OSCAR LEVANT ON GEORGE GERSHWIN. LEVANT, OSCAR. 1906-1972. Typed Manuscript with penciled annota...

OSCAR LEVANT ON GEORGE GERSHWIN. LEVANT, OSCAR. 1906-1972. Typed Manuscript with penciled annotations, fragment of 'My Life: or, The Story of George Gershwin,' 7 pp, 4to, n.p., c.1939, on wood pulp typing paper, heavily browned, folded at horizontal center, chipping to edges; laid in to volume featuring printed version of Levant's story, published in November 1939 Town and Country as 'Variations on a Gershwin Theme,' clipped from the original pages and laid down to individual leaves, bound in red cloth gilt, 238 x 160 mm. Provenance: G. Alan Chidsey, Great Neck, NY (booklabel to verso of t.p.). Oscar Levant was a pianist and composer who also acted in several movies during the Golden Age, including An American in Paris. He is closely associated with Gershwin, having met him early in his career, and having been the first pianist, after Gershwin himself, to record Rhapsody in Blue. In 1939, two years after Gershwin's untimely death, Levant published a memoir of the composer in the society magazine Town and Country. The published version has been gathered here, pasted up in the leaves of the small red volume, complementing the 7 pp of original typescript which is from an earlier draft recalling Levant's time spent with Gershwin. G. Alan Chidsey (1920-1979) was a book dealer and lawyer who served as a trustee of the estate of Marsden Hartley. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing