Cole Porter

This is an excellent book if you are a die-hard Cole Porter fan and want to know all the details of his life and music. It is a long book with intimate details of his life, including the sex, and his feelings towards many of the people he knew personally and professionally. His music and theatrical/movie career is discussed with names and lyrics. I liked the book, but the flow of his life was too often interrupted with the minutiae that many will appreciate. I guess I like a smoother read.

The most dry, over-reported book imaginable about someone who was OBVIOUSLY a barrel of laughs and a great deal of fun. 50 pages in, and Cole is 21 and graduating from Yale. FIFTY PAGES! (Of VERY small type, I might add....) We learn of his college roommates, (and their future careers) song titles for college shows performed twice (and the scores lost) parties after football games... you get the idea...I really don't have the patience to see if he'll EVER write Anything Goes - or what the name of the stage manager's daughter's puppy of that particular show might happen to be. (Because I'm SURE if the information is out there, it's been unearthed and shared with us..)Sorry- it's basically unreadable- unless college text books are your idea of a good time.

Having recently seen for the third or fourth time the movie ("De-Lovely") with Kevin Kline as Cole Porter, I realized that I was fascinated by this very talented man. I had also seen the Hollywood-ized rendition of Cole's life and times with Cary Grant and comparing the two movies and trying to figure out the truth was a mystery for me. Hence, when I saw this book was available, I immediately ordered it. It is a provocative, entertaining and highly informative biography of this talented man's life and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My husband tells me that I am "addicted" to his music and I know the words to most every song of his. It doesn't hurt that I also have an abiding interest in the Broadway music world. As an aside, I would love to see his former apartment at the Waldorf as my husband and I stay at the Waldorf for a week every year while in New York City wining and dining.

just okay.

Unfortunately this book was not interesting enough to keep my interest. I was able to get about 1/3 & gave upI love biographys but this wasn't to my imterest

Cole Porter composed hundreds of American's finest songs which included both the words and the music. Most are still well known today; if you hear a Cole Porter song you're recognize it and perhaps hum along. His output would be amazing enough even if he had not done most of it while in agonizing pain from two shattered legs he suffered from a horseback riding accident. If you love Cole Porter music, you owe it to yourself to read this splendid biography (even if it's a bit too long).

Is it possible to have too much information in a biography? In this case, yes. While there is a lot of information about his personal life, including very interesting details of his many boyfriends, crushes, and hook-ups, much of the other material presented is gratuitous. I didn’t need to know the complete guest lists of every party he ever gave or attended, plus the life stories of each of them, including other people they happened to know. At times I almost forgot it was supposed to be about Porter. I eventually lost interest.

Informative, and with different information than other Cole Porter books. Great detail on show production, and more on his wife than normally revealed. On the other hand, for a new book, it did not delve into the more difficult side of their marriage and his friends quite as much as I'd expected. It is the perfect companion to The Cole Porter Songbook.

Going to be in a production of Kiss Me Kate later this year so read this for a bit of background. Enjoyed it on the whole, Porter seems quite reminiscent of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory on some levels with his OCD and fastidiousness. There is a lot of information about various social butterflies of the 30s and 40s - many of them minor royalty - who Porter hung around with, none of whom seemed particularly interesting. Porter spent most of his adult life consorting with pretty young men, on both short and long term bases. Rather lost interest in who these seemingly interchangeable people were too. The book does provide limited insight into the Porter marriage, I can see what Porter got out of it (a fig leaf to cover his homosexuality) although it is less obvious what Linda got out of it (perhaps the chance to move in exalted social circles). Linda seems to have spent most of her life preoccupied with various illnesses - real and imaginary - and they spent so much of their time apart I could see little evidence for the author's assertion that she and Cole were incredibly close.Anyway, interesting and worth a read although finding out more about Porter and his social circle didn't do anything to endear any of them to me.

A lifelong Cole Porter fan, I bought this book via Amazon online after seeing sharply conflicting customer reviews. It's a well-researched biography of an intriguing, blisteringly talented composer with an enigmatic, privileged and troubled private life that has become very much part of his public legend. Mr Porter cheerfully mythologised and glamourised his life (that naff 1940s Hollywood bio-pic he approved, with Cary Grant and Alexis Smith doing their professional best to capture Cole & Linda Porter in scripted cliché-characterisations that bore only a passing resemblance to any reality). Yes, this biography is packed with gossipy details gleaned from interviews and reminiscences from those close to Porter and his world - it's stiff with Countess di Frassos, Lady Mendls, Monty Woolleys, Murphys and the like - but then, so were Porter's life and works. To learn more about Porter's work, Citron's "Noel & Cole" biography might be more useful, but McBrien's biography takes the reader right into the privileged coterie and hothouse Broadway/Hollywood/High Society to which the Porters aspired and where their glamorous lives sparkled and shone, despite the private pains and passions they firmly hid from public scrutiny. This book is a must for students of Cole Porter. Recommended.

I found this book quite entertaining but, not totally so. I enjoyed reading of his family history, his (wicked Grandfather) his loving mother, his forgotten father and his successful years in college, but when it came to reading about his continental relationships and friendships with continental minor nobility (The Duke of Lampadusa, Well, I ask you!) I wish there had been more about his show business life and the stars he directed and nurtured OK, we get some good story's about Ethel Merman, one of his great and enduring stars. I would have liked to have heard more about his relationships with the stars like Fred Astaire (Who was Porters favourite interpreter of his words & music) And others like Sinatra (who does get a mention) And those many others who he must have met and who have kept his words and music alive all these years.Having said all that I have said. It's not a bad book but it is not a great one either.

Splendid. Some readers have lamented the lack of analysis of the songs; I can't think what they mean, as McBrien quotes many of Porter's marvellous lyrics as well as giving us a close look at an often uneasy personal life. Well worth the price!

very detailed biography and great service!