Cole Porter Biography Quotes 8 Report mistakes

Early Life
Cole Albert Porter was born on June 9, 1891, in Peru, Indiana, into a family whose expectations and resources shaped his path. His mother, Kate Cole, a determined and musically minded woman, encouraged his talent from childhood, while his father, Samuel Fenwick Porter, was quieter in influence. The family fortune and ambition were embodied in his maternal grandfather, James Omar Cole, known as J. O. Cole, a powerful figure who hoped his grandson would pursue a conventional, prestigious career. Porter learned piano and violin as a boy and showed an early gift for melody and wit, performing and composing for local gatherings long before he entered the professional world.

Education and First Steps
Porter attended Yale University, where his charisma and productivity became legend. He wrote songs for campus shows, the glee club, and the Yale Dramatic Association, and contributed fight songs that would endure at the university. After Yale he moved to Harvard at the urging of his family, enrolling in the law school before decisively switching to music. At Harvard he studied composition with Edward Burlingame Hill, honing craft that balanced urbane lyrics with supple harmonic sense. His first Broadway effort, See America First (1916), closed quickly, but the experience introduced him to the workings of musical theater and affirmed his resolve to write for the stage.

Paris and the 1920s
Porter spent much of the late 1910s and early 1920s in Europe, especially Paris, absorbing cosmopolitan culture and forming friendships that would feed his artistic persona. He married Linda Lee Thomas in 1919. A socially prominent, intelligent, and supportive partner, Linda championed his career and provided a stable home as they moved between Paris, Venice, and New York. Their marriage, companionate and enduring, gave Porter the emotional and social framework in which he refined his voice: worldly, playful, and tinged with romantic irony.

Broadway Success
Porter's breakthrough came at the end of the 1920s. Paris (1928) introduced the sparkling anthem Lets Do It (Lets Fall in Love), and Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929) delivered You Do Something to Me. The Gay Divorce (1932), written for Fred Astaire, featured Night and Day, one of his most enduring standards. Anything Goes (1934), produced by Vinton Freedley with a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, cemented his stature; Ethel Merman, one of his most vivid interpreters, introduced I Get a Kick Out of You and Youre the Top with brassy brilliance. Jubilee (1935) yielded Begin the Beguine, while Red, Hot and Blue! (1936) with Merman and Bob Hope offered Its De-Lovely. In Hollywood he supplied scores for films such as Born to Dance (1936), which introduced I Got You Under My Skin. DuBarry Was a Lady (1939) and Panama Hattie (1940) kept him at the center of Broadway, as did Something for the Boys (1943) during the war years.

After surviving a devastating riding accident in 1937 that shattered both legs, Porter persevered through chronic pain and dozens of surgeries. His postwar triumph Kiss Me, Kate (1948), with a book by Bella and Samuel Spewack and a Shakespearean frame, won major awards and included Another Opnin, Another Show, So in Love, and Too Darn Hot. Later came Can-Can (1953), with I Love Paris, and Silk Stockings (1955), with All of You. For the film High Society (1956), starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, he supplied True Love and other songs that refreshed his voice for a new generation.

Craft and Style
Porter belonged to the rare class of Broadway creators who wrote both music and lyrics. His songs fuse conversational rhyme with intricate internal patterns, effortless wordplay, and harmonies that glide between elegance and sting. He drew on cosmopolitan references and a knowing humor that could slide from the boulevard to the bedroom without losing poise. Unusual song forms, chromatic twists, and rhythmic finesse underpin melodies that seem inevitable once heard. The balance of sophistication and emotional clarity made standards such as Just One of Those Things, In the Still of the Night, I Concentrate on You, Evry Time We Say Goodbye, and From This Moment On core parts of the American songbook.

Key Collaborators and Interpreters
Porters orbit included producers, writers, and performers who helped shape his shows. Lindsay and Crouse tightened the comic engine of Anything Goes; the Spewacks gave Kiss Me, Kate its theatrical snap. Orchestrators such as Robert Russell Bennett translated his piano-born ideas into brilliant pit colors, and conductors like Lehman Engel kept his shows taut in performance. Ethel Merman became the definitive belter of his Broadway work, while Fred Astaire embodied his urbane romanticism onstage and onscreen. Early in his ascent, Irene Bordoni championed his Paris-era songs; later, Bob Hope brought comic vitality to Red, Hot and Blue! Offstage, longtime friends such as Monty Woolley were part of the witty salon that fed his creativity. Beyond the theater, singers including Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra carried his songs into recordings and radio, ensuring their circulation far beyond Broadway. Ella Fitzgeralds celebrated songbook interpretations, and the many versions by Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and others, helped make Porters catalog timeless.

Accident, Loss, and Later Years
The 1937 riding accident permanently altered Porters life. He endured persistent pain, wrote from bed or a specially built work surface, and returned to the hospital for repeated operations. Linda Lee Thomas remained his steadfast companion and ally until her death in 1954, a loss that deeply affected him. Even as he continued to compose, the long medical ordeal culminated in the amputation of his right leg in 1958. After that surgery his output slowed markedly, though he remained a revered figure in both New York and Hollywood. He spent increasing time away from public life as health issues compounded. Cole Porter died on October 15, 1964, in Santa Monica, California.

Legacy
Porters legacy rests on a body of work that defines sophistication in American popular song. He showed that wit and wordplay could coexist with genuine feeling, and that a songwriter could be both satirist and romantic. His best shows, from Anything Goes to Kiss Me, Kate, continue to be revived; his film scores still circulate through star-driven remakes; and his standards sustain endless reinterpretation by jazz and pop singers. Just as important, he proved that a singular authorial voice could shape an entire score: a composer-lyricist whose fingerprints are audible in every rhyme and chord change. From the salons of Paris and the rehearsal rooms of Broadway to the bandstands and recording studios where his songs live on, Cole Porter remains one of the central figures of the Great American Songbook, a writer whose elegance, humor, and melodic invention still feel modern.

Our collection contains 8 quotes who is written by Cole, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Love - Writing - Romantic - Travel.