Career
From 1949 to 1954, Levenson was a panelist on the CBS series This Is Show Business along with playwright George S. Kaufman and Abe Burrows.
In 1950 he and fellow comedian Joe E. Lewis were the first members of the New York Friars' Club to be roasted. The club has roasted a member every year since the inaugural roasting.
In 1956 he hosted the game show Two for the Money, having replaced fellow humorist Herb Shriner. From 1959 to 1964, he hosted The Sam Levenson Show. Over a span of more than a decade, he appeared on Toast of the Town aka The Ed Sullivan Show twenty-one times, in addition to frequently serving as a substitute host on CBS's Arthur Godfrey Time. He was a guest host on The Price Is Right and was a panelist on many other television programs such as Password and What's My Line? Levenson also had a cameo in the film A Face in the Crowd. Levenson also appeared multiple times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson throughout the 1970s. Levenson wrote the well-known poem "Time Tested Beauty Tips" for his grandchild, which has become falsely attributed to Audrey Hepburn.
Sam Levenson was originally a Spanish teacher at Samuel Tilden High School in Brooklyn. He was an author and wrote Everything But Money (1966), the bestseller Sex and the Single Child (1969), In One Era And Out The Other (1973), and You Can Say That Again, Sam! (1975). Levenson appeared frequently in the "Borscht Belt" hotels of the Catskill Mountains.
The 150-seat Sam Levenson Recital Hall at Brooklyn College was named after him in 1988 in gratitude for his donations over the years to the Performing Arts Center. A glazed porcelain bust of him graces the hall's rear wall. The library of Franklin K. Lane High School, from which he graduated in 1930, is named for him, and a large portrait painting of him hangs on the north wall of the library. During Lane High School's rededication ceremony in the fall of 1976, Levenson was an honored guest and gave a humorous speech about his days as a student.
Levenson died of a heart attack in Long Island College Hospital on August 27, 1980. He was 68.
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Famous quotes containing the word career:
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
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“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)