Oscar Levant
Who was Oscar Levant? Besides being one of George Gershwin’s best friends, he was a true renaissance man ala 1920s, 30s & 40s. He was a talented composer, intelligent solo pianist, wise-cracking movie actor and a writer.
Oscar Levant was born in Pittsburgh in 1906. In the liner notes for his 1942 album of Rhapsody in Blue, he began his auto-biographical outline by commenting: “I was born, like many other children whose parents happened to live in Pittsburgh, in Pittsburgh, December 27, 1906. It has always been a regret that the event could not have been delayed four days, so that I would have been born in 1907. As it is, I’m reckoned as a nineteen-sixer, and thus thirty-five at the present time, (1942) when I am really only thirty-four.”
In his second book, “Memoirs of an Amnesiac” he did mention playing for the Brunswick artist Ben Bernie in the twenties, but he didn’t reveal if he recorded with him. He did edit his own version of “Rhapsody” for that label though, to help Brunswick compete with the 12-inch Paul Whiteman/George Gershwin Victor version.
Oscar Levant’s personal versatility may have helped to blur his memory as a kind of Hollywood utility man. It is mostly unnoticed that he was leading an intelligent musician and very expert composer. He was from a conventional Jewish Russian family, growing up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. Like his siblings, he got music lessons at an early age. At seven he continued playing piano under Martin Miessler, formerly of the Leipzig Conservatory. Levant was making public recitals within a year. He attended music lessons at the Fifth Avenue High School, where he was exposed to classical performance by his teacher Oscar Demmler. This included attending recitals of the great Polish pianist, Ignacy Jan Paderewski and concerts conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Demmler offered Levant to accompany him in violin and piano repertoire which was Levant’s first public playing when he was only twelve.
Finally, he died in California in 1973.
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