Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber by Geoffrey Block
Authors: Geoffrey Block
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years between
Anything Goes
and
Kiss Me, Kate
(1948) are similarly remembered mainly because they contain one or more hit songs.
Anything Goes
, act II, finale (1987). Photograph: Brigitte Lacombe.
In the unlikely Midwestern town of Peru, Indiana, Porter’s mother, appropriately named Kate, arranged to have Cole’s first song published at her own expense in 1902 (he was eleven at the time). Three years later Porter entered the exclusive Worcester Academy in Massachusetts. Upon his graduation from Yale in 1913, where he had delighted his fellow students with fraternity shows and football songs, Porter endured an unhappy year at Harvard Law School. Against his grandfather’s wishes and in spite of financial threats, Porter enrolled in Harvard’s music department for the 1914–1915 academic year. In 1917 he furthered his musical training with private studies in NewYork City with Pietro Yon, the musical director and organist at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral; in 1919–1920 the future Broadway composer continued his studies in composition, counterpoint, harmony, and orchestration with Vincent D’Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris.
Although his first success,
Paris
, would not arrive for another twelve years, Porter had already produced a musical on Broadway,
See America First
(1916), before Gershwin or Rodgers had begun their Broadway careers and only one year after Kern had inaugurated his series of distinctive musicals at the Princess Theatre. The years between the failure of his Broadway debut after fifteen performances (inspiring the famous quip from
Variety
, “
See America First
last!”) and the success of Irene Bordoni’s singing “Let’s Do It” in
Paris
were largely dormant ones for Porter. In fact, the sum total of his Broadway work other than
See America First
was one song interpolation for Kern’s
Miss Information
in 1915 and approximately ten songs each in
Hitchy-Koo of 1919
and the
Greenwich Village Follies
in 1924. During these years the already wealthy Porter—despite his profligacy an heir to his grandfather’s fortune—grew still wealthier when he married the socialite and famous beauty Linda Lee Thomas in 1919. In 1924 the Porters moved to Italy where they would soon launch three years of lavish party-throwing and party-going in their Venetian palazzos. On numerous such occasions the expatriate songwriter would entertain his friends with his witty lyrics and melodies. Near the end of this partying, Porter in 1927 auditioned unsuccessfully for Vinton Freedley and Alex Aarons, the producers of several Gershwin hit musicals and the future producers of four Porter shows starting with
Anything Goes
. When the following year Rodgers and Hart were preoccupied with
A Connecticut Yankee
, Porter was easily persuaded to leave Europe and bring
Paris
to New York.
Anything Goes
would arrive six years and many perennial song favorites later.
The Changing Times of
Anything Goes
Most accounts of the genesis of
Anything Goes
attribute the disastrous fire that took between 125 and 180 passengers’ lives on the pleasure ship
Morro Castle
off the coast at Asbury Park, New Jersey, on September 8, 1934, as the catalyst that led to the revised book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. According to conventional wisdom, the earlier libretto about a shipwreck could not be used any more than Porter could use his line about Mrs. Lindbergh in “I Get a Kick Out of You” after the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. 1 But at least two sources, George Eells’s biography of Porter and Miles Kreuger’s introductory notes to conductor John McGlinn’sreconstructed recording, report that producer Freedley was dissatisfied by the Guy Bolton–P. G. Wodehouse book when he received it on August 15 and that the
Morro
disaster served mainly as a convenient explanation.
According to Eells, Freedley thought there was “a tastelessness about this piece of work that no amount of rewriting would eradicate,”
Anything Goes
and
Kiss Me, Kate
(1948) are similarly remembered mainly because they contain one or more hit songs.
Anything Goes
, act II, finale (1987). Photograph: Brigitte Lacombe.
In the unlikely Midwestern town of Peru, Indiana, Porter’s mother, appropriately named Kate, arranged to have Cole’s first song published at her own expense in 1902 (he was eleven at the time). Three years later Porter entered the exclusive Worcester Academy in Massachusetts. Upon his graduation from Yale in 1913, where he had delighted his fellow students with fraternity shows and football songs, Porter endured an unhappy year at Harvard Law School. Against his grandfather’s wishes and in spite of financial threats, Porter enrolled in Harvard’s music department for the 1914–1915 academic year. In 1917 he furthered his musical training with private studies in NewYork City with Pietro Yon, the musical director and organist at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral; in 1919–1920 the future Broadway composer continued his studies in composition, counterpoint, harmony, and orchestration with Vincent D’Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris.
Although his first success,
Paris
, would not arrive for another twelve years, Porter had already produced a musical on Broadway,
See America First
(1916), before Gershwin or Rodgers had begun their Broadway careers and only one year after Kern had inaugurated his series of distinctive musicals at the Princess Theatre. The years between the failure of his Broadway debut after fifteen performances (inspiring the famous quip from
Variety
, “
See America First
last!”) and the success of Irene Bordoni’s singing “Let’s Do It” in
Paris
were largely dormant ones for Porter. In fact, the sum total of his Broadway work other than
See America First
was one song interpolation for Kern’s
Miss Information
in 1915 and approximately ten songs each in
Hitchy-Koo of 1919
and the
Greenwich Village Follies
in 1924. During these years the already wealthy Porter—despite his profligacy an heir to his grandfather’s fortune—grew still wealthier when he married the socialite and famous beauty Linda Lee Thomas in 1919. In 1924 the Porters moved to Italy where they would soon launch three years of lavish party-throwing and party-going in their Venetian palazzos. On numerous such occasions the expatriate songwriter would entertain his friends with his witty lyrics and melodies. Near the end of this partying, Porter in 1927 auditioned unsuccessfully for Vinton Freedley and Alex Aarons, the producers of several Gershwin hit musicals and the future producers of four Porter shows starting with
Anything Goes
. When the following year Rodgers and Hart were preoccupied with
A Connecticut Yankee
, Porter was easily persuaded to leave Europe and bring
Paris
to New York.
Anything Goes
would arrive six years and many perennial song favorites later.
The Changing Times of
Anything Goes
Most accounts of the genesis of
Anything Goes
attribute the disastrous fire that took between 125 and 180 passengers’ lives on the pleasure ship
Morro Castle
off the coast at Asbury Park, New Jersey, on September 8, 1934, as the catalyst that led to the revised book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. According to conventional wisdom, the earlier libretto about a shipwreck could not be used any more than Porter could use his line about Mrs. Lindbergh in “I Get a Kick Out of You” after the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. 1 But at least two sources, George Eells’s biography of Porter and Miles Kreuger’s introductory notes to conductor John McGlinn’sreconstructed recording, report that producer Freedley was dissatisfied by the Guy Bolton–P. G. Wodehouse book when he received it on August 15 and that the
Morro
disaster served mainly as a convenient explanation.
According to Eells, Freedley thought there was “a tastelessness about this piece of work that no amount of rewriting would eradicate,”
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