Oscar Levant Biography

A highly talented and multifaceted personality, Oscar Levant was a skilled musician who also had a successful career as a comedian and actor. It is an unfortunate fact that his versatility was the very cause that overshadowed his brilliance as a musician and made people view him as a jack of all trades. Music was his first love and he had been receiving music lessons from a young age and was trained in composition under the able tutelage of the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. He forged a close friendship with the pianist and composer George Gershwin who enabled him to build a career for himself in Hollywood. Over the years he had composed music for several movies, and also wrote or co-wrote numerous hit songs. He became a regular panelist on the radio quiz show ‘Information Please’ where he impressed the audience with his quick wit and deep musical knowledge. Along with being a musician, he also developed a comic persona of a sarcastic and bitter man. He performed comedy sketches and began appearing in movies. His major pictures include ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and ‘The Barkleys of Broadway’. The brilliant artist began suffering from neurotic problems during his later years and had to be frequently admitted to mental hospitals.