He's got rhythm

Oscar Levant built his reputation as an actor and radio host, but this talented pianist was also a key interpreter of Gershwin's music

- Misha Donat

‘Upper berth – lower berth. That’s the difference between talent and genius,’ muttered George Gershwin to his friend Oscar Levant as he settled down for the night in the more comfortable lower bunk. The two musicians were on the sleeper from New York to Pittsburgh, where Gershwin was due to perform his Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F. The conductor Bill Daly had been held up in New York, and Levant was to help out by playing the solos while Gershwin rehearsed the orchestra.

If Oscar Levant was no genius on the level of Gershwin, he was nothing if not multi-talented. Pianist, composer, actor, writer, radio show host – he managed all those careers throughout his life. As a Gershwin player he was second only to the composer himself, and at the peak of his career, in the early 1940s, his concert fee was higher than those commanded by Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein – not because he was regarded as a finer pianist (he wasn’t), but because his radio show Information Please had a regular audience of 12 million in the US.

Oscar Levant was born in Pittsburgh on 27 December 1906, the youngest son of an Orthodox Jewish family. He received his first piano lessons from one of his brothers, and soon developed into a prodigy. On the day before his first lesson at high school, Paderewski was to give a recital in Pittsburgh. The 12-year-old Levant asked his new teacher if he wanted to know what the famous pianist was going to play. Instead of rattling off the pieces verbally, Levant sat at the piano and played the entire programme.