by Cole Porter
† Lillian Russell (1861–1922), actress and singer. According to an article in the New Yorker (Geoffrey Hellman, ‘Corsets De Luxe’), ‘The first gartered corset was made for Lillian Russell, who was so enchanted with it she became a regular customer, later ordering from Mme. Binner the most expensive corset ever made. It cost thirty-nine hundred dollars – fourteen hundred dollars for the corset proper and twenty-five hundred dollars for the garters, which had diamond buckles.’ See Lillian Ross, ed., The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (New York, n.d.), n.p.
* Sophie Tucker (1887–1966) was a singer and actress. Porter refers to Tucker’s autobiography, Some of These Days (Garden City, 1945).
† John J. Moorehead was one of Porter’s surgeons. The same year Moorehead published a book, Clinical Traumatic Surgery (Philadelphia and London, 1945).
* John and Bob Lynn are unidentified.
† The Canadian-born Alexis Smith (1921–93) played the part of Linda Lee Porter. Henry Stephenson (1871–1956) took the role of Omar Cole.
‡ The role of Porter’s mother, Kate, was taken by Selena Royle (1904–83). The character Samuel Fenwick Porter, Cole Porter’s father, ultimately did not appear in the film.
§ Darryl F. Zanuck (1902–79) was a film producer and co-founder, with Joseph Schenck (1878–1971), of 20th Century Pictures (distributed by United Artists). From the late 1920s until 1933, Zanuck worked for Warner Bros., as a writer and, from 1931, head of production.
¶ Fred Astaire did not, finally, appear in Night and Day.
* Jean Howard.
† Fred Waring (1900–84) was a band leader; Stuart Churchill (1903–2000) was his vocalist. The ‘first’ ‘Just One of Those Things’ was written for The New Yorkers (1930) and although it was dropped during the Philadelphia tryouts, it was published in November of that year by Warner Bros.; the well-known ‘Just One of Those Things’ was written for Jubilee (1935) and published in October 1935, also by Warner Bros.
‡ The actress and singer Shirley Temple (1928–2014). On 19 September 1945, at the age of seventeen, she married John Agar (1921–2002), an Army Air Corps sergeant and member of a prominent Chicago meat-packing family.
§ Presumably Irving Berlin.
¶ Gilbert Miller (1884–1969) was a theatrical producer; he produced Ferenc Molnár’s stage play The Swan in New York during the 1922–3 season. A musical version was never produced although a film version, with Grace Kelly, Alec Guinness and Louis Jourdan, was released by Paramount Pictures in 1956.
* The actor Robert Bray (1917–83) was a member of the U.S. military during World War II. He is particularly known for his roles in television and Hollywood B-Westerns, including The Lone Ranger and Stagecoach West.
† A derivative of sulphanilic acid, use to treat streptococcal infections.
* One of these offers may have been Orson Welles’s Around the World; see below, pp. 251–60.
† See above, p. 240.
‡ The photograph sent by Porter is apparently lost.
§ Porter’s secretary, Margaret Moore.
* Merle Oberon and her husband at the time, cinematographer Lucien Ballard (1908–88).
† Alexander Korda (1893–1956) was a Hungarian-born film producer; his credits include the Orson Welles vehicle, The Third Man (1949).
‡ See above, p. 210.
* Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 194, does not mention these lines. They were intended to replace ‘For when once we get the proper settin’ / We being a-pettin’ and go on a-pettin’ ’.
* Berlin’s ‘You Keep Coming Back Like a Song’ was written for the film Blue Skies, released by Paramount Pictures on 16 October 1946; introduced by Bing Crosby, the song was nominated for, but did not win, the Oscar for best song.
* Helen Ormsbee, ‘Welles Like Phileas Fogg in Overcoming Obstacles’, New York Herald Tribune, 16 June 1946, D1: ‘Cole Porter and I blocked out the plan for the script and music for this show last August [1945] in Hollywood.’
† See below, p. 259.
‡ The narrative poem Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl by John Greenleaf Whittier, first published in 1865.
* New York Sun, 7 January 1946, 46.
† Harold Wallace Ross (1892–1951) was a journalist and co-founder, in 1925, of the New Yorker.
‡ Probably Robert Bray.
* Around the World.
† For Mike Todd, theatrical producer, see p. 195.
‡ That is, without any out-of-town tryouts. In the event, Around the World had a tryout in Boston, opening there on 28 April 1946.
§ Presumably Porter refers here to the husband of one of Linda Porter’s sisters. According to her obituary in the New York Times of 21 May 1954, 28, these were a Mrs William Wallace of Nantucket, Massachusetts and her half-sister, a Mrs Lee Abbell of Covington, Kentucky.
* La Quinta, a resort town in southern California. Probably Porter refers specifically to the La Quinta Resort and Club that opened in 1926.
* CPT, Correspondence 1946 (transcription of a telegram). Ray Heindorf (1908–80), composer and arranger; he conducted and arranged the production numbers for Night and Day.
* Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane was widely seen as a negative biography, at least in part, of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who, after the film’s release, prohibited its mention in any of his newspapers.
* According to a marginal note, Robert Bray (1917–83), the television and film actor.
† Around the World.
‡ Around the World opened at the Shubert Theatre, New Haven, on Tuesday 7 May.
* In a letter of 10 April, Porter’s secretary Margaret Moore suggested to Stark he travel east for the opening of Around the World. And in a letter of 18 April she wrote to him again including details on how Porter himself sometimes secured tickets for shows: ‘I’m delight to get theatre tickets for you – but I sincerely hope you will approve of my method for getting good seats for GLASS MENAGERIE. This is still a very popular show and hard to get good seats for evening, so I had to get them through Mr. Porter’s special man here – George Solotaire, 160 W. 44th St., though the price is very high. Whenever Mr. and Mrs. Porter cannot get good seats for any show, they always call upon this man – and as you well know, many times Mr. Porter wants tickets for shows on such short notice.’ Source: Stanford University, Cole Porter Collection, shelfmark FE209, Correspondence: 1946 (TLS on Waldorf stationery).
* Carole Hill is a fictitious character invented to compensate for some stars who could or did not appear in the film. As Carole, Ginny Simms sang ‘What is This Thing Called Love’ (Wake Up and Dream, 1929), ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ (Born to Dance, 1936), ‘Just One of Those Things’ (Jubilee, 1935), ‘You’re the Top’ with Cary Grant (Anything Goes, 1934) and ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ (Anything Goes, 1934).
† Possibly Schwartz’s music for The Time, the Place and the Girl, released by Warner Bros. on 28 December 1946, or his Broadway show Park Avenue, which had a short run of seventy-two performances at the Shubert Theatre, New York, from 4 November 1946 to 4 January 1947.
* This letter probably dates from 1946 since there is otherwise no Monday 6 May during the period 1941–7 when Porter was corresponding with Barclift.
† Chasen’s, a trendy restaurant at 9039 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles; opened in 1936, it closed in 1995.
‡ Porter’s reference here is obscure.
* Paul Whiteman (1890–1967) was one of the foremost bandleaders of the time. The original of this letter has not been traced; it is reproduced in facsimile in Kimball and Gill, Cole, 147.
† The actor Nelson Eddy (1901–67) was the lead, Dick Thorpe, in Rosalie, a story about a West Point cadet who falls in love with a girl who turns out to be a European princess. Whiteman recorded ‘Rosalie’ on his album, The Night I Played 666 Fifth Avenue (Grand Award Record Corp., 1959).
* Probably Robert Bray.
† Earl J. Hess and Pratibha A. Dabholkar, The Cinematic Voyage of the Pirate: Kelly,
Garland, and Minnelli at Work (Columbia, MO, 2014), 72–3 and 232.
* See New York Times, 30 July 1946, 32: ‘The Orson Welles-Cole Porter production, “Around the World,” will terminate its career at the Adelphi Theatre after Saturday night’s performance it was announced yesterday. The musical extravaganza, staged and adapted by Mr. Welles from Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days,” opened at the tail-end of last season receiving a rather cool reception from a majority of the drama reviewers. The attraction, however, staged an uphill fight until recently, when Mr. Welles decided to call it quits because of poor business.’
† See Variety, 8 January 1947, 8. Night and Day grossed four million dollars; the top-grossing film, The Bells of St. Mary’s, brought in eight million dollars.
* Rhapsody in Blue (Warner Bros., 1945).
* See p. 285.
* Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan (née Vanderbilt, 1877–1964) was a daughter of the railroad magnate William Kissam Vanderbilt. She married her first husband, Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, on 6 November 1895; they separated in 1906 and divorced in 1921. On 4 July 1921 she married a French pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Balsan (1868–1965). See Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and Mother in the Gilded Age (New York, 2005).
† Elsa Maxwell.
‡ Wife of movie mogul Jack Warner.
§ Millicent Veronica Hearst (1882–1974) was the wife of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951).
¶ For a recording by Beatrice Lillie, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB-kZN9Bc28.
** A note by Sam Stark in the margin identifies the ‘young man’ as Robert Raison.
* ‘Yip’ Harburg and Burton Lane’s Finian’s Rainbow opened at the 46th Street Theatre, New York, on 10 January 1947. The original cast recording was released by Columbia Records.
† Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! was first given at the St James Theatre, New York, on 31 March 1943.
‡ From Something for the Boys (1943). A 1943 radio cast recording, including the chorus ‘See That You’re Born in Texas’, was released on AEI (B00000N5G) in 1995; see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LheZnhLm9Ig.
* Finian’s Rainbow.
† A comic strip by artist and author Milton Caniff (1907–88), named after the eponymous adventurer; it ran from 13 January 1947 to 4 June 1988.
‡ Possibly a reference to Edward VII (1894–1972, after his abdication Duke of Windsor) and his wife Wallis Simpson (1896–1986)
§ Porter’s valet and Linda’s maid.
* Presumably Porter means it will be snowy; cf. Grandma Moses’s Cambridge Valley in Winter above, p. 220.
† Porter’s dog Pep and Stark’s dog Judy.
‡ William Vincent Astor (1891–1959), businessman, philanthropist and a son of the businessman and investor John Jacob Astor IV (1864–1912). He married Helen Dinsmore Huntington, well known to be lesbian, on 30 April 1914. They divorced in 1940, and in 1941 Helen married the real-estate broker Lytle Hull. Vincent subsequently married Mary Benedict Cushing (‘Minni’); they divorced in 1953.
§ Ava Alice Muriel Astor (1902–56), a daughter of John Jacob Astor IV, married her fourth husband, David Pleydell-Bouverie (1911–94) on 27 March 1940. She had previously been married to the Russian artistocrat Sergei Platonovich Obolensky; Raimund von Hofmannsthal, a son of the Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal; and the English journalist Philip John Ryves Harding.
¶ Possibly Kitty Miller (1891–1979), a New York socialite and the eldest daughter of financier Jules Bache (1861–1944).
* An ice skeleton-racing and toboggan track in St Moritz, Switzerland.
* The Villa Madama, west of Rome on Monte Mario, was commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici in 1518, based on a design by Raphael. It was sold to Mussolini in 1941 by the then-owner, Carlo, Count Dentice di Frasso, and his wife Dorothy Cadwell Taylor. The heiress Dorothy Taylor (1888–1954) had first married the British aviator Claude Grahame-White in 1912 but divorced him in 1916 after she inherited nearly twelve million dollars; she married Count Carlo Dentice di Frasso (1876–death date unknown), son of Count Ernesto Dentice, 7th Prince of Frasso, in 1923. Frasso is a commune about 40 kilometres northeast of Naples.
† Porter’s dog.
* James Phinney Baxter III, Scientists Against Time (Boston, 1946), won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for history.
† Grace Moore (1898–1947), operatic soprano and actress.
‡ Stanley Musgrove.
* The seven brothers of the Ringling family who in 1906 purchased Barnum & Bailey Ltd and in 1919 merged their circuses as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
† William S. Paley (1901–90) was the founder of CBS; he married the socialite Barbara Cushing Mortimer (1915–78) on 28 July 1947.
‡ Mary Benedict Cushing (1906–78) was the second wife of Vincent Astor. Betsy Cushing (1909–98) had married James Roosevelt II (1907–91), the eldest son of Franklin D. Roosevelt (at the time Governor of New York), in June 1930. She divorced Roosevelt in 1940 and on 1 March 1942 married the millionaire John Hay Whitney (1904–82).
§ Clare Boothe Luce (1903–87) was an author and diplomat. She was married to Henry R. Luce (1898–1967), the magazine magnate whose stable of publications included Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated.
* That is, New York; the reference is to Walter Winchell.
† Unidentified. No book with the title More Please appears to have been published about this time.
‡ Roger Edens (1905–70) was a composer and lyricist at MGM.
* The final text read ‘. . . you hit my heart’. Porter’s apparent original version, ‘. . . you broke my heart’ is not noted in Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 382.
† Lela Simone (1907–91) was a solo pianist with the MGM studio orchestra, part-time from 1937 and full-time from 1939; she had emigrated from Germany in 1933. As part of Arthur Freed’s team at MGM she also worked as a vocal coach, piano instructor and music editor; her last work for MGM was on Gigi in 1958.
* Porter sent a telegram to Sam Stark on 19 July to tell him ‘MY MA IS BETTER’. Stanford University, Cole Porter Collection, shelfmark FE209.
* Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 382.
† Porter’s reference is obscure.
‡ The Bishop’s Wife (The Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1947), starring Cary Grant as an angel who helps a bishop build a new cathedral and repair his marriage. Monty Woolley played the role of Professor Wutheridge.
§ Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
* Earl J. Hess and Pratibha A. Dabholkar, The Cinematic Voyage of the Pirate, 101 and 115.
† See pp. 110–38.
* Manufacturer of perfumes (créateur parfumeur), founded in 1849 in Grasse, France.
† Elizabeth II had announced her engagement to Philip Mountbatten, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark (subsequently the Duke of Edinburgh), on 9 July 1947. They were married on 20 November 1947.
* Fairbanks had married Mary Lee Hartford on 22 April 1939; Melissa was their third daughter.
† Maria del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva, 18th Duchess of Alba (1926–2014) and Don Luis Martínez de Irujo y Artázcoz (1919–72). They had married on 12 October 1947.
* A reference to the scene in The Pirate during which Kelly and Garland, dressed as clowns, sing ‘Be a Clown’.
† The Palazzo Barbaro was one of a pair of adjoining palaces in the San Marco district of Venice, fronting on the Grand Canal.
‡ Milton Sperling (1912–88), screenwriter and film producer; he owned an independent production unit – an administrative organization hired by major studios to finance and release, but not film, pictures – at Warner Bros., United States Pictures. He did not, in the end, produce a Porter musical.
§ Arthur Lyons.
¶ Apparently nothing came of the proposal.
* Porter’s suit concerned his continuing residence at 416 N. Rockingham, which
Porter claimed Haines had agreed to renew; apparently the suit was successful. See McBrien, Cole Porter, 302.
† Robert Bagar and Louis Biancolli, The Concert Companion: A Comprehensive Guide to Symphonic Music (New York and London, 1947).
CHAPTER SIX
KISS ME, KATE, 1948
Although his inner circle was not large, Porter’s correspondence with his closest friends seems to reveal a more genuine identity than the relatively neutral personality he projects in many of his other communications. The second of the following two letters to Sam Stark, by now one of his most intimate acquaintances, is particularly notable for its frank references to Porter’s homosexuality. He begins by teasing Stark sympathetically about an illness he had contracted, which is perhaps what encouraged Porter to be a little more sincere in this letter. Later, he refers to a lover (Michael Pearman) and mentions Gore Vidal’s gay novel The City and the Pillar (1948). Here is confirmation, if it were needed, that although Porter kept this part of his life private, he was sexually active, promiscuous, and apparently not particularly repressed about his sexuality. The letter also gives Stark an update on Porter’s health at the time – treatments on his right leg to delay the need for an operation:
13 January 1948: Cole Porter to Sam Stark1
Dear Sam: –
I am sending you, under separate cover, a book which you lent me. It has been standing in a bookcase in Williamstown just above a radiator, so it is rather badly warped. Please sit on it for a while and I am sure it will resume its normal lines.
I am also sending a program of Allegro.* I may have sent you one of these before.
I also received the bank statement from Stark, Morgan Harjes et Cie.* I had no idea that your banking firm had so many branches around the world. Naturally, I regret a great deal that you can no longer handle my account, due to lack of funds. But, perhaps I can find a few dollars later on to put me in good standing again. There was a postscript on this statement from one of your tellers, and he signed it simply “Robert”.† Who, pray, could this be?
That’s all.
Love,
[signed:] Cole.2