The Curmudgeon Files #3

Certainly, the older folk among us remember seeing Oscar Levant in several of the fluff, Hollywood musicals of the 40s and 50s. Born December 27, 1909, in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, he was a brilliant classical pianist and composer; an acerbic, dead-pan comedian; and self-proclaimed, neurotic. “There’s a fine line between genius and insanity,” he once remarked. “I have erased that line.” He claimed to have once been thrown out of a mental institution because he depressed the other patients.

Self-critical to a fault, he said of himself: “I’m a controversial figure. My friends either dislike me or hate me.” When asked what he did for exercise, Levant replied: “I stumble, then fall into a coma.”

Among his favorite targets were politics and politicians. “The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans,” he once observed, “is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.” When asked about a certain politician, he replied: “He’ll doublecross that bridge when he comes to it.”

Concerning the film industry, that which made him a star, he commented : “Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel”. And during the conversation, the subject of a popular leading lady came up -- a young starlet who the film studio was promoting as the all American, bring-home-to-mother type of girl. “I knew her before she was a virgin,” Levant boasted cynically.

Oscar Levant died August 17, 1972, in Beverly Hills, California.

Ray Cassidy