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| A Talent for Genius |
| The Life and Times of Oscar Levant |
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| Sam
Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger, 512 pages, 6x9, illus.,
index, 1-879505-39-8,
$17.95 paper |
“Oscar Levant: Hophead raconteur, crybaby,
brilliant musician, self-loathing Jew. The
great neurotic sidekick of the American twentieth
century.”
—James Ellroy
“The definitive
tale of Oscar.”
—Ian Whitcomb
“Whether you’ve ever heard of Oscar Levant
or not doesn’t matter. This book’s
a page-turner on any terms. It’s also
a biography that’s simultaneously frank,
funny and frightening.”
— The Hollywood Reporter
“Sam
Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger give us this maddening
sprawl of a life with clear-eyed
sympathy.”
—
Entertainment Weekly |
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Oscar
Levant was the Amadeus of Hollywood, the Oscar Wilde
of Broadway, and
the most wildly self-destructive personality ever
to become a household name. An astonishingly
gifted concert pianist (and the premier interpreter
of Gershwin’s concert works), composer, film
and stage presence, radio and television raconteur,
insult wit, and bestselling author, Levant steered
a maniacally masochistic course through seven decades
spent in the company of some of America’s
most noted literary, musical, and entertainment
personages.
He penned three popular
volumes of autobiography; made more than 100 recordings,
including a version of Rhapsody in Blue that remained a bestselling
classical record for ten years; and appeared in
thirteen films, including An
American in Paris, The Band Wagon, and Rhapsody
in Blue, in which he literally played
himself, best friend to George Gershwin.
His
death in 1972, at the age of sixty-five, left
the entertainment community
shocked—largely with amazement that a four-pack-a-day
smoker with a long history of drug abuse and mental
illness had lasted as long as Levant did. Already
hobbled by complex superstitions meant to ward
off the terrors of performing, his addiction to
Demerol in the 1950s almost destroyed him, but
it didn’t keep him from appearing on television
to talk about it. His uncensored comments
on The Jack Paar Show and his own Los Angeles
talk show made national news.
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Sam Kashner is the co-author, along with his wife
Nancy Schoenberger, of Hollywood
Kryptonite: The Bulldog, the Lady, and the Death
of Superman. He is the author of
three books of poetry, most recently Don
Quixote in America. Nancy Schoenberger won the Devins Award for
her book of poetry The Girl on a White Porch. She’s
an associate professor of creative writing at the
College of William and Mary, where she edits Verse,
an international poetry journal. She is currently
working on a biography of Caroline Blackwood. |
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