- Cole Porter - the
definitive biography by William McBrien (Harper Collins, £17.99)
-
- Buy
Cole Porter The Definitive Biography Today!
-
- 'the queue of handsome associates was endless…'
- Porter was alive when Hollywood made his biopic, Night and
Day, in which Cary Grant played a heterosexual composer whose
marriage was his central happiness. Dishonest, of course, but,
despite his homosexuality, Porter's union with his wife Linda
was indeed the rock on which he stood. Naturally wealthy, Porter
might have gone through life a dilettante, but even at Yale he
was writing songs that showed at least a promise of something
better. Working at musical theatre, he contributed scores to
flop after flop, until success beckoned. The catalogue of achievement
was tremendous. Will there ever be a time when 'Night and Day'
or 'I get a Kick out of You' are not considered some of the greatest
lyrics of all time?
The price to be paid was too much. Linda's fabulous riches could
not prevent her lifelong invalidism, painfully charted throughout
McBrien's warm and caring book. When Porter was crippled by a
riding accident, he too began a life of pain, against the background
of which it becomes too easy to understand the melancholia of
so much of his work. Often separated by long distances from Linda,
Porter maintained a lifelong passion for young men, his fondness
for them usually consolidated when he introduced them to Linda,
whose understanding of her nymph errant husband seems to have
been limitless.
The queue of handsome associates was never-ending: for Porter,
a life that consisted of giving away countless gold cigarette
cases. Linda's death was a catastrophe that marked the beginning
of his own end, the closing down of an existence in which he
had little interest.
McBrien's book improves immeasurably as it gathers momentum.
We hardly glimpse Porter the person in the first well-chronicled
hundred pages, but the later years come off the page with a poignancy
that is almost too strong. Aficionados of musical theatre might
want rather less rudimentary and well-worn facts about such popular
shows as Kiss Me Kate and more meaty material about Porter's
many clinkers, but McBrien doesn't mess with a serious reassessment
of his hero's work.
Shortly before his death, Porter was asked what he would miss
most about life. He replied, 'My Queen Anne chairs'. The saddest
thing is that one believes he meant it.
RETURN TO REVIEWS
|
