A Cole Porter Companion Edited by Don M. Randel, Matthew Shaftel, and Susan Forscher Weiss

Abstract

Cole Porter is something of an anomaly among Broadway composers from the Golden Age of the American musical—the forty years or so in which the Broadway musical and American popular song were inextricably linked. He was born in Peru, Indiana, not New York City or Europe. He wasn’t Jewish. His primary social group comprised wealthy expatriates in Paris and Venice. Yet he became one of our most popular and durable composers. Porter’s life was far more interesting than those of his fellow composers, so it comes as no surprise that it has inspired a dozen biographies chronicling his life in café society, his marriage to wealthy divorcée Linda Thomas, his homosexuality, and the horrible accident that crippled him for the last quarter-century of his life. Artistically, Porter was distinctive for writing his own lyrics. Among his celebrated peers, only Noel Coward, who was nowhere near as interesting a composer, managed this feat.