Cole Porter Is Dead

Oct. 16, 1964 - Cole Porter (pictured in 1936), the world-famed composer and lyricist, died at 11:05 p.m. last night at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., hospital, where he underwent kidney surgery last Tuesday. He was 72 years old.

Porter wrote the music and lyrics for scores of songs that became all-time favorites, such as “Night and Day,” “Begin the Beguine,” “In the Still of the Night,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and “I Get a Kick Out of You.”

He also wrote the musical scores for such movies as “Born to Dance,” “Rosalie,” “Broadway Melody of 1940,” and “High Society.”

Warner Brothers told Porter’s life story in a 1946 musical, “Night and Day,” in which Cary Grant portrayed the composer.

Born in Peru, Ind., Porter graduated from Yale University in 1913. He then spent a year studying law and two years studying music at Harvard.

After his first musical flopped, Porter went abroad and joined the French Foreign Legion in 1917. He was switched to the French artillery and served as an officer at the front in World War I.

He married Linda Lee Thomas in Paris in 1919. She died in New York in 1954.

As Porter’s reputation grew, so did his mode of living. Not that he ever had to pinch pennies — for he had inherited $1 million from his grandfather. To this was soon added an income of more than $100,000 a year from his songs.

The Porters maintained apartments in New York, Paris, Venice, and on the Lido. These became fashionable salons attracting notables from the musical, theatrical, and literary worlds.

With the opening of each new show, Porter would present his wife with an appropriate present. When “Red, Hot and Blue” opened, he gave her a platinum cigarette case inset with rubies, diamonds, and sapphires, explaining that the rubies were red, the diamonds were “hot,” and the sapphires were blue.

Porter developed chronic osteomyelitis in his right leg — the result of an injury suffered from a fall from a horse in 1937 — and the leg was amputated in 1958. From that point on, Porter lived under the constant pressure of pain and, reversing his previously active social life, became a virtual recluse.

He rarely saw anyone except intimate friends. A 90-minute television program honoring him was presented in 1960, and a party celebrating his 70th birthday was given in 1962, but he was unwilling to attend either event. When Yale University wished to confer an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters on him in 1960, Porter accepted on condition that the presentation be made in his apartment.

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