Oscar Levant

Award won Role or nomination

1. 1906 age 0

   Born

2. 1923 age 17

   CreditBen Bernie and All the Lads

3. 1937 age 31

   CreditNothing Sacredcomposer

4. 1945 age 39

   CreditRhapsody in Blue

5. 1946 age 40

   CreditHumoresque

6. 1948 age 42

   CreditRomance on the High Seas

7. 1950 age 44

   CreditThe Barkleys of Broadway

8. 1951 age 45

   CreditAn American in Paris

9. 1952 age 46

   CreditO. Henry's Full House

10. 1953 age 47

    CreditThe Band Wagon

11. 1972 age 65

    Died

• BFBess Flowers3 titles
• AFArthur Freed3 titles
• BHBen Hecht2 titles
• EHErnest Haller2 titles
• HMHarold Miller2 titles
• ALAlan Jay Lerner2 titles
• VMVincente Minnelli2 titles
• RERoger Edens2 titles
• BCBetty Comden2 titles
• AGAdolph Green2 titles

• 
  Photo:Trailer screenshotPublic domain

• It certainly will be if you are still around.

  Oscar Levant, CC BY-SA 4.0

• Tell me, George, if you had it to do all over, would you fall in love with yourself again?

  Oscar Levant, CC BY-SA 4.0

• It would have been better if you had died and Gershwin had written the elegy.

  Oscar Levant, CC BY-SA 4.0

• A symphonic conductor should reconcile himself to the realization that, regardless of his approach or temperament, the eventual result is the same — the orchestra will hate him.

  Oscar Levant, CC BY-SA 4.0

• I would like to have been present, if I could have my choice of all moments in music history, when Stokowski suddenly became conscious of his beautiful hands. That must have been a moment. Like stout Cortez [sic] on a peak in Darien (I know it was Balboa) he saw before him a limitless expanse, a whole uncharted sea that might be subjected to his influence, free from the encumbrance of a baton.

  Oscar Levant, CC BY-SA 4.0

• He never asks the orchestra to do anything which contradicts the players' feeling of what the music signifies or what the printed notes of the score actually mean in plain musical language. To his credit he does not pretend to omniscience. When a certain progression of programs with the Philharmonic decreed that he conduct the Brahms Fourth Symphony two seasons ago, he disavowed intensive rehearsals with the simple statement to the orchestra: "Gentlemen, you know the work better than I do." Both the compliment and the attitude endeared themselves so much to the orchestra that they literally forgot themselves in a mass effort to justify his statement—and, as one of those who heard the performance, I can testify that they delivered one of the most powerful and integrated interpretations of the score that New York has experienced in years.

  Oscar Levant, CC BY-SA 4.0