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A Talent for Genius: The Life and Times of Oscar Levant
by Sam Kashner & Nancy Schoenberger
- Used
- Very Good
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0679404899
- ISBN 13
- 9780679404897
- Seller
-
San Antonio, Texas, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
A Talent for Genius: The Life and Times of Oscar Levant
by Sam Kashner & Nancy Schoenberger
Hardcover Cloth 512 pages. Condition Very Good Dust Jacket Very Good. Presumed First edition Second printing 1994 with corresponding number line. Handsome black boards and silver embossing shows off this Clean, tight, square copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Book Well kept and carefully stored in unread condition. Slight shelf wear - bumped corners. An unclipped dust jacket smooth, clean and brilliant with the usual shelf wear - a few scrapes, wrinkles and chips. Dust jacket sports original pricetags. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy.
Oscar Levant was the Amadeus of Hollywood, the Oscar Wilde of Broadway -- and the most wildly self-destructive personality ever to become a household name. An astonishingly gifted concert pianist, composer, film and stage presence, radio and television raconteur, insult wit, and bestselling author, Levant steered a maniacally masochistic course through seven glorious decades.
His death in 1972, at the age of 65, left the entertainment community shocked -- largely with amazement that a four-pack-a-day smoker with a history of drug abuse and mental illness had lasted as long as Levant did. He made a national reputation for himself in the late '30s as a brash, brilliant 'expert' on radio's famed quiz show 'Information, Please!', and as a fine concert pianist and the premier interpreter of George Gershwin's concert works.
He appeared in 13 films, usually as a best friend/'Oscar Levant' type. He played Gene Kelly's sidekick in 'An American in Paris' and a lovable hypochondriac in 'The Band Wagon,' and in the film biography 'Rhapsody in Blue,' he literally played himself: Oscar Levant, best friend to George Gershwin, a role he knew all too well.
His hero worship of Gershwin stunted his confidence as a songwriter and a serious composer, though one of his pop songs, 'Blame It on My Youth,' has become a standard, and Arnold Schoenberg, Aaron Copeland, and Virgil Thomson all thought Levant an immensely gifted composer. Levant's addiction to Demerol following a heart attack in the early '50s led to nearly a decade of drug dependency.
Already hobbled by complex superstitions meant to ward off the terrors of performing, Levant was almost destroyed by his addictions. But his intense neurosis didn't keep him from appearing on television to talk about it. His uncensored comments on 'The Jack Paar Show' and on his own local Los Angeles talk show made national news.A Talent for Genius, the result of exhausting research and hundreds of hours of interviews, is a profoundly revelation.
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Details
- Seller
- River House Books
(US)
- Seller's Inventory #
- 657050
- Title
- A Talent for Genius: The Life and Times of Oscar Levant
- Author
- Sam Kashner & Nancy Schoenberger
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover Cloth
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0679404899
- ISBN 13
- 9780679404897
- Publisher
- Villard
- Place of Publication
- Westminster, MD
- Date Published
- 1994
- Pages
- 512
- Bookseller catalogs
- Biography; First Editions;
Terms of Sale
River House Books
About the Seller
River House Books
About River House Books
I found hundreds of nice dust jackets with no books to cover. Need one for your library? Have a look at that category!
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I ship domestically in the US using the Post Office and internationally using consolidation services. Books are always wrapped then packed in cardboard boxes with padding to protect the contents. International shipments are double boxed with shipping paperwork attached to the outside of the box using a special envelope. And a complete duplicate of all the paperwork packed inside the outer box in case the attached set wanders off.
Previous international shipments to Austria, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Spain, Sweden, UK --> Help me fill in my international bingo card!
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Cloth
- "Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
- Number Line
- A series of numbers appearing on the copyright page of a book, where the lowest number generally indicates the printing of that...
- Shelf Wear
- Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Remainder
- Book(s) which are sold at a very deep discount to alleviate publisher overstock. Often, though not always, they have a remainder...