The Letters of Cole Porter

by Cole Porter

  * On Your Toes subsequently opened in New York on 11 April. Woolley played the part of Sergei Alexandrovitch.

  † Possibly the screenwriter and movie columnist Louella Parsons (1881–1972).

  * It did, however, become part of a later scene, sung by Virginia Bruce.

  † Porter later considered using ‘Who But You?’ in Red, Hot and Blue!, although it was eventually dropped from that show as well.

  ‡ Seymour Felix (1892–1961) was a director and choreographer active on Broadway in the 1920s and in Hollywood from 1933.

  * First written for Anything Goes (1934) but revised for Born to Dance.

  † Roy del Ruth (1893–1961) was a writer and director.

  ‡ Show Boat (Universal Pictures), with Allan Jones taking the role of Gaylord Ravenal, opened on 17 May 1936.

  * The Hollywood star James (‘Jimmy’) Stewart, who took the role of the male lead, Ted Barker.

  † Sonja Henie (1912–69) was a Norwegian figure skater and actress. She won the Olympic gold medal in skating in 1928, 1932 and 1936; signed by Twentieth Century Fox in 1936, she debuted later that year in One in a Million. She did not appear in Born to Dance.

  * It is not known what Cummings and Silvers felt was wrong with Porter’s opening, or what changes Porter made to it. It remained in the film.

  † William Anthony McGuire (1881–1940). The Great Ziegfeld – which earned McGuire an Oscar nomination for best writing, original story – was released by MGM in 1936.

  ‡ Alfred Newman (1901–70) was one of Hollywood’s best-known composers and arrangers. Newman was nominated for forty-five Oscars during his career and won nine, for The Hurricane (The Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1937), Alexander’s Ragtime Band (Twentieth Century Fox, 1938), Tin Pan Alley (Twentieth Century Fox, 1940), Mother Wore Tights (Twentieth Century Fox, 1947), With a Song in My Heart (Twentieth Century Fox, 1952), Call Me Madam (Twentieth Century Fox, 1953), Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (Twentieth Century Fox, 1955), The King and I (Twentieth Century Fox, 1956) and Camelot (Warner Brothers, 1967). Edward B. Powell (1909–84) was a composer and orchestrator. Powell, who most often worked with Newman, is credited on more than 375 films including Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (Charles Chaplin Productions, 1936), All About Eve (Twentieth Century Fox, 1950), Miracle on 34th Street (Twentieth Century Fox, 1947), and The King and I (Twentieth Century Fox, 1956). Newman was the musical director for Born to Dance and Powell the orchestrator.

  * Roger Edens (1905–70) was a composer, arranger and producer. He shared Academy Awards for best score for Easter Parade (MGM, 1948, with Johnny Green), On the Town (MGM, 1949, with Lennie Hayton) and Annie Get Your Gun (1950, with Adolph Deutsch). Edens made the musical arrangements for Born to Dance.

  † Harvey S. Haislip USN (retired) (1889–1978) was marine advisor for Born to Dance; the author of several U.S. Navy sea adventure novels, Haislip was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his duty as commanding officer of the USS Stewart during World War I.

  * According to Variety, 15 July 1936, Born to Dance did not go into production until the week of 7 July: ‘Hollywood, July 14. Metro’s “Born to Dance” went into production last week after long rehearsal of a flash number “I’m Nuts About You” . . .’

  † Born to Dance was released on 27 November.

  * Charles Igor Gorin (Ignatz Greenberg, 1904–82) was a singer and music teacher. Trained as an opera singer, Gorin was cantor at the Leopoldstrasse Synagogue in Vienna; he fled Austria for the United States in 1933. A frequent performer on radio and, later, television, Gorin appeared as Nicki Papaloopas in Broadway Melody of 1938 (MGM, 1937).

  † Arthur Lyons (1906–93) was Cole Porter’s agent in Hollywood. His other clients included Jack Benny, Joan Crawford, Lucille Ball, Ray Milland, Hedy Lamarr, Jerome Kern and Eugene O’Neill.

  ‡ Cole Porter’s secretary.

  * Nat W. Finston (1895–1979) was a composer, conductor, producer and chairman of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1938–44. Finston was head music director for Paramount and MGM from 1928 to 1945.

  † ‘Broadway Rhythm’, composed by Herb Brown, and performed by Frances Langford, Buddy Ebsen and Eleanor Powell, for Broadway Melody of 1936 (MGM, 1935).

  * Song by Sanford C. Faulkner (1806–74), the official state song of Arkansas from 1949 to 1963. ‘The Arkansas Traveller’ appeared frequently in animated cartoons of the 1930s and 1940s, including Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes.

  * The dance ensembles in Born to Dance were directed by Dave Gould (1899–1969).

  † Irving Thalberg (1899–1936) was a prominent Hollywood producer. Together with Louis B. Mayer he was instrumental in the founding of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he was head of production from 1925.

  * Edgar Joseph Mannix (1891–1963) was a studio executive at MGM known as ‘The Fixer’.

  * Rosalie (MGM, 1937), another Eleanor Powell vehicle.

  † Shortly after the conclusion of these meetings, reports circulated that Porter intended to travel from Chicago to Ontario to see the Dionne Quintuplets (born 28 May 1934); see the New York Evening Journal for 16 June 1936: ‘Cole Porter is the most excited man around these days. He leaves from Chicago almost immediately by motor, with a letter of introduction to Dr. Dafoe, who is going to introduce him to the Dionne Quintuplets, and he is going to write a song about them.’ There is no evidence that the trip took place or that he wrote a song about them.

  * A reference to Irving Berlin’s 1933 revue, As Thousands Cheer.

  † Anything Goes.

  * ‘A Little Skipper from Heaven Above’.

  † Red, Hot and Blue! had a tryout at the Colonial Theatre, Boston, beginning 7 October 1936. The added song was ‘Down in the Depths’ (originally ‘On the 90th Floor’), which replaced ‘Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye’. Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 206.

  * Red, Hot and Blue! premiered at the Alvin Theatre, New York, on 19 October 1936.

  † Mary Pickford (Gladys Louise Smith, 1892–1979) and Merle Oberon (Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson, 1911–79) were prominent Hollywood actresses.

  * Vincent Freedley (1890–1943) was a theatre and television producer; he produced four shows by Porter: Anything Goes (1934), Red, Hot and Blue! (1936), Leave it to Me! (1938) and Let’s Face It! (1941).

  * See above, pp. 140–1.

  † Henry Spitzer (?1897/8–1952) was a music publisher; he committed suicide in 1952 (see The Billboard, 4 October 1952, 49).

  ‡ Jimmy Durante (James Francis Durante, 1893–1980) was a comedian and singer.

  * MGM, released 24 December 1937 and starring Nelson Eddy and Eleanor Powell.

  * Several of Porter’s (mostly later) dictionaries survive at UCLA, Special Collections, Collection Number 316. These include: Maximilian Delphinius Berlitz, Deuxième Livre pour L’Enseignement des Langues Modernes, Partie Française pour Adultes, Novelle Éditions, Revue et Complètement Remaniée (New York, 1950); Maximilian Delphinius Berlitz, Los Verbos, Aprendidos por la Conversación (New York, c.1943); Maximilian Dephinius Berlitz, Libro Italiano, Nuova Edizione Reveduta ed Ampliata (New York, 1953); Gaston Benedict, Metodo Directo Progresivo, Español, Primer Libro (Los Angeles, n.d., copyright 1942); and Gaston Benedict, Metodo Directo Progresivo, Español, Segundo Libro (Los Angeles, n.d., copyright 1931).

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SETTLED – AND INJURED – IN NEW YORK, 1937–1944

  Porter spent part of 1937 in New York and California, and part of the year in Paris. He was in New York at the start of the year when Irving Berlin sent him the score of his new, as yet unreleased film, On the Avenue,* and a few months later, when Porter was in Beverly Hills, he wrote a letter of recommendation to the Broadway producer Dwight Deere Wiman (of Porter’s Gay Divorce) on behalf of the aspiring composer Brooks Bowman:†

  7 January 1937: Cole Porter to Irving Berlin1

  YOUR AVENUE SCORE JUST ARRIVED STOP WE HAVE BEEN PLAYING IT ALL EVENING AND ITS [sic] VERY GREAT STOP MANY THANKS S
ORRY YOU HAVE THE FLU AND LOVE YOU BOTH FROM US ALL=COLE.

  24 May 1937: Cole Porter to Dwight Deere Wiman2

  Dear Dwight:

  This is to present to you a very talented young man, Brooks Bowman. He wrote the great Princeton Triangle Show two years ago and, not only his lyrics, but his music is very interesting. I know it will be worth your while to listen to him.

  Best regards and love from us both to you and Steven.

  Yours,

  [signed:] Cole Porter

  While he was in Paris, Porter’s shows proved a summer success in the New York area – an aspect of his career and finances that is little documented: the New York Times reported on performances of Gay Divorce in July and August, at Jones Beach Stadium for a crowd of 8,000, and at Randalls Island Stadium for a crowd of 10,000, at which another 4,000 had to be turned away.3 He returned to New York on the Normandie on 30 September 1937, intending to sign a contract for a new show with the Shubert Organization. Two shows were under consideration: Greek to Me, which was abandoned early on,* and You Never Know, which premiered at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, on 21 September 1938. Porter had travelled with the Scottish actor Jack Buchanan (1891–1957); other travellers on board included Hedy Lamarr.†

  In October, Porter accepted an invitation from Countess di Zoppola‡ to spend some time at her house in Mill Neck, New York. On 24 October, while riding on the property, Porter’s horse shied, threw him, and fell on his legs, both of which suffered compound fractures. He was operated on at a hospital in Glen Cove and then moved to Doctors Hospital in Manhattan, where he underwent a second surgery in late November. Two letters to Monty Woolley, from November and December 1937, show Porter’s determination to carry on normally, but at the same time, the extent to which he suffered:

  23 November 1937: Cole Porter to Monty Woolley4

  Dear Mr. Woolley:

  I am sending you a book which you will, I think, eat up, called THE GOLDEN SOVEREIGN, which is a sequel to Victoria Regina.* Naturally, Rigger [T. Lawrason Riggs] brought it to me. He came down the other day with a satchel full of presents and they were touching.

  First, A bouquet of Christmas roses from his garden in New Haven,

  Second, A hunter and a deer from Sweden, made out of pipe cleaners,

  Third, A bottle of Coty’s Eau de Cologne†

  Fourth, Two books,

  Fifth, A Bottle of Muscatel

  He was so grand and so funny, and I resent the fact that I see him so little these days.

  When I get a little bit better I shall write you the scientific details of my fractures. I have picked up a lot of new medical words which I throw around with great effect, and I am sure you will be impressed.

  Linda arrived last night and from all I hear, was met by an entire male chorus. She and Katie‡ came out to see me today with that old [Howard] Sturge[s], and they all looked very fit. Naturally Linda brought me a very beautiful new gold cigarette case.

  The town buzzes with your success, in fact, people talk about you too much and I do my best to head them all off and on to fresher subjects. Of course, all the figures have been distorted so, by the Elsas of life, that you are now making just a little bit more than Clark Gable. I don’t know whether Lennie* wrote you the Robert Rubin story or not, but just in case he didn’t, here it goes: Lennie saw him at one of those theatrical parties that Lennie goes to, the other night, and said “Mr. Rubin, how do you like your new acquisition?” to which Mr. Rubin responded “What new acquisition?” and Mr. Hanna replied “Why Monty Woolley”. Then Mr. Rubin said “Oh! Mr. Hanna, we all know we’ve got something there and Monty Woolley is going to go very far.”

  Goodbye and thank you so much for those frequent and excellent letters, they do me a great good. Goodbye, and bless you.

  [added by hand:] As you know, I think I had your little malady† in 1928 but only discovered I was ill when it had already reached the advanced secondary stage. My only advice is never but NEVER miss a treatment. You will be tempted to as you will always feel so well. I also drank profusely all during my illness & it seemed to do no harm.

  I’ll write again soon.

  Love

  C

  2 December 1937: Cole Porter to Monty Woolley5

  Dear Monty:

  Stop writing pages about your damned lip and then saying it must be a bore to sit around patiently while my bones knit.

  If I had merely broken my legs, I’d have no complaints to make. But, although the left leg got a compound fracture, (that means that the bones went through the skin and were exposed to the air), the right leg was mashed to such a pulp from below the knee to the ankle that a great many of the nerves were injured, one of them very seriously and most of the pain has come from there.

  From the second day it was obvious that the toes of my right leg were without sensation. And after a few more days, the excruciating pains, as if from burns, began. It was explained that these were blebs forming. It seems that blebs always form after injury to nerve tissue. Isn’t that a nasty word, bleb? And a bleb is a hemispheric ulcer about an inch in diameter. The pain grew so much worse that the doctors decided that the cast must be removed and a coffin-like box be put in its place so that the blebs could be treated with Amartan. Amartan is the stuff they used for the burnt passengers of the Hindenburg.

  When the cast was removed I shall never forget the first sight of my leg. I asked, “What is that jelly its [sic] covered with?” and the reply was, “That’s not jelly, that’s blebs.” It was hard to believe for the whole leg looked like a flowing mass of lava and it sorta made me sick.

  Then I began to find out that large areas of my leg felt like some one [sic] else’s leg and thats [sic] when the trouble began. For in tracing the different nerves during the Amartan treatment, it was discovered that the anterior papliteal [sic] nerve seemed to be totally dead. As you know, the sciatic nerve goes down the back of the thing. Then one branch of it comes forward to a point just below the knee and runs from there on down the front of the leg and over the instep to the toes. This branch is the anterior papliteal [sic].

  The Amartan treatment dried up some of the blebs but not all, so that quite a few of them had to be cut off, which didn’t add to my comfort. In the meantime was starting the cruelest blow of all. All the minute off-shoots from the old papliteal [sic] began to struggle for existence again, causing curious pressures and pains that felt the very lightning bolts. Also the craziest illusions, some of which I wrote down as the doctors wanted them for data. I’m enclosing a few of them and you can believe them or not.

  Porter’s letter goes on to describe the effect on him of various drugs – ‘Morphine simply made me want to give parties and did nothing toward diminishing the pain. Hyoscine drove me crazy, Nembutal . . . induced nothing but drowsiness. Then they hit on Dilaudid . . . it’s a mixture of morphine with a lot of other nice drugs . . . I have had a shot of it every four hours for the last month and it has saved my life . . .’ – and at the request of his doctors he wrote ‘A Few Illusions Caused by An Injured Anterior Popliteal Nerve’, detailing some of his deliriums while medicated:

  I’m a toe dancer, but a toe dancer who dances only on the toes of his right foot. The music in the orchestra pit is charming and it’s very pleasant hopping around and around to that gay tinkling strain. But after a while, I realize that my toes are tired, and, risking the reprimand of the ballet master, I decide to drop to the ball of my foot and give them a rest. But, lo and behold, try as I may, I cannot do it, for my ballet slipper has been made in such a way that I must stay on the tip of my toes. So, long after the curtain has gone down, the music has stopped and I’m alone in the theatre, I watch the sad show I make as I go on and on, doomed forever to hop around on those poor tilted toes. It’s a relief to wake up and be no longer a toe dancer. But it’s an awful bore to have this tremendous new pressure on the sole of my foot, which forces it up with such incredible insistence that I feel, as if, at any moment, the tendons
of my ankle would break. Gradually I get used to this, however, as it continues pushing and pushing, but I must say I become rather discouraged when late at night I look at my toes to find that they are as far away as they ever were from the shin bone.

  The toes on my right foot are having a delightful time under the covers; they are tapping up and down on the cast and then resting from their exertions by stretching, and stretching so completely that each is separate from the other. This is such a pleasant feeling that it seems too good to be true. So I pull up the covers. It is not true.

  My right leg stretches, slanting upwards before me, like the side of the hill, the summit of which is my toes. From the ankle down – and approaching me – any number of small, finely, sharply-toothed rakes are at work. Each one has about the same routine. For instance, the rake that has been allotted to the inside of my leg begins at the ankle, proceeding slowly toward the knee, and digs as deeply as it can into my skin, at times much deeper than at others, and consequently varying in its painfulness. It goes slowly on in this manner until it reaches a point just a little short of the knee, then retraces its tracks until it finds the spot where it was able to penetrate the most, at which point it settles down to dig to its heart’s delight. The same procedure takes place over the entire leg and continues until I yell for a hypo.

  The toes on my right foot are tapping against the cast again and once more stretching happily in the morning sun – that is, until I look at them and find that they aren’t. A little later the rakes go to work, but for some reason they have reversed their procedure and instead of beginning at the ankle and digging toward the knee, they start just below the fracture and wind up at the toes. Those that mount the sole of the foot have great difficulty digging under the nails of the smaller toes, which are so close to the skin, but they finally succeed and the result is a most interesting new form of torture. In the late afternoon I notice that the right foot is doing its best to fit into a show that is much too short for it, but it persists and persists until someone inserts, inside the cast, a jagged glass shoehorn that extends from the inner heel all the way around to the little toe, but it is sadly ineffective and only adds to the confusion.