The Boy The Youth The Adult The Composer and His Works The End

Unlike his contemporaries such as Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, and George Gershwin, Cole Porter was not brought up in the milieu of New York's Tin Pan Ally and was not of a recent immigrant family. Although he later had an Eastern and Ivy League education, he was born in rural Indiana with wealthy Midwestern roots and, after college, passed most of his musical apprenticeship in Paris among glittering socialites.

THE BOY
Cole Porter was born Peru, Indiana, a small city on the Wabash River which is now the site of the International Circus Hall of Fame and is tribal headquarters of the Miami Nation American Indian tribe and and the home of the world's only remaining manufacturer of steam calliopes. The 2008 movie The Little Big Top was filmed entirely there.

Cole's grandfather, J.O. (James Omar) Cole, left Indiana at age 22 to try his luck in the California Gold Rush. Once there he discovered he could make more money by supplying other miners than by looking for gold himself, and he set up a successful general store. He returned to Peru to marry a local girl, and they returned to California together, settling in Brandy City. This 'city', formerly Strychnine City, was northwest of Lake Tahoe. Now, like so many gold rush cities, it can not even be found on the map. The Coles spent a total of ten years there.

Returning to Peru, J.O. became even more successful financially, establishing several businesses which included three drugstores and a brewery. His daughter, Kate, married one Samuel Fenwick Porter of whom we know little. No trace of his family remains in Peru, although the Victorian house in which their son Cole grew up still stands. While Cole (he was given his mother's last name as his first name) was in Elementary School he gave improvised shows on its porch and charged a penny admission to his friends — an early start in show business. His musical talent and flair were inherited from father's side of family. Samuel was a pianist and sang and played the steam calliope for parades, but he had no say in Cole's upbringing except to administer punishment when it was called for.

The main influence was his wealthy grandfather, J.O., who controlled the purse strings, but there were many other unusual influences on this impressionable young boy. By age six he was studying the piano and violin, and soon started to write songs. The first was "Song of the Birds" when he was eight (or ten) and followed this with a complete operetta. When Cole was eight, J.O. would drive him in his horse and buggy to view the local poorhouse and predicted the boy would end up there! He was dressed like "Little Lord Fauntleroy". He loved reading and read all the classics. Cole seems to have been free to do almost anything he wanted but he did have to practice the piano. He didn't like it, but this was to prepare him for future. Later the precocious lad accompanied silent films and, during the summers, he played piano on a lake boat. Local newspapers frequently mentioned him as playing the piano for various functions.

Perhaps the biggest influence was the circus. Peru was the headquarters for the Hagenbeck and Wallace circus and it was not uncommon to see elephants wandering down the street and even into stores. The Wild Man of Borneo shined shoes during the winter months and told the boys stories, and Cole drove the Fat Lady around in his donkey cart. On Saturdays boys would watch the performers rehearsing their acts. One of Cole's favorite possessions was a clown suit; the whole ambiance of the circus was an early introduction to show business. One of his better known later songs is "Be a Clown" which he wrote for the film The Pirate where it was sung by Judy Garland and Gene Kelly.

THE YOUTH
When Cole was ready for high school, his mother wanted to send him to an Eastern prep school, but the wealthy grandfather refused to finance this, insisting he go to military or business school in Indiana to prepare to take over the family business interests. He threatened to end his allowance, and Kate, who had gone to an eastern finishing school, managed to scrape together enough herself to send him to Worcester Academy, in Massachusetts. The school required all students to take English, mathematics, Greek, Latin, French, science and history. Quite a curriculum for someone more interested in playing the piano and in writing songs and theatricals! He did try out, unsuccessfully, to be a pitcher on the baseball team. However, he was a star at the piano and in the Glee Club and received honors at the end of his first year. One of his professors, Dr. Abercrombie, taught him that "Words and music must be so inseparably wedded to each other that they are like one", a precept he was to follow all his life. Later he became editor of the paper and wrote the class song and the songs for class musicals. Two of them, reflecting his circus influence were The Tattooed Gentleman and The Bearded Lady. (Some of the lyrics got him into trouble.) After failing Greek on first applying to Yale, he was accepted on his second attempt. Meanwhile, his grandfather relented after graduation and offered him a gift of his choice. He chose two months in Europe and spent most of his time in Paris, living with a French family and becoming fluent in French.

At Yale he continued to write songs one of which was to become the Yale Fight Song: "Bull dog! Bull dog! Bow,wow,wow, Eli Yale". It is still sung there. He belonged to the Glee Club, became a cheer leader and a member of the Whiffenpoofs. Cole was also clever at sketching. He started to write light operas (he was a great admirer of Gilbert and Sullivan), continued to write songs (300 in all) and to coach the performances of other students. After graduation and another trip to Europe, he enrolled in Harvard Law School. However, he spent only one year there and transferred to the Harvard School of Music. He eventually left school and moved to the Yale Club in New York. He seldom returned to Peru.

THE ADULT
By 1915 Porter was settled in New York and sold some songs for a Junior League show at $50 for each song and 4¢ for each copy. He wrote several others for Broadway revues. Next came an operetta See America First. It featured a recalcitrant burro who reacted to the audience with an "accident" on stage. Reviews were not great, one calling it the "worst musical comedy in town. Don't see America First". It closed after 15 performances.

After this failure, Cole took himself back to Paris and resumed studying at the Schola Cantorum, selling some songs and living off funds supplied by his mother and grandfather. When the United States declared war on Germany, Cole enlisted because he thought it would be exciting! At least that is one version. He claimed he had joined the French Foreign Legion, but he showed up in Paris in a variety of uniforms from different organizations. Some say he went to work for a relief fund, others that all his claims were lies. (The French Foreign Legion does claim he was an enlistee.) Whatever the truth, he spent most of his time in Paris, often playing the piano for groups of friends. He also won a Croix de guerre for keeping high the morale of the troops.

After the war Porter stayed in Paris and became a member either of "the Lost Generation". He soon attracted the patronage of the legendary hostess Elsa Maxwell and, writing continuously, accumulated a "trunkful" of songs he could draw on to entertain with. At a wedding at which he played at the Paris Ritz, he met the wealthy, beautiful, and divorced (her husband had badly abused her) socialite Linda Lee Thomas. She was a descendent of the Virginia Lees. When she tried to hire him to play at one of her parties, Cole was offended; he was not a paid performer! He was finally convinced but arrived dressed weirdly. Linda took it as a joke and, two years later, they were married. Ten years older, after her disastrous first marriage she was probably looking more for a friend than a lover. They remained together for 34 years as the best of friends, sometimes more like mother and son, until her death. She was often called Linda Cole Porter.

The list of their acquaintances reads as a roster of "Who's Who" in American and European society, theatre, literature, arts and nobility. During the 20s and 30s, in the days before much airplane travel, they commuted constantly between Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. They were very well acquainted with life aboard a luxury ocean liner such as the one depicted in Anything Goes. They also spent much time in Venice, Italy which was put on the social map by Elsa Maxwell. They owned or rented houses in Venice, New York, Paris and on the French Riviera. Even during the Depression of the 30s, the glittering social life continued.

THE COMPOSER AND HIS WORKS
Meanwhile Porter continued to write songs, occasionally for others' shows. He was one of the few contemporary composers to write both the lyrics and music. His songs are noted for their elegance and have been compared to those of classical French composers. Ingenuous and almost mathematical in shape; songs such as "Night and Day" are harmonically rich and constantly change between major and minor keys, even within a phrase. (Almost unconsciously he uses what he learned in his classical music studies at Yale.) He was hailed as the one man who could stand up to the standard set by Arthur S. Sullivan! His original complex accompaniments often had to be simplified "for general consumption". The words are just as clever. The New York Times said "... his ballads are shot through with a quality of cynical ho-hum that breathes of the Ritz and the Lido". Dale Harris wrote: "... their ardor is firmly controlled, even subordinated, to elegance of style". They are never maudlin or syrupy sentimental. A blasé veneer hides powerful emotions.

The plots of his musicals are largely about the social world with which he was so familiar. Many have cardboard gamblers and gangsters who provide comic effects, not sinister ones. Moonface Martin is a good example. In working, he a required scene be completed before he started to work on the song lyrics, sometimes adapting one of the many songs in his trunk or ones originally written for one of his other works.

Cole also started to write for Hollywood and added it to his busy schedule of commutes, this time by train. He wrote the music and lyrics for many musical film including, most notably for High Society with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly and the song "True Love".

Porter did his best work after midnight in a room with several pianos using one which had the sound deadened to avoid bothering his neighbors. (In New York he later lived in a Waldorf Tower suite; former president Herbert Hoover lived below.) No matter where he was, he was thinking of songs; he says he wrote "Night and Day" in a taxi, but he also claimed he got the idea for it from hearing the beat of Egyptian tom-toms when he was cruising down the Nile. One must take many of his stories with a grain of salt. For each show, he wrote about twenty-five songs then discarded about ten of them during rehearsals. Unusual for the time, his songs sprang from the plots and were not just stuck in with no relationship to what was going on. All told, his songs as a professional number over 800 and his musicals (not including those written during his school years) twenty-nine. For complete lists see:
http://www.coleporteronline.com/ColePorterSongs.html http://www.coleporteronline.com/ColePorterShows.html

THE END
Arguably his greatest work was one of his latest, the 1948 Kiss Me Kate. A play within a play spoofing the world of operetta he knew so well and using one of his earliest melodies, that for "Wunderbar" which was first used for a song in the aborted version of Anything Goes.

As he grew older, Linda became concerned about his health and urged him to stay in New York, giving up his Hollywood work. She herself was more and more incapacitated by emphysema and Porter bought her a TV set. She spent most evenings watching it rather than going out to parties. She died on May 20, 1954, leaving a personal estate of 1.5 million dollars, and she was buried in Peru! In 1957 Cole was hospitalized for a partial gastrectomy. In April his right leg was amputated at mid-thigh due to the results of a 1937 fall from a horse. He was fitted with a prosthesis but seldom wore it, and he lost interest in his usual pursuits.

He never wrote another song after 1958. He would rise at 11 be dressed and then spend the day in his wheel chair, often listening to soap operas on the radio; his favorite was Stella Dallas. In the late afternoon the leg was attached and he was dressed, complete with carnation, for dinner with guests. After they left, he would drink, watch television, and go to bed about 3 or 4 a.m. Honorary events were held for him, but he could not attend; he received an honorary degree from Yale in a private ceremony. He became more and more taciturn, and soon friends started to decline his dinner invitations. He spent November 1960 until July 1961 in the hospital with "chronic pneumonitis, emaciated, too much alcohol and a state of exhaustion and malnutrition". He could not attend his 70th (?) birthday party. However, between bouts of illness he continued occasional trips to California. He died on October 15, 1964 and is buried in Peru between the graves of his father and Linda.

Every year the Cole Porter Festival, celebrating his life and music, is held in Peru on the Sunday nearest his birthday, June 6.

Return to Resource Library Home Page

Revised August 2009
Please credit Lyric Opera San Diego when using this material.