Words & Music by Cole Porter

The lights go dim. You and your date settle back, and you light a cigarette for her. The pianist begins to work the ivory, while the drummer fills in with wire brushes; then a girl stands up in the spotlight and sings: "In the still of the night,/As I gaze from my window . . ." Your date turns to look at you, and, before many more bars have tumbled into sound, hands in the dark begin to reach out for each other; a romantic haze, a mist of memory bedded with desire, fills the room and settles around the boy and girl.

"Do you love me, as I love you . . .?"

In a way, the very name Cole Porter has become a symbol of love, with all the glamor, excitement, poignancy, heartbreak, anguish and wild joy the word connotes. And whenever anyone hears a Cole Porter song, he is automatically transported, sometimes against his will, back to a scene and a moment that was once meaningful, and still might be.

At Porter's command, forgotten nights come to memory again; sights, sounds and sensations spring back into your mind. You remember the time you and a girl leaned on a piano shortly before you were going overseas and an old Chicago trombonist played Night and Day, softly and breathily, with a beat-up felt hat stuck over the bell of his horn. You remember a girl who made her date take her home early, so she could sneak out the back door and wait in the shadows for you, and how she came into your arms humming

So in Love. You remember a button-cute, zippy girl from a Broadway show who jumped up at parties, tossed her long dark hair and did a belting imitation of Ethel Merman: "You're the top, you're the Colosseum,/You're the top, you're the Louvre Museum,/You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss,/You're a Bendel bonnet,/A Shakespeare sonnet,/You're Mickey Mouse!"

Certainly there have been other spellbinders and dazzlers in our time – George and Ira Gershwin,

Jerry Kern, Dietz and Schwartz, Vincent Youmans, Dick Rodgers and Larry Hart, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Julie Styne, Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn – but the thing about Cole Porter that makes you sit up is the fact that he is one of the few really top songsmiths to do a special job on both words and music. On the whole, the music of George Gershwin is probably more inventive and more significant in the matrix of American composition, but George needed brother Ira to turn each melody into an

Unforgettable song. Larry Hart could pen an excruciatingly clever and precise lyric, but needed Dick Rodgers to make it come to life. No one man has been able to capture the sophistication of love and laughter as nimbly as Cole Porter, word merchant and tunesmith extraordinary, and everything he attempted from the very first was cast in what we now recognize as a point of view that is his sole property: an unlikely blending of the starry-eyed and the cynical.

Hardly a week goes by without some musician, in some part of the world, tramping into a recording studio or standing up in front of an audience and knocking out a Cole Porter song. His tunes have been cut by practically everybody in the business: singers (both jazz and pop), instrumentalists (both jazz and otherwise), glee clubs, barbershop quartets and opera singers (both light and grand).

His Broadway shows – Fifty Million Frenchmen, Gay Divorce, Anything Goes, Red, Hot and Blue, DuBarry Was a Lady, Panama Hattie, Silk Stockings, Can-Can, Kiss Me, Kate, to name but a few – have never been anything but Cole Porter shows from start to finish, no matter who produced, directed, did the book, choreographed, or starred in them.

Cole Porter has been on the scene for more than forty years, flinging his music and lyrics into the air and letting them hang there, now careless, then tender and adoring, now bitter and sardonic, now full of despair and disenchantment, now loaded with warm smiles and happiness.

He has never had time for the transient or the second rate or the feeling that he has to make do with something until the genuine article comes along. His best quality is his true, well-nigh faultless taste, exhibited in one way in the living room of his former Hollywood home, which was full of pieces of marble statuary brought back from his travels, great clusters of flowers and greenery and chairs that once belonged to nobility around the world. Only through Porter's innate sense of what is correct could such a room escape the brand of a Hearstian nightmare. It is, perhaps, inevitable that his firsthand knowledge of exotic places and people should turn up in his songs, as in the seldom heard

Ours,The white Riviera under the moon,

Ours,A gondola gliding on a lagoon,

Ours,A temple serene,

By the greenArabian sea,

Or maybe you'd rather be

Going ga-ga in Gay Paree!

Porter today is as lithe and trim as a tennis pro, and his face has a leathery look, tanned and toughened by the blazing suns of spas and beaches – symbolic of the international-set life he has lived – yet it is of a sensitive construction that mirrors his alternately whimsical, brooding, adventurous brain. It is in some ways a weary and jaded face, one that has seen an enormous lot. It makes you think that he might have meant himself when he wrote

I get no kick from champagne.

Mere alcoholDoesn't thrill me at all,

So tell me why should it be true

That I get a kick out of you?

Some get a kick from cocaine.

I'm sure that if

I had even one sniff

It would bore me terrific'lly, too,Yet I get a kick out of you.

Parties at Cole Porter's apartment in the Waldorf-Astoria Towers are always long remembered. "There is a great charm and gaiety about Cole," says a friend, "that nobody else ever seems to approach." Porter has even written songs during the height of a party. Miss Otis Regrets was one. Porter could easily have been thinking of one of his own exuberant, abandoned shindigs when he wrote

FloatingOn a starlit ceiling,

DoingOn the cards I'm dealing,

GloatingBecause I'm feelingSo hap-hap-happy,

I'm slap-happy!

So ring bells, sing songs,

Blow horns, beat gongs . . .Our love never will die!

How'm I ridin'? I'm ridin' high!

Cole Porter, it soon becomes clear, is not just a love song writer who occasionally knocks out a witty lyric; nor is he a comedy writer who occasionally pens a touching ballad. Instead, he is a master of both schools. For the worldly sophistication and inventiveness in Porter's comedy lyrics also contribute to his love lyrics; the daring and defiance in his comedy are instrumental in making his love songs distinctively and romantically meaningful. From the burnished bulk of Porter's wise and witty words may be gleaned something very close to an encyclopedia of love, for through his songs he expresses almost every conceivable condition and situation that lovers can get into or out of, from flirtation to consummation, from fun to profundity, from finger-snapping elation to wristslashing depression. Love that has not yet taken hold:

You'd be so easy to love,

So easy to idolize all others above,

So worth the yearning for,

So swell to keep ev'ry home fireburning for!

The fruitless fight against falling in love:

I tried so, not to give in . . .

I said to myself, "This affair neverwill go so well!"

But why should I try to resist when,darling, I know so well

I've got you under my skin?

For those who want to fall in love:

Why wait around,

When each age

Has a sageWho has foundThat upon this earth

Love is all that is really worthThinking of?

For those who are just falling in love and mouthing goofy talk to each other:

Please be sweet, my chickadee,

And when I kiss you, just say to me,

"It's delightful, it's delicious, it'sdelectable,

It's delirious, it's dilemma, it's delimit,it's deluxe,

It's delovely!"

For those who are tenderly, romantically in love:

Strange, dear, but true, dear,

When I'm close to you, dear,

The stars fill the sky . . .

So in love with you am I!

For those who are unabashedly, physically in love:

I love the looks of you, the lure of you,

The sweet of you, the pure of you,

The eyes, the arms, the mouth of you,

The East, West, North and the Southof you.

I'd love to gain complete control ofyou,

And handle even the heart and soulof you . . .

For those whose love is painfully intense:

Just disappear,

I care for you much too much,

And when you're near,

So close to me, dear,

We touch too much!

The thrill when we meet

Is so bittersweet

That, darling, it's getting me down . . .

So on your mark,

Get set,

Get out of town!

For those whose love can conquer any sort of problem:

Whenever skiesLook gray to me,

And trouble begins to brew . . .

Whenever the winter winds becometoo strong,

I concentrate on you.

When fortune cries,

"Nay, nay!" to me,

And people declare, "You'rethrough!"

Whenever the blues become my onlysong,

I concentrate on you.

For shy, reluctant types, Cole Porter suggests that love is to be enjoyed:

The most refined lady bugs do it,

When a gentleman calls . . .

Moths in your rugs do it;

What's the use of moth balls?

Locusts in trees do it, bees do it,

Even over-educated fleas do it,

Let's do it, let's fall in love!

The pain of parting for those deliriously in love:

Ev'ry time we say good-bye,

I die a little.

Ev'ry time we say good-bye,

I wonder why a little . . .

Why the gods above me,

Who must be in the know, (concluded on page 64)Cole Porter(continued from page 62)

Think so little of me

They allow you to go.

For those who would question the very nature of love:

What is this thing called love?

This funny thing called love?

Just who can solve its mystery?

Why should it make a fool of me?

If love should die, Porter recommends that we take it philosophically:

"It was just one of those things,

Just one of those crazy flings,

One of those bells that now and thenrings,

Just one of those things!"

And get over the hurt in a hurry:

It's the wrong time and the wrongplace,

Tho' your face is charming, it's thewrong face,

It's not her face, but such a charmingface

That it's all right with me.

You can't know how happy I am thatwe met,

I'm strangely attracted to you,

There's someone I'm trying so hardto forget.

Don't you want to forget someonetoo?

Perhaps through commercial love:

Love for sale!

Appetizing young love for sale!

If you want to buy my wares,

Follow me and climb the stairs . . .

He can even comment on the proper weather conditions for love-making:

It's too darn hot.

It's too darn hot.

I'd like to sup with my baby tonight,

Refill the cup with my baby tonight,

But I ain't up to my baby, tonight,

'Cause it's too darn hot.

He describes love for a city:

I love Paris in the springtime,

I love Paris in the fall.

I love Paris in the winter when itdrizzles,

I love Paris in the summer when itsizzles.

Or the awful loneliness of the big city when your love is unrequited:

Manhattan, I'm up a tree!

The one I've most adoredIs boredWith me.

Manhattan, I'm awfully nice,

Nice people dine with me, and eventwice!

Yet the only one in the world I'm madabout

Talks of somebody else, and walks out.

With a million neon rainbows burningbelow me,

And a million blazingTaxis raisingA roar,

Here I sit above the town,

In my pet pailetted gown,

Down in the depths on the ninetiethfloor.

Why, even the janitor's wife

Has a perfectly good love-life,

And here am I, facing tomorrow,

Alone with my sorrow . . .

Down in the depths on the ninetiethfloor.

Fidelity in love:

If I invite

A boy some nightTo dineOn my fineFinnan haddie,

I just adore

His asking for more,

But my heart belongs to daddy.

Though other dames,

At football games,

May longFor a strongUndergraddy,

I never dream

Of making the team'Cause my heart belongs to daddy.

A turnabout on the subject of fidelity:

From Milwaukee, Mister Fritz

Often moves me to the Ritz.

Mister Fritzis full of Schlitzand full of play,

But I'm always true to you, darlin',in my fashion,

Yes, I'm always true to you, darlin',in my way.

Mister Harris, plutocrat,

Wants to give my cheek a pat.

If the Harris pat means a Paris hat,Bébé!

Mais, jesuis toujours fidèle, darlin',in my fashion,

Oui, je suis toujours fidèle, darlin',in my way.

In his fashion, and in his way, Cole Porter has left an indelible stamp on American popular music. As Moss Hart has said, "It is hard now to remember the original impact of Cole Porter on the musical theatre of the middle and late Nineteen Twenties. He burst upon that moribund world with the velocity of a meteor streaking across the sky. His words and music, had an abandon, a stunning freshness, a dash and a lyrical agility that were completely new to our ears. The verve of Let's Do It, the brisk ardor of You Do Something to Me, the sultry boldness of Love for Sale, the mordant glow of What Is This Thing Called Love? seemed to blow the winds of a graceful and polished world across the musty musical theatre of those days and make the majority of songs we had been singing sound downright provincial. The great ballads – Night and Day, Easy to Love, I Get a Kick Out of You – and all the others that were to run riot down the years were to come later, but in the late Twenties we were suddenly aware that a new musical voice of immense vigor and freshness was making itself heard – a forceful talent that was racy and slashing and bold, but a talent that had great elegance and a curious kind of purity. One thing was certain even then: no one could write a Cole Porter song but Cole Porter. Each song had a matchless design and a special felicity of its own that stamped it as immediately and uniquely his."

In all, Cole Porter has penned the words and music to more than five hundred songs that have been heard in a total of twenty-five musical comedies, nine Hollywood films and several TV spectaculars. It is to his credit that he is the only popular song writer whose lyrics – those to You're the Top – were used in a Northwestern University poetry course as an example of excellence in both meter and rhyme.

Cole Porter today divides his time among New York, Hollywood, Paris, Venice, Jamaica and other far-scattered points. He never ceases to roam in search of fresh experiences to distill into his songs, and he has now reached that point, which must exasperate him, where people continually compare each new song unfavorably with the ones that went before. This is an endless chain, of course, for the unfavorably compared ones are subsequently thought to be superior to those that follow. Somehow, Porter manages to remain unhackneyed and inventive, youthful and agile in his imagination. His songs will not become butdated as long as there are sophisticated lovers with ears to hear him and voices to limn his melodies and lyrics.

Ours, Ridin' High, Easy to Love, I've Got You Under My Skin, It's Delovely, Down in the Depths, Copyright © 1936 by Chappell & Co. Inc. Get Out of Town, My Heart Belongs to Daddy, Copyright © 1938 by Chappell & Co. Inc. I Concentrate on You, Copyright © 1939 by Chappell & Co. Inc. Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye, Copyright © 1944 by Chappell & Co. Inc. So in Love, Always True to You in My Fashion, Copyright © 1948 by Cole Porter, Buxton Hill Music Corporation, owner of publication and allied rights throughout the world. Too Darn Hot, Copyright © 1949 by Cole Porter, Buxton Hill Music Corporation, owner of publication and allied rights throughout the world. It's All Right with Me, I Love Paris, Copyright © 1953 by Cole Porter, Buxton Hill Music Corporation, owner of publication and allied rights throughout the world. All of You, Copyright © 1954 by Cole Porter, Buxton Hill Music Corporation, owner of publication and allied rights throughout the world. Let's Do It, What Is This Thing Called Love?, Copyright 1928 by Harms, Inc. Love for Sale, Copyright 1930 by Harms, Inc. You're the Top, I Get a Kick Out of You, Copyright 1934 by Harms, Inc. Just One of Those Things Why Shouldn't I?, Copyright 1935 by Harms, Inc.