To most of us, he is the ultimate sophisticate -- a debonair, decadently rich gentleman who triumphed on Broadway, partied in Paris, soireed in Venice, cruised up the Nile and never left his sumptuous New York apartment without placing a carnation in the lapel of his impeccably tailored suits.
But there's another, equally intriguing -- if lesser known -- side to Cole Porter, the brilliant songwriter whose 100th birthday is being celebrated this year.
Beneath the surface glitter of the career that produced both music and lyrics for "Night and Day," "You're the Top," "Anything Goes," "I Love Paris," "Begin the Beguine," "I Get a Kick Out of You" and dozens more is a personality that was shaped and nurtured not in cultural capitals but in Peru, Ind., a dot on the map about 150 miles southeast of Chicago and 75 miles north of Indianapolis.
Never mind that a --ing Cary Grant portrayed Porter in "Night and Day" (1945), the rife-with-errors film that alleged to tell the story of Porter's life. (For all its inaccuracies -- most notably its disguise of Porter's homosexuality -- the film had Porter's blessing; in fact, he insisted on Grant.)
Never mind that Porter himself routinely embellished his life's story.
The fact is that 100 years ago, on June 9, Porter was born in a small but comparatively sophisticated little Indiana town that had an inexplicably exotic name.
Even a century ago, Peru, Ind. -- although located in the midst of vast farmlands -- had a big and bustling main thoroughfare named Broadway. The architecture was grandiose by any measure, its Romanesque buildings and European-influenced gables towering above the little city.
From this unusual place came one of the supreme songwriters of our century. Granted, Peru has changed a great deal since Porter's childhood days: Some of its magnificent old facades are crumbling, its former sophistication has given way to a long line of fast-food restaurants, its lone movie theater charges $1.50 a ticket. Like many small towns in America, it no longer prospers.
Yet it was to Peru's grassy, unassuming cemetery that Porter returned in 1964, turning his back on the glamorous locales where he had played out his adulthood.
Between the start and finish of his life, Porter never lost touch with small-town Midwest, visiting his Peru family and friends regularly, even if he had moved away as a teen-ager to attend prep school in the East. These Midwestern ties shaped his art, almost as much as the high-life places did.
Although Porter's songs don't reflect the sauntering, rustic feeling of Indiana as, say, Hoagy Carmichael's tunes do, there are other, subtler influences. The Midwestern work ethic that drove Porter to become one of the most prolific of all songwriters is unmistakable. And the naughty, snickering lyrics of risque songs such as "But in the Morning, No," "Love for Sale" and "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" remind one that Porter, as a child taking music lessons in Marion, Ind., bought titillating magazines there and stored them in his violin case for future reference.
Sex in turn-of-the-century Indiana was not exactly an open subject, and, in his songs, Porter reveled in the naughtiness of it.
More important, Porter was acutely aware that, as a small-town Midwesterner, he was an anomaly in the songwriting business.
"The first time I met Cole Porter [in the '50s], it was at a fancy party, and the host said to me: 'Cole Porter wants to meet you,' " recalls songwriter Sammy Cahn.
"But instead of going up to Cole, I stood there transfixed. Finally, he came up to me and said: 'Sammy Cahn, I've always envied you.'
"And I said: 'You've envied me? What could you have possibly envied me?'
"And Cole said: 'The fact that you were born on the Lower East Side [of New York]. If I had been born on the Lower East Side, I would have been a true genius.' "
Although Porter's clever lyrics and seductive melodies assure him a place among songwriters of genius, his quip about New York's Lower East Side says a great deal about his unusual life and remarkable accomplishments.
Obviously, Porter was well aware that many -- if not most -- of the great songwriters of his era had been poor kids from the streets of New York. George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Irving Caesar, Sammy Cahn, Mitchell Parish, Burton Lane -- the list seems endless. What's more, most of these talents, who saw songwriting as a quick ride out of the poverty, were born of Jewish immigrants.
So how did an Episcopalian from Peru, scion of a fantastically wealthy family and born in a sprawling Indiana home, triumph in big-city showbiz?
"You have to remember that Cole's mother, Kate, was born with a golden spoon in her mouth, and that went for Cole, too," recalls Amelia Reuter, 80, whose mother was cook for Porter's family; as such, Ms. Reuter spent the first 29 years of her life around Porter.
"Kate could get Cole whatever she wanted him to have, and she constantly prodded his musical talent along. She sent him to Marion [Ind.] for violin and piano lessons; she encouraged him every step of the way."
Indeed, Kate -- to whom Porter was fiercely devoted -- shaped her son's life and tastes according to her own preferences. Perhaps she hovered over her third child because the first two had died in infancy.
She even went so far as to lie about Porter's age, shaving off two years to make him seem more precocious. Porter carried forth the lie later in life, also glamorizing himself by claiming to have joined the French Foreign Legion during World War I. (In fact, he worked as a volunteer to aid soldiers.)
As a child, "Whether covered like an oriental potentate in velvets and silks as he tossed in his crib, or dressed in lace cuffs and waistcoats as a baby of seven or so, Cole was hardly a typical Indiana boy," writes Charles Schwartz in "Cole Porter: a Biography" (Da Capo).
"Kate saw to it that he had his own Shetland pony, a private tutor for French lessons, and a working familiarity with the social graces expected of one of society's elite."
The pampering had a tangible effect on Cole, "who was very aloof, like his mother," Ms. Reuter says. "He had a little dog by the name of Jezebel. But Cole would never let me touch the dog. He would never really even talk to me."
If Porter's childhood was unusual for Peru, his pursuit of music was nearly taboo. Kate's father, self-made millionaire J. O. Cole (whose fortune apparently allowed him to run roughshod over Porter's weak-willed father, Sam), railed against it.
But Porter was writing songs as a child, and even his grandfather's insistence that Porter attend law school after graduating from Yale did not do the trick; Porter quickly dropped out.
Although his first full-fledged show, "See America First" (1916), was an unmitigated bomb, Porter forged ahead. By the late '20s he was launching an incredible hit parade, including "What Is This Thing Called Love?", "You Do Something to Me," "Love for Sale," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," "I've Got You Under My Skin," "In the Still of the Night," "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," "Well, Did You Evah!", "Friendship," "Be a Clown," "Another Op'nin', Another Show," "Wunderbar" and dozens more.
And though the press portrayed Porter's life as an endless stream of champagne and caviar, that was only part of the truth. Porter worked as hard as he played, and he credited his appetite for both to his Indiana roots.
"I'm not cynical or acid or anything of that kind," Porter once said. "I'm a hard-working boy from Indiana, and I'm engaged in the business of entertaining myself, which enables me to entertain, as much as I can, the world."
Or, as socialite Elsa Maxwell once put it, while Porter "was cutting capers all over Europe, he was working hard and steadily, six hours a day, writing songs, experimenting with lyrics, polishing his technique."
The exact nature of those songs was unprecedented. Never before had lyrics been put together with such cleverness, economy and poetry.
Consider these sublime words from "Begin the Beguine":
"What moments divine, what rapture serene,/Till clouds came along to disperse the joys we had tasted./And now when I hear people curse the chance that was wasted,/I know but too well what they mean."
But that's only half the story, for Porter's music is unique: the insinuating, chromatic half-steps of his melodies; the erotic, Latin undercurrents of his rhythms; the bittersweet harmonies, every chord sharpened with passing dissonance -- these, too, make Porter's songs unforgettable.
Even as Porter's life took its tragic turn, when a horse he was riding fell on him and crushed his legs in 1937 (leaving him dependent on canes and crutches), the music and words never ceased to flow. Buoyed by both his mother and his wife, Linda (a wealthy socialite whose apparently platonic relationship with Porter was emotionally fervent), Porter continued to write hits.
"When you saw him struggling to move, you knew he was in great pain," says Alfred Drake, who also starred in "Kiss Me, Kate." "But Cole never once complained, and he always seemed happiest when he was at the piano."
Sadly, Porter's 73 years did not end well. With his mother and Linda both dead, with his right leg amputated near the hip (from the riding accident), he was, by all accounts, a broken spirit.
Still, he had insisted that he be buried in Peru, alongside Linda and other family members. In his final gesture, Porter felt compelled to return to the place that Broadway and Hollywood had long overshadowed -- at least in the popular imagination.
"His ties were never really anywhere else but here in Peru," says Amelia Reuter of a town that proudly identifies itself as "Home of Cole Porter."
"I'm not sure Peru ever really understood him or comprehended his fame, but the town always loved him, and I think he loved Peru, too."