Just One of Those Things

"I can't stand hobbles. I can't stand fences. Don't fence me in."

            It's not every boy who goes off to boarding school with an upright piano. But that's what Cole Porter of Peru, Indiana, did. Born into a family that had made its fortune in timber, oil, coal, and gold mining, Porter's early life was 'a trip to the Moon on gossamer wings.'

            "I inherited two million dollars," he said. "People always say that so much money spoils one's life. But it didn't spoil mine. It simply made it wonderful."

            One of America's premier composers and songwriters, his songs effervesced like bubbles in champagne. Their elegance graced more than 30 Broadway shows and musicals. At Yale, he wrote 300 songs, including two fight songs whose wacky lyrics include "Bingo, Bingo, Eli Yale!" and "Bull dog! Bull dog! Bow wow wow!"

“Life’s Great, Life’s Grand…”

            With maturity came standards like Begin the Beguine, It's De-Lovely, Night and Day, You're the Top, and Just One of Those Things. Without them, the world would be far less merry. Or gay, to be precise, for Porter was about as out of the closet as one could be in his day.

            "I never sat down just to write a hit," he once said. Porter's sublime early days could have been summed up by lines from his song Don't Fence Me In: "Life's great, life's grand, Future's all planned, No more clouds in the sky. How'm I ridin'? I'm ridin' high."

            Unlike many Broadway composers, he wrote the lyrics and music for his songs, sometimes crafting a gem in less than a half hour. No one but no one else could so effortlessly spin off lines like "Do that voodoo that you do so well"…."You're the top. You're the Tower of Pisa. You're the smile on the Mona Lisa"…"Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let's fall in love."…"They say that bears have love affairs and even camels; we're merely mammals. Let's misbehave!"

            "The instant happiness that Porter gave his audience is the kind that becomes history," said literary critic Alfred Kazin.

            He didn't just write about high society. He was high society. (In fact, who else but Porter could have written the music for the Frank Sinatra musical "High Society?")

            He lived at the pinnacle. In 1931 Vanity Fair wrote, "He has often played for the King and Queen of Spain and the Prince of Wales….His Paris house in the rue Monsieur has a room done entirely in platinum…He averages at least two baths a day and owns sixteen dressing gowns and nine cigarette cases."

            While in Manhattan, he ensconced himself in the Waldorf Towers. He had fresh orchids, gardenias, and roses brought in daily, and they were always white orchids, white gardenias, and white roses. A typical evening might find him dining with Daighilev, Lady Cunard, William Randolph Hearst, the Gershwins, or the Vanderbilts.

Life Was a Song

            Porter and his songs were erudite, erotic, exotic, and, above all else, as elegant as "the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire" as he wrote in a song.

            You might say his life was a song. Until the summer of 1937.

            While visiting a Long Island riding club, he was warned not mount a horse known to be skittish. Being impetuous, he did so. Something spooked his steed. It threw him, fell on top of him, and then rolled over him, causing compound fractures in both his legs.

            Over the next three decades, Porter suffered through more than 30 operations, chronic bone disease, constant pain, depression, and ultimately the amputation of his right leg in 1958.

He Loved the “Bitch”

            To help take away the misery, he used humor. He gave each leg a name. The left was adorable Josephine, the right Geraldine, a monster. Nonetheless, he assured friends that he loved the "bitch" and was very attached to her.

            He managed to be as stoic as he could about his medical woes. When he was a boy, his mother had told him that a gentleman keeps his personal problems to himself, otherwise he only distresses his friends.

            He told everyone that while waiting for the ambulance to arrive—while under a horse—he slipped out his notebook and wrote lyrics for "At Long Last Love." His biggest Broadway hit was 1948's "Kiss Me, Kate." He  told a correspondent he wrote it carefree songs in "terrific hell" from pain.

            "Why do you start me on stories about these legs?" he asked a friend. "They don't depress me in the least, luckily."

MORAL: Be a clown. Be a clown. 
All the world loves a clown. 
Be the poor silly ass,
And you'll always travel first class.

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