Cole Porter Biographies & Genealogy

4 Cole Porter Biographies

Cole Porter Jun 9, 1891 - Oct 15, 1964

Among these shows and songs were "Fifty Million Frenchmen" in 1929 ("You Do Something To Me"); "Wake Up and Dream," also 1929 ("What Is This Thing Called Love"); "The New Yorkers" in 1930 ("Love for Sale"); "Gay Divorce" in 1932 with Fred Astaire ("Night and Day"); "Anything Goes" with Ethel Merman, Victor Moore and William Gaxton in 1934 ("You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You"); "Jubilee" in 1935 ("Begin the Beguine," "Just One of Those Things"); "Red, Hot and Blue" with Miss Merman, Jimmy Durante and Bob Hope in 1936 ("It's De-lovely," "Down in the Depths of the '0th Floor"). Also, "Leave It to Me" in 1938 in which Mary Martin made her Broadway debut singing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy"; "Dubarry Was a Lady" with Miss Merman and Bert Lahr in 1939 ("Friendship"); "Panama Hattie" with Miss Merman in 1940 ("Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please"), "Let's Face It" in which Danny Kaye sang "Melody in 4F" in 1941; "Something for the Boys" with Miss Merman in 1943 and "Mexican Hayride" with Bobby Clark in 1944. While Mr. Porter was horseback riding in the summer of 1937, his horse slipped, threw him and fell on top of him, breaking both his legs and damaging his nervous system. One result of Mr. Porter's accident was chronic osteomyelitis, a bone disease. In attempts to alleviate this, he was subjected to more than 30 operations during the next 20 years but, despite this, his right leg had to be amputated in 1958. For the rest of his life, Mr. Porter lived under the constant pressure of pain and, reversing his previously gay social life, became a virtual recluse. Worked in Wheel Chair Still he continued to turn out his songs. The score for "Leave It to Me," written shortly after his accident, was composed while he was almost completely bedridden. In order to continue his work, he had his piano placed on blocks so that he could roll up to the keyboard in his wheel chair. At the end of World War II, Mr. Porter hit what seemed to be a dry period. Two successive shows-- "Seven Lively Arts" in 1944 and "Around the World in 80 Days" in 1946--were failures. But in 1948 he came back with his biggest artistic and commercial success, "Kiss Me Kate," a musical treatment of "The Taming of the Shrew." In this score, Mr. Porter was not only at his Porterian best with such songs as "Too Darn Hot," "Always True to You in My Fashion" and "So in Love," but he also revealed a remarkable talent for blending the idioms of both Porter and Shakespeare in "I've Come to Wive It Wealthily in Padua," "I Am Ashamed that Women Are So Simple," "I Hate Men" (which Brooks Atkinson called "the perfect musical sublimation of Shakespeare's evil-tempered Kate") and the kind of grammatical challenge that Mr. Porter relished, a song written entirely in the subjunctive, "Were Thine That Special Face." Other Musicals Mr. Porter's later Broadway scores included "Out of This World" (1950), "Can-Can" (1953) and "Silk Stockings" (1955). For films he wrote "I've Got You Under My Skin" and "Easy to Love" for "Born to Dance" in 1936; "Rosalie" and "In the Still of the Night" for "Rosalie" in 1937; "I Concentrate on You" for "Broadway Melody" in 1940 and "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" for "Something to Shout About" in 1943. Mr. Porter's wife died in 1954. During his last years he lived in a nine-room, memorabilia-filled apartment in the Waldorf Towers. On weekends he was driven to a 350-acre estate in the Berkshires and in the summers he lived in California. He rarely saw anyone except intimate friends. A 90-minute television program honoring him was presented in 1960, and a party celebrating his 70th birthday was given in 1962, but he was unwilling to attend either event. When Yale University wished to confer an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters on him in 1960, Mr. Porter accepted on condition that the presentation be made in his apartment.

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