The WOW Report

  • WOW Report
  • About
  • RuPaul’s Drag Race Live!
  • WOW Presents Plus
  • What to Watch
  • Store
You are here: Home / Life / Born This Day / #BornThisDay: Songwriter, Cole Porter

#BornThisDay: Songwriter, Cole Porter

By Stephen Rutledge on June 9, 2022 3:03 am

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 Lee 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.

Thomas 1919 passport photo, public domain

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. In 1949, it won the first ever Tony Award for Best Musical. Kiss Me, Kate has been revived in 1999 and 2019, and has been performed in hundreds of high school and community theatre productions.

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

Bite and let bite

Live and let live and remember this line:

‘You’re bus’ness is your bus’ness and my bus’ness is mine’

Live and let live

Be and let be

Hear and let hear

See and let see

Drink and let drink

Eat and let eat

You like bouillabaise, I do not

So what, so what, so what?

Pray and let pray

Slip and let slip

Dress and let dress,

Strip and let strip

Live and let live and remember this line:

‘You’re bus’ness is your bus’ness and my bus’ness is mine’

Porter, 1953

Hollywood has stubbornly refused to get the Cole Porter story right. There is the highly fictionalized Night And Day (1946), with an improbably Cary Grant as Porter, without a whiff of gayness, and Alexis Smith as Linda Lee. Porter’s life was chronicled a bit more realistically in the sad De-Lovely (2004), starring Kevin Kline as Porter and Ashley Judd as his wife. The only good thing about this mess is a soundtrack that includes Porter songs sung by Alanis Morissette, Elvis Costello, Diana Krall, Natalie Cole, and others modern age singers. Porter also appears as a character in Woody Allen‘s delightful film Midnight In Paris (2011), where he is played by Yves Heck.

I like to think that Porter would give his approval to this:

Show the love:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Born This Day, Culture, Entertainment, Gay, History, LBGTQ, Life, Music, Music, On Stage

More

ABBA! Nick Offerman! Murray Bartlett! David Bowie! The WOW Report for Radio Andy!

ABBA! Nick Offerman! Murray Bartlett! David Bowie! The WOW Report for Radio Andy!

by Blake Jacobs on February 3, 2023 11:00 am

Adam Joseph Reimagines Loosey LaDuca’s Talent Show Track “Let Loose”- Listen

Adam Joseph Reimagines Loosey LaDuca’s Talent Show Track “Let Loose”- Listen

by Paisley Dalton on January 31, 2023 9:28 am

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Trending


#TikTokTrend: Madonna Dancing to Gaga’s ‘Bloody Mary’ Has Fans Kinda Freaking TF Out –Watch

Robert Fux, Farao Groth & Kayo Are Sashaying to the ‘Drag Race Sverige’ Judging Panel

Monét X Change & Bob the Drag Queen Launch New Line, BOMO Beauty

The LOOK George Santos Gives After Being Asked “Who Do You Think Will Win Drag Race..?” –Watch

#80ForBrady: Trixie Quizzes Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sally Field & Rita Moreno –Watch

About

From the creators of The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Party Monster, Million Dollar Listing, RuPaul's Drag Race, I Am Britney Jean, Big Freedia, and more.

Schiaperrelli! Madonna! Tom Hanks! Kylies Minogue & Jenner! The WOW Report for Radio Andy
Madonna! Joanna Lumley! Edgar Allan Poe! Jennifers Lopez AND Coolidge! The WOW Report for Radio Andy!
Prince Harry! Jennifer Coolidge! M3GAN! Jordan Peele! Randy Joins Us for the WOW Report for Radio Andy!
Rest in Perfection Barbara Walters and Anita Pointer! The WOW Report for Radio Andy!
ONJ! QE2! Leslie Jordan! Our In Memoriam Episode for 2002 on The WOW Report for Radio Andy

© 2021 World of Wonder Productions, Inc | World of Wonder is a trademark of World of Wonder Productions, Inc | Privacy

Copyright © 2023 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in