Cocktail party wallflowering led me to a master raconteur
I am some inches taller than 6 feet. Blending into the wallpaper at cocktail parties requires some stealth. My first year as an unworthy guest, I spied a guy even taller than myself. He was well groomed, dressed better than me. He stood alone against the wall. It looked like a good place to fade away. I eased my way over to his side and tossed out a remark that I hoped would hook him into responding. That he did. He kept me spellbound for the next three hours until my social wife came and dragged me off due to the party’s conclusion.
This tall man was David Levitch. The Levitch family owned Liberty Furniture in the building that now houses Auntie’s Bookstore and Uncle’s Games in downtown Spokane. David managed the furniture business for several years.
David Levitch never told me about the furniture business. We talked hours, year after year at the cocktail party, about his uncle, Oscar Levitch. If you know anything about Spokane from the 1930s through the 1950s, Oscar Levitch is a prominent name. Oscar was active in all kinds of civic affairs. He gave generously to good causes. He was well known for sponsoring sports activities in Spokane, all kinds of sports, including boxing, wrestling, racing and probably most notably, Spokane baseball.
Oscar Levitch would help out local baseball players by hiring them in the off-season to work in his downtown jewelry store at 10 N. Howard St. in the Rookery Building. The Spokane Indians’ most famous slugger, Levi McCormack, sold rings and things during the winter for Oscar.
But Oscar was most famous for his sense of humor. At each cocktail party, I asked David to tell me about his Uncle Oscar’s long-lived prank war with a visiting comedy team of “Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson.”
Olsen and Johnson staged a freewheeling, anything-goes comedy show that toured all over the United States and even appeared on television occasionally. The duo came to Spokane and performed at the Fox Theater. They often incorporated local celebrities in their humorous routine. Oscar Levitch was one of them.
After hearing himself lampooned from the theater stage, Oscar set out for revenge. Levitch purchased the entire first two rows of seats at the Fox Theater for the second night of the Olsen and Johnson show. He gave away the tickets all over Spokane. Oscar required that each recipient pick up the newspaper that would be provided on the seat and hold up that newspaper as if reading the news during Olsen and Johnson’s act.
David said his Uncle Oscar’s plan worked as if it had been rehearsed. Olsen and Johnson were noticeably distracted.
Olsen and Johnson hired a construction crew to meet them at dawn the next morning in front of Oscar Levitch’s Howard jewelry store. Following orders from the pair of comedians, the workers nailed up plywood covering the store windows and posted large signs with the words “STORE CLOSED UNTIL OLSEN AND JOHNSON LEAVE TOWN.” That began the prank war.
David Levitch told the story as if he was there, and I guess he was. I looked forward to Levitch’s stories more than the priceless prosciutto and the Armenian olives. I’m a sucker for old stories about Spokane.
Levitch passed away Feb. 16 after 85 years of living. It took a lengthy obituary to highlight his lifetime of achievement. I only spent a few hours with the man, once each year for the last few years, but I was struck to my core with the truth of this line written into Levitch’s obit as it appeared in The Spokesman-Review:
“There is consensus among his friends and family that David was a master story and joke-teller. Without embellishment, but with an eye for exquisite detail, his stories and jokes were legion.”
Amen.