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Article: Levant bio: An intriguing character in clumsy hands
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- June 23, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1994 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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A TALENT FOR GENIUS
The Life and Times of Oscar Levant
By Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger
Villard, 512 pp., illustrated, $25
Oscar Levant was jack of all musical trades and master of most;
he was one of the inventors of crossover.
For a period in the late 1940s and early 1950s Levant was the most
popular concert pianist in America, commanding bigger crowds and
higher fees than Vladimir Horowitz or Arthur Rubinstein. That was
because he was even more famous as a star of radio, records and, most
of all, the movies, where he invariably played his greatest and only
role, himself.
Levant's upbringing, psychology and pathology equipped him with a
major burden of guilt; he always ...