talent for genius the life and times of oscar levant

Very Good in Very Good jacket A Talent for Genius: The Life and Times of Oscar Levant by Sam Kashner & Nancy Schoenberger Hardcover Cloth 512 pages. Condition Very Good Dust Jacket Very Good. Presumed First edition Second printing 1994 with corresponding number line. Handsome black boards and silver embossing shows off this Clean, tight, square copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Book Well kept and carefully stored in unread condition. Slight shelf wear-bumped corners. An unclipped dust jacket smooth, clean and brilliant with the usual shelf wear-a few scrapes, wrinkles and chips. Dust jacket sports original pricetags. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy. Oscar Levant was the Amadeus of Hollywood, the Oscar Wilde of Broadway-and the most wildly self-destructive personality ever to become a household name. An astonishingly gifted concert pianist, composer, film and stage presence, radio and television raconteur, insult wit, and bestselling author, Levant steered a maniacally masochistic course through seven glorious decades. His death in 1972, at the age of 65, left the entertainment community shocked-largely with amazement that a four-pack-a-day smoker with a history of drug abuse and mental illness had lasted as long as Levant did. He made a national reputation for himself in the late '30s as a brash, brilliant 'expert' on radio's famed quiz show 'Information, Please! ', and as a fine concert pianist and the premier interpreter of George Gershwin's concert works. He appeared in 13 films, usually as a best friend/'Oscar Levant' type. He played Gene Kelly's sidekick in 'An American in Paris' and a lovable hypochondriac in 'The Band Wagon, ' and in the film biography 'Rhapsody in Blue, ' he literally played himself: Oscar Levant, best friend to George Gershwin, a role he knew all too well. His hero worship of Gershwin stunted his confidence as a songwriter and a serious composer, though one of his pop songs, 'Blame It on My Youth, ' has become a

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