Description
This portrait of concert pianist, author, actor, comedian, and quipmeister OSCAR LEVANT by Drew Friedman is now available in a limited edition of 12 fine art prints. Levant’s accomplishments and credits are too numerous to mention, and over the course of five decades in the public eye he became a legend in music, film, TV, onstage, and on literary best-seller lists. By way of explaining his character, we offer the following quotes from Oscar, some lifted from his autobiography Memoirs of an Amnesiac:
• “There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”
• “Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.”
• “At the table, I sometimes discourse on the cynicism of the blintz, or the bottled anger and rapelike aggressiveness of Coca-Cola.”
• “When I appeared before the draft board examiner during World War II, he asked me if I thought I could kill. ‘I don’t know about strangers,’ I replied, ‘but friends, certainly.'”
• “Happiness isn’t something you experience, it’s something you remember.”
• “I have given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.”
• “Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic, and so am I.”
• “Among the multifarious pills I take there is one that has nothing but side effects.”