Cole Porter

Biography

Cole Porter was born into wealth. His mother’s father, James Omar Cole, was a wildly successful speculator in timber and coal, and the growing boy wanted for nothing. He took up both the violin and piano very early in life. His mother financed student orchestras in the town of Peru, Indiana in return for an expectation that they would spotlight her boy in violin solos. He hit his stride as a composer with the success of Gay Divorce, the 1932 musical that introduced the world to “After You, Who?” “Night and Day?” and “How’s Your Romance?” For the 1937 movie Rosalie he created “In the Still of the Night.” Cole Porter’s greatest late-career Broadway hit, first produced in 1948, was Kiss Me Kate. Its song list included “Another Op’ning, Another Show,” “Why Can’t You Behave?,” and “Always True to You in My Fashion.” Porter died of kidney failure in California in October 1964. His body was returned to Peru, Indiana for burial.