Oscar Writhes Again

To Oscar Levant, an ounce of attention is worth a pound of cure--and he was getting lots of attention last week.

It all began when Los Angeles station KCOP-TV (Channel 13) brought in a beauty queen to do the Philco commercials in place of Oscar's ailing wife June. Oscar had expected to do the commercials himself, and this "humiliation" shook him from id to toe. He was rude, hustled her off-camera before she could make her sales pitch, was notified within minutes that Philco had canceled sponsorship of the show. In a rage, Oscar launched into an on-the-air assault on Philco, urged his audience not to buy Philco until the company returned to his program. "Let's fight the power game with the power game," he cried. "I don't need Philco--who needs Philco?"

The station promptly suspended him, next day was swamped by the greatest flood of mail and phone calls in its history. "We've never had such literate and highly abusive calls before," admitted bemused KCOP. Telegrams poured in, including one from Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, himself a curmudgeon of stature: "Have just canceled order for my 15th Philco. I don't need anybody either. But you are a good deed in a naughty world." Snorted Oscar himself: "My leaving Channel 13 is a catastrophe for the community. The channel will now revert to its cloacal status with such intellectual pursuits as hypnotism and bingo."

Excusable Blunder. Oscar won his point. Caving in under the flood of mail, KCOP took him back. When other sponsors offered to snap up the time Philco had vacated, Philco itself gave up and reinstated Oscar.

Oscar's appearance was typical. "I don't appear here in humility," he told his audience. "I made an excusable blunder--considering the circumstances that I was humiliated--of using my power for fractional, justifiable vindictiveness." As for Philco, "I will not tolerate any capricious whim, right or wrong (and I was right as usual), to deter my passionately loyal fans from purchasing this great product."

Off the air, Oscar was less abject and more candid: "I thrive on humiliation. That's the reason I went back to Channel 13. I couldn't get that much humiliation anywhere else."

But two days later, Oscar sprang another surprise on long-suffering KCOP-TV: he gave the station six days' notice (he had no contract), announced he was switching to Channel 9, which he had only days before characterized as "the Skid Row channel." On his last KCOP shows he laid into KCOP lustily: "I am in a stream of very bad consciousness. Wherefore of late I have lost my mirth, to quote General Trujillo, I want to express my appreciation for the lack of cooperation, the lack of consideration, the lack of even primitive facilities, which have made a man out of me." Commented Station Manager Al Flanagan shortly: "We survived Liberace's departure."

"Unapproachable Greatness." This week Oscar will start skidding amuck two evenings a week (for $900 a performance --$300 more than KCOP-TV gave him) on KHJ-TV's Channel 9. By now knowing which side its customers are buttered on, Philco was expected to tag along prudently with its peevish star. Promised Oscar: "I'll treat them like Queen Mary visiting the poor."

At the end of his eventful fortnight, Levant was negotiating with both CBS and NBC to go transcontinentally berserk on network next fall; he was also ranting affably with moviemakers interested in producing his screen biography. Of the recent turns in his labyrinthine career, Oscar offered a candid self-appraisal: "In some situations I was difficult, in odd moments impossible, in rare moments loathsome, but, at my best, unapproachably great."

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