Photo of Oscar Levant at dorothyfields.co.uk
Most people today don’t remember Oscar Levant, but for three decades he stood as one of the leading wits of the age. He was a classical pianist who studied at UCLA with Schoenberg, an actor/musician in films including “Humoresque” and “An American in Paris,” host of the talk show “The Oscar Levant Show,” and author of sketch-filled reminiscences “Memoirs of an Amnesiac” and “The Unimportance of Being Oscar.”
I just read “Unimportance,” and laughed and smiled all the way through. It’s a pleasure to find comedy based on word play, worldliness, self-deprecation, and a recognition of fallen realities. For years his quips stood alone — I think he first said, “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin” — and in his books they come at you in rapid fire. And the revelatory tales he spins made him enemies of long standing.
He wandered in high cultural circles, and the vignettes are worth repeating.
On Truman Capote: “At one dinner party we were informed that a prominent social figure had given him twenty gift treatments from a well-known beauty doctor at a hundred bucks a throw. I asked him why. Capote pointed to a spot just under his left nostril and said: ‘I’ve got a mark here.’
I looked closely and said: ‘I can’t see anything at all.’
‘You have to have a very strong light,’ Capote said complacently.”
A conversation with Robert Lowell: “‘I’ve been committed to twelve sanitariums,’ he announced with an air of triumph. ‘How about you?’
Who counts? ‘Ten,’ I said at random.”
On Leonard Bernstein: “I must apologize for the withering remarks I made about Leonard Bernstein [in a previous book]. But in my defense, I did not reveal how he used to play records of applause from his concerts. After all, I met Lenny 18 years ago. I remember thinking then: Here is a young man who bears watching. Close watching.”
On Lillian Hellman: “The Little Foxes [Hellman’s play] had its successful run in the pre-World War II period. When Russia attacked Finland, Broadway shows rushed to the aid of ‘poor little Finland’ by giving benefit performances. Lillian Hellman refused to follow suit . . .”
On Gore Vidal: “In 1960, when Gore Vidal ran (and was defeated) for Congress from staid Republican Duchess County in New York, he appeared with me on television. I asked him with devious ingenuousness, “Could Oscar Wilde have carried Duchess County?” He fielded the query very well.
Once I declared to Gore that having affairs with a couple of women happened to bore me. ‘Are you a crypto homosexual?’ (Why does Vidal love that word ‘crypto’?)”
On Dylan Thomas at UCLA for a poetry reading, the first on his tour of U.S. universities: “[Christopher Isherwood] managed to fulfill Dylan’s other request for ‘some booze and a blonde.’ The booze was easy enough to supply; the blonde was provided in person by Miss Shelley Winters, the actress. But Dylan found out to his chagrin that Shelley’s interest in poetry did not extend to the poet.”
And Hemingway: “I met Hemingway once, and the man breathed so heavily he frightened me.”
For another word about Hemingway, see here.
