A Brief Appreciation For Oscar Levant, Soon To Be Played By Sean Hayes

As reported last week on BroadwayWorld, Beth Williams (Grove Entertainment), Barbara Whitman Productions and Hazy Mills Productions have announced the development of a new play based on the life of Oscar Levant, which will star Sean Hayes.

Do audiences still know who Oscar Levant was? When this writer attended a performance of the Broadway production of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, there was just a smattering of chuckles in reaction to a joke that made reference to him, but until his passing in 1972, Oscar Levant could send an audience into hysterics by just taking a pained puff on his cigarette and muttering such clever pearls of wisdom as:

Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism.

An epigram is only a wisecrack that's played at Carnegie Hall.

I am no more humble than my talents require.

"There's a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."

He was no doubt a talented man and often a brilliant one, but despite film appearances in such classics as THE BARKLEYS OF BROADWAY, THE BAND WAGON and, of course, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (He wrote many of his best lines.), numerous classical concert appearances and three best-selling books (The titles A SMATTERING OF IGNORANCE, THE MEMOIRS OF AN AMNESIAC and THE UNIMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR tell you all you need to know.) Oscar Levant was most known for being Oscar Levant.

In the early days of television, when most programs were live and technology was still in its infancy, entertainment was created by just pointing a camera at someone with talent, often scripted but sometimes not, and praying that they were interesting.

Oscar Levant was interesting. He was a self-styled neurotic hypochondriac with a saggy demeanor and an endlessly quotable wit. He was Nathan Lane without the energy. George Costanza without the delusions of confidence. And he was tremendously popular. Nora Johnson based the paranoid, classical musician title character of her best-selling novel, THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT, on Levant, whose surname translates to "orient" in French. Peter Sellers played the role in the same-named film adaptation and Don Ameche portrayed him in the Broadway musical, HENRY, SWEET HENRY.

Levant's only full Broadway score, sharing composer credit with Albert Sirmay, was a 1930 Rip van Winkle variation called RIPPLES, set in the Catskills and starring Fred Stone, best known for playing the scarecrow in the 1903 Broadway musical, THE WIZARD OF OZ. During RIPPLES' brief run of 55 performances, Levant was often seen across the street at the Times Square Theatre, standing in the back during performances of his buddy George Gershwin's hit, STRIKE UP THE BAND and admiring his pal's superior work.

The Gershwin/Levant relationship didn't do a lot for the former's self-esteem. While Gershwin and his brother Ira wrote numerous hit songs, Levant's only contribution to list of American standards is the melancholy, "Blame It On My Youth," written with lyricist Edward Heyman. Though Levant wrote classical compositions, none achieved near the popularity of his friend's RHAPSODY IN BLUE and his acclaim in the music world came seated at the piano on concert stages as the master interpreter of Gershwin's music, particularly CONCERTO IN F. Here is his performance of that piece in the Gershwin bio-pic, RHAPSODY IN BLUE.

He was a complex man, with a career full of theatrical possibilities.