#BornThisDay: Songwriter, Cole Porter

June 9, 1891 – Cole Porter:

I’m a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop, but if baby I’m the bottom… you’re the top.

That quote is from You’re The Top a Cole Porter song from his 1934 musical Anything Goes.

At just 10 years old, I was so enamored by the songs of Cole Porter and the story of his life and his famous friends that my parental units gave me huge “coffee table” book about this great American songwriter for Christmas and then followed it up with another big book of his collected lyrics for my birthday the next week. I still have both books. How about that? Even now in the 21st century, Porter’s lyrics still come off as urbane and witty, and his melodies sinuous and brooding.

In 1916, his first full score was performed. That musical, See America First, was a flop. It closed after just 15 performances. Bruised by the whole experience, Porter began to travel around Europe. He found an apartment in Paris, and it was the beginning of his lifelong love affair with the city, which he would return to in songs like You Don’t Know Paree and I Love Paris.

During his time in Europe, Porter contributed material to many musicals, but until his song Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love) appeared in the 1928 musical Paris, he had not had a big hit. Paris, the city, not the musical, was the place that Porter flourished socially. He attended parties with his pal Noël Coward. The Paris fêtes of the era were fancy and fabulous, attended by the upper-crust of society. Porter’s own events were marked by gay and bisexual shenanigans, cross-dressing, famous international musicians and actors, along with a large surplus of recreational drugs. He once hired the entire Ballet d’ Monte Carlo to entertain at one of his soirees.

In Paris, Porter started spending time with American divorcee Linda Thomas. They became best friends very quickly. Their financial and social status made them prefect as a married couple. The fact that Thomas’s ex-husband was abusive and Porter was gay made the pairing an even more perfect match. Thomas was always one of Porter’s staunchest supporters.

Being married simply increased Porter’s chance of success, and being wed to Porter allowed Thomas to keep her high status in society for the rest of her life. They married in 1919, and they lived in a happy special arrangement, a successful public relationship, but a sexless marriage, until Thomas’s death in 1954. They adored and respected each other. The couple valued each other’s advice, shared the same passion for travel and art, and of course, parties. He slept with many men, but Porter was always true to his wife in his fashion, proving that there are all sorts of marriages.

Porter was happy with a life writing songs in Hollywood in the 1930s. He was comfortable working in the sort of liberal film industry where he could enjoy increasingly open gay adventures. At the time, it was somewhat more acceptable to be an eccentric gay artist, but Thomas feared for Porter’s reputation and career. Her standing in society was threatened by his assignations. The rumors about Porter whirled in her upper-crust social circles.

Despite a horseback riding accident in 1937 that crippled him for the rest of his life, Porter produced much of his best work in the 1940s and 1950s.

He wrote hundreds of songs for Broadway shows, film musicals, and television specials. Most of his shows, if not the songs, are slight and easily forgettable. He was approaching 40 when he truly became a commercial success on Broadway. He spent the last third of his life as an invalid, in horrible pain, after that devastating riding accident; yet he wrote the greatest score of his life, Kiss Me Kate, when he was in his late 50s, after most people had decided he was washed up. Kiss Me Kate opened in 1948 and ran for over 1000 performances.

Even Porter’s song titles sound gay. Among the titles: Please Don’t Make Me Be Good, I Get A Kick Out Of You, You Do Something To Me, I’ve Got You Under My Skin, My Heart Belongs To Daddy, What Is This Thing Called Love?, Just One Of Those Things, Love For Sale, Don’t Fence Me In, and Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.

Lyricist Alan Jay Lerner quipped: “Cole is a homosexual who had never seen the closet”. Anything Goes was both his motto, and his hit song. In the charming Experiment he wrote:

Be curious
Though interfering friends may frown
Get furious
At each attempt to hold you down

Porter made slight, sly references in his songs about the sort of men he fancied. In a song for the perfectly titled show Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929), Porter wrote:

Find me a primitive man
Built to a primitive plan
I don’t mean the kind that belongs to a club
But the kind that has a club that belongs to him…

His lyrics are often full of naughty fun. In Brush Up Your Shakespeare from Kiss Me Kate, he joked:

When your baby is pleading for pleasure
Let her sample your ‘Measure for Measure’…

Porter died in 1964, at 73, lonely, morose, alcoholic, gathering guests to dine in settings that had once sparkled with life and laughter, then refusing to eat. He is buried next to his wife in Peru (Indiana, not South America).

His witty, sophisticated songs, among the best ever written, are the tinpantithesis of poetry.

The 1990 album Red, Hot, + Blue features Porter songs sung by popular musicians of the 1980s and early 1990s, including: Annie Lennox, Tom Waits, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop and Jimmy Somerville. It remains a favorite album of mine. It raised a lot of money for HIV/AIDS research.

How about this Porter tune as a Gay Anthem?:

Live and let live

Be and let be

Hear and let hear

See and let see

Sing and let sing

Dance and let dance

I like Offenbach, you do not

So what, so what, so what?

Read and let read

Write and let write

Love and let love