Cole Porter: The Definitive Biography (Hardcover)

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.