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Product Description
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 men. 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.
From the Back Cover
COLE pORTER composed some of this century’s most evocative music, including 'Night and Day', 'Easy to Love' and 'I've Got You Under My Skin'. His musical scores, notably 'Kiss Me Kate', 'High Society', 'Silk Stockings' and 'Can-Can', shaped three decades of movie-making. Porter worked with everyone who was anyone: Fred Astaire, Ethel Merman, Mary Martin and many others.
Interweaving his life and music, William McBrien contrasts Porter's raffish, elegant scores with the pain and passion of a life which mixed devotion to his wife with numerous homosexual love affairs. This definitive biography contains frank interviews with friends and colleagues who until now have never spoken about Cole Porter. Now, at last, we can fully understand the man, the music and its magic – as well as the darker side of the star whose live and work epitomizes the romance of café society.
“McBrien has done a superb job, uncovering the real man behind the carapace of style”
Financial Times
“A thorough and balanced account of an exceptional life, diligently written.”
Daily Mail
“This new biography will tell you all you need to know about Old King Cole. And then some.”
Literary Review
“Fascinating . . . not least for its portrait of a vastly rich lifestyle”
Daily Telegraph
In 1905, when Cole Porter, a boy of fourteen, boarded the train for Worcester Academy in Massachusetts, he must have felt both triumphant and troubled. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews
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 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 even 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.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
This is an affordable and brilliantly written book about the life of one the 20th century's greatest tunesmiths and lyricists. One joy of this book is the way in which the lyrics and narrative complement and intertwine with each other to advance the story of his life.
Incidentally, the film of his life ('De-lovely') does exactly the same thing. Both this book and the film manage to show just how autobiographical many of Porter's songs were, or how they reflected his own unusual attitudes to life and society.
If you have any level of interest in Cole Porter - and you probably do if you're reading this review - then I heartily recommend this book to you - as well as the separate film.
There is a fundamental thing missing in this biography and it is music. You will get the most remarkably well researched details about the socialites from the time (don't Monty Woolley and Duff Cooper or George Beisingwanger sound like characters straight out of an american PG Woodhouse?). But this is all you will get.
Bearing in mind the period, and Porter's influential role in american XX century music, the following statistics from the index are remarkable. Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald get a couple of mentions, Miles, Bird, Getz, Gillespie, Basie, Ellington, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, NONE. Considering that over the years they and their successors have done more to maintain the genious of Porter alive than the Duke of Verdura (I kid you not), it is rather remarkable they are not mentioned nor Porter's view on their work.
It is unfortunate that a professional biographer who's previous claim to fame were three books about Stevie Smith has taken on this task. Clearly he is methodical and thorough (he can tell you who dined with Porter every night for 30 years). HOwever he has applied his method to tracking socialites rather than the real relevance of Porter's contribution. Unfortunately he cannot make you understand Porter's influence in modern music beyond often forgotten Broadway musicals.
I hope someone will take on the challenge of writing the real "definitive" biography, the one that doesn't forget the music!
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