Born in Peru, Indiana, in to the wealthiest family in town—perhaps the wealthiest in all of Indiana—he went to Yale right before the Great War. Then came a short period of service in the war, followed by a long holiday in Europe through the early twenties, with a loving but mostly sexless marriage of convenience to Linda Lee Thomas, of the Virginia Lees.
Beneath his smooth, genial, almost inhumanly productive and evasive surface, there were turbulent waters. His very name, for all its air of Ivy League ease, represents a burdened legacy. He was a Porter by birth but, if his mother had anything to do with it, would be a Cole for life. Porter, by temperament and entitlement, came of age among the openly bisexual European upper crust.
Far from a drama of either repression or subversion, the situation seems like an oddly happy social concord. His letters to his lovers are in the same register as those of the Oscar Wilde—Robbie Ross circle in London a few decades earlier: chummy more than erotic, with a transparent language of concealment, a more or less open code of intrigue.
And they touch plenty. But Frank Sinatra had no trouble applying the songs, or their emotions, to Ava Gardner or her successors. Porter is so famous for his gifts as a lyricist that it might seem mischievous to the point of perversity to suggest that his real greatness resides in his skills as a composer.
Yet how many other popular composers have had more hits with instrumental, unsung versions of their work? Though rarely overtly jazz in the Arlen-Gershwin manner, his melodies have so much mysterious inner propulsion that, asked to swing, they practically swing themselves. His list of requirements for a hotel room in Philadelphia during a tryout included sliced liverwurst, salami, and bologna, and twenty-four cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Another small but striking social trait that runs through the letters is the preponderance of presents that were incumbent on people in show business then; Porter gives and gets flowers, paintings, wine, books for the smallest of reasons, and then writes at length to thank the present-giver, or to thank the present-recipient for his thanks.
Porter, high-Wasp tastes and all, had to navigate a Broadway and Hollywood world that was astoundingly uniform in its Jewishness. The degree of reverse cultural assimilation that this Gentile from the Midwest had to undertake is captured in one of the funniest letters Porter ever wrote, to his Jewish agent, Irving Lazar:. Thank you for your letter of Dec. I am not an idiot child. There is a producer named Sol Siegel—and an assistant producer named Saul Chaplin. Sol sent Saul to be with me here for ten days while I wrote new material.
Since Saul not Sol returned to Culver City, I have received charming telephone calls from Sol, and a most enthusiastic letter from Saul. What other kind of tunes could you write? In the fall of , when he was forty-six, he endured a horrific accident, in which the horse he was riding fell on him and crushed one of his legs. The injuries led to more than thirty operations in the course of his life, all excruciatingly painful, and a legacy of permanent suffering.
Just how agonizing his condition must have been, and what consequences it had for his work, has been a source of much speculation. Wilder, among others, insists that there was minimal good work after the accident. Still more certainly, the letters are heroic in their avoidance of self-pity, though they also reveal for the first time just how bad his injuries were. From the ankle down—and approaching me—any number of small, finely sharply toothed rakes are at work. The rakes got only more sharply toothed over time.
He managed to persevere, it seems, by a mixture of champagne and stiff-upper-lipness. But not a day of it could have been easy for him. Porter writes engagingly, as an artisan, about the business of putting on a show. He writes minimally about his own creative process for the same upper-crust reason that he writes minimally about his suffering—only second-rate people go on and on about their inner lives.
Analyzing is the same as complaining, and self-analysis is the twin of self-promotion. Clues about his creativity shine through the workmanlike surface, though. Porter still wrote in a revue style where the characters were hardly worth dramatizing. She launched him into that set. It was not the fast lane, it was the chic, intercontinental, European set. That is how and when it all began. Overnight, his wealth matched his wife's. The couple became a fixture of the social circuit overseen by gossip columnist Elsa Maxwell, for whom almost any occasion was worthy of extravagant celebration.
Before long, the inseparable Linda and Cole became known as les Colporteurs. They found a spacious home on the rue Monsieur not far from the EiffelTower, which Linda decorated in a staggeringly lavish style— Chinese lacquered tables, Art Deco furnishings, magnificent oriental rugs and generous bowls of freshly cut flowers, many from her own lush garden.
She brought in a white grand piano and replaced a wall facing the garden with sheets of frosted glass so her husband could work in natural light. In spring, the Porters reserved several rail cars and transported their entourage to Venice, where they rented palaces and hosted dance parties on the canals.
Russian ballet master Sergei Diaghilev, then in residence in Venice, was a favored guest at the Porters' parties, perhaps because Linda was courting him to hire her husband to score one of his ballets.
Through Diaghilev, Cole met a young poet and ballet aficionado named Boris Kochno, for whom some biographers believe the composer wrote one of his giddiest paeans to love:. Inevitably, Linda learned that Kochno was much more than an acquaintance of her husband's, a revelation that led to the first significant test of their marriage. Linda, apparently needing to be alone, urged Cole to leave Venice and return to New York for a while.
The couple told friends that she was exhausted by the social whirlwind, which may, in part, have been true. Linda had suffered since her youth from a variety of respiratory problems that only grew worse over time. In any case, the hiatus worked, and the couple were soon reunited. For most of the s, Porter's output had been limited to writing an occasional song or inconsequential musical, or entertaining friends at the piano. Maxwell recalled to Furia that Porter performed some of the same songs that had bombed in See America First to an " 'enraptured' audience, 'straining to catch the droll nuances of his lyrics.
Linda hoped that Porter would put his gifts to more serious purposes and had urged him to study formal orchestration— to little avail. But another gesture of hers did help him. In , while they were in Paris, she invited a recently married friend to stay with them. The friend's new husband, Irving Berlin, would become one of Porter's most ardent boosters. And when Berlin was approached to score a musical about Paris the next year, he referred the producer to Porter, saying his love of the city made him the better choice.
Critics raved about Paris , lavishing praise on "the flaming star" songwriter and lamenting that he paid more attention to night life than his music. The show included "Let's Do It," one of Porter's biggest hits. But as Porter's reputation soared in the s, his clever melodies and witty, often suggestive lyrics did not sit well with censors and often could not be broadcast on the radio:. Love for sale, Appetizing young love for sale.
If you want to buy my wares, Follow me and climb the stairs, Love for sale. He made it easier for other writers to follow suit. That's why audiences today still find excitement and newness in Porter's work. In New York City, Linda held a dinner party each opening night at her apartment, which adjoined his, on the 41st floor of the WaldorfTowers on Park Avenue.
The couple's arrival at the theater was timed so the buzzing crowd could behold them as they strode down the aisle moments before the lights dimmed. For each debut, Linda presented her husband with a one-of-a-kind cigarette case inscribed with the production's name and date. Her devotion to Cole's career was perhaps nowhere more evident than in the vast scrapbooks she kept, preserving ticket stubs, reviews, photographs, theater programs and other show business paraphernalia.
They now repose at Yale. There, Porter became more indiscreet about his affairs. He also had his own coterie, from which Linda felt excluded. If low bars you like, If old hymns you like, If bare limbs you like, If Mae West you like, Or me undressed you like, Why, nobody will oppose. When ev'ry night, the set that's smart is in- Truding in nudist parties in Studios, Anything goes.
In , having failed to convince Cole to leave Hollywood, Linda fled to their Paris house and, for the first time, contemplated divorce. Cole pursued her, but friends characterized their reunion as icy. That fall, a despondent Porter sailed to New York alone. Visiting a friend's farm on Long Island shortly after his return, he went riding at a nearby riding club.
His horse fell and rolled over him, crushing both of his legs. Porter later told friends that as he writhed in the dirt waiting for help, he composed lyrics in his head.
Linda arranged passage to the States and rushed to his side. When one doctor told her that Porter's right leg, and possibly his left, should be amputated, she took over the case, bringing in another physician, who also recommended amputation. Linda said no. Ironically, she had faced a similar dilemma years before. Her first husband had been in a car accident that had mangled his leg, and doctors urged that it be amputated.
She and her husband refused, hoping for the best, and his leg eventually healed. Cole and Linda were now as close as ever. And later, when she got sick, he stood by her. There's a wealthy Hindu priest Who's a wolf, to say the least, When the priest goes too far east, I also stray. But I'm always true to you, darlin', in my fashion, Yes, I'm always true to you, darlin', in my way. Linda gave up remonstrating with Porter about his affairs, perhaps out of sympathy for his physical affliction.
She also closed their beloved Paris house and, as a retreat from Manhattan that they could both enjoy, bought a property in the western Massachusetts town of Williamstown. She redecorated the main house and transformed a carriage house into a cottage where Porter could work undisturbed.
Linda attended to Porter as best she could, but her worsening respiratory ailments made ministering to him difficult. Though at times she couldn't travel herself, she encouraged her husband to indulge his lifelong wanderlust. In , having seen a magazine article about the ruins of Peru's Machu Picchu, Porter resolved to visit the site, despite having to negotiate precarious mountain trails. He made much of the journey on horseback and was carried over especially difficult terrain by his valet and Ray Kelly, a former sailor whom the Porters had met on a cruise and later hired to be Porter's assistant.
According to biographer McBrien, "Kelly considered Cole a person of great physical courage, sometimes verging on foolhardiness.
In early Linda, by now a near invalid, developed pleurisy and sought refuge in Arizona. Porter resumed his work in Hollywood and traveled frequently to Arizona to help care for her. When she recovered sufficiently, they returned to New York and their adjacent apartments at the Waldorf.
Except to lunch with her husband a comforting ritual , Linda rarely left her suite, which came to resemble a hospital ward, complete with an oxygen tent. When the end neared, she seemed almost to welcome her release from her suffocating existence. She died in May Porter was devastated.
At her funeral service, says Kimball, "he cried like a baby. In the months that followed, Porter commissioned horticulturists to develop a hybrid rose, which he patented and named the Linda Porter rose. But he never again set foot in the main house in Williamstown, which he had always considered Linda's home. Instead, he stayed in his cottage, and if he needed something from the main house, waited while servants fetched it.
When Porter returned to the Waldorf, he moved to a lower floor and had his apartment decorated by one of Linda's friends.
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