One-Man Show Breathes Life Into Oscar Levant’s Unhealthy Humor

Every age has its icons. In the ‘50s there was Oscar Levant: pianist, composer, author, raconteur, pungent wit, professional curmudgeon, darling of the Algonquin Round Table and other such glitterati.

But Levant also traded on something else--being a fashionable neurotic, the man who tried to give Nembutal a good name, the humorist who made self-revelation, in all its misery, chic.

Fifty-somethings remember his signature appearances on Jack Paar’s show as a chain-smoking, hands-trembling, pasty-faced quipster. The unreformed alcoholic and pill-popper, whose masochism often won out, once joked:

“I don’t drink; it makes me feel good.” Laughs also came from his line, “The first time I met and embraced Judy Garland may well be the greatest moment in pharmaceutical history.”

And now he returns to the stage--at UCLA’s Royce Hall Saturday--in the person of Stan Freeman, whose award-winning, one-man marathon, “At Wit’s End,” revels not only in Levantian anecdote and the subject’s well-known dissolute ways, but his gifts as a pianist.

In fact, it was the many talents of Freeman that inspired producer Ronald Lachman and writer Joel Kimmel to put together a show based on material from Levant’s books--one of which is titled “Memoirs of an Amnesiac.”

Now 71, and six years older than Levant when he died two decades ago, Freeman says he had only a passing acquaintance with the man he celebrates; they met during World War II.

“I was a pianist in the Army orchestra,” he recalls. “We were doing a bond-selling tour with celebrity guests, and one of them was Oscar. Whenever an emotional emergency struck and he canceled--anything could do it, just the sight of blood was trauma enough--I filled in for him. As a result I got to play Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ a lot.” (He closes the show with that popular piece, and samples bits of Chopin and Bach along the way.)

Levant, slavishly devoted to George Gershwin, slipped into a mode of “undiluted idolatry,” becoming the foremost interpreter of his colleague’s music. Only Gershwin and Levant’s wife, June, remained outside the target area of his deadly barbs--one line in the show, an unprintable observation about Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, had the mal vivant fired from a Los Angeles TV talk show that he was host of during the ‘50s.

Some of the milder lines--”I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin”--spin out as part of the show’s patter. But since Leonard Bernstein’s death two years ago, the one about Bernstein “using music as an accompaniment to his conducting” has been dropped as insensitive.

June Levant, who lives in Beverly Hills and with whom Freeman has an imaginary dialogue in the show, contributed many details to “At Wit’s End.”

She exaggerates a little about the first five years of their often stormy marriage, claiming to have uttered only two words: “I’m leaving.” But the quip fits the context of their relationship.

“I was terribly intimidated by Oscar’s coterie,” says his widow, who was formerly the starlet June Gale. “Personalities like Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker and George S. Kaufman--stars of the literary world--left me dazzled, dumbstruck and feeling inadequate. I used to cry to him, ‘Why don’t we know any ordinary people?’ ”

Levant didn’t leave his wife stranded.

“He bought me books,” she recalls, “saying, ‘You don’t want to be a baby doll all your life.’ ” So successful were they in calming her insecurities that she ultimately became the host of her own daytime TV talk show.

After a 1952 heart attack, Levant fell prey to hypochondria, drug dependency and clinical depression. It was as a patient on the Cedars-Sinai psychiatric ward that Dr. Lionel Margolin, then a resident, encountered him.

“Even at his lowest moments, he had a wit that wouldn’t stop,” says Margolin, now a practicing psychoanalyst. “His remarks--I still remember them--poked fun at occupational therapy. ‘Ah, yes,’ he used to say, ‘we cure mental illness by making ceramic ashtrays.’ ”

It was Levant’s ability to scrutinize the system and offer his own sharp insight into a patient’s hospital experience that benefited the staff so much, recalls Margolin.

“We all got into the habit of listening to him,” he says, “as the inmate uttering words of sanity.”

Freeman has been touring “At Wit’s End” for three years. In 1989, it played the Coronet Theatre for four months (earning him the trade paper Drama-Logue’s Best Actor Award); after that came another long run in Miami, and last winter the show was installed for a month at Michael’s Pub in New York, where he picked up a Drama Desk nomination.

Impersonating the tormented misanthrope is Freeman’s first foray as an actor--he has written two Broadway shows, performed as piano soloist with a number of major symphony orchestras and noted jazz bands, contributed material to “The Carol Burnett Show,” accompanied Marlene Dietrich for many years and composed songs.

“But doing this show was scary,” he says in his rich baritone--markedly different from the whining sound of Levant. “And I still get nervous, even though it’s the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever attempted.”

He jokes about his amazingly varied career, mimicking the Brando line--”I coulda been a contendah”--and says that he regrets accepting all the offers his diverse talents inspired and not staying focused as a serious pianist.

Still, Freeman and Levant have struck an equitable exchange; it’s not easy to cast a major acting role that requires the artistry of a consummate pianist. And, especially in this post-print era, he takes pleasure in regaling audiences with “all the literary references of Oscar’s rude remarks.”

“After all,” he jokes, “maybe even today some people need a break from Ice-T.”

Stan Freeman’s “At Wit’s End” plays at 8 p.m. Saturday at UCLA’s Royce Hall. Tickets: $9 to $25. Call (310) 825-2101.