p><p>The 12-year-old Levant asked his new teacher if he wanted to know what the famous pianist was going to play. Instead of rattling off the pieces verbally, Levant sat at the piano and played the entire programme. \u00a0<\/p><p>When, in February 1924, Paul Whiteman and his orchestra presented his \u2018An Experiment in Modern Music\u2019 concert in New York with the premiere of Gershwin\u2019s <em>Rhapsody in Blue<\/em> as its highlight, Levant\u2019s ears pricked up. On hearing the piece, he immediately learned the solo part. He was to become closely associated with it for the rest of his life, playing it once with Toscanini and recording it twice. He also performed it with Paul Whiteman in the 1945 Gershwin biopic<em> Rhapsody in Blue<\/em>. \u00a0<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Oscar Levant - Rhapsody In Blue\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YiI5WmiIVrY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u2018I played an unsympathetic part \u2013 myself\u2019 <\/h3><p>As an actor, Levant made his debut on Broadway at the age of 21 in<em> Burlesque<\/em>, adapted by Clifford Odets from a story by Fannie Hurst. Levant was cast as a pianist and songwriter, and the play, which also featured a young Barbara Stanwyck, was filmed the following year as<em> The Dance of Life<\/em>, again with Levant. \u2018I played an unsympathetic part \u2013 myself,\u2019 he commented. <\/p><p>Oscar Levant played a thinly disguised version of himself in most of his later films too. In the Vincente Minnelli musical <em>An American in Paris<\/em> he appears as Gene Kelly\u2019s unemployed pianist friend, and in an egomaniacal dream sequence performs the finale from Gershwin\u2019s Concerto in F, managing through film trickery to appear not only as the soloist, but also all the orchestral players and an enthusiastic audience member. \u00a0<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Gershwin's Concerto in F by O. Levant\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wePBkW6WMM8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u2018It isn\u2019t what you are, it\u2019s what you don\u2019t become that hurts’<\/h3><p>In the Joan Crawford melodrama <em>Humoresque <\/em>(another Clifford Odets script based on Fannie Hurst), Levant gives his violinist friend, played by John Garfield, advice from the piano stool that might have been intended for himself: \u2018It isn\u2019t what you are, it\u2019s what you don\u2019t become that hurts.\u2019 <\/p><p>In an attempt to give the impression that Garfield was actually playing the violin on the soundtrack, his arms were pinned to his sides while the instrument was attached to his chin, and two violinists (one of them Isaac Stern) crouched with their faces out of camera-shot and did the playing \u2013 one the bowing, the other the fingering.\u00a0The soundtrack was recorded by Stern and Levant. After a few takes, Levant suggested, \u2018Why don\u2019t the five of us do a concert tour?\u2019<\/p><p>My favourite among the films in which Levant appeared is<em> The Band Wagon<\/em> \u2013 a Minnelli musical made in 1953, starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, and with songs by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz. But by this time Levant was clearly ill, and he couldn\u2019t take an active part in any of the energetic musical numbers. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u201cThat's Entertainment\u201d from The Band Wagon 1953\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/t6gX37d2eP8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Addicted to prescription drugs<\/h3><p>He had always been a notorious hypochondriac and had become addicted to prescription drugs. He was taking a mixture of Dexedrine and Thorazine \u2013 a cocktail whose effect he described as \u2018chaos in search of frenzy\u2019.\u00a0 Levant made one last film for Minnelli \u2013 <em>The Cobweb <\/em>\u2013 in which he played another part that might have been modelled on himself: a patient in a psychiatric hospital.<\/p><p>For all his inbred talent for showbusiness, Levant made a valiant attempt to become a serious composer. He took lessons with <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/arnold-schoenberg\">Arnold Schoenberg<\/a><\/strong>, who told him at their first meeting \u2018You have a very talented face.\u2019 Levant eventually commissioned Schoenberg to compose his Piano Concerto, but then refused to come up with the high fee the composer was demanding for the dedication and the privilege of giving the work\u2019s premiere. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">L-R: Fred Astaire, Nanette Fabray, Oscar Levant in a dancing babies parody for ‘The Band Wagon’ (1953). Pic: FilmPublicityArchive\/United Archives via Getty Images – FilmPublicityArchive\/United Archives via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure><p>In the end, the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-concerto\">concerto<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s first performance was given by Schoenberg\u2019s former pupil and long-time collaborator Edward Steuermann. Levant later received encouragement from <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/aaron-copland\">Aaron Copland<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 and from composer and longtime Alfred Hitchcock collaborator <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/bernard-herrmann\">Bernard Herrmann<\/a><\/strong> (one of the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/best-movie-composers\">greatest movie composers of all time<\/a><\/strong>), who persuaded him to compose a Sinfonietta and even gave him lessons in orchestration. \u2018Mine,\u2019 said Levant, \u2018was the sort of piece in which nobody knew what was going on \u2013 including the composer, the conductor and the critics. Consequently I got\u00a0pretty good notices.\u2019<\/p><ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/five-essential-works-aaron-copland\">Best of Aaron Copland – five essential works<\/a><\/strong><\/li><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/recordings\/appalachian-spring\"><em>Appalachian Spring<\/em>: Aaron Copland’s masterful evocation of America’s wide open spaces<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">He famously quipped, \u2018I knew Doris Day before she\u00a0was a virgin\u2019<\/h3><p>As a wit, Levant could hold his own with such friends of his as Dorothy Parker, SJ Perelman and George S Kaufman. When Kenneth Tynan interviewed Perelman and Groucho Marx for <em>The Observer<\/em>, they picked Levant as one of the three fastest on the draw for one-liners \u2013 the others being Kaufman and Irving Brecher, who wrote two of the Marx Brothers\u2019 films. <\/p><p>One example of his rapier wit: Levant had appeared (as a pianist named Oscar Farrar) in Doris Day\u2019s first film, <em>Romance on the High Seas<\/em>. When she became synonymous with the innocent all-American girl next door, he famously quipped, \u2018I knew Doris Day before she\u00a0was a virgin\u2019.<\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">‘Levant is disease of Hollywood’<\/h3><p>Levant\u2019s crabby personality was legendary. Ernst Lubitsch\u2019s comedy <em>That Uncertain Feeling<\/em> features an obnoxious pianist who creates mayhem in the bourgeois marriage of Merle Oberon and Melvyn Douglas.\u00a0 The part, brilliantly played by Burgess Meredith, was reputedly modelled on Levant. Tynan summed him up accurately: \u2018Pearl is disease of oyster; Levant is disease of Hollywood.\u2019<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"That Uncertain Feeling | Trailer\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YjlZ1r-_0dw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><p>In the end, it may have been Levant\u2019s talent for wisecracking that put paid to his ambition to be taken seriously as a musician. The pieces he wrote during his period of study with Schoenberg \u2013 a Piano Concerto which he performed with the NBC Symphony, a <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/string-quartet\">String Quartet<\/a><\/strong> premiered by the famous Kolisch Quartet, and a <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/nocturne-definition\">Nocturne<\/a><\/strong> for orchestra \u2013 have sunk without trace. <\/p><p>On the other hand, of the 80-odd songs he composed, at least one \u2013 \u2018Blame it on my youth\u2019 \u2013 is still widely known, and was recorded by such artists as Chet Baker, Art Farmer, Keith Jarrett and Nat King Cole. Characteristically, Levant complained that it brought back more memories than royalties. \u00a0<\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Gershwin pianist without equal<\/h3><p>Levant\u2019s own recordings as a pianist, all made for Columbia, include \u00e9tudes, polonaises and mazurkas by <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/frederic-chopin\">Chopin<\/a><\/strong>, plus music by <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/claude-debussy\">Debussy<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/franz-liszt\">Liszt<\/a><\/strong>, and the piano concertos of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/edvard-grieg\">Grieg<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/tchaikovsky\">Tchaikovsky<\/a><\/strong> (the latter with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy). But it is on his Gershwin performances that his reputation rests. He played all the major works through to the composer, so his interpretations have the stamp of authority.\u00a0<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/greatest-piano-concertos-all-time\"><strong>The greatest piano concertos of all time<\/strong><\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/recordings\/tchaikovskys-piano-concerto-no-1-guide-best-recordings\"><strong>A guide to Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and its best recordings<\/strong><\/a><\/li><\/ul><p>That may not have helped him much when, after Gershwin\u2019s early death in 1937, Oscar Levant performed the Concerto in F with the NBC Symphony and Toscanini. Faced with differences of opinion between them about how certain passages should go, Levant told the Italian maestro, \u2018Mr Gershwin wanted it this way\u2019 \u2013 to which Toscanini replied, \u2018That-a poor boy, he was a-sick.\u2019 <\/p><p>Be that as it may, Levant\u2019s recordings of the <em>Rhapsody in Blue <\/em>(with Ormandy) and the \u2018I Got Rhythm\u2019 Variations (with Morton Gould and his Orchestra) have a rhythmic verve and a spontaneity that have never been surpassed. So much did Levant fall under the spell of Gershwin that a chapter devoted to him in his autobiography<em> A Smattering of Ignorance<\/em> is entitled \u2013 not without a tinge of regret \u2013 \u2018My Life\u2019. \u00a0<\/p><p>Top pic: Rhapsody In Blue, US lobbycard, from left: Robert Alda, Oscar Levant, 1945. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Published: Saturday, 26 October 2024 at 15:47 PM ‘Upper berth \u2013 lower berth. That\u2019s the difference between talent and genius,\u2019 muttered George Gershwin to his friend Oscar Levant as he settled down for the night in the more comfortable lower bunk. The two musicians were on the sleeper from New York to Pittsburgh, where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":49060,"template":"","categories":[1,17],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"8"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/oscar-levant-film-star-and-greatest-gershwin-pianist-of-his-generation.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/oscar-levant-film-star-and-greatest-gershwin-pianist-of-his-generation-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/oscar-levant-film-star-and-greatest-gershwin-pianist-of-his-generation-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/oscar-levant-film-star-and-greatest-gershwin-pianist-of-his-generation-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/oscar-levant-film-star-and-greatest-gershwin-pianist-of-his-generation-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/oscar-levant-film-star-and-greatest-gershwin-pianist-of-his-generation.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/oscar-levant-film-star-and-greatest-gershwin-pianist-of-his-generation.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Published: Saturday, 26 October 2024 at 15:47 PM ‘Upper berth \u2013 lower berth. That\u2019s the difference between talent and genius,\u2019 muttered George Gershwin to his friend Oscar Levant as he settled down for the night in the more comfortable lower bunk. The two musicians were on the sleeper from New York to Pittsburgh, where…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/49059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}