The Letters of Cole Porter
Page 3
I love your two Russian Nihilists. I got the blank after one of the names. Of course, you will be Turnesky in your own inimitable way. I am trying to write a talking mysterioso song for you and your fellow conspirator. As soon as you finish the conversation between the Nihilists on which the plot is formed, write it to me and I will convert it into a recitatif. As a matter of fact I have written your motif already. It combines the splendor of Wagner and the decadence of Strauss.
You speak of three acts. I beg you--Don’t! Three would be either interminable or choppy. Remember what a change of costume and scene means! It is a terrible thought always, and if possible try to condense your action to 2 acts.
Another thing (Forgive Me) Dink Stover was altogether too short. It gave one sensation but not perception. Please write this play a long one, for we can easily cut parts if we time it and find it soporific. I wish we could make this play a little masterpiece in its own foolish way. Take it horribly seriously, and I will join you. It really is important, for after all it can never happen again.
The minute you finish it send it to me. I have a great deal to do when I return to college, and I must have most of this play in black & white by Oct. 1st.
And another--
“I wonder where my old girl is now”
Write me here until Sept. 6. Then my address will be Shelbourne Farms, Shelbourne, Vermont, care of V. Webb, until Sept. 10. After the wedding at Garrison, the 11th, I go to Humphrey[‘]s. You will be there too & we can finish things up.
As soon as college opens I shall begin rehearsing songs, & by the second weak [sic] you can begin.
If you have written the opening of the first act, send it at once. Also write me the caste [sic] again, with the names of each member more plainly so I can use them in verses of songs.
You have no idea how delighted I am that you have gone at this play so hard. We ought to open a few eyes.
Goodby, Almet, & thank you.
Devotedly,
Cole
Aug. 234d [!]
[Autumn 1912]: Cole Porter to Almet Jenks
My Dear Almet:
I received the first act, the episode and the note.
Needless to say, I am delighted with the first act. The plot is excellent, the characters delightfully drawn, and most of the lines pertinent and witty.
I have written down the Overture. It begins with the motif–Chlodoswinde’s yearning for Larry; then follows the waltz representing her pangs on finding him false, ending in the motif of supreme happiness, which appears again at the end of the play. Following this come’s [sic] Larry’s love song. Then a thing in 5/4 time introducing the foreign influence on the hotel, modulating into a death march representing the monotony and decadence of the place. This is connected with the opening chorus by a movement which grows more excited as it progresses. The opening chorus is the Rainbow song, which can be sung by guests who depart at the end of it. At this, the bell-boys sing:
“Bellboys”
If you get done soon enough (& by that I don’t expect you to tear it off) I can have incidental music, an overture, an entr’acte, combined motifs, melodrama, etc.
Perhaps I sound altogether too serious about it, but I feel that it is up to you to show New Haven a little of that brain. You have no idea how much is expected. You have a reputation.
I have written a song for Anstruther (Arnold) called “My house-boat on the Thames.”
“My houseboat on the Thames”
Then a thing which can be stuck in some opening chorus or finale--
“Exercise”
I rather fear for the Episode. It seems to me that it would take nearly as long to prepare this scene as to go at once to the 2nd act, but perhaps I am wrong. However, we can talk that over on returning to college.
Tell me, who do you cast for Penton? Will Jack Blossom be a good Harrison?
I can never thank you enough for accomplishing so much and such good work. Would it be possible to have the second act take place in the lobby also?
Goodbye, Almet. Write me if anything drastic happens.
Devotedly,
Cole
[September 1912]: Cole Porter to Almet Jenks
My Dear Almet:
I received your letter answering in regard to the change of scene and the Episode.
Of course I was delighted to hear from you that the second set doesn’t require a switch, and I think your idea of contrast is wonderful. I feel duty bound to tell you how much work I have done because you must believe me enjoying the wilds of Maine. The truth is that I have manuscripted practically all of the first act. Immediately upon reaching New Haven Humphrey [Parsons] is going to try to persuade Dave Smith of the Music School to orchestrate it for about ten instruments.
As for getting together, I wish we could dine someplace Friday night and go through the memebers [sic] of each class and pick out ability. Don’t you think we could confine the chorus to bell-boys and feminine guests? I shall leave the caste [sic] almost entirely to you, but of course those who can’t sing can’t have songs.
You have no idea how grateful I am for your play. I think we ought to get an awful lot of satisfaction in seeing it well done.
I can begin rehearsing songs Monday night, and you ought to begin getting separate parts typewritten as soon as you return.
I have had to insert arrows indicating the approach of certain songs, at which points the conversation must “lead up,” but otherwise there are practically no changes.
I am so anxious to see you and talk over the whole thing, having thought of so little else during the past fortnight.
It’s a great shame about the Episode, but I really do believe you should disown this attractive child of your brain.
Finish that second act. I can do nothing until you do. You see my only means of making the songs relevant is by writing verses which give the idea of belonging to the person that sings them.
We shall meet very soon, but until then farewell.
Devotedly,
Cole
Sunday. We leave for New Haven tomorrow. Let me know the minute you arrive.
late September, 1912
In 1913 and 1914, even after his graduation, Porter continued to be active at Yale events including, in January 1913, writing and delivering an essay, ‘The New Hotel of America’, at the Scroll and Key, a ‘secret’ society founded at Yale in 1842 and consisting of fifteen prominent seniors:*
It seems only fitting when the Taft Hotel is about to celebrate its first birthday to immortalize the celebration by writing an essay on the New Hotel of America.
Of course every town in the country with a sense of decency has a new hotel in these days. You may travel to the little city and look for the shabby hotel whose plush parlors you used to dread, only to find instead a wonderful skyscraper on the main street making all the early Victorian shops about it fairly black with rage.
The minute you arrive, the native who meets you begins booming the hotel to the skies. You are told with hushed awe of the interior decoration, and of the vulgar display of bathrooms. Then after leading up gradually, he ends by giving you the prize package – he mentions the grill – for there is always a grill. This is perhaps the most typical feature of the New Hotel – the grill – a low-ceilinged, rotingly ventilated cellar where the piece de resistance is rarebit, where the vintage is Budweiser all of which is accompanied by an orchestra from Long Branch taking the name of Robert E. Lee in vain.
With the coming of the new type of hotel, we have lost the dear old American plan – the famous gorge – the delight of the really hungry – which required no imagination to satisfy the appetite. Do you remember the days when a heavily betrayed waiter used to place your plate on the table and then encircle it with little bathtubs – the whole giving the impression of a sun surrounded by a myriad of satellites? And will you ever forget the old menu that revelled in its number of vegetables, and gloated over its variety of pie? But those have passed now, and in its stead, we are
presented with an aesthetic European plan menu wearing a cover on which is painted a lady in an impossible décolleté gown rising out of a glass of champagne.
But these abuses which beset us are as nothing compared with the architectural evil in the typical New Hotel. And of course, New York is blamed again, when really the whole trouble lies with the owners of the hotels in our little towns. Every little village hotel owner decided to imitate the innocent metropolis to a T. As a result of this we see such a spectacle as the Hotel Taft which completely demoralizes the effect of a New England college campus.
But we rejoice to say that our American taste shows signs of improvement. This is a new era of hotels in America. Perhaps in a few years we shall return as graduates and refer to the dear old days when the Taft stood there.*
A lost and apparently otherwise unknown work by Porter, The Kaleidoscope, is documented for 30 April 1913;† on 22 October he sang at the Boston Yale Club14 and in March 1914 he gave a piano performance at the Waldorf-Astoria for the New York Yale Alumni Dinner.15 Also in April 1914, Porter and his Yale classmate T. Lawrason Riggs (1888–1943), with whom Porter soon after collaborated on See America First, produced Paranoia, or Chester of the Yale Dramatic Association at the Hotel Taft in New Haven.16 And in May, at a meeting of the Associated Western Yale Clubs in Cincinnati, Porter and Riggs produced We’re All Dressed Up and We Don’t Know Huerto Go.* The performance was noted in the Yale Alumni Weekly: ‘[T]he Cincinnati convention on Friday and Saturday, May 22 and 23, turned out to be the most interesting one of the most important of the series . . . The noise and jollity rose to a crescendo as the committee’s stage programme began with coffee. Then followed three hours of very amusing business, in which figured several graduate monologue artists, a Princeton dancing act, and a Mexican play put on by Cole Porter, ’13, who was assisted by an all-star cast including Woolley, ’11;† Johnfritz Achelis, ’13; Laurence Cornwall, ’12; and three very delightful undergraduate Dramatic Association actors.’17
Several months before We’re All Dressed Up, on 22 September 1913, Porter had enrolled at the Harvard Law School. One of his assignments – a fictitious brief, whether made up by him or assigned is unknown – describes the following situation:
Defendant and his friend Brown were standing on a street corner waiting for a car when Brown said to Defendant, “Tell me what you know about the murder in South Boston.” Thereupon Defendant spoke the following words intending that only Brown should hear them. “I see from the morning paper that Exum is strongly suspected of the crime. Much evidence tends to show that he is the guilty man, but from the facts stated in the newspaper there is not sufficient evidence to warrant saying he is guilty. Still I would suspect the rascal anyway. My friend Smith says he is guilty and I believe him.”
The truth was that there were two morning papers and one of them charged A. B. Exum with the crime and the other the plaintiff. Jones and Brown did not know the plaintiff and both had A. B. Exum in mind. A. B. Exum was in fact guilty. One person in the crowd, waiting for the car, overheard the conversation between the defendant and Brown and, having read the paper which charged the plaintiff with the crime, reasonably believed that the plaintiff was the man the defendant was speaking of, but he had been with the plaintiff on the night of the murder and knew in fact that he (the plaintiff) was not guilty.
The plaintiff now sued the defendant for slander. The defendant demurred but was overruled and brings the case upon appeal.18
It seems likely, given the names of the plaintiff and defendant, A. B. Exum and X. Y. Jones, as well as the name of the ‘lawyer’, Coram W. McAfee, C. J., to say nothing of the almost comical scenario, that the entire brief is Porter’s work. And it apparently did not bode well for his legal career, which ended in the autumn of 1914 when he transferred to the Harvard School of Music. According to an interview he gave in 1939, ‘One day I was at a party and I played a piece I had written and the dean of the Law School said “Porter – don’t waste your time – get busy and study music.” ’19
In the spring of 1915, Porter was contacted by the literary and theatrical agent Elizabeth Marbury (1856–1933)* about songs for a show that would eventually become his first Broadway musical, See America First. Several telegrams that Porter sent to his mother describe his meetings with Marbury and one, to his grandmother Rachel Cole (see below), may be an attempt, however circuitous, to impress his otherwise sceptical grandfather:
9 April 1915: Cole Porter to Kate Porter20
CHECK ARRIVED LAST WEEK[.] THANK YOU[.] GOT OFFER TO WRITE JUNIOR LEAGUE SHOW FOR NEXT YEAR[.] COULD NOT ARRANGE MEETING WITH COMMITTEE UNTIL MONDAY NIGHT[.] WILL COME HOME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE[.] MEETING MISS MARBURY TOMORROW AFTER-NOON[.] LOVE . . . COLE
12 April 1915: Cole Porter to Kate Porter21
MARBURY DELIGHTED[.] PRODUCTION ASSURED FOR NEXT YEAR[.] MEETING WEBER AND FIELDS* MANAGER TOMORROW IN REGARD TO INTERPOLATING SEVERAL OF MY OLD SONGS IN THEIR NEW SHOW[.] MEETING JUNIOR LEAGUE COMMITTEE TONIGHT[.] LEAVE FOR HOME TOMORROW AFTER-NOON =COLE
12 May 1915: Elisabeth Marbury to Cole Porter22
Dear Mr. Porter,
Will you please meet me, to play over your songs, to-morrow, Tuesday, at 12 o’clock, at “Chez Maurice”, Wintergarden Building, Broadway, between 50th and 51st Street.
Sincerely Yours,
[signed:] Elisabeth Marbury
25 May 1915: Cole Porter to Rachel Cole (his grandmother)23
JUST RETURNED AFTER SIX DAYS WITH MARBURY. SHOW TO BE PRODUCED IN OCTOBER. TELL GRANDAD LEW FIELDS GAVE ME FIFTY DOLLARS FOR EACH SONG I SOLD HIM AND FOUR CENTS ON EACH COPY.† FOUND YOUR WIRE WAITING. THANK YOU SO MUCH [FOR?] WRITING. COLE
Elizabeth Marbury was as enthusiastic as Porter, arranging for an article about the upcoming show to be published in the New Haven Register for 8 June:
Yale Man, Song Writer, Has a Fine Future. “I consider Cole Porter, your Yale graduate, who is now writing his first professional music, the most promising composer of light opera that I have ever encountered,” declared Miss Elizabeth Marbury, the well-known dramatic agent and producer, who was here to witness the first night of Lew Field’s [sic] new play for which Mr. Porter has supplied several numbers. Miss Marbury, who is known from coast to coast, and is a recognized authority on matters theatrical, was the one who first induced Mr. Porter, who was graduated from Yale only last year, and is now taking a special musical course at Harvard, to “write for the profession.” “It may seem that I am making a large order for the young man,” she went on, “but I am convinced that Mr. Porter is the one man of the many who can measure up to the standard set by the late Sir Arthur Sullivan. This looks like a boast, but watch him.”24
Over the next several months, Porter kept his family informed about the show’s progress:
15 December 1915: Cole Porter to Kate Porter25
JUST RETURNED FROM NEW YORK[.] UNLESS SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY HAPPENS SHOW WILL GO INTO REHEARSAL IN A FEW WEEKS PRODUCED BY MARBURY AND MOROSCO[,]* BUT DON’T BE OVER CONFIDENT[.] TELL GRANDAD AND BESSIE[.] TERRIBLYH [sic] SORRY YOU ARE NOT WELL . . COLE PORTER
15 January 1916: Cole Porter to Kate Porter
SHOW GOING BEAUTIFULLY[.] FRIGHTFULLY BUSY[.] WILL WRITE SOON[.] GIVE MY LOVE TO DIXIE AND DOCTOR[.] MISS YOU A LOT[.] GOODBYE[,] COLE.
14 February 1916: Cole Porter to Kate Porter
EVERYTHING GOING BEAUTIFULLY[.] REHEARSING FROM TEN IN MORNING UNTIL TWELVE AT NIGHT[.] TIRED BUT CONTENTED[.] WILL WRITE AT EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY. LOVE TO ALL[,] COLE
20 February 1916: Cole Porter to Kate Porter
OPEN SCHENECTADY TUESDAY MATINEE[.] PLAY ALBANY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY NEXT WEEK[,] ROCHESTER FOLLOWING WEEK[.] RETURN TO NEWYORK [sic] AND REHEARSE[.] NEWYORK [sic] OPENING SHOULD BE MARCH FOURTEENTH IF EVERYTHING GOES WELL[.] CAN MAKE NO PREDICTIONS[.] LOVE TO ALL. COLE.
22 February 1916: Cole Porter to Kate Porter
SHOW MOST ENTHUSIASTICALLY RECEIVED[.] HAVE HIGH HOPES FOR BRILLIANT OPENING IN NEW YORK[.] U
SUAL WORK PREPARATORY TO PREMIERE NOW BEGINNING[.] BIGELOW SCORES TREMENDOUS HIT[.] DONT WORRY[.] LOVE TO ALL. . . COLE.
The subject of Porter and Riggs’s musical was topical in the 1910s in particular: the ‘See America First’ movement, apparently founded in Salt Lake City in 1906, was taken up by President Taft in 1911, as the New York Times reported: ‘President Taft today promised a committee appointed by Gov. Crothers of Maryland that he would write a letter indorsing [sic] the “See America first” movement.’ A ‘See America First’ convention was held in Baltimore that same year, and in 1912 the Secretary of the Interior linked the development of national parks to the movement: ‘There is no scenery in the Old World grander or more inspiring [than the national parks], and as new roads are built giving easy access to all parts of every park, and inns and lodges are constructed, the American people will gradually learn that the now common phrase, “See America first,” has more than a merely patriotic significance.’ Less than two months after the opening of See America First, a bill was presented to Congress to centralize the administration of the National Park Service.26 Porter’s See America First, however, was not long-lived, closing on 8 April after only fifteen performances. The Evening World described it as ‘an achievement that college boys might have done in the way of entertainment’, while the Evening Sun called it ‘the worst musical comedy in town. Don’t see America First.’27 For Riggs, the failure of See America First was devastating. Shortly after it closed he wrote, ‘I spent the fall of 1915 in Cambridge, working on the book and lyrics of a comic opera, “See America First,” with Cole Porter, 1913, who did the music. It was presented in New York during the winter, but failed dismally. Owing to the fact that the composer and I consented to a complete transformation of the piece to meet the capabilities of its interpreters and the supposed taste of the public, we suffered, in addition to our disappointment, the unsatisfactory feeling that nothing had been proved as to the worth of our efforts. But we are wiser as well as sadder, and for myself I have done with attempts at dramatic composition, so far as I can foresee.’28 For his part, in a 1953 interview Porter said: ‘I’ll never forget that night . . . when my first show closed . . . As they dismantled the scenery and trucked it out of the stage alley, I honestly believed I was disgraced for the rest of my life.’29