The evidence is here: Why Oscar Levant Wasn't Just a Crazy Person

Oh yes. Do you know why all this is happening? Three guesses. Because I can only cure one obsession by taking on another.

And why did I need to cure my obsession with Harold Lloyd? Three guesses. Absolutely no one wanted to publish my novel about him (The Glass Character),and my heart broke. It shattered. No matter how much I am bombarded with imperatives to epublish it, I can't buy it, I don't think I'd sell more than a couple dozen copies, if that. Just more discouragement. I have no idea how to promote it, and surely the market is flooded by now. As far as I know, there are no editorial standards for ebooks, similar to the paper self-published books I've seen (which so far have all been dreadful, just screaming for an editor). Around here, traditional publishers are so freaked out by the new forms that they won't go near you, so you will be basically stuck at that level. My paper books sold poorly enough, and I am not convinced sending it out into the ether would net me more than a few hundred at most. I could go on, but I won't.

Therefore the only way I can avoid major depression is to take up my next obsession, which I will NOT NOT NOT write a book about. I have promised myself, and I will stick to it.

Anyway, Oscar Levant, genius, creative polymath, crazy as a hoot owl (speaking of birds), and father of three beautiful daughters - wait! Could this be right?

Oscar Levant had a whole 'nother life besides the grumbling, Buster-Keaton-faced, piano-dextrous sidekick in innumerable movies. He was a chick magnet. I can't find a good photo of his first wife, but I know she was gorgeous in the plucked-eyebrow way women were back then (showbiz women, anyway). Once they split, he pursued singer/actress June Gale with obsessiveness and fervor, and it worked.

I get the feeling June Gale was one of these glamorous women who was tough as nails inside, and it was a good thing because she would gradually evolve into her husband's caregiver. Oscar would fall apart and drag himself up again over and over, until he took final refuge in his bed. I wonder if his wife had to go up to his bedroom 30 or 40 times a day to supply with him with coffee.

There is evidence, slim but fascinating, of this other life, a much happier one: dare I say it, almost normal? I only found a few photos of June Gale, but she is a knockout's knockout, dazzling even by Hollywood standards. Oscar wasn't exactly anyone's idea of handsome, but he had a "something", no one could figure out exactly what it was, some odd kind of charisma or tidal force that dragged people into his sphere of influence and wouldn't let them go.

He would come up to women and drape his arm around them and murmur to them in that distinctive low tough-guy voice, and they'd melt. These weren't necessarily affairs, but rather Levant experiments to see how far he could get: and he often got pretty far.

Anyway, on to his daughters. I found only a couple of poses, one in which Oscar receives a kiss from his eldest daughter with visible affection while holding the youngest rather awkwardly on his knee. Obviously happy, he DOES look handsome here. Fathers didn't get down on the floor then to play Lego or take their kids to the park in a stroller because such things didn't yet exist, but there is no doubt Oscar loved these girls and gave them all he had, all that his crippled, fragile, crushed but valiant heart could give them.

Oh, and this picture of the three girls - they all have the full lips and sleepy-lidded, haunting Levant eyes, and to be honest it looks a lot better on them. He has stamped them all with his crazy DNA, and one wonders what happened to them (though the biography claims they all went on to solid careers in different fields), whether they struggled the way he did to stay upright, to stem the force of his tidal despair.

So Oscar wasn't really alone, not at all, he had a beautiful and devoted family (with June fighting like a tiger to keep him out of the hideous cuckoo's- nest sanitariums of the day), but it didn't really save him. I find this incredibly sad. What would have saved him? I'm not sure. His meeting George Gershwin was the best and worst thing that ever happened to him: the bio quotes someone-or-other saying, "What makes you, unmakes you." Even after Gershwin's death at 38, Levant would forever walk in his shadow.

(Looking up something else, I found this little splash of delight about his disastrous purchase of a "summer house", in which he functioned about as well as Woody Allen on a game farm):

The transition to country gentleman was not an easy one. The quiet, the sound of crickets, the animals rustling through the underbrush at night were a torment to Levant. The first day in their new house, he went out to take his walk, as was his custom in the city. Almost as soon as he stepped out of doors he saw two black snakes undulating along a rock. Certain they were poisonous, he scuttled back into the house, where he remained for three days.

The next time he emerged, the sight of a hedgehog terrified him. Insects gave him anxiety attacks. Even birds, with their restless fluttering, upset him. Levant, his nerves already unraveling, found that the most anxiety-producing creature in all the woods was the hummingbird.

'The hummingbird is crazy,' he confided to the journalist Maurice Zolotow. 'I make that statement flatly. The hummingbird is psychotic. If there were psychiatry for birds, they would have to analyze every hummingbird.'

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

An American in Paris - Tra La La

I was surprised to note that Gene Kelly grabs his crotch at 3:30.

Why Leslie Caron and Oscar Levant are not not NOT the same person

(from A Talent for Genius: The Life and Times of Oscar Levant by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenenberger):

"It was Gene Kelly who had brought the seventeen-year-old ballet dancer Leslie Caron over from Paris to star as the gamine Lise Bourvier (in An American in Paris). . . At a studio party to welcome Leslie Caron to Hollywood, Oscar (Levant) met the French teenager who would be turned into an American movie star with her first picture. June (Levant) was anxious to know what Gene Kelly's discovery looked like. 'She looks too much like me as far as I'm concerned,' he replied.

As preposterous as the remark sounded, there was truth in it. Caron did indeed look like a feminized, fetching version of Oscar Levant, with her full, pouty lips, round head, and wide, intelligent eyes. The resemblance would be borne out later in Amanda Levant, the daughter who looked the most like her father and who would bear a striking resemblance to Caron."

OK then. . .

We may not agree with this thesis, but we can try it on, can't we? Every adjective has been used on Levant, and his pictures show a man who can be either borderline-dishy, or as toadlike as Jabba the Hutt. He's much better in his movies, where his set-the-world-on-fire piano playing style immediately sends the hormones soaring, whether you like his looks or not.

 

As for Caron, she's a bit overbite-ish for my tastes, her invisible tail frisking away like a merry little squirrel's. Hi-Lily, Hi-Lo, indeed.

 

 

There's something Satanic about Oscar's face that doesn't go well with a blunt cut.

 

 

Funny, but I DO see the pouty mouth and sad eyes in this one,

though he was awfully young here.

 

 

 

 No, no, NOOOOOOO. . . this isn't working. . .  Levant in drag is just too incongruous. Once he outgrew that soft-faced, baby-lipped phase, he began to look sort of like the neighborhood tough, and it suited him.

 

Now THIS is Caron's true predatory nature, all done up in Oscar's sexy performing tux and trademark bow-tie.

 

 

Uhh. . .

 

 

Ahh. . .

 

Enough, enough! Let me quote another strange source, an astrology site that dissects Levant's natal chart (something to do with a goat), and makes the following alarming statements:

 

 

 

 

"He was knock-kneed and always looked disheveled with his rumpled, crumpled attire. Many women found Levant sexy with his limpid eyes, sensuous mouth, helpless demeanor, and devilishly wicked tongue. At home, his friends would find the pianist hunched over the piano smoking one of his countless cigarettes playing Bach, listening to Beethoven on the phonograph and reading Albert Camus at the same time."

Would I have wanted to know Oscar Levant? He was a close friend of Dorothy Parker - they always spoke highly of each other - but I've always had severe doubts as to whether I would have wanted to meet her. She was just too difficult, too draining, though as with Levant, celebrity swirled around her. I've just started reading the Levant bio, and already it's alarming: the man was a sort of bipolar's bipolar who careened from one extreme state to another, sometimes soaring in huge updrafts of grandiosity and other times glued, paralytic with depression, to his bed.

As with Parker, though, he had loyal friends, people who honestly loved him and knew they were in the company of an original. They don't make them like that any more, do they?  Perhaps in the course of human history, one Oscar Levant was enough.

Black swan, white swan

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wind and fire and. . . Debussy

 

 

there is no translation

for streams of pure meaning

and pure fire

like motion

and speed

who made thee

my steed

 

the language of motion

the swiftness

that casts all words

into fire

consumed

by the moment

 

 

I dreamed of horses

crashing in surf

each shining in color

slick-wet

as with birth and the sea

I ache to see

 

 

 

 

the shell of words we live in

is prison

we die inside it

die to creation

the way life creates itself

 

second by second

 

Painted Doll: the magic of the early talkies

The Wedding Of The Painted Doll

It's a holiday today
The Wedding of the Painted Doll
It's a jolly day
The news is spreading
All around the hall

Red Riding Hood & Buster Brown
The Jumping Jack Jumped into town
From far and near they're coming here
Church bells ringing, bringing

All the little dollies from the follies
With the painted cheeks
Little Mama doll has fussed around
For weeks and weeks

Shoo the blues
No time to lose
Rice and shoes
Will spread the news
That it's a holiday
Today's the Wedding of the little Painted Doll

Here come the bridesmaids
Look at them in their places
Look at the fancy laces
Look at them as they smile
All sorrow away

Here comes the bride now
Look at the little cutie
Look at the little beauty
Look at the little doll
It's her wedding day

Here's the preacher and all look
As he takes his little book
He is sure he knows his stuff
'Cause he's done it oft'n enough

Here comes the bride groom
Ready for the service
Just a little nervous
Now the preacher says,
"You're married to stay"

It's a holiday today
The Wedding of the little Painted Doll


Arthur Freed (W) & Nacio Herb Brown (M)
from the 1929 movie, "Broadway Melody"

I finally found a YouTube clip of one of my favorite Hollywood production numbers. It's one of my favorites because it's just about the first Hollywood production number ever, from the 1929 curiosity Broadway Melody. Then of course you know what happened. It was taken down due to one of those silly rules, such as the law against theft.

So I put up the closest thing I could find, which is grainy still pictures, but the music is good.

The days of early sound must have been heady and terrifying: everything was dumped upside-down. Theatres had to scramble to convert all their equipment, careers were shattered, others sprang up full-blown like Athena from the head of Zeus. (Sorry, I used that metaphor a few posts ago, but it was too good not to repeat. This Oscar Levant stuff is getting to me.) It wasn't so much actors with "good voices" who were able to make the switch, but actors who were able to adapt their style to something more fluid, more subtle, with no more fluttering eyelashes or jabbing, full-body gestures.

Try something here, if you will: look at some silent films, both dramas and comedies (and turn off the wretched music that usually goes with them: when I say silent, I mean silent). Then watch some black-and-white movies from ten years later, with the sound off. Observe carefully. It's a whole 'nother ball game, like comparing stage acting to screen acting. The old large gestures won't play. Often, one murmur will do.

This doesn't mean sound films are "better", but they do seem to be from another planet. Much as I'm intrigued by them, I find silent pictures hard to follow. I'm one of those auditory types, and seeing lips moving with title cards strains my imagination.  Except for Harold Lloyd comedies, the pace of silent film seems much slower, and I was raised as a vid-kid on television that, by comparison, moved at light speed.

So, with the release of that awful non-talkie The Jazz Singer (featuring Al Jolson, the most repulsive performer who ever lived), everything changed. Garbo walked in and mowed everyone down with a voice that was heavily accented, "foreign", and far too deep and gruff to match her ethereal beauty. Something about it worked, it snagged people, grabbed them viscerally. Comedians such as W. C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy, who already had a loyal following in silent pictures, exploded overnight into international stars: and need I tell you why?

So anyway, this Broadway Melody, which I have watched on Turner Classics (bailing halfway through the first time because the non-musical part of it is just so awful) is a fine example of the partial transformation that audiences gobbled up at the time. It's a sort of cliche of early talkies that everyone had to cluster around a microphone hidden behind a potted palm, but it actually is true that these movies had a peculiarly static quality. Nobody knew how to deal with a microphone, which to the actors (mimes, by our standards) must have seemed like a voice-sucking monster. That explains why they had to include frenetic production numbers like this one, to keep rigor mortis from setting in.

This is the strangest one ever, with girls being spun around like compasses, a preacher with Harold Lloyd glasses and rubber legs who appears to fall down the stairs, cartwheels and splits galore, girls with a pompom attached to one ankle (??), and precious lyrics sung by one of those young men with a falsetto voice. I also note a bit of '20s choreography I've seen before: the girls stand on one foot, the other leg extended, hold on to the extended ankle, and hop up and down.


The whole thing is so beautiful to look at: not "black and white", but silver and shine. The music has that charming, optimistic "oom-cha, oom-cha" quality that was so popular before the Depression brought it all crashing down. Soon would come a leap in sophistication:  better songs, real plots instead of stilted novelty-driven dialogue ("Take. . . him. . . for. . . a. . . ride"), Fred and Ginger. If you look at pictures from 1929, then pictures from 1931, you will be astounded at the transformation.

In the interim was a mad scramble, studded with quirky little sparklers like this one.

Cheap Trick of the Day

Let us now diss famous dames. . . These quotes are, of course, borrowed. But the person who originally used them must've borrowed them too, eh? Truth is, it's Monday and I don't feel like writing anything. So I will let famous people speak for me, saying colorfully nasty things about women of note. This was a long list and I winnowed out the clinkers, noticing that the only really good ones belonged to another time and place. The art of the gorgeous insult is apparently wearing thin. Please note: in keeping with my latest obsession, we could not avoid including several choice Levant quotes. I don't think he sat around inventing these: they just spontaneously sailed out of his bizarre and fevered intellect, and straight over everyone's head. She was incredibly ugly, uglier than almost anyone I had ever met. A thin, withered creature, she sat hunched in her chair, in her heavy tweed suit and her thick lisle stockings, impregnable and indifferent. She had a huge nose, a dark mustache, and her dark-dyed hair was combed into absurd bangs over her forehead. - - - Otto Friedrich (about Alice B. Toklas)   I loathe you. You revolt me, stewing in your consumption . . . you are a loathsome reptile - I hope you die. - - - D. H. Lawrence (to Katherine Mansfield)   Zsa Zsa Gabor       She not only worships the golden calf, she barbecues it for lunch. - - - Oscar Levant (about Zsa Zsa Gabor) The only person who ever left the Iron Curtain wearing it. - - - Oscar Levant (about Zsa Zsa Gabor) You can calculate Zsa Zsa Gabor's age by the rings on her fingers. - - - Bob Hope Katherine Hepburn       She has a face that belongs to the sea and the wind, with large rocking-horse nostrils and teeth that you just know bite an apple every day. - - - Cecil Beaton (about Katherine Hepburn) She ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B. - - - Dorothy Parker (about Katherine Hepburn) Marilyn Monroe Her body has gone to her head. - - - Barbara Stanwyck (about Marilyn Monroe) She has breasts of granite and a mind like a Gruyere cheese. - - - Billy Wilder (about Marilyn Monroe) She's a vacuum with nipples. - - - Otto Preminger (about Marilyn Monroe) Elizabeth Taylor Elizabeth Taylor looks like two small boys fighting underneath a thick blanket. - - - Mr. Blackwell Every minute this broad spends outside of bed is a waste of time. - - - Michael Todd (about Elizabeth Taylor) Other Actresses Her hair lounges on her shoulders like an anesthetized cocker spaniel. - - - Henry Allen (about Lauren Bacall, 1994)   I treasure every moment that I do not see her. - - - Oscar Levant (about Phyllis Diller)   Miscellaneous In feathered hats that were once the rage, she resembles a petrified parakeet from the Jurassic age. A royal wreck - - - Mr. Blackwell (about Camilla Parker-Bowles) (More) Literary Legends A fungus of pendulous shape. - - - Alice James (about George Eliot, pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) George Eliot has the heart of Sappho; but the face, with the long proboscis, the protruding teeth of the Apocalyptic horse, betrayed animality. - - - George Meredith (about George Eliot, pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans) Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the." - - - Mary McCarthy (about Lillian Hellman) Isn't she a poisonous thing of a woman, lying, concealing, flipping, plagiarizing, misquoting, and being as clever a crooked literary publicist as ever. - - - Dylan Thomas (about Dame Edith Sitwell) I am fairly unrepentant about her poetry. I really think that three quarters of it is gibberish. However, I must crush down these thoughts, otherwise the dove of peace will shit on me. - - - Noel Coward (about Dame Edith Sitwell) In her last days, she resembled a spoiled pear. - - - Gore Vidal (about Gertrude Stein) She was a master at making nothing happen very slowly. - - - Clifton Fadiman (about Gertrude Stein) Virginia Woolf's writing is no more than glamorous knitting. I believe she must have a pattern somewhere. - - - Dame Edith Sitwell (about Virginia Woolf) (Favorites? Am I prejudiced in favor of Oscar Levant? His jibes  shouldn't have worked because they were full of unlikely words like 'barbecue' and 'Iron Curtain', but they win the prize for originality and sheer goofiness. In second place, the "nothing very slowly" about Stein, who really seems to get it in these things. Also, did you notice the similarity in pose between Dylan Thomas and Marilyn Monroe? Each of them whoring in their own special way.)