by Cole Porter
* New York Times, 4 December 1925, 19. Walter Damrosch (1862–1950), at the time conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra; Theodore Steinway (1883–1957), grandson of Henry E. Steinway, founder of Steinway & Sons pianos, and chairman of the company; Condé Montrose Nast (1873–1942), publisher and founder of the media company named after him; Cyril Maude (1862–1951), English actor.
† The Ballets Suédois, directed by Rolf de Maré (1888–1964), was active from 1920 to 1925; its most important productions included Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (1921), with a storyline by Jean Cocteau and music by Georges Auric, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc and Germaine Tailleferre; and Milhaud’s La Création du Monde (1923). See Bengt Nils Richard Häger, The Swedish Ballet (New York, 1990), and Nancy Van Norman Baer and Jan Torsten Ahlstrand, Paris Modern: The Swedish Ballet, 1920–1925 (San Francisco, 1995).
‡ Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) was one of the foremost French composers of the early twentieth century, known in particular for his jazz-influenced music and as a modernist. In 1919 he had composed the influential Brazilian-influenced ballet Le Boeuf sur le Toit.
* We are indebted to Robert Orledge for these details. On 22 January 1924, Porter sent Koechlin a telegram (also lost) requesting more lessons: he had these on 23, 25 and 29 January and on 1 and 5 February. Further, see Robert Orledge, ‘Cole Porter’s Ballet Within the Quota’, The Yale University Library Gazette 50/1 (1975), 19–29.
* The Times, 30 October 1923, 10. Milhaud’s ballet Le Boeuf sur le Toit premiered in February 1920 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris.
* See above, p. 32.
* ‘The Blue Boy Blues’ (1922) satirizes the controversial purchase the previous year by railroad magnate Henry E. Huntington of Thomas Gainsborough’s famous Blue Boy; see, for example, Manchester Guardian, 31 December 1921, 6: ‘There are few pictures with which we are more loath to part. The Gainsborough has all the fresh willful loveliness that we like to consider as the signal quality of English art.’ Similarly, a certain Basil Thomson wrote to the editor of The Times (London) on the ‘Loss of a National Asset’, arguing that ‘Great works of art are among the assets of the nation; they educate the public taste and they attract visitors’, before concluding, curiously: ‘Moreover, it is probably true that a picture painted in a damp climate suffers when it is kept for years in a dry atmosphere like that of the United States.’ The Times (London), 23 January 1922, 6.
† Paul Whiteman (1890–1967) was perhaps the best known band leader in the 1920s.
* Here Seldes refers to George Gershwin’s 1919 ‘Swanee’, which became a hit when it was performed by Al Jolson in his show Sinbad (1920).
† The house was put up for sale in 2012 with an asking price of €40 million; see https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/greathomesanddestinations/a-house-in-the-country-without-ever-leaving-central-paris.html (accessed 9 April 2018).
* New York Herald Tribune (European Edition), 4 January 1925, 2, and 5 January 1925, 2. The Herald Tribune, the chief newspaper for expatriate Americans on the continent, frequently reported on the Porters’ social life. On 2 February 1924, for instance, it noted that ‘Lady Michelham has entertained at dinner at the Hotel Ritz, Paris, here guests including: Prince and Prince [sic] Radziwill, Comte and Comtesse Georges de Castellane, Lady Cunard, Lady Cynthia Mosley, Mr. and Mrs. Cole Porter’; on 4 February it reported: ‘New of Americans Day by Day. At the dinner-dance at the Hotel Ritz, Paris, last night, Lady Cunard was among those entertaining, having as her guests Grand Duchess Marie, Lady Michelham, Miss Elsa Maxwell, Mr. Cole Porter, Mr. Charles Mendl and Captain Molyneux.’
* A reference to the fact that Shaw was tall. This also explains Porter’s later salutations to him as ‘Big Boy’.
† See below, pp. 54–71.
* A reference to the fact that Linda Porter was born in Virginia.
* Presumably Montmartre.
* Mrs Herman ‘Dumpy’ Oelrichs (née Dorothy Haydel, 1891–?) was the wife of Hermann Oelrichs (1891–1948), a businessman and the son of Hermann Oelrichs (1850–1906), American agent of the Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping company.
† Courtney Burr (?–1961), producer, performer and stage manager.
‡ Possibly the Mexican artist and art historian Miguel Covarrubias (also known as José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud, 1904–57).
* Charles Green Shaw’s collection of poems, Into the Light, was published in New York in 1959.
* In Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes (New York, 1973), 222, Kochno writes that, ‘One day, Cole Porter invited Diaghilev and me to lunch with George Gershwin, who was passing through Paris and wanted Diaghilev to hear his Rhapsody in Blue, which he would have loved to have performed by the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev listened in silence while Gershwin played his score, promised to “think about the question of using it for a ballet”, but never gave him an answer.’ This anecdote may well be apocryphal and it cannot date from the earlier 1920s as Kochno’s placement of it in his narrative suggests: Gershwin did not meet Diaghilev until his trip to Paris in 1928. See William G. Hyland, George Gershwin (Westport, CT, 2003), 44, and below, p. 81.
* Porter’s letters and telegrams to Kochno survive at (Yale University, Gilmore Library, Cole Porter Collection, MSS 82, Box 67). All are handwritten, and considering Porter’s sometimes indecipherable handwriting as well as his less than perfect French, some passages are difficult to transcribe. With this in mind, our translations are both freer and in some respects more polished – in order to convey Porter’s sense – than his original French prose.
† ALS. This first letter is difficult to place chronologically. It survives in a folder with an envelope dated 14 September but that date does not fit, either chronologically or with respect to its content, with the letters that follow. See below for a letter that can plausibly be dated 14 September. And if that is the case, then this letter must be from at least a week earlier since it describes not only the time Porter spent with Kochno in Venice but also mentions that Kochno was departing for Naples. That, in turn, makes an earlier date consistent with Porter’s letter of 20 September. The most likely Sunday referred to here is 6 September 1925. It is unclear whether by writing ‘2 o’clock in the morning’ he means 2 a.m. following Saturday 5 September – technically Sunday 6 September – or more casually meaning 2 a.m. on the night of 6–7 (Monday) September.
* Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982), pianist; ‘the big one’ is presumably Charles Green Shaw. Berners is the composer and writer Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners (1883–1950); Misia is Misia Sert (Maria Zofia Olga Zenajda Godebska, 1872–1950), a pianist and hostess of an artistic salon in Paris. ‘Cook’ is the Thomas Cook travel agency.
* A short message from Porter to Kochno apparently dates from a stay in Florence as a reference to the Pitti Palace shows: ‘Cher Boris – Linda + moi nous allons a la galerie Pitti ce matin. Apres dejeuner, je rentre a l’hotel pour dormir un peu dans ma chambre #28. Cela sera de 3 a 4 hres. Pour-quoi pas venir me voir la? Cole’ [‘Dear Boris – Linda and I are going to the Pitti gallery this morning. After lunch, I come back to the hotel to sleep a bit in my room #28. This will be from 3:00 to 4:00. Why not come see me there? Cole’]. The contents of the message do not entirely make chronological sense since Porter’s letter (of 20 September) implies Kochno was not in Florence and the Porters would have left by the time he arrived. The suggestion in that letter that Kochno write to Porter in Paris is chronologically plausible, since the itinerary suggests he would be returning there on 25 September.
* Addressed to Kochno at the Hotel Excelsior, Rome, this telegram was re-routed to the Palace Hotel, Naples.
† 24 September.
* Since according to this letter (written on stationery of “The Travellers” 25, Avenue des Champs-Elysées) Porter had been back in Paris for three weeks – and because his itinerary suggests he would return on (or about) 25 September – this letter apparently dates from about 15 October.
* Telegra
m addressed to Kochno at the Hotel de Paris, Montecarlo.
* If this letter, and in particular its description of Linda’s illness, relates to Porter’s telegrams to Kochno of 18 October and 4 November, it must have been written on either Wednesday 21 or 28 October.
* Telegram sent from Cherbourg and addressed to Kochno at the Savoy Hotel, London.
* Paris, Archives de l’Opéra, Fonds Kochno, shelfmark 1406, 1–51.
* Boris Kochno (trans. Adrienne Foulke), Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes (New York, 1973), 222.
* See above, p. 69.
† Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac.
‡ See above, pp. 37–8
§ See below, p. 148
¶ It also appears to be the case that while he was involved with Porter in the autumn of 1925, Kochno was also involved with Hermann Oelrichs Jr., a friend of Porter’s. On 19 September, at the same time Porter was writing to Kochno, Oelrichs wrote to him (in terms remarkably similar to Porter’s), ‘I know that I write you too much. But I love you too much, my angel. I think of you too much. I want to see you too much and that is going to end badly. Because you will soon say – Enough! I’ve had enough.’ See James Bone, The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous & Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America’s First Supermodel (New York, 2016), n.p.
* New York Public Library, Schomburg Centre, MG 247, Smith, Ada, 1926. McBrien, Cole Porter, 108, states that Porter and Bricktop met ‘around 1925’. It is more likely to have been only in 1926, given the evidence of Bricktop’s diary.
† Presumably the reference here is to a party given by Elsa Maxwell at the Ritz-Carlton.
* According to her diary, Bricktop arrived back in Paris two days later, on 1 September. She saw Porter at least twice that autumn, on 3 October and 25 December. See New York Public Library, Schomburg Centre, MG 247, Smith, Ada, 1926.
† During the 1880s, the Ca’ Rezzonico was home to the painter Robert Barrett Browning (1849–1912), whose father, the poet Robert Browning (1812–1899), died there on 12 December 1899).
* Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages: An Autobiography (New York, 1975), 87–8. Although self-serving and disingenuous about his embarrassment (it is unlikely Rodgers would not have heard of Porter by that time), Rodgers’s account of Porter’s lifestyle rings true.
† McBrien, Cole Porter, 105. In his A Durable Fire (London, 1983), 189, Cooper reproduces a letter from 3 December 1923 describing an earlier meeting with Porter and Irving Berlin: ‘Later we went to the Biltmore where Diana and I left our party and joined Cole Porter. There was a good cabaret show there and we went on again to supper with a man called Irving Berlin who writes music. He had a nice flat and gave us eggs and champagne. We had only been drinking whiskey out of flasks hitherto.’
* George Byron (birth and death dates unknown) was a singer and the second husband of Eva Kern, Jerome Kern’s widow.
† Elsie de Wolfe.
‡ Ferenc Molnár (1878–1952) was a Hungarian author, playwright and stage director. He is known in particular as the author of the 1909 play Lilliom, the basis for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel (1945). For accounts of these two dinners, see the New York Times for 17 November 1926, 19, and 19 December 1926, 26.
* Edward Albert, later Edward VIII and, after his abdication, the Duke of Windsor.
* George Edward Alexander Edmund, Duke of Kent (1902–42).
† The French aristocrat Prince Jean-Louis de Faucigny-Lucinge (1904–92), a descendant of Louis IX, and his wife Mary Lilian Matilda, Baroness d’Erlanger (1901–45), whom he married in November 1923.
‡ Prince Viggo, Count of Rosenborg (1893–1970) and his wife, the former Eleanor Margaret Green (1895–1966), whom he married in June 1924. Because Viggo married without permission of the Danish king (at the time, Christian X), he renounced his place in the Danish line of succession.
§ Eleanora Randolph Sears (1881–1968) was a tennis player. Sears won the U.S. National Championship in 1911 and the three consecutive years 1915–17.
* Louiseboulanger, a fashionable salon opened in 1927 by Louise Melenot (1878–1972) and her husband, Louis Boulanger (birth and death dates unknown).
† Probably Countess Atalanta Mercati (1903–64), who in 1928 had married the author Michael Arlen (1895–1956); see New Yorker, 26 May 1928, 61: ‘Perhaps the best European theatre has been observed in Michael Arlen’s wedding to Countess Atalanta Mercati, at Cannes. The Baron, as his British friends always roguishly call him, was wed in an orthodox service: he was married, that is to say, wearing a gold crown lined with baby blue. The gifts included a diamond bracelet which, after all, will last forever, and a handsome cheque from the bride’s angry and absent father.’
‡ Madame Agnès (birth and death dates unknown) was a hat designer popular from the late 1920s to the 1940s; she had a shop on the Rue Saint-Honoré.
§ Oei Hui-lan (1899–1992) was the third wife of the Chinese statesman and diplomat Vi Kyuin Wellington Koo (1888–1985).
* Paris, which opened at the Music Box Theatre, New York, on 8 October 1928 and ran for 195 performances. Out-of-town tryouts, the source of the income mentioned by Porter in his letter, began considerably earlier, at Nixon’s Apollo Theatre, Atlantic City, on 6 February 1928. Before its New York opening, Paris was also performed in Philadelphia, Boston and Washington D.C.
† Harvey Cole wrote back on 11 February, detailing Porter’s financial obligations and noting that ‘Matters in West Virginia are looking no better and it will apparently be all we can do to make the regular distributions’, a reference to the family business concerns generally. He concluded by writing, ‘I am delighted to hear that your new show is going so well. I had already heard the news from Aunt Bessie. I feel sure that you are coming into your own and am more pleased than I can tell you.’ On 15 February, Porter signed a promissory note, borrowing $3,500 from the First National Bank of Peru, Indiana, due on 14 January 1928; it was paid on 22 June 1928. Source: Yale University, Gilmore Library, Cole Porter Collection MSS 82, Box 49, folder 299.
‡ Irène Bordoni (1885–1953) was an actress and the star of Paris.
* New York Times, 9 October 1928, 27. Bordoni’s songs included ‘Don’t Look at Me that Way’ and the duet, ‘Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love’. According to Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 103–4, ‘Quelque-Chose’ was introduced by Bordoni during the show’s tryouts but was dropped before the New York opening; similarly, ‘Which?’ was probably written for Bordoni but is not listed in any playbills. This accounting does not square with the New York Times review and remains unresolved.
† Ralph B. Strassburger (1883–1959) was a businessman and racehorse owner and breeder. He was married to May Bourne, a daughter of Frederick Gilbert Bourne, president of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and may as a result have been acquainted with Porter through members of the Singer family, including Winnaretta Singer and Daisy Fellowes.
* Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanovski (1891–1942) had been exiled from Russia for his involvement in the murder of Grigori Rasputin in 1916; he married the Cincinnati real-estate heiress Audrey Emery (1904–71) in 1926.
† Prince Serge Obolensky (1890–1978) and Ava Alice Muriel Astor (1902–56), a daughter of John Jacob Astor IV. They had married in 1924. The Obolensky family fled Russia in 1917 during the Russian Revolution. Alice Astor’s mother, Ava Lowle Willing (1868–1958), was the first wife of John Jacob Astor IV.
‡ Eileen Sutherland-Leveson-Gower (1891–1943). She married George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, Marquess of Stafford (1888–1963), in 1912; he succeeded his father as the 5th Duke of Sutherland in 1913.
§ Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1890–1958).
¶ In the programme, the revue is titled Troisième Ambassadeurs – Show of 1928, but in the printed book of lyrics, In the Old Days and Today; see Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 90. For many years, the orchestral parts for La Revue des Ambassadeurs were considered lost; only an incomplete piano-vocal sc
ore, published in Paris by Salabert in 1928, survived. The orchestral parts were rediscovered in 2014; see https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/23/arts/music/cole-porters-lost-show-unearthed.html.
* Buster West (1901–66) was a dancer and actor; he performed ‘Baby Let’s Dance’ and ‘Fountain of Youth’ in La Revue des Ambassadeurs. Clifton Webb (1889–1966) was an actor, singer and dancer. A long-time friend of Porter, Webb had known the composer at least since the mid-1910s, when he appeared in Porter’s See America First. He later appeared in You Never Know (1937). Webb joined the cast of La Revue des Ambassadeurs several weeks into the show’s run; see below, pp. 84–5, and for You Never Know, pp. 153–6.
† Between 1919 and 1929, with the exception of 1928, the producer George Wight mounted an annual revue, Scandals, in New York.
‡ Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s She’s My Baby ran for seventy-one performances at the Globe Theatre, New York, between 3 January and 3 March 1928.
* Presumably the bandleader Fred Waring (1900–84), who featured in La Revue des Ambassadeurs.
CHAPTER THREE
PORTER’S RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES, 1928–1937
Shortly after the opening of La Revue des Ambassadeurs, Cole Porter wrote to his cousin and financial manager Harvey Cole, concerned – as he so often was – about money:
29 May [1928]: Cole Porter to Harvey Cole1
Dear Harvey,
Thank you for the weekly reports on royalties. I notice that at the end of the Philadelphia run, they dwindled considerably, but a wire came after the Boston opening, saying that the show was a big hit there, so that they should go better now.* Also, the Gilbert Miller Office† writes that we have The Music Box Theatre for the New York run, which will have a gross of $3000 per week.