October 2

Cole Porter: Closeted Homosexual Songwriter

American songwriter Cole Porter (1891-1964) was a bit like his rivals Noel Coward and Ivor Novello, in that he was also known as a generous host who gave extravagant parties that catered to homosexual interests and behavior. People still argue over whether Porter was a true bisexual (he married), or whether he was a gay man who got married (like Leonard Bernstein). There have been two biographical films about Cole Porter: Night and Day (1946) and De-Lovely (2004), but both were more fiction than fact. Night and Day, which starred Cary Grant* (a closeted homosexual) playing Cole Porter (a closeted homosexual) is nearly 75% fiction. De-Lovely (starring Kevin Kline), acknowledges that Porter’s wife Linda knew of her husband’s homosexual trysts and liaisons, but gives the wrong impression that Porter’s romantic involvements were solely with women. 

Cole Porter had a long term romance with U.S. Marine (and dancer/choreographer) Nelson Barfield (who inspired "You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To"), as well as a relationship with Robert Bray, a married Californian. He had an affair in 1925 with Boris Kochno, a poet and Ballets Russes librettist. He also had a long relationship with his constant companion, Boston socialite Howard Sturges, as well as with architect Ed Tauch, for whom Porter wrote "Easy to Love". The list continues with director John Wilson (who later married international society beauty Princess Nathalie Paley), and longtime friend Ray Kelly, whose children still receive half of the childless Porter's copyright royalties. There were also too many one night stands (with men) to count.

Born into a wealthy family in Indiana, Porter moved to Europe in 1917. He maintained a luxury apartment in Paris, where he entertained lavishly. His parties were extravagant and scandalous, with much gay and bisexual activity, Italian nobility, cross-dressing, international musicians, and a large surplus of recreational drugs.

*Here is a clip from the 1946 film Night and Day, in which Cary Grant (as Cole Porter) plays piano, smokes and sings all at the same time.



At a wedding in Paris, he met Linda Lee Thomas (of the famed Lee family of Virginia), who was a rich, Kentucky-born divorcée eight years his senior. They married two years later, in 1919. She was in no doubt about Porter's homosexuality, but it was mutually advantageous for them to marry. For Linda it offered continued social status and a partner who was the antithesis of her abusive first husband, and for Porter it brought a respectable heterosexual front in an era when homosexuality was not publicly acknowledged, much less deemed acceptable.

Among his best-known songs are Night and Day, I Get a Kick Out of You, and I've Got You Under My Skin. Not to mention Begin the Beguine and Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye (my personal favorite). Unlike most composers of popular song, Porter generally wrote both words and music.

Porter was embarrassed and incapacitated by the amputation of one of his legs, which was crushed in a horse-riding accident in the 1930s. Linda Porter acquired a 40-acre estate in the Berkshires (western Massachusetts) in 1940, and after she died in 1953, Cole became a virtual recluse at Buxton Hill, as the property was named. Porter ordered the Tudor-style main house razed after the death of his wife and moved a caretaker’s cottage to the location of the original house. According to one of his biographers, visitors to Buxton Hill became fewer and fewer, because most weekends Porter was wicked drunk and ignored his invited guests, some of whom dubbed the farm, “the torture chamber.” At Cole’s death in 1964, the Buxton Hill estate went to Williams College, but returned to private hands a few years later. It is now a luxury inn, with tennis courts and a 30' X 50' swimming pool. www.buxtonhill.com

Here is a particularly affecting version of Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye, in which Ray Charles sings a duet with Betty Carter. This song contains one of the best lyrics I know for expressing the sentiment of missing a lover who has gone away:

When you're near there's such an air of Spring about it.
I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it.
There's no love song finer,
But how strange the change from major to minor
Every time we say goodbye.