November 21, 1934: The musical Anything Goes premieres at the Alvin Theatre in New York. Along with Kiss Me, Kate, Cole Porter called it "one of my two perfect musicals."
Cole Albert Porter was born on June 8, 1891 in Peru, Indiana, to a wealthy family. His mother, the daughter of a coal and lumber speculator who was believed to be the richest man in Indiana at the time, indulged his love of music. Together, they wrote his first operetta when he was only 10 years old.
He was valedictorian of his Massachusetts prep school, and his grandfather rewarded him with a trip to Europe and admission to Yale University, which made him a worldly young man. He joined the famed Whiffenpoofs a cappella singing group, and wrote "Bulldog," which is still Yale's fight song to this day.
His frequent trips to Manhattan on the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (now the New Haven Line of Metro-North Commuter Railroad) indulged his love of musicals, but also indulged his love of nightlife, including gay liaisons.
To indulge his grandfather, he moved on to Harvard Law School, but the school's dean knew where his talent lay, and helped him switch to Harvard Music School. His mother was told, and supported it; his grandfather was not told. He staged musicals at Harvard, and by 1915, was staging them on Broadway.
He worked with the Duryea Relief organization during World War I, and hosted debauched parties in Paris. In 1918, he met Linda Lee Thomas, and their marriage gave both what they needed: She got security, and a man who adored her for her personality, if not lusting for her; he got the cover of a marriage to deflect public suspicion of what he really wanted in bed. The marriage lasted until her death in 1954.
His musicals were good enough to help him get by, if not to become famous, until 1928, when Paris became his 1st big hit show. His 1929 show Fifty Million Frenchmen included the song "You Do Something to Me," which truly launched him: Along with Irving Berlin, George & Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart, and Johnny Mercer and his various collaborators, Cole Porter became one of the leaders of what became known as "The Great American Songbook." More than that, it kept him afloat during the Great Depression, when many writers, producers and theater owners went under.
In 1932, he staged a musical titled The Gay Divorce -- "gay" in its original sense of "happy," not as in "homosexual," no matter what the tendencies of Broadway in general and Porter in particular. It starred Fred Astaire, and it was his last show before he went to Hollywood, including the 1934 film version, The Gay Divorcee. It included "Night and Day," which remains Porter's best-known song.
In 1934, producer Vinton Freedley came up with a new approach to producing musicals. Instead of commissioning book, music and lyrics, and then casting the show, Freedley sought to create an ideal musical with stars and writers all engaged from the outset.
The stars he wanted were Ethel Merman, William Gaxton and comedian Victor Moore. He planned a story about a shipwreck and a desert island, and for the book he turned to P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton. For the songs, he decided on Porter. By telling each of these that he had already signed the others -- in other words, lying to them -- Freedley gathered his ideal team together.
A drastic last-minute rewrite was necessitated by the Morro Castle fire off the coast of New Jersey in September, which dominated the news and made Bolton and Wodehouse's book seem tasteless. Nevertheless, the show, Anything Goes, was an immediate hit.
Its songs include the title number, "I Get a Kick Out of You," "All Through the Night" and, along with "Night and Day," probably the best-known Porter song, "You're the Top." (Often mis-listed and mis-sung as "You're the Tops.") It name-checks several current big names in the world: Mickey Mouse, Mahatma Gandhi (pronounced "GAN-dee," to rhyme with "Napoleon brandy"), Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, Eugene O'Neill, Jimmy Durante, Irving Berlin, and "Mrs. Astor," although not specifying which one.
Anything Goes was filmed in 1936, with Merman, Bing Crosby and Ida Lupino. There was a remake in 1956, but with a seriously rewritten story, this time with Crosby and Mitzi Gaynor. Merman and Frank Sinatra starred in a made-for-TV version in 1954, for NBC's The Colgate Comedy Hour. A performance of a 2021 London revival, with Broadway (and TV show Younger) star Sutton Foster and British musical legend Robert Lindsay, was broadcast on PBS' Great Performances in 2022.
Anything Goes was the 1st of 5 Porter shows featuring Merman. He loved her loud, brassy voice, and wrote many numbers that displayed her strengths. Jubilee, written with Moss Hart in 1935, was not a major hit, but included the songs "Begin the Beguine" and "Just One of Those Things." He also wrote for movies, including "I've Got You Under My Skin" for Born to Dance in 1936, and "In the Still of the Night" for Rosalie in 1937. (This is not the doo-wop hit of The Five Satins in 1956, although Dion & the Belmonts had a hit with it in 1960.) He wrote "Don't Fence Me In" for a 1934 film musical that was never made, but it became a hit when Roy Rogers sang it in the 1944 film Hollywood Canteen.
On October 24, 1937, only 46 years old, Porter was riding a horse at Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley, Long Island, New York, when his horse rolled on him and crushed his legs, leaving him substantially crippled and in constant pain for the rest of his life. Though doctors told Porter's wife and mother that his right leg would have to be amputated, and possibly the left one as well, he refused to have the procedure. He remained in the hospital for seven months before being allowed to go home to his apartment at the Waldorf Towers.
He resumed work as soon as he could, finding it took his mind off his perpetual pain. In 1938, he staged Leave It to Me!, with Mary Martin singing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." His 1939 show DuBarry Was a Lady starred Merman and Bert Lahr, but it was too risqué for the censors, and some lines and songs had to be cut. "Friendship," one of Merman's best-known songs, was kept.
In 1940, Porter wrote Panama Hattie. Most of its songs have been forgotten, but it was his longest-running hit yet. It also led to one of the best jokes on The Muppet Show: In 1977, Merman guested, and, after she sang a medley of her hits, the camera panned to the box where the old hecklers Statler and Waldorf, both named for famous New York hotels, sat. Waldorf said, "I remember Ethel Merman in the opening of Panama Hattie!" Statler, apparently believing himself to be the younger of the two, told him, "You remember Teddy Roosevelt in the opening of the Panama Canal!" (In fact, while Roosevelt got the Canal built, it didn't open until 1914, when Woodrow Wilson was President.)
Composer biographies were common in 1940s films, even for still-living writers like Porter. In 1946, Cary Grant played Porter in Night and Day. Porter himself was at a commercial low point, but in 1948, he staged Kiss Me, Kate, a modernization of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, which led to a rebound in his career. The following year, the Tony Awards debuted, and Kiss Me, Kate won the 1st-ever Tony for Best Musical.
After Porter resisted it for 20 years after the horseback accident, ulcers on his right leg finally forced its amputation in 1958. Broadway writer Noël Coward, a close friend, visited him, and saw how he was no longer in pain, and predicted that his musical output would get back to normal levels, and he would be a hit all over again.
Sadly, that turned out to be wishful thinking: He never wrote another song, and lived in seclusion until kidney failure ended his life on October 15, 1964 outside Los Angeles in Santa Monica, California. He was 73. Both the music industry, through rock and roll, and Broadway, with more sophisticated musicals like My Fair Lady and Fiddler On the Roof, had passed him by.
But not completely. The roster of singers who've recorded compilation albums of his songs is staggering: Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Anita O'Day, Julie London, Dionne Warwick, and, as recently as 2021, in his last album before being overtaken by Alzheimer's disease, Tony Bennett recorded Love for Sale, a series of Porter duets with Lady Gaga, born 22 years after Porter died.
In 1966, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons had a Top 10 hit with "I've Got You Under My Skin." In a 1974 episode of M*A*S*H, set in 1951, "Trapper" John McIntire (played by Wayne Rogers) sang it during a surgery session. In a 1982 episode of the show, set in 1953, Hawkeye Pierce (played by Alan Alda), having lost a bet to Trapper's replacement, B.J. Hunnicutt (played by Mike Farrell), had to climb on top of a table in the mess tent, drop his pants (but not his underwear), and "sing 'You're the Tops' without your bottoms." Not long before her death in 1984, Merman recorded a new version of "Friendship" for Friendship brand margarine.
In 1989, interviewed for the CBS News show 48 Hours while on tour for his album Flowers In the Dirt, Paul McCartney, 47 years old and 19 years into his post-Beatles solo career, made no bones about his love for rock and roll, but also made the point that he didn't start out that way: He said, "I was out to be another Cole Porter. Still am, babe."
In 1990, noting that Porter was gay and that AIDS had devastated the gay community, including the gay overlap with the Broadway sub-community, the fundraising album Red Hot + Blue was recorded. It included David Byrne of Talking Heads on "Don't Fence Me In," Neneh Cherry on "I've Got You Under My Skin," and Sinéad O'Connor on "You Do Something to Me."
The Alvin Theatre, where Anything Goes premiered, was at 250 West 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan. In 1983, it was renamed the Neil Simon Theatre. It is still in operation. Oddly, no Broadway Theatre has yet been named for Cole Porter.
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November 21, 1934 was a Wednesday. This was also the day that American newspapers broke the story of the "Business Plot," a proposed military coup that would be backed by some of America's richest men to depose President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install a fascist government, a plan torpedoed when their intended commander, Marine General Smedley Butler, blew the whistle on it in a Congressional committee hearing. I have a separate entry for that event.
This was also the day that the Yankees purchased the contract of Joe DiMaggio from the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. I have a separate entry for that event.
Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And while the NHL season began on November 8, there were no games scheduled for this day. So there were no scores.
