by Cole Porter
* Princess Elvina Pallavicini (1914–2004) was a member of the so-called Black Nobility in Rome who supported Pope Pius IX after the overthrowing of the Papacy in 1870.
* Look magazine, for which Eells wrote articles. Fleur Cowles was its editor.
† Clare Boothe Luce (1903–87), the conservative politician and author. At that point she was ambassador to Italy.
‡ Richard, Porter’s masseur.
§ Stavros Niarchos’s yacht.
* Summertime, starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi, was directed by David Lean. It is based on Arthur Laurents’s play The Time of the Cuckoo.
* Thomas Noyes and Lyn Austin were to produce Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure . . . at the Bijou Theatre in New York from 10 October. Most of the music was by Richard Addinsell but the choreographer had prepared a routine to Porter’s ‘Begin the Beguine’ and Noyes was unsure who to ask permission to include the music. Thomas Noyes’s father, Newbold, was one of Porter’s classmates at Yale. See the letter of 8 September 1955 from Noyes to Porter, CPT, Correspondence 1955.
* i.e. to both Howard and Charles Feldman, her ex-husband.
* Grace Kelly (1929–82) was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the 1950s, appearing in Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955) among many others, before marrying Prince Rainier III of Monaco (1923–2005) in April 1956.
* Chaplin’s version was used in the film.
* Porter’s letter to Robert Montgomery is in CPT, Correspondence 1955. He writes: ‘Thanks for your letter of Dec 21, 1955. As for “Professor Munch”, “Countess Krupp”, and “Mimsey Starr”, they are, as far as I know, entirely fictitious people.’
* The Great Sebastians by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse (librettists of Porter’s Anything Goes) had opened on 4 January. It starred Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.
* Norman Granz (1918–2001) was a jazz record label owner and producer. His labels included Verve, and his Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts ran from 1945 to 1957.
* Green sent the recording of ‘True Love’ on 1 March, commenting: ‘In the event that you should find the tempo a little slower than perhaps you would have liked, let me point out that this was most carefully considered and that the requirements of the scene dictated what we have done tempo and mood-wise.’ Letter of 1 March 1956 from Green to Porter. Madeline P. Smith replied on 5 March to acknowledge receipt of the recording. Sources: USC, MGM Music Department collection. Box PR-31A.
* Porter’s long-term friends, the Duke and Duchess of Alba.
† Porter means Jerez de la Frontera.
* The entry for 16 March is blank.
* The New York Times review of the film was headed ‘Cole Porter Music Still Fresh’. A. H. Weiler, New York Times, 22 March 1956, 38. The Times carried a mention of Porter’s fortieth anniversary on 28 March 1956, 26, though he had a song performed on Broadway in 1915 before his full debut in 1916.
† Walter Winchell (1897–1972) was a famous journalist, known for siding with Joseph McCarthy against Communism in his gossipy reportage.
‡ Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady opened on 15 March.
§ Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella opened on 3 May. Eells must have seen the pre-Broadway tryout.
¶ Jerry Bock, Larry Holofcener and George David Weiss’s Mr. Wonderful opened on 22 March. Sammy Davis Jr. was the star. Porter’s ‘It’s All Right With Me’ was interpolated.
** Porter’s old friend, John C. Wilson, director of Kiss Me, Kate.
†† Strip For Action, by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson, was due to open in April but was postponed until September.
‡‡ Wilson’s wife.
§§ Porter’s masseur (see McBrien, Cole Porter, 363).
* The Villa Palagonia is located in Bagheria, near Palermo in Sicily. It was built in 1715 by the architect Tommaso Napoli.
† John Fearnley (1914–94) was a casting director for the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization from 1945 to 1955 and also directed numerous productions at the New York City Center Civic Light Opera and Jones Beach Marine Theater.
* The famous opera house in Naples.
† Renata Tebaldi (1922–2004) was (with Maria Callas) one of the two greatest sopranos of Italian opera of her generation.
‡ It appears that Porter had ordered a subscription to The Listener as a Christmas present to Eells, but he had received The Observer instead.
§ Presumably Porter’s masseur, as identified in McBrien, Cole Porter, 363.
* The Most Happy Fella.
† A draft copy of the letter also includes the following: [handwritten:] ‘The flops’ [typed:] ‘In 1943 Mexican Hayride had a run of 167 performances. The only flops were Seven Lively Arts in 1944 with 183 performances and Around the World in Eighty Days in 1946 with 75 performances.’ On Stark’s headed stationery: ‘Sam Stark, collector, photographs, lithographs, books, scrap books, biographical data of stage and screen personalities.’ Stanford University, Cole Porter Collection, shelfmark FE209, Correspondence: 1955 (on Waldorf stationery), 1–17.
* Misia Sert’s memoirs, Misia and the Muses: The Memoirs of Misia Sert, were published in English in 1953, with an introduction by Jean Cocteau.
* Ananias of Damascus was one of Jesus’s disciples at Damascus, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible. Ananias and his wife Sapphira were characters who lied about money in chapter 5.
* Jean Howard notes: ‘Cole wanted to avoid the press as much as possible. He turned against the Hilton hotel in Istanbul because hotel officials allowed them in – all the way in – the press actually walked straight in and found Cole in his bathtub. He was furious. The hotel did make the newspeople turn over the negatives, which Cole destroyed, but he didn’t calm down.’ Travels with Cole Porter, 184.
* Porter’s masseur. See McBrien, Cole Porter, 363.
† Harry Warren’s Broadway musical Shangri-La opened on Broadway on 13 June and ran for only twenty-one performances.
‡ The Ziegfeld Follies of 1956, with a cast including Bea Arthur and Tallulah Bankhead, closed in Boston during its pre-Broadway tryout.
* Probably a Greek film producer.
† Katina Paxinou (1900–73) was a Greek actress of stage and screen.
* A walled monastery in Boeotia, Greece.
† Jean Howard notes: ‘Cole arranged to have some of the honey sent to New York – it was great.’ Howard, Travels with Cole Porter, 191.
* Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), the British First World War poet.
* The Embericos family were world leaders in shipping, founded by Epameinondas C. Embericos (1858–1924), a founder of the Hellenic Steamship Navigation Company, Minister of Shipping, and co-founder of the Bank of Athens.
* i.e. Howard and her ex-husband, Charles Feldman.
† They abandoned the project; much later, it became Bock and Harnick’s She Loves Me, 1963. For the announcement of the possible musical, see Sam Zolotow, ‘Audrey Christie Gets Stage Role’, New York Times, 8 June 1956, 20.
‡ During Porter’s holiday, Green had sent him a copy of the theatre-style overture to the film, which was to be ‘played in deluxe houses before the picture itself goes on’ and differed from the overture heard on the soundtrack album. Letter of 16 May 1956 from Johnny Mercer to Cole Porter. USC, MGM Music Department collection. Box PR-31A.
* Romain Gary (1914–80) was a French novelist and diplomat. He also wrote the screenplay for The Longest Day (1962) and directed two films.
* Presumably Porter means playwright George Kelly (1887–1974), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Craig’s Wife (1925).
* On 9 July 1956 the Greek island of Amorgas was hit by the largest known earthquake in the history of Greece.
* The article (on p. G4) is accompanied on pp. 1–2 by pictures of Dolores Gray, Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Dorothy Dandridge, and a group shot with Porter ‘checking’ the score. Caption: ‘They’ll star in the Cole Porter salute.’ Also a p. 3 picture of Sally For
rest and George Chakiris rehearsing ‘a number set for the Porter “spectacular”’. On p. 4, ‘Dolores Gray, under the watchful eye of Cole Porter, zips through a song’.
* The two lines from ‘Stereophonic Sound’ were specifically described as ‘unacceptably vulgar’ in Shurlock’s letter.
† Shurlock writes: ‘The following line is unacceptable’.
* Shurlock notes: ‘The word “Bum” . . . has too vulgar a meaning to be approved. May we suggest that the word “crumb” be substituted.’ The letter also notes that in “All of You” the lines “I’d love to make a tour of you. / The arms the eyes the mouth of you, / The east, west, north and the south of you” ‘must be delivered in a non-suggestive manner’. Similarly, the ‘acceptability’ of ‘Satin and Silk’ ‘will depend primarily on the manner in which it is sung’.
* Clare Boothe Luce, American ambassador to Italy.
† A popular joke of the time, whereby the Pope supposedly responded in this way to Luce’s attempts to persuade him to be tougher on communism.
* The Italian-born industrialist Bruno Pagliai (dates unknown) married the actress Merle Oberon in 1957. They lived together in Mexico and were divorced in 1973.
* Philip Langner (1926–) is an American film and theatre producer. The actor Tom Ewell (1909–94) appeared in several dozen Hollywood movies, including the screen adaptation of The Seven Year Itch (1955), in which he had also appeared onstage.
* The celebrated film of 1950.
† In 1970, Lauren Bacall appeared in Applause, a Broadway musical based on All About Eve.
‡ It became Oh, Captain! (1958) with a score by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, based on the 1953 film The Captain’s Paradise.
§ S. J. Perelman (1904–79) was the screenwriter of the recent Academy Award-winning Around the World in 80 Days (1956).
* E. Maurice Adler (1906–60) was a producer for 20th Century Fox, the studio that held the rights to Porter’s Can-Can. Among his most important films were From Here to Eternity (1953), Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) and Bus Stop (1956). His wife Anita Louise (1915–70) was an actress, appearing in several dozen films from her childhood (Down to the Sea in Ships, 1922) through to adulthood (her last film was Retreat, Hell!, 1952).
† Sir Francis Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969) was a prolific literary figure and part of the famous Sitwell family. Escape with Me! was Sitwell’s account of his tour of Asia, published in 1939.
* Cyril Ritchard (1898–1977) was a veteran Australian actor, especially popular in that period for his appearance in the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan (1954). Lewine and Porter wanted the actor to play The Magician in Aladdin.
* Clifford Odets (1906–63) was the writer of such plays as Paradise Lost (1935), Golden Boy (1937), The Russian People (adaptation, 1942) and The Country Girl (1950). He was also a director and the screenwriter of films such as Sweet Smell of Success (1957).
* A reference to Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Golden Cockerel, which was premiered posthumously in 1909.
* Homer Croy’s The Lady from Colorado was published in July 1957 by Duell, Sloan and Pearce. It is based on the story of Katie Lawder.
* Howard Emmett Rogers (1890–1971) was a prolific screenwriter whose work included Billy the Kid (1941) and Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951). The Guardsman (1931) was a film starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.
* Anna Maria Alberghetti (1936–) is an Italian singer and actress who won the Tony Award in 1962 for appearing on Broadway in the Bob Merrill musical Carnival! Capitol Records released an album of hers titled I Can’t Resist You, which included Porter’s ‘I Concentrate on You’, in 1957. She played Princess Ming Chou in Porter’s television musical Aladdin in 1958.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE FINAL YEARS, 1958–1964
On 18 February 1958, Paul Sylvain wrote to Sam Stark: ‘Mr. C.P. has been here since Jan 14th last, for an operation on his right leg. It was very successful, and the doctor predicts that Mr. C.P. will eventually be feeling much better generally. This morning, he will have another operation performed, on the same right leg – a minor thing, a sort of continuation of the first operation, to expedite the healing up process.’1 Porter’s hospitalization was also reported in the New York Times: ‘Cole Porter has undergone another operation, one of many, on his right leg, which he injured in a horseback riding accident in 1937. He is a patient at Harkness Pavilion, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.’2 As the days wore on, Mrs Smith kept Porter’s friends up to date on his progress. On 21 February she wrote to Bella Spewack: ‘Porter has been in the hospital more than five weeks, but the doctors think he can come home in early March. It is his old leg trouble.’3 Four days later, Mrs Smith wrote to the Starks:
25 February 1958: Madeline P. Smith to Sam and Harriette Stark4
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Stark: –
Mr. Porter asks me to thank you for your good telegram to him at the hospital. He was happy to hear from you.
We are hoping that he can come home in a week or two – but are keeping our fingers crossed. It has been such a long time now: 6 weeks today that he has been at Harkness Pavilion.
He hopes you are both well and happy, and sends his love.
Yours sincerely,
[signed:] Madeline P. Smith
(Secretary)
But two weeks later, he had not been moved:
10 March 1958: Madeline P. Smith to Sam and Harriet[te] Stark5
Dear Mr. Stark: –
As Mr. Porter is still in the hospital (8 weeks tomorrow), he has asked me to thank you for him for the Los Angeles Times clipping re ALADDIN.6 What an excellent one it is – and will grace our Scrap Book.
Poor Mr. P. is getting discouraged after this long hospitalization, but I am sure they will have conquered the leg infection before long.
With best regards,
Yours sincerely,
[signed:] Madeline P. Smith
(Secretary)
Mrs Smith’s letter makes reference to a review of Aladdin, which had been broadcast on 21 February to a generally negative reception. ‘Cole Porter and S. J. Perelman should send out for the genie,’ wrote the New York Times. ‘Their attempts to make a musical out of “Aladdin”, the imperishable “Arabian Nights” story of the boy with the magic lamp, ran headlong into sustained disaster. The ninety minutes on the du Pont monthly show over Channel 2 were a pretentious ordeal.’7 It was a sad debut for Porter’s last musical.
But Aladdin was the least of his problems. As the weeks wore on, it was clear that the situation with his leg was serious. Finally, a decision had to be made – so drastic that it was announced in the newspapers: ‘Cole Porter’s right leg was amputated yesterday at the Harkness Pavilion, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. The 64-year-old composer’s condition was described as “excellent” by hospital authorities. The hospital said that the operation had been necessitated by chronic osteomyelitis, a bone disease. In 1937 Mr. Porter suffered fractures of both legs in a horseback riding accident.’8 It was the end of Porter’s creative life, though that was not yet clear. Friends sent him messages and gifts in hospital:
7 April 1958: Madeline Smith to Leland Hayward9
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hayward: –
Mr. Porter was so touched with the beautiful pink Azalea plant that came to him from you for Easter. He asks me to send you his grateful thanks and to tell you how much he enjoys having it in his room, to remind him of what kind friends you are.
He sends you both his love.
Yours sincerely,
[signed:] Madeline P. Smith
Secretary.
In April, Sam Stark was involved in a car accident, but it was decided not to inform Porter yet because of his own condition. Mrs Smith wrote to Stark:
15 April 1958: Madeline P. Smith to Sam Stark10
[. . .] Mr. Porter was happy to hear from you via your pencilled letter; and we have not yet told him about your accident, as you ask, for we keep every possible worry away from him. I am
happy to say that yesterday and today have been his first good days. He was plagued with hic-cups [sic] after the operation, which have stopped only two days ago (they were intermittent hic-cups [sic]). He has also had trouble keeping his food down, but that too has abated somewhat. The pain is gone – and that is a great thing, for he had been suffering with it for so long. It is 13 weeks today since he went to the hospital, and we only hope he can get out of there before too long – and as soon as he can, I am sure he will want to go to sunny California, and then you will see him. They get him up for a few minutes daily, and have him take a few steps with the help of some kind of a walker. It will be slow – but, when we look ahead to the future, I am sure it will all be for the best. [. . .]
You have one advantage over Mr. Porter that I can think of: You have a fine wife to help you get well. Mr. P. seems so alone – friends and admirers by the thousands, but no immediate family. I take little black “Pep” home with me every week-end, as he is the only other creature – except Paul [Sylvain] – who lives in this beautiful apartment . . .
Two weeks later, Mrs Smith sent a further update to Stark on Porter’s health. From this point to the end of Porter’s life, Smith was the main source of information for Stark on the composer’s health and activities, and most of the letters in this chapter are therefore from her rather than Porter:
30 April 1958: Madeline P. Smith to Sam Stark11
Dear Mr. Stark: –
Mr. Porter has asked me to thank you for your card from Texas, which he appreciated receiving. I have not yet told him of your misfortune, as we do not like to give him any worries at all if we can help it. He is now doing so nicely, that we want to keep him improving and hasten the day when he can leave the hospital.
It has now been 3 ½ months that he has been at Harkness Pavilion. He has only just begun to have visitors – one a day – to get him accustomed to the world of activity again, and, fortunately, they all give good reports of how Mr. Porter looks and seems. He is tanned (sun lamp and visits to the hospital garden), gets regular exercise in the hospital gym, eats better than he did (is on hospital diet now) – and he is anxious “to get back to work”, which of course is a very good sign. He really hopes to get to California in June, but we must wait and see about that.