Oscar Levant Nails It Again: "A politician is a man who. . ." [by DL]

Oscar Levant, who "knew Doris Day before she was a virgin," defined a politician as a man who will "double-cross that bridge when he gets to it." Has anyone read his book Memoirs of an Amnesiac?. It's the sort of book I must have read, but I can't remember doing so. I have a feeling that I would have liked it. I am sure of it in fact. Putnam published it in 1965. Three years later came The Unimportance of Being Oscar, another bravura performance -- not too wild, not too earnest, but full of self-deprecatory wit and wisdom. "I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients," he confided. He was very fast, very smart and knowing, a good guest on a talk show, a mordant foil to Gene Kelly's native optimism in "An American in Paris." He wrote these lines that he says in the movie: "It's not a pretty face, I grant you. But underneath its flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character." He also wrote "Blame it on My Youth" and other songs and was a buddy of George Gershwin. The jokes were spontaneous and delivered deadpan. When he said that he knew Doris Day "before she was a virgin," it was a valuable reminder of the band singer's brilliance -- with the Les Brown Orchestra in the 1940s, as Ruth Etting in "Love Me or Leave Me," in duets with Sinatra in "Young at Heart" -- which preceded the virginal image projected in the sugary pillow-talk movies of the 1960s. After Marilyn Monroe converted to Judaism, Oscar said, "now that Marilyn Monroe's kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her." -- DL

 

Comments

[Alan Senauke]

My mother turned me on to Oscar Levant in the early 60s. I seem to recall he was a regular on the Jack Paar show. Read both of his books as they came out.

[Susan Mitchell]

Utterly brilliant! ❤️

[Michael Shepler]

Oscar had his own talk show on, I believe, 2 local LA television stations & was fired from both. His co-hosts were his wife June & also James Mason's then wife, Pamela. One of his best film roles is as John Garfield's sidekick in "Humoresque".

[The Best American Poetry]

I think you're right, Alan: it must have been on the Jack Paar show that I first made Oscar's acquaintance.