Cole Porter song EVERYTIME WE SAY GOODBYE and his life and music

Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Many of his songs became standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway and in film.

Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, Porter defied his grandfather's wishes and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn to musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote the lyrics as well as the music for his songs. After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 1930s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate. It won the first Tony Award for Best Musical.

Porter's other musicals include Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady, Anything Goes, Can-Can and Silk Stockings. His numerous hit songs include "Night and Day", "Begin the Beguine", "I Get a Kick Out of You", "Well, Did You Evah!", "I've Got You Under My Skin", "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" and "You're the Top". He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s, including Born to Dance (1936), which featured the song "You'd Be So Easy to Love"; Rosalie (1937), which featured "In the Still of the Night"; High Society (1956), which included "True Love"; and Les Girls (1957).

Anything goes by Cole Porter

Mommy’s little Darling

By Georg Predota, Interlude

Cole Porter
Credit: http://www-tc.pbs.org/

It’s not easy being the son or daughter of the richest person in the whole wide word! Just ask Kate Cole, daughter of James Omar Cole, at his time, the richest man in the US state of Indiana. Kate was treated like a princess and showered with the most expensive toys, clothes and jewelry. She received the best general education money can buy, and that included very expensive instructions in dance and music. Above all, Kate Cole developed a rather expensive and eccentric taste. When her daddy introduced her to a number of suitable and high-powered businessmen for the purpose of marriage, Kate rebelled. Instead of following her father’s wishes, she married a weak, shy and ineffectual, although moderately successful pharmacist named Sam Porter from her hometown of Peru, Indiana. Daddy Cole was furious, yet considering his esteemed social image, financially subsidized the couple. Living on a generous allowance for the rest of their lives, Kate gave birth to a son on 9 June 1891, christened Cole Albert Porter.

Young Cole displayed some early musical talent, studying violin at age six and starting piano lessons at age eight. His mom did everything in her powers to vigorously promote her little darling. She subsidized the student orchestra so her son could be the featured violin soloist. When Cole began composing his first songs, mom paid to have them published and numerous copies were handed to family, friends and the local press. She even falsified his school records to make him appear more intelligent and mature for his age. Despite, or because of his overbearing and overprotective mother, Cole really blossomed during his undergraduate studies at Yale University. He became a huge social success, composing almost 300 songs during his tenure. In addition, he furnished the music for six full-scale musical comedies, staged by various University fraternities. When he graduated in 1913, he was unanimously voted the “most entertaining” member of his class. But it was still difficult to escape the wishes of the richest man in Indiana, and at the insistence of his wealthy grandfather, Cole enrolled in the Harvard Law School. Hardly two years into his career as a buddying lawyer, Cole, without informing his grandfather, transferred to the Harvard’s School of Art and Sciences. Eventually he abandoned all academic studies and moved to New York to start his professional musical career.

Cole Porter and Linda Lee Thomas
Credit: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/

His first Broadway show See America First, staged in 1916 was not a rousing professional success. However, it introduced Cole to the New York upper crust, and he became a prominent socialite. By July 1917, Cole moved to Paris and much enjoyed the city’s fabulous social life and an endless stream of extravagant parties. He made up stories about his heroic fighting days in the French Foreign Legion and the French army, and was considered a war hero back home. None of it was true, but Cole nevertheless “encouraged this official story for the rest of his life.” He also met the wealthy and divorced Linda Lee Thomas from Louisville, Kentucky. She was slightly older, radiantly beautiful and well aware of Cole’s homosexual preferences and activities. However, their financial situation and social status made them ideal candidates for marriage, and they officially said yes on 19 December 1919. According to some sources, their “Paris home had platinum wallpaper and zebra skin chairs,” and they lived a successful public relationship, yet sexless marriage until Linda died in 1954.

At first, his professional life progressed frustratingly slow. He had minor successes in Paris in the early 1920’s, but when he wrote five songs for a show recommended by Irving Berlin, his long-envisioned Broadway career finally became a reality. A number of successful shows were staged in Europe, and by 1930 he was one of the most sought after songwriters on Broadway. In quick succession, Cole wrote the music for an extended number of highly successful shows, and one hit song after another! Just when things could not be any better, tragedy struck. A riding accident crushed both his legs and irrevocably damaged his nervous system. Over the next twenty years, Cole underwent more than thirty operations, and eventually his legs had to be amputated. Unhampered by this personal tragedy, Cole continued to write music for a seemingly endless number of Broadway hits. In 1948, Cole created his masterpiece! Collaborating with Bella and Sam Spewack, he wrote the music and lyrics for the musical Kiss Me Kate. The show opened on 30 December 1948 and ran for an astonishing 1077 performances. It clearly established Cole Porter as one of the greatest American lyricists and songwriters. He conquered Broadway, Hollywood and beyond, producing a “rich and fascinating body of work, characterized by wit and sophistication, with an underlying strain of restless melancholy and loneliness.” He actively shaped a distinct cultural American heritage. Cole Porter died on 15 October 1964.

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Cole Porter - His Music and His Life

Cole Porter was born June 9, 1891, at Peru, Indiana, the son of pharmacist Samuel Fenwick Porter and Kate Cole. Cole was raised on a 750-acre fruit ranch. Kate Cole married Samuel Porter in 1884 and had two children, Louis and Rachel, who both died in infancy. Porter's grandfather, J.G. Cole, was a multi-millionaire who made his fortune in the coal and western timber business. His mother introduced him to the violin and the piano. Cole started riding horses at age six and began to studying piano at eight at Indiana's Marion Conservatory. By age ten, he had begun to compose songs, and his first song was entitled "Song of the Birds".

He attended Worcester Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905, an elite private school from which he graduated in 1909 as class valedictorian. That summer he toured Europe as a graduation present from his grandfather. That fall, he entered Yale University and lived in a single room at Garland's Lodging House at 242 York Street in New Haven, CT, and became a member of the Freshman Glee Club. In 1910, he published his first song, "Bridget McGuire". While at Yale, he wrote football fight songs including the "Yale Bulldog Song" and "Bingo Eli Yale," which was introduced at a Yale dining hall dinner concert. Classmates include poet Archibald Macleish, Bill Crocker of San Francisco banking family and actor Monty Woolley. Dean Acheson, later to be U.S. Secretary of State, lived in the same dorm with Porter and was a good friend of Porter. In his senior year he was president of the University Glee club and a football cheerleader.

Porter graduated from Yale in 1913 with a BA degree. He attended Harvard Law school from 1913 to 1914 and the Harvard School of Music from 1915 to 1916. In 1917 he went to France and distributed foodstuffs to war-ravaged villages. In April 1918 he joined the 32nd Field Artillery Regiment and worked with the Bureau of the Military Attache of the US. During this time he met the woman who would become his wife, Linda Lee Thomas, a wealthy Kentucky divorcée, at a breakfast reception at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. He did not, as is often rumored, join the French Foreign Legion at this time, nor receive a commission in the French army and see combat as an officer.

In 1919 he rented an apartment in Paris, enrolled in a school specializing in music composition and studied with Vincent D'indy. On December 18, 1919, married Linda Lee Thomas, honeymooning in the south of France. This was a "professional" marriage, as Cole was, in fact, gay. Linda had been previously married to a newspaper publisher and was described as a beautiful woman who was one of the most celebrated hostesses in Europe. The Porters made their home on the Rue Monsieur in Paris, where their parties were renowned as long and brilliant. They hired the Monte Carlo Ballet for one of their affairs; once, on a whim, they transported all of their guests to the French Riviera.

In 1923 they moved to Venice, Italy, where they lived in the Rezzonico Palace, the former home of poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. They built an extravagant floating night club that would accommodate up to 100 guests. They conducted elaborate games including treasure hunts through the canals and arranged spectacular balls.

Porter's first play on Broadway featured a former ballet dancer, actor Clifton Webb. He collaborated with E. Ray Goetz, the brother-in-law of Irving Berlin, on several Broadway plays, as Goetz was an established producer and lyricist.

His ballad "Love For Sale" was introduced on December 8, 1930, in a revue that starred Jimmy Durante and was introduced by Kathryn Crawford. Walter Winchell, the newspaper columnist and radio personality, promoted the song, which was later banned by many radio stations because of its content. In 1934, his hit "Anything Goes" appeared on Broadway. During the show's hectic rehearsal Porter once asked the stage doorman what he thought the show should be called. The doorman responded that nothing seemed to go right, with so many things being taken out and then put back in, that "Anything Goes" might be a good title. Porter liked it, and kept it. In 1936, while preparing for "Red, Hot and Blue" with Bob Hope and Jimmy Durante, Ethel Merman was hired to do stenographic work to help Porter in rewriting scripts of the show. He later said she was the best stenographers he ever had.

Porter wrote such classic songs as "Let's Do It" in 1928, "You Do Something To Me" in 1929, "Love For Sale" in 1930, "What Is This Thing Called Love?" in 1929, "Night and Day" in 1932, "I Get A Kick Out Of You" in 1934, "Begin the Beguine" in 1935, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" in 1938, "Don't Fence Me In" in 1944, "I Love Paris" in 1953, "I've Got You Under My Skin", In the Still of The Night", "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To", "True Love", "Just One Of Those Things", "Anything Goes", "From This Moment On", "You're The Top", "Easy to Love" and many, many more.