Word: levante
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...simply workmen who make more or less pleasant noises for a living. "What's the difference," he once cried, "between Heifetz and a fiddler in a tavern?" Last week Petrillo set up a little ceremony to pound home his point of view. Before him came Pianist Oscar Levant, penalized with suspension from the union last April for temperamentally failing to honor concert contracts, thus depriving supporting musicians of work. Levant's humiliation reminded Petrillo of another time when art bowed to business. "There was Menuhin," he said. "He used to talk about...
Irascible Pianist Oscar Levant ran head-on into indomitable Boss James C. ("Little Caesar") Petrillo of the American Federation of Musicians. With word that the pianist had failed to keep five concert dates in Canada within the past fortnight, Petrillo banned Levant from all further bookings until the executive board hears the case. Said Czar Petrillo: "I have an idea that Levant feels he is bigger than the federation. This we cannot tolerate...
...Night Is a Woman." When Zorba is too full for words, he dances in wild leaps like a trout or unslings his santuri (a kind of dulcimer) and plucks from it the haunting laments of the Levant. Zorba is a great unbeliever in everything but the abundant life. Pockmarked with bullet scars, he has no faith in war. Full of reverent awe be fore the universe, he cannot stomach organized religion or priests ("[They] even fleece their fleas"). Child of instinct, Zorba defines the hours as if he had created them. "Daytime is a man," he explains, "night...
...biggest disappointment in Full House is The Ransom of Red Chief, where two kidnappers steal a ten-year-old terror. Fred Allen and Oscar Levant would seem ideal as the bumbling criminals; instead, both play it dead-pan, leaving Red Chief--who should be the only poker face--to grovel for the laughs...
...comedy of two other episodes. The Cop and the Anthem wisely casts Charles Laughton as a dapper old bum who unsuccessfully tries to get himself locked up in a warm jail for the winter. A burlesqued version of The Ransom of Red Chief presents Fred Allen and Oscar Levant as dour confidence men who, after making the mistake of kidnaping a little monster of a hillbilly boy, finally pay his parents a reward for taking him off their hands. Sample dialogue (strictly not O. Henry as the boy sicks a bear on his terrified captors: "He's a cinnamon...