The Letters of Cole Porter

by Cole Porter

  † New York Herald Tribune, 2 April 1939, E1-2. Porter’s comments about the uncertainty of writing a hit notwithstanding, he is quoted on the dust jacket of Bruce Abner and Robert Silver’s How to Write and Sell a Song Hit (New York, 1939, and advertised as ‘Inside information on titling, composition, lyric writing and song marketing by two experts’) as saying, ‘At last would-be song writers have a bible.’

  * Mary Jane (‘Mae’) West (1893–1980) was a well-known actress and sex symbol.

  † The playwright and producer George S. Kaufman (1889–1961) had previously written the books for George Gershwin’s Strike Up the Band (1930) and Of Thee I Sing (1931), and Arthur Schwartz’s The Band Wagon (1931).

  * Len Hanna’s companion.

  * Charles Feldman (1905–68) was a Hollywood attorney and film producer. At the time he was married to Jean Howard.

  † Porter’s mother.

  ‡ Panama Hattie.

  * Margaret Case Harriman, ‘Words and Music’, New Yorker, 23 November 1940. Reprinted in Margaret Case Harriman, “The Wise Live Yesterday: COLE PORTER”. Take Them Up Tenderly: A Collection of Profiles (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 135–49. The curious phrase ‘for ninstance’ is explained by Harriman: ‘Porter will tell you, with a reminiscent grin, that the source of “for ninstance” is a story about Miss Peggy Hopkins Joyce that entertained certain Americans in France a few years ago. Miss Joyce, who had arrived in Monte Carlo in one of her statelier moods, confided to a friend a few days later that she had simply decided to leave, because Monte Carlo was full of such dreadful people that season. When the friend protested mildly that a good many attractive people seemed to be around, Peggy drew herself up and loftily inquired, “For ninstance, whom?” Porter treasures things like that, sometimes for years.’ For a detailed account of Porter’s and other Broadway composers’ compositional methods, see Dominic McHugh, ‘I’ll Never Know Exactly Who Did What: Broadway Composers as Musical Collaborators’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 68/3 (2015), 605–52.

  * Eve Arden’s solo, ‘Pets’, and the ensemble number with Muriel and Jean, ‘Revenge’, were both dropped during rehearsals. Danny Kaye’s speciality number, ‘Melody in Four F’, was composed by Sylvia Fine and Max Liebman; it was dropped late in the run of the show, when José Ferrer replaced Kaye, and was replaced by ‘It Ain’t Etiquette’ from Du Barry Was a Lady (1939).

  † Johnny Mercer (1909–76) was a songwriter and singer.

  * Porter’s cottage in Williamstown, on the grounds of Buxton Hill.

  † The Russian singer Dora Stroëva (1889–1979) had appeared in Irving Berlin’s 1923 revue The Music Box and sang on the animated short, Alexander’s Ragtime Band (Fleisher Studios, 1931).

  * Sylvia Ashley (1904–97) was an English-born model, actress and socialite. Porter’s ‘poor little Sylvia is all alone in the world’ probably refers to the fact she was at the time Douglas Fairbanks Sr.’s widow (they were married from 7 March 1936 until Fairbanks’s death on 12 December 1939). She was subsequently married to Edward Stanley, 6th Baron Stanley of Alderley (1944–8), and to Clark Gable (1949–52).

  † Capehart, a luxury home phonograph popular during the 1930s and 1940s; see Robert W. Baumbach, The Incomparable Capehart (New York, 2005).

  ‡ Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859–1935) was a Russian composer and conductor.

  § Oliver Jennings was an heir to the Standard Oil fortune (founded by Oliver Burr Jennings, 1865–1936) and the partner of Ben-Hur Baz.

  ¶ These lines appear to be Porter’s parody of a number of traditional songs concerning African-Americans, among them Stephen Foster’s My Old Kentucky Home.

  * Gregory Ratoff (1897–1960) was a producer, director and actor.

  † Irving Berlin’s This is the Army (1942), which Barclift choreographed.

  ‡ Arthur Lyons, Porter’s agent in Hollywood.

  § Du Barry Was a Lady, first produced on stage at the 46th Street Theatre, New York, on 6 December 1938, was released in a film version by MGM in 1943. Starring Lucille Ball, Red Skelton and Gene Kelly, it tells the story of a night-club coatroom attendant who dreams he is King Louis XV, courting Madame Du Barry, who became the king’s last lover and was executed in Paris in 1793 during the Reign of Terror.

  * Irving Berlin’s This is the Army. Laurence Bergreen, in his biography of Irving Berlin, reports that about this time the composer Harry Warren made negative comments about Berlin during the Allied bombing of Germany, including ‘They bombed the wrong Berlin.’ He further reports that Porter came to Irving Berlin’s defence writing to Berlin: ‘I can’t understand all this resentment to my old friend, “The Little Gray Mouse.” It seems to me that he has every right to go to the limits toward publishing the music of his Army show as every cent earned will help us win the war. If I had my way he would have been given the Congressional Medal because . . . he is the greatest song-writer of all time – and I don’t mean Stephen Foster. It’s really distressing in these days of so much trouble to know that envy still runs rampant even on that supposed lane Tin Pan Alley. I’m sure you will agree about this, dear little mouse. Love – Rat Porter’. See Laurence Bergreen, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (New York, 1990), 418. No source is given for Porter’s letter.

  † Presumably Porter’s house on Hedges Place in West Hollywood. It was listed for sale in 2014 for $11.5 million; see the advertisement in the Los Angeles Times for 20 October 2014; http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hotprop-cole-porter-20141029-story.html

  ‡ The Porters’ home in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

  * William Skipper (1915–87) was a dancer and choreographer. He appeared in Porter’s Panama Hattie (1940), served in the Coast Guard as a Lt. Commander during World War II, and returned to Broadway in 1946 when he was cast as the juvenile lead in Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun.

  † Lew Kesler Jr. (1905–81) was a choreographer; Fred Nay (1911–93) was an actor and stage manager. The musical revue Star and Garter ran at the Music Box Theatre, New York, from 24 June 1942 to 4 December 1943.

  ‡ That is, ‘Uncle Sam’.

  * Hal McIntyre (1914–59) was a saxophonist. McIntyre and his orchestra recorded ‘You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To’ for Victor on 22 July 1942 but the recording was not released; see Brian Rust, The American Dance Band Discography 1917–1942. Volume 2: Arthur Lange to Bob Zurke (New York, 1975), 1,224.

  * Frederic Nay (1911–93) was a bit actor and ensemble player on Broadway and in Hollywood, chiefly during the 1930s and 1940s. He appeared in Porter’s Jubilee (1935), Panama Hattie (1940) and Let’s Face It! (1941).

  † The dancer Tito Reynaldo (birth and death dates unknown); he had appeared in Porter’s Du Barry Was a Lady (1939).

  * Benjamin Glazer (1887–1956) was a screenwriter, producer and founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; he won Oscars for his writing for Seventh Heaven (1927) and Arise, My Love (1941).

  * The theatre-owner and producer Michael Todd (Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen, 1909–58). He produced Porter’s Something for the Boys.

  † Herbert Fields (1897–1958) and his sister Dorothy (1905–74) were librettists, screenwriters and – in Dorothy’s case in particular – songwriters. They had already collaborated with Porter on Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929), The New Yorkers (1930), Du Barry Was a Lady (1939), Panama Hattie (1940) and Let’s Face It! (1941).

  ‡ Hubert Edward Hassard (‘Bobby’) Short (1877–1956) was an actor and the director of more than fifty Broadway or West End shows including Arthur Schwartz’s The Band Wagon (1931), Irving Berlin’s As Thousands Cheer (1933) and Porter’s Jubilee (1935), Something for the Boys (1943) and Mexican Hayride (1944).

  * New York Times, 8 January 1943.

  † Mississippi Belle.

  ‡ Jack Riley (birth and death dates unknown) was an actor; he featured as a bit performer in six Broadway shows between 1938 and 1942, including Porter’s Panama Hattie (1940) and Let’
s Face It! (1941).

  § In early 1943 Nay was taken on for a bit part in the Bob Hope-Betty Hutton film comedy Let’s Face It! (based on the show but without Porter’s songs).

  * Betty Grable (1916–73), actress and one of the leading Hollywood stars of the 1930s and 1940s. Grable appeared on Broadway only twice: she took the part of Alice Barton in Porter’s Du Barry Was a Lady (1939), and from 12 June to 5 November 1967 she appeared as Mrs Dolly Gallagher Levi in Hello, Dolly!

  † Lew Kessler (birth and death dates unknown) was a musician and choreographer.

  ‡ Jack Cole (1914–74) was a choreographer.

  * Porter’s sources were: George Stuyvesant Jackson, ed., Early Songs of Uncle Sam (Boston, 1933); Herbert Hughes, ed., Irish Country Songs (London, 1909); John A. and Alan Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs (New York, 1934); and Charles Villiers Stanford, arr., Songs of Erin (London, 1901).

  † William Ellfeldt (1906–77) played the uncredited role of the piano player in the film Confidential Agent (Warner Brothers, 1945).

  ‡ Frank Luther, Americans and their Songs (New York, 1942).

  * Arthur Lyons.

  * See McBrien, Cole Porter, 256. According to McBrien, Stark later married Harriette, the daughter of the Mafia boss in Kansas City. I. Magnin was a luxury department store founded in San Francisco in 1876; during the early years of the twentienth century, I. Magnin opened shops in several luxury hotels throughout California. See Devin Thomas Frick, I. Magnin & Co: A California Legacy (Garden Grove, CA, 2000).

  † Lauren Bacall (Betty Joan Perske, 1924–2014), one of Hollywood’s greatest stars and winner of an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honorary award in 2009. She is, perhaps, best known for her films with Humphrey Bogart, To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948); on Broadway she won Tony Awards for Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981). Source: Boston University, Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center, Lauren Bacall Papers, B.9 Scrapbook Vol. I. Bacall’s scrapbook also includes a photograph of Porter inscribed to her: ‘For Betty The Great from her old pal Cole.’

  * Helen Huntington Hull (1893–1976) was a socialite and arts patron; she served at various times on the board of directors of the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center. In 1941 she divorced her first husband, William Vincent Astor (1891–1959), a son of John Jacob Astor IV (1864–1912), and married Lytle Hull (1882–1958), a real-estate broker.

  † Probably Mexican Hayride, which opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, on 28 January 1944 and ran for 481 performances.

  ‡ Paul Armstrong according to annotations by Stark on other letters sent to him by Porter.

  § The partner of William Haines; other details are unknown.

  * Stark had changed his name from Gertzen.

  † This sentence is written vertically up the left side of the letter, with an arrow pointing to the Waldorf logo.

  ‡ Sylvia Ashley.

  * W. Somerset Maugham’s Introduction to Modern English and American Literature (New York, 1943).

  * According to marginal notations, Louisa Wannamaker and Paul Armstrong, details concerning whom, as well as Bill Gray, are unknown.

  * Presumably Porter refers here to Mexican Hayride.

  † Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! had opened at the St James Theatre, New York, on 31 March 1943.

  ‡ Allen Walker (dates unknown) was Sam Stark’s partner, and co-owner with Stark of the jewellery counters in the I. Magnin department stores.

  § William Haines (1900–73) was an actor. He owned the house at 416 North Rockingham, Hollywood, that Porter rented beginning in 1943. Haines was blacklisted in 1934 for refusing to conceal his homosexuality through a marriage of convenience. He subsequently had a successful career as an interior designer. See McBrien, Cole Porter, 267–8.

  * Stark’s drawing appears not to survive; Porter’s allusions are therefore unexplained.

  † Katherine Mackey (née Duer, 1880–1930) was the wife of the financier Clarence Hungerford Mackay (1874–1938); they married in 1898 and had a daughter, Ellin (who in 1926 married Irving Berlin) and two sons, John and Clarence.

  ‡ Fiorello H. LaGuardia (1882–1947) was mayor of New York, 1934–45.

  § Paul Armstrong.

  ¶ Mexican Hayride, which opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, on 28 January 1944.

  ** These two photographs appear to be lost.

  * Apparently the mother of Porter’s friend, Michael Pearman, about whom little is known. See McBrien, Cole Porter, 153–5.

  * Although no year is given, the reference to Mexican Hayride dates this letter to 1944.

  † According an annotation on this letter, Roger Armstrong.

  ‡ Mexican Hayride opened on 28 January.

  § Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1891–1967) was Secretary of the Treasury, 1934–45, during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  * Possibly Gene Fowler, Good Night Sweet Prince: The Life and Times of John Barrymore (New York, 1943).

  † The actor and writer Eddie Davis (1907–58) had recently appeared on Broadway in George White’s Scandals (1939), with music by Sammy Fain, and the Al Jolson-produced musical comedy Hold on to Your Hats (1940), with a book by Guy Bolton, music by Burton Lane and lyrics by E. Y. (Yip) Harburg.

  ‡ Marrons glacés.

  * A restaurant at 3927 Wilshire Boulevard, opened in 1932 by Alexander Perino and patronized by the Hollywood elite; see Joseph Temple, ‘7 Famous L. A. Restaurants’, http://blog.iwfs.org/2014/09/7-famous-l-a-restaurants-from-the-studio-era/, and Hadley Meares, ‘The Michelangelo of the Menu: Alexander Perino’s rules of Fine Dining’, https://www.kcet.org/food/the-michelangelo-of-the-menu-alexander-perinos-rules-of-fine-dining (both accessed 20 January 2018).

  † Bobby Clark (1888–1960) was a comedian, writer and director; he took the starring role, Joe Bascom (alias Humphrey Fish), in Mexican Hayride.

  ‡ Harold (‘Hal’) B. Wallis (born Aaron Blum Wolowicz, 1898–1986) was a film producer. His film credits for Warner included The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), with Errol Flynn, and Casablanca (1942), with Humphrey Bogart. Wallis left Warner Bros. later in 1944; Night and Day was produced by Arthur Schwartz.

  * Presumably two of Porter’s valets.

  * Jean Gabin (Jean-Alexis Moncorgé, 1904–76) was a French actor famous in particular for his roles in La bandera (1935), Pépé le Moko (1937), La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Human Beast (1938). He left France for Hollywood in 1940, where he remained until 1944. Porter probably met Gabin at the premiere of Something for the Boys, which Gabin attended in the company of Marlene Dietrich, with whom he was having an affair.

  † Cover Girl (Columbia Pictures, 1944), starring Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly. The plot revolves around Rusty Parker, whose romance with her dancing mentor is threatened when she becomes a celebrated cover girl.

  * Margaret Moore, Porter’s secretary.

  † Monty Woolley.

  ‡ The actor Richard (Roy) Cromwell (LeRoy Melvin Radabaugh, 1910–60) was best known for his role in the Oscar-nominated The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Paramount Pictures, 1935) for which he received co-star billing with Gary Cooper; he was married to Angela Lansbury from 1944 to 1945.

  § Follow the Boys was released by Universal Pictures in 1944.

  * Edward John Stanley, 6th Baron Sheffield, 6th Baron Stanley of Alderley and 5th Baron Eddisbury (1907–71) was a British peer. He was married to Sylvia Ashley from 1944 to 1948.

  † The actress Joan Fontaine (1917–2013); she was married to the actor Brian Aherne (1902–86) from 1939 to 1945.

  ‡ Merle Oberon was married to the film producer and director Alexander Korda (1893–1956) from 1939 to 1945.

  § The theatre and film producer Mike Todd (1909–58) is best known for Around the World in 80 Days (United Artists, 1956) and as Elizabeth Taylor’s third husband. Todd produced Porter’s musicals Something for the
Boys (1943) and Mexican Hayride (1944). The film version of Mexican Hayride (Universal), produced by Robert Arthur (1909–86), was released in 1948. Porter’s suggestion that a film version of Mexican Hayride would ‘make us all so much poorer’ refers to the increased tax liability it would create.

  ¶ Joan Blondell (1906–79) was an actress; Joy Hodges (1915–2003) was a singer and actress. Something for the Boys had closed in New York on 8 January 1944.

  ** Presumably a reference to the fact that the lead in New York was Ethel Merman.

  * See the New York Times for 5 April 1944, 1: ‘CHAPLIN ACQUITTED IN MANN ACT CASE. With lips trembling as he clutched at the knot of his necktie, an emotion-choked Charlie Chaplin tonight heard himself acquitted of Mann Act charges . . . The jury of seven women and five men cleared the world-famed comedian of Government charges that he transported his former protégé, 24-year-old Joan Barry, to New York City and back in October, 1942, for immoral purposes.’ The Mann Act of 1910 – also known as the White-Slave Traffic Act – made it a felony ‘to knowingly transport or cause to be transported, or aid or assist in obtaining transportation for, or in transporting, in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or in the District of Columbia, any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or with the intent and purpose to induce, entice, or compel such woman or girl to become a prostitute or to give herself up to debauchery, or to engage in any other immoral practice.’ See http://legisworks.org/sal/36/stats/STATUTE-36-Pg825a.pdf.

  † The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (Paramount, released 1944), comedy directed by Preston Sturges, with Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton, in which a small-town girl wakes up after a sending-off party for the troops and finds herself married and pregnant, but has no memory of her husband’s identity. The film was nominated for an Oscar for original screenplay, and for best director (Preston Sturges) by the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.