Oscar Levant

Oscar Levant would probably be better known by people born after the 1950s, if only he'd been a little less talented, or at least able to concentrate on fewer aspects of a life in the public eye. A composer, pianist, actor, author, and "personality," he managed to achieve a fair amount of fame in each of these fields -- though mostly the last from 1945 onward -- but never enough in any of them to last long beyond the time of his death in 1972. Born into a musical family in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1906, he revealed himself to be a piano prodigy at an early age and, after initial les...