Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 - October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he opposed the wishes of his grandfather who dominated and took music as a profession. Trained classically, he was attracted to musical theater. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and in the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway music scene. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote lyrics, as well as music, for his songs.
After a serious horse-riding accident in 1937, Porter was left paralyzed and in pain, but he continued to work. His performance in the early 1940s contained no enduring hits from his best work from the 1920s and 30s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful music, Kiss Me, Kate. It won the first Tony Award for Best Musical.
Other Musical Porter includes Fifty Million French People , DuBarry Was a Lady , Anything Occurred , Can-Can and Silk Stockings . Many of his hit songs include "Night and Day", "Begin the Beguine", "I Get a Kick Out of You", "Well, Did You Know Evah!", "I Got Got You Under My Skin", "My Heart Own Daddy "and" You're the Top ". He also compiled scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s, including Born to Dance (1936), featuring the song "You'd Be So Easy to Love"; Rosalie (1937), featuring "In the Still of the Night"; High Society (1956), which included "True Love"; and Les Girls (1957).
Video Cole Porter
Life and career
Initial years
Porter was born in Peru, Indiana, the only surviving child of a wealthy family. His father, Samuel Fenwick Porter, is a pharmacist with a trade. Her mother, Kate, is the daughter of James Omar "J. O." Cole, "the richest man in Indiana", a coal and wood speculator who dominates the family. J. O. Cole built the couple a house in his Peruvian region, known as Westleigh Farms. After high school, Porter returns to the property only for occasional visits.
Mrs. Porter's strong-willed spoiled her and began her music training at an early age. He studied the violin at the age of six, the piano at the age of eight, and wrote his first operetta (with help from his mother) at ten o'clock. He faked his recorded year of birth, turning him from 1891 to 1893 to make him appear more mature prematurely. Her father, who is a shy and unassertive man, plays a lower role in Porter's care, though as an amateur poet he may have influenced his son's reward for rhymes and verifiers. Porter's father also has musical talent as a vocalist and pianist, but father-son relationships are not close.
JO Cole wants his grandson to be a lawyer, and with that career in mind, he sent him to the Worcester Academy in Massachusetts in 1905. Porter carried the piano upright with him to school and found the music, and his ability to entertain, made it easy for him to make friends. Porter did well in school and rarely went home for a visit. He became a class reporter and was rewarded by his grandfather with a tour of France, Switzerland and Germany. Entering Yale University in 1909, Porter majored in English, studied music, and also learned French. He is a member of the Scroll and Key and Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternities, and contributes to the Yale Record's humorous humor magazine. He was an early member of the Whiffenpoofs singing group cappella and participated in several other music clubs; in his senior year, he was elected president of Yale Glee Club and was his main soloist.
Porter wrote 300 songs while on Yale, including student songs such as football batting songs "Bulldog" and "Bingo Eli Yale" (aka "Bingo, That's The Lingo!") That are still played at Yale today. During the lecture, Porter became acquainted with New York City's nightlife, riding the train to New York City for dinner, theater, and night in town with his classmates, before returning to New Haven, Connecticut, in the morning. He also wrote musical comedy values ​​for fraternity, Yale Dramat (Yale dramatic society), and as a student at Harvard - Cora (1911), And Criminals Still Pursuing Her i> (1912), < i) The Pot of Gold (1912), The Kaleidoscope (1913) and Paranoia (1914) - which helped prepare him for a career as a composer and lyricist of Broadway and Hollywood. After graduating from Yale, Porter enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1913. He immediately felt that he was not destined to become a lawyer, and, at the advice of the law school dean, Porter turned to the Harvard music faculty, where he studied harmony and counter-match with Pietro Yon. Kate Porter does not object to this step, but is kept secret from J. O. Cole.
In 1915, Porter's first song on Broadway, "Esmeralda", appeared on the revision of Hands Up. The rapid success was soon followed by a failure: its first Broadway production, in 1916, See America First, a patriotic comic opera modeled on Gilbert and Sullivan, with a book by T. Lawrason Riggs, was failed, closed after two weeks. Porter spent the next year in New York City before going abroad during World War I.
Paris and marriage
In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, Porter moved to Paris to work with the organization Duryea Relief. Some writers have been skeptical of Porter's claim to serve in the French Foreign Legion, although the Legion includes Porter as one of his soldiers and displays his portrait at the museum in Aubagne. With multiple accounts, he served in North Africa and was transferred to the French Official School at Fontainebleau, teaching cannons to American troops. An obituary notification at The New York Times said that, while in the Legion, â € he has a portable piano made especially for him so he can carry it on his back and entertain troops on their bivouac. Another account, provided by Porter, is that he joined the recruitment department of the American Aviation HQ, but, according to his biographer Stephen Citron, there is no record that he joined this or any other branch.
Porter maintained a luxury apartment in Paris, where he entertained extravagantly. His party is very wasteful and scandalous, with "a lot of gay and bisexual activity, Italian nobles, dressed in cross, international musicians and big surplus drugs". In 1918, he met Linda Lee Thomas, a rich man, Louisville, born in Kentucky, divorced eight years older than him. She is beautiful and socially connected; the couple shared their interests, including the love of travel, and he became a confidant and a partner of Porter. The couple married the following year. He does not doubt Porter's homosexuality, but it is profitable for them to marry. For Linda, she offers sustainable social status and the couple who is the antithesis of her first rough husband. For Porter, it brings a respectable heterosexual front in an era when homosexuality is not openly acknowledged. They, more than that, were completely devoted to each other and remained married since 19 December 1919, until his death in 1954. Linda continued to protect her position in the social field, and believed that classical music might become a more prestigious channel than Broadway for her husband's talent. , he tried to use his connections to find him a suitable teacher, including Igor Stravinsky, but to no avail. Finally, Porter enrolled at Schola Cantorum in Paris where he studied orchestration and matches with Vincent d'Indy. Meanwhile, Porter's first big hit was the song "Old-Fashioned Garden" from the Hitchy-Koo revue in 1919. In 1920, he donated music from several songs to the musicals A Night Out
Marriage does not diminish Porter's appetite for ultimate luxury. Porter's house on rue Monsieur near Les Invalides is a magnificent house with platinum wallpaper and a zebra leather chair. In 1923, Porter got a legacy from his grandfather, and the Porter family began living in a rented castle in Venice. He once rented the entire Ballet Russes to entertain his guest house, and for a party at Ca 'Rezzonico, which he rented for $ 4,000 a month ($ 57,000 in current value), he hired 50 gondola donors to act as a footrest and had a strict. pedestrian -rope performs in a blaze. In the midst of this incredible lifestyle, Porter continues to write songs with encouragement from his wife.
Porter received several commissions for the songs in the years immediately after his marriage. He has occasional numbers interpolated into the appearance of other writers in England and the US. For the performance of C. B. Cochran in 1921, he had two successes with comedy numbers "The Blue Boy Blues" and "Olga, Come Back to the Volga". In 1923, in collaboration with Gerald Murphy, he composed a short ballet, originally titled Landed and then In Quota , satirically describing the adventures of an immigrant to a movie star. The work, written for Ballet suÃÆ' Â © dois, lasts about 16 minutes. It was arranged by Charles Koechlin and shared the same opening night with Milhaud's La crÃÆ' Â © ation du monde . Porter's work was one of the earliest compositions based on jazz symphony, preceding George Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue for four months, and was well received by French and American observers after the premiere of ThÃÆ'Â © ÃÆ' Â ¢ tre des Champs -ÃÆ' â € ° lysÃÆ' Â © es in October 1923.
After a successful New York performance the following month, Ballets suÃÆ'Â © dois toured in the US, and did 69 times. A year later the company broke up, and the score disappeared until it was reconstructed from Porter and Koechlin manuscripts between 1966 and 1990, with the help of Milhaud and others. Porter was less successful with his work at Greenwich Village Follies (1924). He wrote most of the original scores, but his songs gradually declined during the Broadway run, and on his post-Broadway tour in 1925, all his numbers were removed. Frustrated by the public response to most of his work, Porter almost gave up writing songs as a career, although he continued to write songs for friends and performed at private parties.
The success of Broadway and West End
At the age of 36, Porter was reintroduced to Broadway in 1928 with musical Paris , his first hit. It was commissioned by E. Ray Goetz for the encouragement of Goetz's wife and star of the show, IrÃÆ'¨ne Bordoni. He wanted Rodgers and Hart to write the songs, but they were not available, and Porter's agent persuaded Goetz to recruit Porter instead. In August 1928, Porter's work on the show was interrupted by his father's death. She hurried back to Indiana to comfort her mother before returning to work. The songs for the show include "Let's Misbehave" and one of the most famous song lists, "Let's Do It", introduced by Bordoni and Arthur Margetson. The show opened on Broadway on October 8, 1928. The Porter did not attend the first night because Porter was in Paris overseeing another show he had commissioned, La Revue , in a nightclub. It was also a success, and, in the Citron phrase, Porter was finally "accepted in the upper echelon of Broadway songwriters". Cochran now wants more from Porter than any isolated songs; he planned a West End extravaganza similar to the Ziegfeld show, with Porter scores and major international players led by Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale and Tilly Losch. The revue, Wake Up and Dream, ran for 263 shows in London, after Cochran was transferred to New York in 1929. On Broadway, business was severely affected by the Wall Street crash of 1929, and production ran just 136 shows. From Porter's point of view, it remained a success, like his song "What Is This Thing Called Love?" become very popular.
Porter's new fame brought him offers from Hollywood, but since his value for Paramount's 1930s
Ray Goetz, producer of Paris and Fifty Million Frenchmen , the success that made him solvent when other producers went bankrupt by the post-crash downturn in the Broadway business, invited Porter to write musical performances about another city he knows and loves: New York. Goetz offers a team that works with Porter: Herbert Fields wrote a book and Porter's old friend, Monty Woolley, directs. The New Yorkers (1930) gained instant fame for incorporating a song about streetwalker, "Love for Sale". Initially performed by Kathryn Crawford in a street environment, the critical disagreement led by Goetz to reassign a number to Elisabeth Welch in a nightclub scene. The lyrics were considered too explicit for radio at the time, although it was recorded and aired as instrumental and quickly became the standard. Porter often calls him his favorite of his songs. The New Yorkers also includes the hit "I Happen to Like New York".
Next came the final show of Fred Astaire, Gay Divorce (1932). It featured a hit that became Porter's famous song, "Night and Day". Despite the diverse press (some critics are reluctant to accept Astaire without her previous partner, Adele, her younger sister), the show takes place for 248 lucrative performances, and the rights to the movie, entitled The Gay Divorcee , sold to RKO Pictures. Porter followed this with a West End show for Gertrude Lawrence, Nymph Errant (1933), presented by Cochran at Adelphi Theater, where he ran for 154 shows. Among the hit songs made by Porter for the event were "Experiment" and "The Physician" for Lawrence, and "Solomon" for Elizabeth Welch.
In 1934, producer Vinton Freedley emerged with a new approach to musical production. Instead of assigning books, music and lyrics and then casting the show, Freedley strives to create the ideal music with stars and authors all involved from scratch. The stars he wants are Ethel Merman, William Gaxton, and comedian Victor Moore. He planned a story about the shipwreck and remote island, and for that book he switched to P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton. For the songs, he decided on Porter. By telling each other that he had signed the other, Freedley put together his ideal team together. The drastic rewriting of minutes is required by a large cruise accident, which dominates the news and makes the Bolton and Wodehouse books seem bland. However, the show, Whatever Happened , is a direct hit. Porter writes what many consider to be his greatest value in this period. The New Yorker said, "Mr. Porter is in his own class," and Porter himself later called it one of his two perfect performances, along with the latter
What Happened was the first of five Porter performances featuring Merman. He loves his loud and rough voice and writes many numbers that accentuate his strength. Jubilee (1935), written with Moss Hart while traveling around the world, was not a big hit, only running for 169 performances, but featuring two songs that have since become standard, "Begin Beguin" and "Just One That matter ". Red, Hot and Blue (1936), featuring Merman, Jimmy Durante and Bob Hope, ran for 183 shows and introduced "This De-Lovely", "Down at Depth (on the Nineteenth Floor)", and "Ridin 'High". The relative failure of these events convinced Porter that his songs did not attract a large enough audience. In an interview he said, "The sophisticated allusions are good for about six weeks... more fun, but just for myself and about eighteen others, all are the first people to love romance, polished, carpentry and adult in the realm of music is really a creative luxury. "
Porter also wrote for Hollywood in the mid-1930s. His scores included for the movie Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Born to Dance (1936), with James Stewart, featuring "You'd Be So Easy to Love" and "I've Got You Under My Skin" , and Rosalie (1937), featuring "In the Still of the Night". He wrote a short film score of Paree, Paree , in 1935, using a few songs from Fifty Million Frenchmen . Porter also composed a cowboy song "Do not Fence Me In" for Adios, Argentina , a film that was not produced, in 1934, but it did not become a hit until Roy Rogers sang it in the 1944 movie Hollywood Canteen . Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters, and other artists also popularized it in the 1940s. The Porters moved to Hollywood in December 1935, but Porter's wife did not like the film's environment, and the porer's homosexual peccadillos, which had been very careful, became less; he retreated to their Paris house. When his film duties at Rosalie finished in 1937, Porter rushed to Paris to make peace with Linda, but he remained calm. After traveling around Europe with his friends, Porter returned to New York in October 1937 without him. They were immediately reunited by the accident suffered by Porter.
On October 24, 1937, Porter was riding a horse with Countess Edith in Zoppola and Duke Fulco at Verdura at the Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley, New York, when his horse rolled and crushed his legs, leaving him substantially paralyzed and in pain for the rest of his life. Although doctors told Porter's wife and mother that her right leg had to be amputated, and possibly her left leg too, she refused to perform the procedure. Linda rushes from Paris to be with her, and supports her in rejection of amputation. He remained in the hospital for seven months and was then allowed to return to his apartment at the Waldorf Towers. He returns to work as fast as he can, finding it takes his mind away from his eternal pain.
Porter's first event after his accident was unsuccessful. You Never Know (1938), starring Clifton Webb, Lupe VÃÆ' Â © lez and Libby Holman, ran for just 78 shows. Scores include songs, "From Alpha to Omega" and "At Long Last Love". He returned to success with Leave It to Me! (1938); The show introduced Mary Martin, singing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy", and other numbers including "Most Gentlemen Do not Like Love" and "From Now On". Porter's last performance of the 1930s was DuBarry Was a Lady (1939), a very annoying show, starring Merman and Bert Lahr. After the pre-Broadway tour, where he got into trouble with Boston censorship, it hit 408 shows, starting at Street Theater 46. Scores included "But in the Morning, No" (which is forbidden from the airwaves), "Do I Love You?", "Well, Are You Evah!", "Katie Goes to Haiti" and other Porter up-tempo track list, "Friendship". In late 1939, Porter contributed six songs for the 1940 Broadway Melody movie for Fred Astaire, George Murphy, and Eleanor Powell.
Meanwhile, as political unrest escalated in Europe, Porter's wife closed their Paris home in 1939, and the following year, bought a country house in the Berkshire mountains, near Williamstown, Massachusetts, decorated with elegant furnishings from their Parisian home. Porter spends time in Hollywood, New York, and their home in Williamstown.
1940s and after the war
Panama Hattie (1940) is Porter's longest hit so far, running in New York for 501 gigs, though none of Porter's songs are immortal. It stars Merman, with Arthur Treacher and Betty Hutton. Let's Face It! (1941), starring Danny Kaye, goes better, with 547 appearances in New York. This, too, does not have any standard number, and Porter always counts it among his lower efforts. Something for the Boys (1943), starring Merman, ran for 422 shows, and Mexican Hayride (1944), starring Bobby Clark, with June Havoc, ran for 481 shows. These events, too, lacked Porter's standards. Critics do not pull their punches; they complained about the lack of hit songs and Porter's generally low standard score. After two flops, Seven Lively Arts (1944) (which displays the standard "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye") and Around the World (1946), many think that Porter's best period is over.
Among Broadway musicals, Porter continues writing for Hollywood. The movie scores of this period are You Will Never Grow Rich (1941) with Astaire and Rita Hayworth, Something to Shout About (1943) with Don Ameche, Janet Blair and William Gaxton, and Mississippi Belle (1943-44), left behind before the filming began. He also collaborated on the filming of Night and Day (1946), a very fictional Porter biography, with Cary Grant unreasonable in the lead. The critics booed, but the film was a huge success, mainly because of the richness of the ancient Porter figures in it. The success of the biopic was in sharp contrast to the failure of the film Vincente Minnelli The Pirate (1948), with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, in which five new Porter songs received little attention.
From this low point, Porter made a striking comeback, in 1948, with Kiss Me, Kate . It was by far his most successful show, running for 1,077 shows in New York and 400 in London. Production won the Tony Award for best music (the first Tony was awarded in that category), and Porter won for best composer and lyricist. His scores include "Another Opinion, Another Show", "Wunderbar", "So In Love", "We Open in Venice", "Tom, Dick or Harry", "I Came to Memorize It Healthy in Padua" Too Darn Hot "," Always True to You (in My Fashion) ", and" Brush Up Your Shakespeare ".
Porter started the 1950s with Out Of This World (1950), which had a good number but was too much camp and vulgar, and not very successful. The next show, Can-Can (1952), featuring "C'est Magnifique" and "It's All Right with Me", was another hit, running for 892 performances. Broadway's last Broadway final production, Silk Stockings (1955), featuring "All of You", was also successful, running 477 shows. Porter wrote two more film and music scores for a special television show before ending his career in Hollywood. The High School movie (1956), starring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Grace Kelly, included Porter's last major hit song, "True Love". The film was later adapted as a stage music of the same name. Porter also wrote the numbers for the movie Les Girls (1957), starring Gene Kelly. The final score was for CBS's special color television, Aladdin (1958).
Recent years
Porter's mother died in 1952, and his wife died of emphysema in 1954. In 1958, Porter's wound caused a series of boils on his right foot. After 34 surgeries, it must be amputated and replaced with artificial limbs. His friend Noy Coward visited him at the hospital and wrote in his diary, "The endless line of pain has been removed from his face.... I am sure that his whole life will be happy and that his work will benefit accordingly.. "In fact, Porter never wrote another song after an amputation and spent the remaining six years of his life in relative exile, just looking at intimate friends. She continues to live at the Waldorf Towers in New York in her memorable apartment. On weekends he often visits the plantation in the Berkshires, and he lives in California for the summer.
Porter died of kidney failure on October 15, 1964, in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 73. He was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in his native Peru, Indiana, between his wife and father.
Maps Cole Porter
Tribut and inheritance
Many artists have recorded Porter's songs, and dozens have released the entire album of his songs. In 1956 American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald released Ella Fitzgerald Singing Cole Porter's Songs . In 1972 he released another collection, Ella Loves Cole . Among the many album collections from Porter's songs are as follows: Oscar Peterson Playing Cole Porter Songbook (1959); Anita O'Day Pedaling Cole Porter with Billy May (1959); All Through the Night: Julie London sang Choicest of Cole Porter (1965); Rosemary Clooney Singing Cole Porter Music (1982); and What Happens: Stephane Grappelli & amp; Yo-Yo Ma Play (Mostly) Cole Porter (1989). In 1990 Dionne Warwick released Dionne Sings Cole Porter . In the same year, Red Hot Blue was released as a benefit CD for AIDS research and featured 20 Cole Porter songs recorded by artists such as U2 and Annie Lennox.
Additional recording collections include Frank Sinatra Sung Select Cole Porter (1996) and John Barrowman Swings Cole Porter (2004: Barrowman plays "Jack" in the 2004 film DeLovely Other singers who have paid homage to Porter include Swedish pop group Gyllene Tider, who recorded the song "Flickkan i en Cole Porter-sÃÆ' Â ng" ("The Girl from Cole Porter Song") in 1982. He was referenced in David Merrue's song "The Call of the Wild" by his 1989 album Rei Momo He was also mentioned in the song "Tonite It Shows" by Mercury Rev on their 1998 album Deserter's Songs .
In 1965, Judy Garland performed a medley of Porter songs at the 37th Academy Awards shortly after Porter's death. In 1980, Porter music was used for the Happy New Year score, based on Philip Barry's Holiday game. The Carol Burnett Show actress paid tribute to Porter in a comical sketch in their CBS television series. You're Top: The Cole Porter Story , video archive material and interviews, and Red, Hot and Blue , video artist featuring Porter music, released in 1990 to celebrate the birthday of one hundred Porter births. In contrast to the highly adorned 1946 biography of Night and Day, Porter's life was more realistic in De-Lovely, an Irwin Winkler 2004 film starring Kevin Kline as Porter and Ashley Judd as Linda. The soundtrack for De-Lovely includes Porter songs sung by Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, Diana Krall and Natalie Cole, among others. Porter also appeared as a character in the 2011 Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris .
Many events commemorate the centenary of Porter's birth, including the 1991 Orange Bowl part-time show. Joel Gray and a large number of singers, dancers and marching bands, rewarded Porter in Miami, Florida during the 57th Orange King Orchore parade, whose theme was "Anything Goes". Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra performs a Cole Porter music program at the Circle Theater in Indianapolis, which also features clips of Hollywood Porter movies. The "Gala Anniversary" concert was held at Carnegie Hall, New York City, with over 40 entertainers and friends paying homage to Porter's long career in theater and film. In addition, the US Postal Service issued a memorial stamp to honor the birth of Porter. Indiana University Opera features Porter musicals, Jubilee , in Bloomington, Indiana.
In May 2007, the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was dedicated to Cole Porter. In December 2010, his portrait was added to the Hoosier Heritage Gallery at the Indiana Governor's office. Many symphonic orchestras have paid homage to Porter in the years since his death including the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, with Marvin Hamlisch as the conductor and Boston Pops, both in 2011. In 2012, Marvin Hamlisch, Michael Feinstein, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra honor Porter with a concert that included a classic that he knew. The Porter Cole Festival is held annually in June at home in Peru, Indiana, to cultivate music and art appreciation. The costumed singers in the Cabaret-style Porter Cole Room at Indiana Historical Society's Eugene and Indiana's Marilyn Glick Center for History in Indianapolis received requests from visitors and performed Porter's hit songs. Porter's Steinway's piano is in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. Porter is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame. In 2014, Porter is honored with a plaque at the Legacy Walk in Chicago, which celebrates LGBT achievement.
Important songs
The show listed is a stage musical unless stated otherwise. Where the show was later made into a film, the year refers to the stage version. The complete list of Porter's works is in the Library of Congress (see also Cole Porter Collection).
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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