Oscar Levant: The Lost Interview

An interview with Oscar Levant

(from Pulse Magazine, April 7, 1960)

Hello, Oscar. Nice to meet you. You know, I almost said “Hell, Oscar.”

(laughs) It would have been more appropriate. Come right in to my den of thieves.

Thieves?

I steal material all the time, everybody thinks it’s mine. It’s all in the delivery.

You mean a “special delivery”.

Aha, a smart-ass kid! We oughta get along just great.

 OK, Oscar Levant, let me get right down to it. What is it that drives you?

Drives me? I have a chauffeur, but it’s a “he”, not an “it”.

You know what I mean.

Drives me, it’s probably just the will to get up in the morning.

Is that hard for you?

Don’t pry.

OK, I won’t. Sorry. I want to know what. . . I hate to say “inspires” you.

Thank you.

Let me rephrase the question. Did you choose music, or did it choose you?

Do you need to ask?

Would you have done anything else?

I probably would have done practically anything else. The rule in our house was absolute perfection. One wrong note was a source of shame. It drove me absolutely crazy. See, now you have your answer!

As to why you went crazy?

I might have been crazy from the beginning.

So in what way did you depart from absolute perfection?

In just about every way. I hated my teachers. I hated my father. I hated my piano.

I have to tell you a story. Nobody in our family had any talent whatsoever on the keyboard, even though a few of them are professional musicians. When my brother was practicing, he kept trying to leave the room but my mother would stick her head in and say, “You have to practice for half an hour!” At one point he slammed the lid down and opened the front door and yelled at the top of his voice, “I HATE THE PIANO!”                  

(Laughs with a wicked expression)

I love piano stories. I hated the piano too. Or I hated what it did to me.

Did you never feel you’d mastered it?

No performance is ever as perfect as the one that exists in your mind.

That’s profound.

No it isn’t, I forgot my Demerol this morning.

Oh, so that’s supposed to be funny?

It gets big laughs.

So when did you decide to. . .

To be a sellout? That’s what they say about Levant. That he’s a sellout, that he sold out to Hollywood and cheap fame as a movie sidekick who plays cornball classical music between production numbers.

Are you?

A sellout?  Oh sure. But I make a lot better money. And it’s a way to stay out of the concert hall. It’s the ninth circle of Hell up there. (lights another cigarette)

But you’re so good. I mean, you’re –

Let’s get on with the Gershwin stuff, shall we? I know it’s coming.

OK, the Gershwin stuff. May I ask what he was really like?

Nothing like that limp-wristed Robert Alda who played him in the film. Had to dub all his playing for him.

Oh, THAT film! The one where you played yourself. What was it like to play yourself?

Let’s not get obscene here.

I don’t mean play “with” yourself.  I mean – portray yourself in the film.

I’d say it was a snap, but I don’t think I ever really figured out my character.

But you kept the coffee-and-cigarettes mode.

Sweetheart, that’s the only mode I have.

Is it your “shtik”?

Jesus, where do you get these words? What makes you think I’m Jewish?

It was the way you hugged Steve Allen on his show.

I hugged him “Jewish”?

I had to translate it.

(Laughs again) So did these guys send over somebody they think can stay ahead of me, or what?

No one can stay ahead of you.

Better for them. Listen, if I hugged Steve Allen any way at all they’d say I was a faggot. I was friends with Gershwin, and he was supposed to be a faggot, so that made ME a faggot by association.

I get the feeling you’re not a faggot.

Not lately. I think I’ve forgotten how, due to lack of practice. I have a lovely wife,  I mean it sincerely, June, she’s just terrific, we busted up last week. No, seriously, I don’t think I’d be alive without her and I don’t know how she puts up with me.

She loves you.

Loves me, as in popular song? Or loves me, as in, she loves him one minute and hates him the next? That would be my wife.

Do you ever stop joking? Do you ever get truly, deeply serious about things?

You mean, do I ever explore the darkest recesses of my tortured psyche?

Something like that.

Yeah, all the time.

At the piano?

Why would I damage my piano like that?

At the psychiatrist’s office? I saw him on your TV show the other day. That’s an innovative idea, to invite your analyst to come on your show.

He’s the only one I could get on such short notice. Adlai Stevenson bailed out on me at the last minute.

What do you say to your psychiatrist?

HELP!. . .  HELP!

Does he help?

I’m not sure there is such a thing as help, I mean on this plane of existence. I think you are who you are. It might be worse if I didn’t go.

Do you run in little circles inside your head?

What sort of question is that?

Just curious.

If you mean, am I a manic-depressive, of course. That’s the only diagnosis they could come up with that was frightening enough.

What are the highs like?

I don’t even know I’m on a high until I come down and realize that I’ve been babbling and swinging from chandeliers for weeks. Usually turns out I’ve offended a lot of people.

It sure smells like cigarettes in here.

The place is one big ashtray.

Are you hooked?

(Gazes at interviewer, lights another cigarette)

Would you play something for me right now?

I thought you’d never ask.

The Humoresque?

Which one?

Dvorak. Am I pronouncing that right?

No. Do you know there are words to that piece?

I didn’t! Why don’t you sing them?

Right now?

Right now.

(He sits at the piano, fidgeting and taking 2 or 3 minutes to get settled.)

Like a bike but so much cuter

Is my tiny two-wheeled scooter,

And I ride it ‘round and ‘round each day.

Though it has no engine on it,

Once I place my feet upon it

Merrily I’m on my way.

When I grow older

I may be bolder

And I’ll think of aeroplanes

And auto-mo-biles. . .

But right now when I’m outside

I’m satisfied to guide and ride

My tiny little scooter

With two wheels!

Oh, that’s lovely!

So are you, sweetheart. Come back any time. (Coughs, drapes arms around interviewer in Jewish embrace)

END

Barbecue Joe and his Hot Dogs - Tin Roof Blues (1930)

Hot Dog Blues by Barbecue Joe and his White Guy Band

 

Yeah.

 

Oh yeah.

 

OHHHHHHH, yeah.

Since you left me, mama

 

I got dem ole

 

Hot Dog Blues.

 

Got it so bad I bin puttin'

 

Mustard on my shoes

 

Since you left me baby,

 

I'm hangin' roun'

With a big bunch of Jews!

 

(musical interlude)

Boss man sez 

 

I gots ta pay my dues

 

(thump thump thump)

 

With the mob on my case,

 

I cain't see how I can refuse

And though you're thinkin', baby

 

That it's only a ruse

 

And though you're thinkin', baby

 

That I've lost my muse

 

And though you're thinkin', baby

 

That I'se exclaimin' "J'accuse"

 

(while reading Spinoza)

 

 

It don't make no difference, naw sahhhhhhhhh. . .

 

Cuz I've got dem -

 

Got dem -

 

Ohhhhhhhh, cuz I've got dem -

 

Got dem-old hot dog blues:

 

Gotta get down to de cawnah store to buy some,

 

I ain't got no time. . . to. . . loooooooooose!

Why "just" is so unjust

 

Did I make a total fool of myself?

Was I unrealistic? Was I wrong to think, this time, maybe this time things will turn out differently?

I thought I had magic on my side. Not so much because of my writing, which frankly took a very long time to get off the ground. When I look back at some of my early efforts, I feel as if I have bitten into a lemon.

No, it was the subject matter, the discovery. When I jumped into this world, the story began to write itself, and I was certain I was on to a Sure Thing.

It was all about Harold Lloyd, sometimes called the Third Genius of silent film comedy. His life seemed unexplored, or at least not explored in the way Chaplin's or Keaton's had been. Turner Classics had just started showing his films, a lot of them, so it seemed as if every time I tuned in I saw him in some obscure short or other. Later I saw him in his full glory in the feature films that propelled him to greatness.

I was in love, and writing feverishly: a story had sprung up about a young woman going to Hollywood to fulfil her obsession with Harold Lloyd. And yes, I was aware the premise might be seen as cliche - the young girl getting off the bus and being awed by the Hollywoodland sign (as it existed then) - but my hope was that Harold's dynamism and quirky charm might win readers over.

I have never researched anything to this depth, and somehow I'm still doing it, finding bits and pieces that fascinate me, even though, at the same time, it's like being steadily kicked in the teeth.

When I allowed myself to fantasize - and for the love of God, what else do writers DO? - I saw this book soaring, finding a substantial readership for the first time. My first two novels were (wince) "critically acclaimed," code for "they didn't sell" . The Glass Character, a reference to Harold Lloyd's nickname for his screen persona, did not soar as I had expected, but plummeted like a shot partridge, landing with a sickening thud.

I am aware that since I last published in 2005, things have changed. Hell, everything has changed, even my own attitude. I anticipated a sort of
comeback, and after awhile it evolved into an expectation. I forgot all about the Ten Commandments which some rinkydink Charlton Heston of an instructor chiselled into my brain at some writer's conference: A writer must hope, but never expect.

 

What if we assumed that attitude towards, say, sex? Would the human race even exist any more? What is hope, anyway, except a form of expectation? In any case, I tried everything I could think of to get this book published and got absolutely nowhere. Very few even read the thing. Maybe the very idea of a novel about silent film seemed boring to them, something the public would never be interested in. Never mind that The Artist, a silent movie about silent movies, had just won Best Picture at the Oscars, one of the biggest upsets in film history, and Martin Scorsese's Hugo featured a Harold Lloyd scene with the main character dangling off the hands of a huge clock.

Did I lose my objectivity, fall in love with Harold Lloyd to the point that the story somehow went off the rails?

Did fascination somehow devolve into a crashing bore?

 

In my writer's life, it seems I've had mostly failure, if you count failure as rejection and not being able to get your projects off the ground. It's all about being noticed. Wagging your ass, as far as I am concerned. When I referred to wearing a clown suit the other day, I was talking about something that actually happened at a writer's seminar.

A woman who had had a formulaic detective novel published with a small press claimed that if you wanted to be published, you had to be "shamelessly self-promoting" and do anything and everything to get noticed.

"Wear bright colors!" she exclaimed. "Stand out! Make them remember you!" I remember she had an eye-assaulting orange shirt on with rainbow suspenders. It really did look clownish, as if Wavy Gravy had landed in the literary world.

I wonder about this "shameless" thing. So what is the opposite of "shameless"? "Shameful", I guess. The implication is that self-promotion is usually seen as shameful, something we simply must not do if we are to keep our dignity.

This is worse in Canada, it really is. We have to hate our own work, or at least disparage it and be modest about it to a clinical degree. And for God's sake, don't let anybody see it! At the same time, our heads are swivelled around 180 degrees by the (mostly-American) lecturers at the Surrey Conference who tell us to promote, promote, promote. Leap over the usual rules like Evel Knievel soaring over the Snake River Canyon.  If you don't somehow make this leap (it used to be Oprah's book club, until even Oprah plummeted to the very last name on the Fortune 500 "50 Most Influential Women" list), you'll either be stuck in the perceived backwater of literary fiction, or will never publish at all.

Everyone seems to know that the main way to make the fabled leap is to "know the right people", but it's never spelled out exactly how you do this. Every attempt I haved made to contact people who might help me has been brushed off or ignored outright, leaving me feeling humiliated and stupid.   Maybe you really do have to attend cocktail parties where everyone is slightly swacked, and rub your foot against an influential guy's leg under the tablecloth (or maybe tackle him in an empty conference room). 

 

In case you think I'm some sort of paranoid crackpot Ma Kettle type with a smoking shotgun, let me tell you a story. I went to the Surrey conference just as my first novel Better than Life was about to come out in 2003, and it was like attending one big giddy literary party.  I had already signed deal for the second one, then called Nola Mardling. I also had an agent who appeared and disappeared in the happy hubbub of the conference. I ran into an old professor of mine who was obviously thrilled with what was happening. Then I won a minor writing award at the conference. And when people found out I had a "book out", a real live PUBLISHED book, they were amazed and wanted to buy a copy. It was a heady time, but it was also very typical of me and my life that it all crashed, savagely, a year or so later. And I still don't really know why, because I swear to God, I tried as hard as I could.

The book had been taken out of my hands and no longer resembled what I had written. Even the main character's name and the eponymous title had to be changed. I can't describe how this affected me. She died. She was dead, her identity had been destroyed, and yet I had to trot around and promote the thing as if she were still alive and well.

The result was, I didn't know my character any more. She was a stranger to me. Everyone was mildly shocked: why should this bother you so much? Why is it such a big deal to you, only two words changed? Readers won't know the difference, and that's all that matters. Not one person saw why I was upset, no one tried to help or defend me; I was completely abandoned at one of the worst times of my life. By now we were on two different planets, and I was no doubt being perceived as "difficult" or even crazy. 

And a writer must be, in any and all circumstances, grateful.

Why did I put up such a fuss over such a minor detail as my main character's name?  Because it changed the entire energy of the book.

Think of it.

Oliver Smith?

Moby Brown?

Suzy Karenina?

You get my drift.

So why would I want to venture into such shark-infested waters again?

The definition of insanity, in some circles anyway, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I suppose that is what I have been doing, trying to transcend what happened and transcend the news that everything is different now, that it's nearly impossible to get published unless the publisher thinks your book will sell, not just sell but leap across that fabled gap into Fifty Shades of Greyhood.

I'm just waiting for Fifty Shades of Grey Part 7 or 19 or whatever it is up to now.  These things make writers crazy, for I hear the book (books?) is/are absolute shit. I can't stand to read them (so obviously, I have no right to have an opinion), but throwing up was never my idea of a good time. When I try to work a little sex into my novels, everyone is deeply embarrassed and tells me I must tone it down or take it out altogether. Meantime, middle-aged porn rules, with frumpy fat schoolteachers furtively masturbating in bed besides their oblivious snoring husbands while the heroine gets tied up and whipped by some guy who looks like Fabio in a suit.

 

It's a fuck book, folks, and it just shocks me that it has taken over the way it has. All my writer's life I've heard, "Well, why don't you just write. . . " (whatever is "hot" and selling like mad at the time). I want to do a whole post on that word "just", because it makes me want to SCREAM. "Just" means, "it's simple, don't you see it? Why aren't you doing it already? Why haven't you thought of it by now, any idiot can see it!"

Just find an agent. Just write a genre novel. Just copy someone else's salacious, gut-squirming style. It's like telling a terminally-ill person to "just" take milk thistle or meditate, it's very simple, or "just" have a more positive attitude, and you'll be all better in a flash.

 

The number of "justs" in someone's vocabulary is in inverse proportion to their actual knowledge about the subject. The less a person knows about writing and publishing, the more they bore and exasperate you with their endless blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  And I have had it, I really have.

I hate "just". It's a diminishing sort of word, condescending, implying you somehow can't see the most obvious solution to your problem and need to be set straight.  It's  almost the opposite of "just", which means, more or less, fair.  Just, in the sense of insulting gratuitous advice, isn't clearly defined in any of the dictionary meanings I've found. It's not an adverb, but a kind of command, and the closest simile I can find is "simply" (meaning you could do this easily, if you had half a brain). Simply write a novel, get on the bestseller list, and make a million dollars.

just (just) Pronunciation: /dʒʌst/

adjective

• based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair: a just and democratic society fighting for a just cause
• (of treatment) deserved or appropriate in the circumstances: we all get our just deserts
• (of an opinion or appraisal) well founded; justifiable: these simplistic approaches have been the subject of just criticism

adverb

• 1exactly: that’s just what I need you’re a human being, just like everyone else
• exactly or almost exactly at this or that moment: she’s just coming we were just finishing breakfast

• 2very recently; in the immediate past: I’ve just seen the local paper

• 3barely; by a little: inflation fell to just over 4 per cent I only just caught the train

• 4simply; only; no more than: just a bad day in the office they were just interested in making money
• really; absolutely (used for emphasis): they’re just great
• used as a polite formula for giving permission or making a request: just help yourselves
• [with modal] possibly (used to indicate a slight chance of something happening or being true): it might just help

• 5expressing agreement: ‘Simon really messed things up.’ ‘Didn’t he just?’

 

 

 

(I notice that the last one looks a little like "sexpressing". Maybe my next novel should be called Sexpression. Or how about How I Tied Up and Tortured Publishers for Fun and Profit? Or even How I Learned to Love Being Tied Up and Tortured? It might just fly.)

 

I'll have another. . . disappointment

Sept. 20, 2012

Diary of some writer or other, somebody I don't even know but have seen in the mirror a few times

 

 

(I thought this was worth quoting, even if it's totally irrelevant to anyone else but me.)

It’s as if I can’t think too closely about my life because if I do, I see the emptiness. The failure. The promise not fulfilled. I know I am not the only writer facing this, or at least I hope so. I found a blog post yesterday that said due to financial necessity, literary fiction  has been largely handed back to the literary presses, making it harder for writers because the literary presses must be inundated with stuff. I would imagine at least 80% of it is totally unpublishable, so if you don’t grab them immediately you’re lost.

 

 

 

 

One agent I tried to contact would only read the first 3 pages of my novel.  Her response was, "It just didn't seem to be going anywhere." It killed me, but it told me something about the reality of publishing now.  My hopes for my third novel are in ruins. None of it worked, nobody was interested, and I was crushed because I was *sure* this one would work, bigger than the last 2 combined, maybe even really big.

 

I feel like a total fool for contacting these people, but what could I do? Everyone constantly tells me to “make contacts”, then when I try to, I look stupid and/or desperate. I don’t know how to do it effectively. I’m told all sorts of conflicting things: be outlandish, wear an orange shirt with suspenders and a rainbow wig, and carry one of those honking Harpo Marx things; DON’T be outlandish, wear a three-piece suit and a Smart Phone balanced on your head. Make yourself indispensible, provide certain services, discreetly.  Probably that last one would work best.

 

 

 

 

It could be I am perceived as too old and over the hill, as publishers now want sexy, smoky dust-jacket photos, young women with long hair and a sultry, pouty, “I don’t care if my book sells or not” expression. (I've seen numerous articles about this, but if *I* say it, everyone is horrified I would even think such an awful thing. Oops, there goes my last chance: no one wants to publish anyone spreading such lies just because she's bitter, and too old.) And if you're a graduate of the UBC Creative Writing program, you're practically a shoo-in. I was also told - the identity of this person is forever locked in the vault of my most useful information - that if you're a woman of colour, it really doesn't matter what you write, so long as you write.

 

The problem is, the more queries and manuscripts you send out and have rejected, the worse you look. After a while you’ve used up all your chances, you're perceived as a pest and a failure and a wanna-be, and - then what? 

 

 

 

 

So why am I even thinking of this? To keep up my hope, which you're supposed to do, I suppose.  But I get ahead of myself. I dream too much, and none of it comes true. Then my heart breaks, over and over and over again. Jesus, can I have just *one* more book out, even another failure? Can I do this, am I allowed?  I can’t write another one, it’s not in me to have a big stack of unpublished work that will never see the light of day because all the presses in Canada now see my work and think, "Oh, no, not HER again." (Get out the form rejection letters.) To come crawling like that, and have the door slammed in my face for the 1000^th time - it’s embarrassing, they will be embarrassed for me.

 

It's not as if I've never done this. If anyone calls me "aspiring", I will choke them to death. I won't quote the reviews for my first two novels, except to say about 90% of them were positive, some of them glowing. Some of them even popped up in places which had never received a review copy, such as the U. S. My second novel won a New York City Book Festival award. Big, fat, hairy deal: this meant NOTHING when I tried to get some attention for my Harold Lloyd novel, The Glass Character.

 

 

 

 

Part of the reason might be the fact that no one in Canada has ever heard of Harold Lloyd. There are thousands of small publishers in the U. S. , but that's just the trouble: thousands. . . where do I start? Taking random stabs is a very bad idea because with that many options, you can go on stabbing for years and years without getting anywhere, meanwhile spending vast amounts of time, money, and hope.

 

Not that I haven't tried a few stunts outside the box. I tried to contact Rich Correll, who was like a second son to Harold Lloyd and one of this closest friends. Never got a response.  I sent emails to Harold Lloyd Entertainment, whose CEO is Suzanne Lloyd, Harold's granddaughter (whom Harold raised like a daughter). No dice, only a polite reply. Mostly my attempts were brushed off like dandruff or ignored altogether.

 

I will never get over my bitter disappointment that my talent was never used. You choke on it if you don’t find a way to use it, if you just stick it in a drawer and never look at it again. I used to believe in God, but now I see that it was something like a horse race where you pick the lucky numbers, then stand beside the race-track pumping your fists up and down and shouting, “Go, go, go!” Just like the brief, flukey, heartbreaking career of I’ll Have Another. Yet another "also-ran".

 

But I WILL have another, another disappointment, another heart-crush, because it seems the fates have decreed I haven’t had enough of them. I will never get over this because I do not WANT to get over my life’s work, what I was destined to do from the beginning!

 

 

 

Oscar, Oscar, OSCAR!

 

It's hard to find a gif with Oscar Levant in it, and when I do it's always an oddball one. Here he seems to be the epicentre of the room, yet Gene Kelly keeps on hitting him in the face (why?) while he maintains that deadpan, Buster Keatonesque non-expression.

 

This one has That French Guy in it, the one I hate, who is the main reason I don't watch An American in Paris when it comes on, approximately weekly, on Turner Classics. I don't like that Stairway to Paradise or whatever it is because That French Guy is just a swish and not good for Gene Kelly, not a wholesome influence.  He's better off with his grouchy, slouchy roommate, who can play the piano like nobody's business.

 

(I also don't like that stupid "I got" thing with the street kids, though it's sexy when Gene Kelly runs his hand up Leslie Caron's thigh when they're dancing at the end. Can't find a gif of that.)

 

 

 

This is a more typical, Rodin-esque Oscar pose, as he thinks to himself, what a couple of stupid jerks, the French guy is probably a poof the way he keeps making eyes at Gene. Everyone else is moving in this, but Oscar is the still point, the eye of the hurricane.

 

This is what I mean about the poof-iosity, the poof-i-tudinousness of An American in Paris. Gene Kelly puts a tablecloth on his head and pretends to be a girl in a kick line. It's positively perverse. Meantime Oscar, who is adorable and sexy at the piano, shedding some of that saturnine quasi-Bogart-esque grimness, is his usual head-nodding piano-playing self. Just a Gershwin-playing fool.


"Everyone in Hollywood is gay, except Gabby Hayes — and that's because he is a transvestite."

Separated at Birth, Part Five Million and Nine: Oscar and Steve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All right, so this one was a bit of a stretch. A massive stretch? Maybe it's just those sensuous lips, lips that seem to come from another galaxy, and the galactic intelligence in those mysterious googly-eyes. Steve Buscemi often plays a sort of intense schlub, which in some minuscule way resembles Oscar Levant's side-kickitude (or rather, his side-kickitudinousness). Oscar never got the girl, in fact the girl usually wasn't even in the same room with him, which is what made these wonderful gifs with Nanette Fabray such a find.

Oh, maybe it's the broodiness, the not-long-for-this-world-ish-ness, or the slight glimpse of horror-movie that you see in both their faces. I refuse to post a certain famous photo of Levant, probably the last one ever taken, which I think is an abomination and the most horrible way of remembering him, in a tatty old bathrobe with a Satanic grimace that reveals a missing tooth. It was taken by Richard Avedon, who should be shot, and not with a camera. Let's be more careful of our icons, our precious talents, our galactic mysteriosos, cuzzadafact that they hardly ever come around. But when they do, they stay a long, long time.

It's not just the music - it's the masks!