The Letters of Cole Porter
Page 40
If you can find time, I beg you, see him, if only for a moment. He is so alone + lonely. And it is most important for him to be with a lady instead of a tramp. Do this for me.
The Linda news is far from good. Today, it was very humid here + to watch her struggle to breathe was terrifying.
[Howard] Sturges comes back next Tuesday to be here in my cottage. This will build her up more than any amount of oxygen.
I miss you, dear Jeannie. I always miss you + love you.
Your
Cole
A few days later, Porter’s regular correspondence with Stark reiterates the situation with Linda’s health – he was evidently trying to come to terms with her mortality – and also mentions ‘Farewell, Amanda’, along with a project he had turned down (a musical version of the 1939 movie The Women):*
9 September 1949: Cole Porter to Sam Stark43
Dear Sam:
There has been absolutely no letter from the manager of the Hotel La Quinta.† Will you please call him up and ask him what is the matter?
I enclose a professional copy of Farewell Amanda. It appears that it goes very well in the picture, Adam’s Rib, and that the picture itself is a knockout. I believe it will be released in December.
[Howard] Sturges is back with us, consequently Linda is being constantly amused during the luncheon hour what with all his delightful stories about so many people. This is what she hungers for and I, alas, forget everybody’s name. She is not improving and we have to face that.
All my best to you all.
[signed:] Cole
P.S.: I also enclose The Women. Max Gordon wants to make a musical of it and asked me to do the score. I have refused. Please read it and see if you don’t agree with me.
C.P.
Porter’s next letter to Jean Howard brings to life the everyday atmosphere of the Porter household and reinforces the importance of Howard in the Porters’ social circle:
13 September 1949: Cole Porter to Jean Howard44
Dear Jeannie:
Your wonderful letter arrived and amused me so much that I gave it first to Essie‡ to read and later to Linda. When I saw them at lunch time instead of being as enthusiastic as I was, they were furious and said with one voice, “but she never writes us letters like that!”
Robert [Bray] writes me that he is having lunch with you tomorrow and I am so glad. I can’t tell you how much he wanted to be with nice people.
Ess came up, stayed the night, and for lunch the next day, and then went back to see poor Boy who, as you probably know, had an awful automobile accident.
Between you and me, Linda is not getting at all better.
I miss you a lot, dear Jeannie. Let me know when you return to town. I stay here with Linda until the end of October.
Your devoted,
[signed:] Cole
Four days later, Porter’s itemized response to a letter from Stark contains various pieces of news, as well as interesting comments on F. Scott Fitzgerald, yet the comment on his wife (‘But Linda is dying’) reveals the emotional burden Porter was dealing with at the time. Further updates later in September mention her continuously, alongside humorous comments on everything from metal staples to the latest popular book:
17 September 1949: Cole Porter to Sam Stark45
Sat. night.
Sammie – I sent a dictated letter to you this afternoon. Then, this evening, your letter, dated Sept 14th arrived. I enclose this letter + answer the following numbered paragphs: [sic]
No. 1. I thank you again for tracking down the manager of the hotel at La Quinta.
No. 2. I couldn’t write to Tito* for I feel, as you do, that he is dead.
3) I told Linda that you had young William Washbourne + she was delighted.
4) Write me this. I love long letters.
5) It makes me sad that Allen [Walker] also dislikes Bobby Raison. I know this is Bobby’s fault.
6) My Robert* has practically moved back to 416, which makes me very happy. You can write him or phone him there + receive an answer shortly. He is entirely rid of that tramp.
7) Linda has improved lately, but not in her essential illness. I hate to think of you feeling miserable, all the time, at Laguna. Why don’t you make sense + move back to a desert climate?
8) Thanks for the story on Scott Fitz G.† I knew him first when he was a most attractive cock-teaser. Later I knew him with Zelda. They were both exhibitionist drunkards + when I saw them anywhere in Paris, I always made a quick exit for I knew that if I stayed, this would implicate me in a possible police raid. They were all that is tawdry. And the dégringolade of Scott was horrible to watch as he had so much talent.
[Howard] Sturges is here in the cottage with me. The trees have begun to turn. The skies are spectacular. The cook is pure French with an ass so big that I can’t understand how she keeps her balance. I’m working well, I believe. But Linda is dying.
All my love. Get hold of Robert [Bray]. He needs nice people like you + Allen [Walker]. He is so alone.
Your devoted – Cole.
1. Cole Porter, Yale yearbook photograph (1913). Porter enrolled at Yale in the autumn of 1909 and while there performed in numerous theatrical and singing groups, as well as composing songs for the Yale football team, the most famous of which is ‘Bingo Eli Yale’.
2. Westleigh Farms, Cole Porter’s childhood home in Indiana (2011). The house as it now survives was built c.1913; it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.
3. Cole Porter’s World War I draft registration card (5 June 1917). In July he sailed to Europe on the paquebot ‘Espagne’, at first serving in the Duryea Relief Organization. He was discharged on 17 April 1919, at which time he was stationed with the 26th Light Infantry Battalion at Vincennes, France.
4. Linda Porter (1919). Porter first met the divorcee Linda Lee Thomas at a wedding in Paris in January 1918, while still on military duty; they married on 19 December 1919.
5. From left to right: Cole Porter, Linda Porter, Bernard Berenson and Howard Sturges in Venice (c.1923). During the 1920s, the Porters regularly spent their summers in Venice, renting a succession of palazzi on the Grand Canal. Howard Sturges was a life-long friend of Porter’s from Yale; the art historian Bernard Berenson was a life-long friend of Linda Porter.
6. From left to right: Gerald Murphy, Ginny Carpenter, Cole Porter and Sara Murphy in Venice (1923). It was about the time this photograph was taken that Porter and the artist Gerald Murphy created the ballet Within the Quota. The Murphys were part of the Porters’ social set not only in Venice but also in Paris.
7. From left to right: Serge Diaghilev, Boris Kochno, Bronislava Nijinska, Ernest Ansermet and Igor Stravinsky in Monte Carlo (1923). Porter probably met Diaghilev, already famous for his association with the composer Igor Stravinsky – in particular their production of the ballet The Firebird – as early as 1919.
8. Letter from Cole Porter to Boris Kochno (September 1925). Porter fell in love with Kochno in the autumn of 1925, at which time they had an affair while the Porters were travelling in Italy. While Porter was sincere in his affection, Kochno appears to have been opportunistic and to have carried on multiple affairs at the time.
9. Scene from the original stage production of Fifty Million Frenchmen, first given at the Lyric Theatre, New York on 27 November 1929. With a book by Herbert Fields, a frequent Porter collaborator, the show ran for a respectable 254 performances considering that it opened barely a month after the stock market crash that year.
10. Irene Bordoni, star of Porter’s show Paris (1928). One of the great stars of early twentieth-century musical theatre, Bordoni took the role of Vivienne Rolland in Porter’s show, introducing the song ‘Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love’. A sign of Porter’s affection for her, she is mentioned in the lyrics to ‘You’re the Top’ from Anything Goes (1934).
11. Sheet music cover for the song ‘Love for Sale’ from The New Yorkers (1930). At the time of its premiere, the New York H
erald Tribune theatre critic wrote that ‘When and if we ever get a censorship, I will give odds that it will frown upon such an honest thing’ – which in fact turned out to be the case.
12. Production designer Jo Mielziner showing a set for Jubilee (1935). Mielziner was considered the premiere set designer on Broadway from the 1930s to the 1950s; his credits include the Gershwin musical Of Thee I Sing (1931) and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel and South Pacific (1945 and 1949).
13. Cole Porter composing as he reclines on a couch in the Ritz Hotel during out-of-town tryouts for Du Barry Was a Lady (1939). Porter insisted on luxurious accommodations stocked with his favourite foods and medicines, more or less replicating his apartment at the Waldorf Towers in New York.
14. Cole and Linda Porter (c.1938). When they met in 1918, Porter wrote to his friend Monty Woolley, ‘I lunch and dine with Linda Thomas every day, and between times, call her up on the telephone. She happens to be the most perfect woman in the world and I’m falling so in love with her that I’m attractively triste.’
15. Ethel Merman in the New York production of Cole Porter’s Panama Hattie (1940). Possibly the greatest female star on Broadway from the 1930s to the 1950s, Merman had first appeared for Porter in Anything Goes (1934); she subsequently took leading roles in Red, Hot and Blue! (1936) and Du Barry Was a Lady (1939) before appearing in Panama Hattie.
16. Sheet music cover for the song ‘Let’s Be Buddies’ from Panama Hattie (1940), sung by Ethel Merman and Joan Carroll. The illustration evokes the title character’s trip to Panama after reluctantly winning an essay contest with a piece entitled ‘Why I Hate Panama’.
17. Draft of ‘I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple’ from Kiss Me, Kate (1948). It was originally intended that the character of Kate would speak much of Shakespeare’s original text at the end of the show but Porter decided instead to adapt it as a song.
18. Monty Woolley, publicity photo (1949). Woolley was an intimate friend and collaborator of Porter’s from their time together at Yale. He played himself in the 1946 Cole Porter biopic Night and Day.
19. Nelson Barclift rehearsing for Irving Berlin’s This is The Army at Camp Upton (1943). Barclift, who became Porter’s lover in the 1940s, appeared in Irving Berlin’s This is the Army (1942) and later choreographed the Orson Welles–Cole Porter flop Around the World (1946).
20. Charlotte Greenwood in Cole Porter’s Out of This World (1950). The actress Charlotte Greenwood got her start in vaudeville in the 1910s. Her part as Juno in Out of This World was one of her most successful roles. According to Grant Hayter-Menzies (Charlotte Greenwood [London, 2007]), she was uncomfortable in the role, feeling it was too risqué.
21. Cole Porter and Ed Sullivan discussing a two-part profile of Porter (aired on 24 February and 2 March 1952) on Sullivan’s popular television show, Toast of the Town. Porter seems to have had little enthusiasm for the shows; in a letter of 27 January 1952 he described the idea as ‘dull news’.
22 and 23. Cole Porter in advertisements for Bromo-Seltzer (c.1950) and Rheingold Beer (Daily News, New York, 18 May 1953). From the late 1910s on, and increasingly in the 1940s and 1950s, Porter was asked to appear in advertisements for a variety of products, including beer, cigarettes and Bromo-Seltzer, an antacid. He sometimes donated his earnings from advertisements to charity.
24. From left to right: Ann Miller, Cole Porter, producer Jack Cummings and Kathryn Grayson on the set of Kiss Me Kate (1953). Kathryn Grayson took the role of Lilli Vanessi/Kate and Ann Miller the role of Lois Lane/Bianca.
25. Cole Porter and Jean Howard (1954). A close friend of the Porters for many years, Jean Howard toured Europe with Cole Porter in 1955 and 1956 and later published a valuable book describing their travels (New York, 1991).
26. Scene from Silk Stockings (1955). Based on the Billy Wilder–Ernst Lubitsch screenplay Ninotchka and Porter’s last stage musical, it premiered at the Imperial Theatre, New York, on 24 February 1955 and ran for 478 performances. It was produced by Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin, who two years earlier had produced Porter’s Can-Can.
27. Cole Porter, music director Andre Previn and producer Jack Cummings working on the film Kiss Me Kate (1953, dropping the comma). Exceptionally, the film was shot in stereoscopic 3-D, which Porter disapproved of, writing to his lawyer John Wharton, ‘To my regret, it is being done in wide screen, 3-D,’ although, as he noted, ‘they are also making a flat version which can be seen in theatres’.
28. Cole Porter, autograph lyric sheet for the finale from Can-Can (1953). Numerous drafts by Porter survive for his lyrics. Frequently he conceived a series of internal and end rhymes, then revised them with additional text to fit the music. In this example, the lines ‘If the waltz king, Johann Strauss / If his bats in Fledermaus’ became ‘If the waltz king Johann Strauss can, / It is so simple to do, / If his gals in Fledermaus can, / ’Twill be so easy for you’.
29. Sheet music cover for the song ‘True Love’ from the film High Society (1956). Like most sheet music from film musicals, the cover depicts not only the singers of any particular song – Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly for ‘True Love’ – but also other major stars of the film, in this case Frank Sinatra.
30. Louis Armstrong and Grace Kelly on the set of High Society (1956), Porter’s second to last film musical (Les Girls, 1957 was his last). Porter was enthusiastic about Grace Kelly’s rendition of ‘True Love’, her only song in the show (in fact a duet with Bing Crosby), writing to the composer Johnny Green, ‘I can’t tell you how surprised I am at the singing of Miss Grace Kelly.’
31. The last photograph of Cole Porter, taken at his home in the Waldorf Towers, New York (1964).
18 September 1949: Cole Porter to Sam Stark46
Dear Sam:
Thank you very much for your wire concerning La Quinta reservations. I have not yet heard from Mr. Proves but I await his letter with interest.
Why haven’t I heard from you for so long? Have you been ill?
Linda is slightly better. She has gained four pounds since she left the hospital and she has more red corpuscles, but she is far from well.
[Howard] Sturges has given up going abroad for which I thank God.
Lots of love from us all.
Your devoted,
[signed:] Cole
28 September 1949: Cole Porter to Sam Stark47
Dear Sam:
Thanks a lot for your delightful letter of September 23. In the future, however, don’t put those nasty clips in the corner of the paper. It took me years to persuade Robert [Bray] to give them up and now suddenly to be confronted with them once more is discouraging.
As I told you on the telephone Linda is all set for La Quinta, but we are awfully grateful to you for looking into the other places.
Your account of Tito [Reynaldo]’s visit made me roll on the floor.
As for your new drug, if this can be applied to Linda also it might be the secret of her improving a great deal. It is so horrible to think that there are so many cures just around the corner.
The Aspirin Age* is not an article in a magazine – it is one of the Best Sellers. It is so popular throughout the East that book shops have great difficulty in keeping it in stock. In case it might help you to trace down this obscure literary effort, it is edited by Isabel Leighton and published by a struggling new firm called Simon and Schuster.
Lots of love from Peppy and Blethe to Judy.†
[signed:] Cole
THIS IS WHAT I MEAN
[Porter draws a line from this up to the staple in the top left-hand corner, with arrows pointing to the staple and to the mention of ‘nasty clips’ in paragraph 1.]
5 October 1949: Cole Porter to Sam Stark48
Dear Sam:
Thank you a lot for the clipping about Robert.‡ He wrote me last week that she is filing suit for a divorce.
The story about the Vedanta Monastery* is so fantastic that it kept me awak [sic] last night. How dreadful of all these talented young people to be taken in by
that rot.
Lots of love from us both and from [Howard] Sturges.
Devotedly,
[signed:] Cole
5 October 1949: Cole Porter to Sam Stark49
Dear Sam: –
I started to get “The Little Sister”† for Linda but Sturge had already read it and was quite sure she wouldn’t like it. She doesn’t like books with four-letter words in them. I can’t understand why she won’t grow up.
Love,
[signed:] Cole
P.S. Thank you very much for sending me the news about Jefty’s‡ death. I shall write to Bill O’Connor immediately.
Linda was also the subject of the following exchange between Porter and his favourite performer, Ethel Merman:
18 October 1949: Cole Porter to Ethel Merman50
Dear Ethel,
My Linda has been seriously ill for eight months. But if anything can make her well again, it is your broadcast every Sunday night at 9:30. I always listen too. You are wonderful and I sit beside her and watch her revel in your excellence. You probably know after a few years on stage that no one can equal you. This is a love letter from Linda and me to you.
My best to you all.
From your devoted
Cole
Merman wrote to Linda in mid-October ‘on the pretense of letting her know that I was on the air’. Porter thanked her:
22 October 1949: Cole Porter to Ethel Merman
Dearest Ethel:
Linda is being taken down by ambulance to New York on Monday, October 24th, and I can’t tell you how she looks forward to listening to you sing again. You are so sweet to have notified her.