Cole Porter composed some of the twentieth 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.
This book evokes the frenetic glamour of Porter's career on Broadway and in Hollywood. His music was the up-beat accompaniment to the gloomier events of the Depression, the Second World War and the bleak years that followed. However, Porter's own suffering was never hinted at publicly or in his work.
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 life and work epitomizes the romance of cafe society.
