The Letters of Cole Porter

by Cole Porter

* ‘Experiment’ had originally been written for Nymph Errant (1933).

  † Norman Bel Geddes (1893–1955) was a theatrical designer and industrial engineer.

  ‡ Aaron Copland (1900–90) was one of the most prominent American composers of the twentieth century. In the event, the ballet was composed by Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971).

  * Alicia Markova (1910–2004) and Anton Dolin (1904–83) were dancers. The comedian Bert Lahr (1895–1967), best known for his role as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, had played in Porter’s Du Barry Was a Lady (1939). Rose’s promise of a young Ethel Merman was not quite fulfilled: in the event, Beatrice Lillie (1894–1989) took the female lead, a possibility raised by Rose in a telegram to Porter of 27 June (CPT, Correspondence 1944).

  † Alexander Smallens (1889–1972) was a conductor. The orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett (1894–1981) was assisted by the orchestrators Hans Spialek (1894–1983) and Ted Royal (1904–81). Spialek had earlier orchestrated, or contributed to the orchestrations of, Porter’s The New Yorkers (1930), Gay Divorce (1932), Anything Goes (1934), Du Barry Was a Lady (1939), Panama Hattie (1940), Let’s Face It! (1941) and Something for the Boys (1943); Royal had worked on Du Barry Was a Lady, Let’s Face It!, Something for the Boys and Mexican Hayride (1944). Some scores of Royal’s and Spialek’s orchestrations survive in NYPL, in the Billy Rose Theatre Division.

  * Presumably the singer, actress and comedian Fanny Brice (1891–1951).

  † Raul Pène Du Bois (1912–85) was a designer. His previous designing credits included the Ziegfeld Follies of 1934 and 1936 as well as Rodgers and Hart’s Jumbo (1935). For Porter, he designed Leave it to Me! (1938), Du Barry Was a Lady (1939) and Panama Hattie (1940); in subsequent years he worked on Kurt Weill’s The Firebrand of Florence (1945) and Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town (1953). He did not, finally, work on Seven Lively Arts. The singer and comedian Beatrice Lillie (1894–1989) was the star of the show, although according to Variety, 1 November 1934, 2, she signed on without knowing much about it: ‘The English comedienne . . . [c]laims she agreed to do the musical without knowing what the show was about, “but with Cole Porter and Moss Hart doing it,” she said, “I thought I’d kinda leave it to them.”’

  ‡ A song composed in the 1920s as a birthday present for Elsa Maxwell; only the text survives. See Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 138.

  * Frank Black (1894–1968) was a bandleader; Eddie Wolpin (1908–89) was general manager of Famous Music, the Paramount Pictures publishing division.

  † These scenes did not, finally, appear in the film.

  ‡ In the event, no other role came through and Woolley appeared as himself in Night and Day.

  § Beatrice Lillie, who took the female lead in Seven Lively Arts; at the time, she was working in London.

  ¶ Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (1879–1964), Canadian-British business tycoon and prominent figure in British society.

  ** Panama Hattie had opened at the Piccadilly Theatre on 4 November 1943.

  * Seven Lively Arts.

  † Mary La Roche (1920–99) was a singer and actress. In addition to Seven Lively Arts, her Broadway credits included several Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, The Pajama Game (1954), Mame (1966) and the 1980 revival of The Music Man; she worked in several films, including Gidget (1959) and Bye Bye Birdie (1963), and on television.

  ‡ A reference to the U.S.O. canteen at Pennsylvania Station, New York. The U.S.O. (United Service Organization), a non-profit NGO founded in 1941 to provide live entertainment to U.S. military troops and their families, not only mounted performances for military personnel in the field, but also established clubs and canteens for servicemen and servicewomen in several U.S. cities.

  * The non-profit clinical and medical research Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

  † According to a marginal note, ‘Verdura’, Fulco Santostefano della Cerda, Duke of Verdura and Marquis of Murata la Cerda (1898–1978), an influential Italian jeweller; apparently Porter arranged Verdura’s introduction to Coco Chanel.

  * Although this letter is undated, both its contents and its preservation between Porter’s postcard of 18 July and his letter of 14 August in Stark’s apparently chronological collection, suggest it was written about this time.

  † That is, in the main house at Buxton Hill, not Porter’s ‘No Trespassing’.

  ‡ Porter’s chauffeur.

  * Robert Raison (birth and death dates unknown) was an actor and intimate friend of Porter’s.

  † Porter’s residence in Los Angeles, which he rented from actor-turned-decorator William Haines. Vogue published a description of part of the house in its 1 September 1945 issue: ‘One room is really a garden sous cloche – the once open terrace glassed in, and with Mexican colours, raw pink and green. Thick green string rugs are planted like grass on the flagstone floor . . . The second room is fresh as an outdoor pavilion, has fruit chintz, Chinese porcelains, a watery expanse of mirrored wall, a light-struck bar built across one window. Under the piano the rug is patched, worn thin by Porter’s feet.’ Also see McBrien, Cole Porter, 269.

  * Yamanaka & Company was an Asian art firm founded by Yamanaka Sadajiro (1865–1936) in New York in 1895. In addition to locations in Boston (from 1899) and London (from 1900), it had agents in Paris (from 1905), an office in Beijing (from 1917) and a branch in Chicago (from 1928). Its inventory was confiscated in 1944 by the U.S. Office of Alien Property Custodian, according to the Yasuhashi Harumichi family papers at the Frick Collection, New York. According to a letter from Porter’s lawyers Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison of 16 April 1965, the screen Porter purchased was left to Sam Stark. Source: Stanford University, Cole Porter Collection, shelfmark FE209, folder 1–25, Correspondence: 1965.

  * On 16 September, Porter wrote similar letters to Betty Hutton, Jimmy Durante and Sophie Tucker; Tucker responded by telegram on 19 September 1944: ‘HAPPY TO SING FOR MY FAVORITE COMPOSER STOP HOW ABOUT MOST GENTLEMEN DON’T LIKE LOVE[?] SHOULD BE OUTSTANDING HIT IF DONE WITH FIVE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTERS[.] HAVE YOUR MAN CONTACT NED DOBSON[,] WILLAM MORRIS AGENCY HERE[.] LOVE=SOPHIE’. CPT, Correspondence 1944.

  † The film director Michael Curtiz (1886–1962) is best known, perhaps, for Casablanca (1942).

  * Seven Lively Arts.

  † A reference to Porter’s dissatisfaction with Todd’s direction of Mexican Hayride.

  * Eugène Berman (1899–1972) was a Russian painter and theatre and opera designer.

  † The Motion Picture Production Code – commonly known as the Hays Office or Hays Code after William H. Hays (1879–1954), the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (1922–45) – established and enforced guidelines that governed acceptable or unacceptable content and language for motion pictures produced by major studios for public audiences in the United States. It was adopted in 1930 and replaced in 1968 by a rating system developed by the MPPDA’s successor, the Motion Picture Association of America. For a copy of the code, including changes made to it during the 1940s and 1950s, see http://productioncode.dhwritings.com/multipleframes_productioncode.php.

  * In the end, Danny Kaye did not appear in Night and Day.

  † ‘I Never Realized’ was sung in the London production of The Eclipse, which played at the Garrick Theatre from November 1919; the show was apparently inspired by a solar eclipse on 29 May 1919, during which ‘. . . the British astronomer Arthur Eddington ascertained that the light rays from distant stars had been wrenched off their paths by the gravitational field of the sun. That affirmed the prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, ascribing gravity to a warp in the geometry of space-time, that gravity could bend light beams.’ See New York Times, 31 July 2017. ‘I Never Realized’ was subsequently incorporated into the New York run of Buddies, which played at the Selwyn Theatre from 27 October 1919–12 June 1920; the song was published in 1921. Melville Gideon (1884–1933) was a composer and performer.

  ‡ F
rom Jubilee (1935).

  § From The New Yorkers (1930).

  ¶ From Let’s Face It! (1941).

  * From The New Yorkers (1930).

  † ‘Let’s Do It’ from Paris (1928); ‘You’re the Top’ from Anything Goes (1934); ‘Friendship’ from Du Barry Was a Lady (1939); and ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’ from Leave it to Me! (1938).

  ‡ Monty Woolley, who appeared in Night and Day and sang ‘Miss Otis Regrets’.

  § Seven Lively Arts.

  ¶ The costume designer Miles White (1914–2000) was not hired for Night and Day. His main Broadway costume design credits were for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! (1943) and Carousel (1945).

  * Sadie Thompson, by Vernon Duke. Merman withdrew from the show in September 1944, some two months before its opening at the Alvin Theatre on 16 November 1944. She did not appear in Night and Day.

  † It is unclear what ‘differences’ Schwartz alludes to, although in the context it apparently relates to ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’ and the unsold picture rights for Leave it to Me! (1938), which Freedley had produced.

  * The actress Greta Garbo (1905–90).

  † See above, p. 211.

  ‡ ‘I Never Realized’, finally, was not included in Night and Day. Porter’s new refrain does not survive.

  * Lyon & Healy, founded in Chicago in 1864, is a manufacturer of harps and other instruments.

  * Maurice Abravanel (1903–93) was a conductor. After several appointments in Germany, Abravanel relocated to Paris in 1933; he subsequently performed in Australia, at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1936, and from 1946 as director of the Utah State Symphony Orchestra. On Broadway he was particularly important as the conductor of Kurt Weill’s Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), Lady in the Dark (1941), One Touch of Venus (1943), The Firebrand of Florence (1945) and Street Scene (1947).

  † Marie Rose Antoinette Catherine de Robert d’Aqueria de Rochegude, Baroness d’Erlanger (1874–1959) was a society hostess and arts patron; she was married to the merchant banker Baron Emile Beaumont d’Erlanger (1866–1939).

  * For a more detailed account of Stravinsky’s Scènes de ballet, see Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky. The Second Exile: France and America, 1934–1971 (New York, 2006), 163–6; for Billy Rose’s letter to Stravinsky, see ibid, 165.

  * Here Porter means Lucille Bremer (1917–96), one of the dancing girls in Panama Hattie. She starred with Fred Astaire in the film Yolanda and the Thief (MGM, 1945) and Ziegfeld Follies (MGM, started 1944 but not released until 1946).

  † Astaire had introduced the song ‘Night and Day’ in Porter’s 1932 Gay Divorce.

  ‡ A telegram of 27 October, from Arthur Schwartz to Porter, identifies this as Frank Loesser’s ‘Sing a Tropical Song’, composed for the film Her Lucky Night (1944): ‘I thought by this time Frankie Loesser surely had sent you the transcription on [sic] his calypso song. He may have had some difficulty getting it, or the birth of his child a couple of weeks ago may have possibly put him on a long jag of celebration. When I told him you wanted the number, he was so thrilled I am sure he will get it for you.’ (CPT, Correspondence 1944).

  § Porter’s suite at the Waldorf, New York.

  ¶ CPT, Correspondence 1944 (copy). Jack Donohue (1908–84), director, performer and choreographer. Donohue was responsible for the musical staging in Seven Lively Arts.

  * Cambridge Valley in Winter, from Cole Porter’s estate, was later auctioned by Sotheby’s; see http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2011/american-paintings-n08751/lot.121.html.

  † For Grandma Moses’s letter to Porter, see Ira & Larry Goldberg Auctioneers, sale 6, lot 797. The provenance of another Moses picture, Sugaring Off, can also be traced to Porter, who subsequently gave it to Cy Feuer; see https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/anna-mary-robertson-grandma-moses-1860-1961-4816730-details.aspx.

  * Le Pavillon opened in 1941 at 5 East 55th Street; at the time it was considered the finest French restaurant in the United States. Le Pavillon closed in 1971.

  † Possibly Earl Russell Browder (1891–1973), general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States, 1932–47.

  ‡ Seven Lively Arts.

  * In ‘Dainty, Quainty Me’: ‘When anyone mentions Martha Raye, Carmen Miranda, / Lana Turner, Anita Louise, Joan Davis, Betty Hutton, / Gregory Ratoff, Red Skelton, Monty Woolley, Don Ameche, / Jack Oakie, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and other stars of the cinema, / I have to take an inema.’

  * CPT, Correspondence 1944. Louis Edward Walters (1896–1977) founded the Latin Quarter nightclub at 1580 Broadway in 1942.

  † According to Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, 140–1, ‘The Laziest Girl in Town’ was published in June 1927 and probably written for a summer show at Edmond Sayag’s Ambassadeurs Café. Other details are unknown. The song was made famous by Marlene Dietrich in Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950).

  * It is likely that these two paragraphs refer to two different works: ‘Don’t Fence Me In’, originally written for Adios, Argentina, was subsequently used in the film Hollywood Canteen, released in December 1944. The bad reviews Porter mentions refer to Seven Lively Arts.

  * Max Dreyfus (1874–1964) was a music publisher. He owned Chappell Music, which published Seven Lively Arts, among other Porter shows.

  † Possibly Porter’s memory failed him here. Robert Benchley’s review of Jubilee in the New Yorker for 19 October 1935, 32–4, does not mention ‘Begin the Beguine’. Although he suggests Porter’s lyrics are too subtle – ‘The lyrics which Mr. Cole Porter has devised, with an eye to pleasing perhaps eighteen people, are negligible in market value’ – he nevertheless said of the show ‘. . . Messrs. Moss Hart, Cole Porter, Hassard Short, Max Gordon, and (everybody’s sweetheart) Sam Harris have a show in “Jubilee!” which is heart-warming and beautiful, and I hope that it runs forever, because it is so nice.’

  * Herman Lissauer (1892–1957) was a researcher at MGM.

  * See Gary Rosen, Unfair to Genius: The Strange and Litigious Career of Ira B. Arnstein (Oxford, 2012).

  * For the text of Judge Frank’s ruling, see https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/154/464/1478575/.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A PORTER BIOPIC AND TWO FLOPS, 1945–1947

  At the start of 1945, Porter’s surviving correspondence mostly concerned the song ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ – originally written in 1934 for the unproduced film musical Adios, Argentina but subsequently used by Warner Bros. in their 1944 Hollywood Canteen – and progress on the film Night and Day:

  4 January 1945: Cole Porter to Jack Warner1

  Dear Jack:

  Your very nice letter of December 30th arrived. After bothering you about the billing on DON’T FENCE ME IN, all billing about this song has entirely disappeared, so I evidently made my objections too late. Perhaps, however, this can be taken care of in the rest of the country, or abroad when the picture is shown. I know nothing about these matters and I shant [sic] bother you further.

  Everything sounds grand about NIGHT AND DAY and my last little prayer each night is that you can wangle a techni-color equipment for it.

  It made me extremely happy to read that you are looking around for an assignment for me at Warner Brothers. I would so much rather work there than anywhere else, Jack. Certainly your studio has treated me beautifully in the past and I feel sort of at home there, what with you at the head of it all.

  My love to you and that lovely Annie, and may your 1945 be something out of this world.

  Best,

  [unsigned]

  4 January 1945: Cole Porter to Jack Warner2

  Dear Jack:

  In my letter written this morning, I forgot to tell you that Mr. Herman Starr’s* secretary, Miss Whittaker, called my secretary, Miss Margaret Moore, to say that I had talked with her about the publicity on the song

  DON’T FENCE ME IN

  and that Mr. Starr said this is entirely up to the Warner Bros. Publicity Department and suggested th
at I talk with you regarding it.

  Later I talked to Herman Starr himself and he told me he had called up your Publicity Department, who told him the publicity had all been set and it was too late to change it.

  I realize that this was entirely true, but do hope that you can do something about the publicity in other citiws [sic] and in other countries, when the picture is shown.

  My best,

  [unsigned]

  Porter had good reason to be interested in the billing, and consequently the exploitation, of ‘Don’t Fence Me In’. Although the specific upshot of this episode is not known, Porter evidently benefited from it over the next several weeks: on 31 January, Variety reported that ‘Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In” slid over the 1,000,000 mark in sheet [music] sales within the past couple of days, the first song to do that since “White Christmas”† and the second since 1929. With the million-mark passed, the song so far has given no indication of slackening and total sale of around 1,250,000 is forecast . . . An unusual type of tune for Porter, “Fence” piled up its sales in a comparatively short time. It was started about three months ago.’3

  5 January 1945: Cole Porter to Arthur Schwartz4

  Dear Arthur:

  Thank you so much for the material regarding the bad notices.‡ I appreciate deeply all the work you have done for me.

  Charles Hoffman* has arrived with the new script [for Night and Day] and is sending it to me. Unluckily at the present moment I am not able to see any one, but perhaps before he leaves I shall be able to see him.

  All my best. I’m so happy that you liked the Ma Moses picture.†

  Sincerely,

  [unsigned]

  As is the case with all celebrities, rumours abounded about both Porter’s health and his work. Although she apparently did not write about Porter in early 1945, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper‡ – or at least Porter heard it was her – reported several misleading facts that Porter felt compelled to correct:

  16 January 1945: Cole Porter to Hedda Hopper5