Frenzied Road Back

His hands noodle out a few bars from Gershwin's Concerto in F; then the man in the crumpled suit says: "This is Oscar Levant speaking. It's an identification that I have to make because I suffer from amnesia." Twice a week, in a pint-sized studio at Hollywood's KCOP-TV, Levant snaps at his guests, snarls at the camera, squints at the "20 outpatients" of his audience, sneers at his sponsors, scowls at the world, sits at his piano, twitching, squirming, blinking, playing. Says he: "I'm a study of a man in chaos in search of frenzy." Only eight weeks old, The Oscar Levant Show is a smash hit, and the networks are angling for Oscar's talents.

After a 1952 heart attack, Levant's road went downhill. He tried recuperating with a bottle, got encircled with more troubles--"at the instigation of a psychiatrist who obviously hated me." He was tossed out of the Musicians' Union for missing concerts, and though quickly reinstated, "I went on drugs because I was deeply hurt. I had been a good union man." After a last concert at Manhattan's Lewisohn Stadium in July 1953, Levant packed off to a Pasadena sanitarium. In 1956 he managed to last 18 weeks on a Los Angeles KNXT show, Words About Music, then got a reprimand for making anti-Nixon quips and quit in disgust. Last February, after more than a year in four sanitariums, he got a call from KCOP (co-owned by Bing Crosby), was offered a temporary job filling in for ailing Jokester Tom Duggan. Ten days later Levant had a show of his own.

Fallen Heart. The Oscar Levant Show repels some people and delights most. Drawing on his motley acquaintance, Levant has corralled both name stars and intellectuals as his guests. Eddie Cantor was followed by Christopher Isherwood, Adolphe Menjou by Aldous Huxley, Red Skelton by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. His subjects run the gamut from highly intellectual topics to brutal digs. Isherwood told him: "You are like a Dostoevsky character--completely unmasked at all times."

Oscar discusses his illness, brings his hand to his heart and says: "If I didn't hold it, my heart would fall out." He has a knack for sharp, snide ad-lib remarks on just about anything, including his sponsors: ("Now for the most important, climactic moment of the show--Queen Bee [vitamins], which cures everything, except me"). On Leonard Bernstein: "I don't think as much of him as he does. Lennie has no humor about his egomania. I do." On love: "Because of my attentiveness to other women on the show, my wife told me I ought to get a divorce and settle down." On theology: "An atheist is a man with no invisible means of support."

Sick-Sick. Never before has KCOP had so much mail. Some call it the "sick-sick show," but most rejoice at "rediscovering" Oscar, the dictionary, and good books as well. Says Huxley: "He represents intelligence--something all of us can use more of."

But for Oscar, 51, success is hard. He is off the bottle ("I don't drink liquor. I don't like it. It makes me feel good"), but his psychiatrist sessions went up from one to three a week.

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