Born in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania into a musical and
Orthodox Jewish Russian family, Levant moved to
New York with his mother, Annie, in
1922, after the
death of his father, Max. He began studying under
Zygmunt Stojowski, a well-established
piano pedagogue. In 1924, Levant appeared with
Ben Bernie in a short film
Ben Bernie and All the Lads made in
New York City in the DeForest
Phonofilm sound-on-film system.
In 1928, Levant traveled to
Hollywood where his career took a turn for the better. During his stay, he met and befriended
George Gershwin. In just twenty years, 1929-1948, he would go on to compose the music for more than twenty movies. During this period, he also wrote or co-wrote numerous popular songs that made the
Hit Parade, the most noteworthy being "
Blame It on My Youth", now considered to be a
pop music standard.
Around 1932, Levant began composing seriously. He studied under
Arnold Schoenberg and impressed him sufficiently to be offered an assistantship (which he turned down, considering himself unqualified). His formal studies led to a request by
Aaron Copland to play at the
Yaddo Festival of contemporary American music on
April 30 of that year. Successful, Levant began on a new orchestral work, a
sinfonietta. He was also married to and divorced from actress
Barbara Woodell in 1932.
In 1939, Levant married for the second time, to singer and actress June Gale (Gilmartin), part of the singing foursome
The Gale Sisters (besides June, there were Jane, Joan, and Jean). They were married for almost 33 years, until his death, and had three children, Marcia, Lorna, and Amanda.
Levant was perhaps best known to American audiences as one of the regular panelists on the radio quiz show
Information Please. Originally scheduled as a guest panelist, Levant proved so quick-witted and popular that he became a regular fixture on the show in the late 1930s and 1940s, along with fellow panelists
Franklin P. Adams and
John Kieran, and moderator
Clifton Fadiman. "Mr. Levant", as he was always called, was often challenged with musical questions, though he impressed audiences with his wide depth of knowledge and quickness with a joke. Kieran praised Levant as having a "positive genius for making offhand cutting remarks that couldn't have been sharper if he'd honed them a week in his mind. Oscar was always good for a bright response edged with acid."
Between 1958 and 1960, Levant hosted a television
talk show on
KCOP-TV in
Los Angeles, The Oscar Levant Show, which later became
syndicated. It featured his piano playing along with monologues and interviews with top-name guests such as
Fred Astaire and
Linus Pauling. A full recording of only one show is known to exist, that with Astaire, who paid to have a kinetoscope recording of the broadcast made, so that he could assess his performance. This is likely the only Astaire performance to have imperfections, as it was live, and Levant would repeatedly change the tempo of his accompaniment to Astair's singing during the bridges between verses, which appeared to get him quite off balance at first. He did not dance, as the studio space was extremely small. The show was highly controversial, eventually being taken from the air after a comment about
Marilyn Monroe's conversion to
Judaism: "Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher,
Arthur Miller can eat her." He later stated that he "hadn't meant it
that way." Several months later, the show began to be broadcast in a slightly revised format; it was taped in order to provide a buffer for Levant's antics. This, however, failed to prevent Levant from making comments about
Mae West's sex life that caused the show to be canceled for good.
Levant was also a frequent guest on
Jack Paar's talk show.
The 1920s and 1930s wit
Alexander Woollcott, a member of the
Algonquin Round Table, once said of him: "There's absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle can't fix."
Open about his
neuroses and a notorious
hypochondriac, Levant was in later life addicted to prescription drugs and was frequently committed to mental hospitals by his wife, June. Despite his afflictions, Levant was considered a genius by some, in many areas (He himself wisecracked "There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."). His playing of the Tchaikovsky and Anton Rubinstein piano concerti, as well as Gershwin, is a testimony to his talents.
Levant drew increasingly away from the limelight in his later years. Upon his death in
Beverly Hills, California of a heart attack at the age of 65, he was interred in the
Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in
Los Angeles, California. In their routines, some comics have claimed, apocryphally, and citing an old joke, that hypochondriac Levant's epitaph was inscribed, "I
told them I was ill." The headstone of comedian
Spike Milligan is also engraved with, "I told you I was ill," albeit in Irish.
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