PORTERIANA: KOCHNO, TAUCH, BARCLIFT, WILSON, and KELLY.

Speranza

A Porter biography may not be quite as witty as a Porter song (who could equal the incomparable Cole?), but a thorough biography honors the Broadway musical's worldliest, most intelligent composer by taking him seriously.

 

Voluminous research buttresses William McBrien's portrait of a charmed life scarred by tragedy.

 

Born in 1891, in Peru, Indiana, Porter left his wealthy family to thoroughly enjoy himself at Yale in Connecticut, New England, where his sassy songs gave the Mid-Western outsider social clout.

 

Although exclusively homosexual, Porter was nonetheless devoted to Linda Lee, the wealthy widow he married in 1919, and McBrien's narrative of their 1920s travels through Europe captures the glamorous sheen of their life together.

 

Porter had some early success with shows like Fifty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong, but his sustained run of hits began in 1932 with "Gay Divorce" (featuring "Night and Day") continuing through the '50s and Kiss Me Kate.

 

The author liberally quotes from Porter's deliciously naughty lyrics, reminding us how corny most show tunes seem when compared to "Love for Sale" or "Anything Goes."

 

McBrien's painful account of the ghastly aftermath of a 1937 riding accident, which left Porter in pain that ended only with his death in 1964, reveals a quiet, uncomplaining stoic whose substance matched his dazzling style.

The wit, sophistication and often-surprising depth of feeling in the music and lyrics of Cole Porter are at last fully realized in this latest of the songwriter's many biographies.

 

Making illuminating use of previously unpublished material at Yale and at the Cole Porter Trust, McBrien weaves a complex and groundbreaking portrait of Porter, interspersed with lyrics and 72 illustrations, recounting his affluent upbringing in Peru, Ind., in the Mid-West, and his emergence in the 1930s as the musical theater's reigning sophisticate, along with Noel Coward (cfr. "Noel Porter").

 

A delicious chapter on the making of Kiss Me Kate in 1948 demonstrates what sharp talons were needed to create a hit.

 

But McBrien's most startling scholarship is on the subject of Porter's homosexuality.

 

Although Porter's marriage remained sexless, he and his wife Linda were the most intimate of soulmates, says McBrien.

 

He traces the early years of their marriage in the expatriate Europe of the 1920s during which time Linda would meet and approve Porter's male lovers through their older years in post-war Broadway and Hollywood, when Linda's respiratory illnesses and Porter's paralyzed legs racked their bodies but not their spirits.

 

Never-before-seen letters shine light into Porter's ongoing relationships with

 

* Ballets Russes star Boris Kochno

 

* architect Ed Tauch,

 

* choreographer Nelson Barclift

 

* director John Wilson, and

 

* longtime friend Ray Kelly -- whose children still receive half of the childless Porter's copyrights.

 

 

In previous biographies by George Eells and Charles Schwartz, these five men --KOCHNO, TAUCH, BARCLIFT, WILSON and KELLY -- are passing references.

 

 

here, they are three-dimensional figures, as McBrien locates the psychological roots of Porter's love songs in his UNREQUITED love for the males  he could have -- but not forever.

 

In the tradition of Anthony Heilbut's "Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature" and Patrick McGilligan's "A Double Life: George Cukor", this astute biography will help to create a standard-setting portrait of Porter as a homosexual artist in a heterosexual world.

McBrien (English, Hofstra Univ.), whose previous work has focused on the poet Stevie Smith, provides us with the first full-length biography of Cole Porter in at least a decade.

 

Porter is a major figure in American popular music, the composer of musicals running on Broadway from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s like Anything Goes and Kiss Me Kate and such perennial popular songs as "You're the Top" and "Begin the Beguine."

 

Porter was born into a well-to-do Peru, Indiana family in the Mid-West, and later married into even more money: Linda Lee.

 

His globe-trotting experiences in high society show up in the sophistication of his lyrics.

 

He was also gay, and McBrien points out how Porter's sexuality emerges in his songs as well.

 

McBrien deals mostly with Porter's life and lyrics.

There is little discussion of the music.

 

Copiously illustrated and well researched it draws on notebooks and letters that were previously unavailable.

 

This book should supplant Charles Schwartz's excellent Cole Porter (LJ 6/15/77) as the definitive Porter biography.

The definitive biography of the bon vivant who was the supreme master of sophisticated popular song.

 A fine biography.

 

It brings to our understanding .the ways that the contradictions and compulsions of Porter's life explain the emotional force and timelessness of the music.

 

Thorough fascinating.

Loaded with juicy gossip.

It succeeds in evoking Porter's white-tie-and-orchids set and his active IF CLOSETED gay life in Europe, Manhattan and Hollywood.

 

Read this book.

You will spend time with, and get to know, one of the great creative figures of the twentieth century.

A complex and groundbreaking portrait making use of previously unpublished material.

Never-before-seen letters shine light into Porter's ongoing relationships with notably five men: KOCHNO, TAUCH, BARCLIFT, WILSON, and KELLY.

When his wife, Linda, was asked why she seldom used the Rolls-Royce Porter gave her, she answered, 'It bruises my sables.'"

A fine biography.

 

Fascinating, engaging.

 

In his life and in his music, Cole Porter was "the top" — the pinnacle of wit, sophistication, and success.

His songs—"I Get a Kick Out of You," "Anything Goes," and hundreds more — were instant pop hits, and their musical and emotional depths have made them lasting standards.

William McBrien has captured the creator of these songs, whose life was not merely one of wealth and privilege.

A prodigal young man, Porter found his emotional anchor in a long, loving, if sexless marriage, a relationship he repeatedly risked with a string of affairs with five men: KOCHNO, TAUCH, BARCLIFT, WILSON, and KELLY.

His last eighteen years were marked by physical agony but also unstinting artistic achievement, including the great Hollywood musicals High Society, Silk Stockings, and Kiss Me Kate (recently and very successfully revived on Broadway).

Here, at last is a life that informs the great music and lyrics through illuminating glimpses of the hidden, complicated, private man.

 

William McBrien lives in Forest Hills, New York.

I was really looking forward to reading this book because the author had spent so many years researching it.

 

Don't waste your time.

 

 This book is nothing more than name dropping (who Porter was with) etc.

 

Linda, his wife was a mere footnote in this book.

 

What a waste.

 

 

A lot of detail, but doesn't show the flair and interesting life of Cole Porter.

Too much time on people's impressions.

The author needed cut through the detail and paint a picture.

 

This biography has a lot of information about Cole Porter and contains many photos of Cole and people of his era.

 

I found the author's style somewhat difficult to follow, but it's a 'must have' for any Porter fan.

 

 

 

This book is very comprehensive and a bit boring for anyone under the age of 50 mostly because the people written about are very seldom spoken about anymore. 

If you love the theater and Cole Porter‘s music you‘ll  have an interesting read.

 

 

 

I had this book in my hands before I could think about it. Great Service!!!

 

 

marvelous insider info about the subject,his life, friends, and what was happening in the world that shaped his life and music. a great read.

 

 

 

Well written and interesting book on an enigmatic figure.

 

 

I suppose the challenge of reading a biography is slogging through the parts of the person's life in which you have little interest.

As a musical theatre performer, I was most interested in the chapters devoted to the genesis of Porter's shows - to me, these were the most interesting, and seemingly well researched.

The rest of it, particularly his early life, did not quite spark my interest.

I did find the ending chapters - dealing with Cole's descent into melancholy and illness - to be touching.

I did gain some insight into the glamorous world of Mr. Porter's time - quite the polar opposite to the Great Depression and WWII.

In the sense that I admire books that give me a glimpse into a world different from my own, I liked it.

 

 

Night and Day this is the best biography of the great Cole Porter (1891-1964). Porter was the scion of a wealthy family from Peru, Indiana. As a lad he excelled in music making and graduated with a degree from Yale University.

 

After a year of Law School at Harvard the travel loving Porter journeyed to Paris.

 

He wed Linda Lee Thomas a wealthy woman several years his senior.

 

Porter was gay and the marriage to Linda was sexless.

 

The couple did love one another and Porter was never the same following Linda's death in 1954.

 

Porter wrote one fabulous musical after another for over 40 years.

 

He lived in luxury with staff to attend his every need.

 

He had a wide circle of friends from among the cultural and literary elite but was an aloof, fastidious, secretive man.

 

Porter was a hard man to know and this biography is about as close as we will ever get to the inner core of the composer.

Porter was a genius in the witty line, the fetching tune and had the ability to make Broadway take notice during his fabulous career.

His life was placid but painful following his fall from a horse and the amputation of a leg.

 

He was alcoholic and probably took drugs.

McBrien is an English professor who has written a well cratede book rich in anecdote.

 

The book is well illustrated with photos from the Porter legacy.

 

Several of Cole's famed lyrics are recorded to the delight of the reader.

 

With the new movie on Cole Porter this is a good supplement to the film.

 

Well recommended.

 

 

Cole Porter (1891-1964) determinedly created the image of an extremely wealthy man who traveled the world, played with the rich and famous, and now and then wrote a Broadway show or two for the pure pleasure of it.

But although he was in some respects A SHALLOW MAN who lived largely for personal pleasure, he was also a very driven and complex one, a man whose fame on the stage did not come easily and who faced a series of horrific hurdles in his private life.

Porter risked his grandfather's ire--and the family fortune he controlled--by settling on a career in music, and while he earned early fame at Yale through his compositions, his first Broadway venture, See America First, was a humiliating fiasco.

Homosexual in an era when it was flatly unacceptable, he would marry to retain respectability and forge a remarkable emotional (if completely platonic) relationship with wife Linda Lee Thomas--even while conducting a series of same-sex affairs with five men: KOCHNO, TAUCH, BARCLIFT, WILSON and KELLY -- that would prove frustratingly superficial.

Near the height of his career, a horseback riding accident would leave him crippled and in physical agony for the rest of his life, and the pressures of pain and keeping up appearances would plunge him into fits of depression that seemed to border on the psychotic.

Biographer William McBrien is meticulous in his research and his recreation of Porter's very high society, and in other hands such a weight of knowledge might plunge a book into absolute impenetrability--but although McBrien sometimes errs by flooding the reader with inconsequential detail, by and large he keeps a fine balance on his very difficult subject, tracing the arc of Porter's life from Indiana to Yale to New York to Europe to Hollywood, tracing the arc of his career from the humiliating fiasco of Porter's first Broadway show "See America First" to the brilliance of such successes as "Anything Goes" and "Kiss Me Kate."

In the process McBrien not only seems to capture Porter, but an entire era as well--a world of sharp sophistication when terms like "star" and "toast of two continents" and "gentlemen" still had meaning, when the "have-nots" danced to the tempo of the "haves" and the wealthy went "slumming" for a thrill.

 

Filled with numerous photographs and large chunks of Porter's memorable lyrics, this is one biography that truly does its subject justice.

WILLIAM McBRIEN has done it;he has given all the PORTER fans of this world the biography they were waiting for for thirty-four years.

 

What this book gives us is an accurate account of the composer's life including his well known homosexuality, even if he married for respectability.

 

PORTER's early years were quite different when compare with the other composers of his generation.

 

He had a millionnaire grandfather and a rather aloof father with whom he didn't really communicate.

 

He led a rather easy going life until he finally decided at the age of 37 to let his talent bloom on BROADWAY.

 

There is considerable irony to the fact that from his riding accident in 1937, that man who had everything suffered a great deal until his death in 1964.

 

You end up knowing what was this thing called love.

 

 

 

I was more curious about Cole Porter's life because I, too, am in love with the lyrics and music he created.

 

Songs like ANYTHING GOES, YOU'RE THE TOP, I LOVE PARIS to name a few are classics to no end.

 

I like a book that takes me back in time, but I'd prefer a good story.

 

I was a bit disappointed how the book became too informational with naming of who's who and who did what vs. a classic story.

 

There are definitely stories behind the stories that would be much more interesting...so, I suppose we have to use our imagination.

 

This book is a great resource to anyone studying about Cole Porter.

 

I had no idea about his horse accident which really put a damper on his lifestyle.

 

He was quite the world traveler in the 20s & 30s which is quite an accomplishment in those days.

 

He definitely had a way with words...but if you read this...complement it with a CD of the COLE PORTER Songbook.

 

It took me a while to get through this because it IS a book that you can put down & keep on your coffee table for a long time (before you pick it up again).

I have been listening to the audiotape and find it surprising that the book is so highly rated by other reviewers.

 

The tape starts out with a reading of what I assume is the introduction to the book--droning on and on and on and on about the different people who assisted with the research.

 

My mother-in-law apparently couldn't get past the intro--she returned the tape to me saying that she had expected something different but that she guessed he had to thank all those people.

 

I did eventually find the fast forward button which is truly a wonderful invention.

I am wondering why they decided to issue an unabridged tape.

 

The book includes long descriptions of dead and forgotten people, many of whom had only obscure connections with Porter.

 

It also includes a plethora of incomprehensible French phrases which I found somewhat obnoxious and believe could easily have been replaced with English equivalents.

 

I imagine the author was trying to set a tone consistent with Porter's lifestyle but I think it was a bad idea.

 

FYI I am not a total ignoramus when it comes to foreign languages--I am fluent in both German and Spanish, and took Greek in high school.

 

Thus far the only information I have found that seems worthy of note is the fact that the lifestyle depicted in the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies might have been lifted directly out of Cole Porter's life.

 

I always thought it was exaggerated.

 

But for the wonderful words and music that he wrote, I would have absolutely no interest in the man.

 

I am now in the middle of the 4th tape and think it is likely I will return the tapes to the library without finishing the book, without the slightest regret.

 

If I happen to see the book on the library shelf, I might look at it to see whether it is better in print than on tape.

 

After finally realizing that many of my favourite songs through the years were written by one man, namely Cole Porter, I searched for a biography and found this one.

 

I had recently finished a biography of Gershwin and thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

Comparing the two men was inevitable.

 

They both composed a tremendous amount of music and were very disciplined when it came to their craft.

 

There the similarity ended.

 

Gershwin was always pushing his limits and developing as a composer.

 

Cole Porter pretty much settled for being a tune-smith- a very clever and witty one, though.

 

Gershwin was always working and learning.

Porter was always partying - booze, drugs, and sex.

 

It is amazing that he was able to stand up, nevermind sit down for several hours at the piano everyday to compose, no matter what his activities of the night before.

 

While Gerhswin's life reveals a composer striving for ever increasing greatness, Porter's life is pretty superficial and shallow - consisting of one party after another with the "beautiful people".

 

It was a bit of a shock to see that his life was as shallow and mindless as it was and wouldn't add up to much of anything if it were not for his incredible talent.

 

Wealthy beyond most of our dreams, he seems to have been oblivious and/or indifferent to the Depression and the great World War - my guess is that he probably saw them as little more than pesty distractions from his round of parties.

 

With Gershwin, you admire his talent, his discipline, his striving, his willingness to take musical risks after he had become wealthy.

 

With Cole Porter - well, there is always his talent.

What a creative genius Porter was!

 

How one guy could turn out such amazing music is truly amazing.

 

Very interesting biography.

 

Now I want to see the film, night and day, despite the lousy reviews--just to hear the music!

 

 

 We learn when he wrote "Anything Goes," he meant it.

I very much agree with the reviewer from Sicily, but there is much more to this book.

 

There is much F.Scott Fitzgerald, an era long about a time and place many of us have not experienced.

 

It is society, alcohol, party, good friends, drugs, and sex---this time homosexual.

 

It is all fun and games, good times, and famous people.

 

Sometimes, however, it is best not to know the personal life as it may spoil the song, the movie, the performance.

 

But if you rise above this, as I did, here is a very skillfully written book with much information, perhaps too much information, but fascinating nevertheless.

 

I am sorry I never got to see him sing and play in person as he was a very talented man and helpful to many of his friends.

 

 

 

 A Top biography.

I'd managed to drag myself through about a quarter of "Last Train to Memphis" when Peter Guralnick droped yet another superfluous detail about a Memphis DJ (Pete, you already told us twice that Bob Neal did the noon "hillbilly" show) and I just couldn't take it no more.

 

Away went the King and out came the incomparable Cole.

Where Guralnick's bio is dense and chewy, William McBrien's treatment on the serious work of being Cole Porter is a melt-in-your-mouth delight.

 

And not without sustenance. McBrien's business is to give analysis of Porter's lyrics through insights into the man's background, actions and relationships.

 

And then comes a cornucopia of society gossip and backstage anecdotes.

 

The juicy stories are not overdone, in fact I would have liked a few more as well as more pictures.

 

A nonchalant reference to a love letter to another man is McBrien's introduction of Cole Porter's homosexuality.

 

I thought I missed an earlier more formal reference.

 

From there it is treated no more nor less seriously than his marriage, wealth or manners--a major factor in his life that molded his work.

 

Porter's crippling riding accident is handled in the same fashion-a clear report uncluttered by romance or irony.

 

"Cole Porter" shows that it is possible to write a critical biography that weighs less than a toddler and is a real pleasure to read.

 

 

WELL RESEARCHED BUT AWKWARD.

This is one of the most comprehensive biographies of Cole Porter out.

There are few stones that are not looked under but the detail becomes cumbersome and the prose style is awkward and often confusing.

The cast of characters reads like a list of the "rich and famous" of the 20th century but the story gets lost in "who knows who", "who is related to who" and "who is doing what to whom".

Still, the book is invaluable for its information and well worth the read.