As Porter biopic shows, when it comes to film biographies ... "Anything Goes"
This funny thing called love?
Just who can solve its mystery?
Why should it make a fool of me?
— "What Is This Thing Called Love?," 1929
In 1946, the film biography "Night and Day" presented Cary Grant as Cole Porter, handsome composer and loving husband.
In 2004, Irwin Winkler's "De-Lovely" (now playing at Pacific Place in Seattle) presents Kevin Kline as Cole Porter, handsome composer and semi-closeted gay man whose life's greatest romance, nonetheless, was with his wife.
The historical Cole Porter (1891-1964), one of the greatest composers of American popular song (including the scores to "Anything Goes" and "Kiss Me Kate"), was a short, bulge-eyed fellow whose long marriage survived on its own terms, despite his passionate affairs with numerous men.
Truth? Smoke and mirrors? No, it's the nature of biography, on film or otherwise.
Think of how the look of something — a face, a flower, a building — can change entirely, depending on the kind of light that's shone upon it. Different angles are emphasized, different colors emerge, and the picture might be distorted, even as it remains recognizable.
But there's a constant in all three versions of Porter's life: simple but achingly beautiful poems of love — its fragility, its deliciousness, its elusive nature. His songs — "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Night and Day," "In the Still of the Night," "I Get a Kick Out of You," to name just a few — still resonate, long after the person for whom they are written (whoever he or she might be) is gone.
Along with Rodgers and Hart, the Gershwins, Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin, Porter's contributions to the American songbook are legendary. On any given evening in any given city, someone in a nightclub is likely crooning a Porter tune. Mention the name Cole Porter and you might get a blank look; hum a few bars of "Too Darn Hot" (as I often did, during last month's heat wave) and look for a smile of recognition. Porter's name and face may have faded, but the work remains.
Do you love me as I love you?
Are you my life-to-be, my dream come true?
Or will this dream of mine
Fade out of sight ...
Like the moon growing dim
on the rim of the hill
in the chill still of the night.
— "In the Still of the Night," 1937
Porter's life was surely the stuff of movies: A wealthy gay man marries a beautiful divorcée, and both enjoy a glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle and great success on the Broadway stage and in the movies. All was changed when a serious riding accident in 1937 resulted in multiple surgeries, decades of pain and ultimate amputation. There are plenty of stories to tell here; and "De-Lovely," like any biography, had to choose among them.
"Whenever you do a [film] biography, telling a story in two hours, you're going to have to leave out certain things," said Winkler in a telephone interview. He and writer Jay Cocks worked for years to develop the screenplay. "We weren't doing a documentary about 74 years of his life — we were doing a love story. We centered the story on those events that dealt with their relationship."
Linda Lee Porter, like Ashley Judd (who plays her in "De-Lovely"), was a Southern beauty. (She was also eight years older than her youthful-looking husband; photos from their marriage show an obvious age discrepancy, especially in the later years. "De-Lovely" chose to keep her young and glamorous.)
A divorcée recovering from a miserable first marriage, she met Porter at a society wedding at the Paris Ritz in 1918. Their own wedding took place a year later, and their marriage endured until her death in 1954. It was not the storybook marriage depicted in "Night and Day"; Cole had many male lovers, while Linda tolerantly looked the other way — most of the time.
Even as "Night and Day" was released, many knew it to be partly fiction. "[The studios] were not as free as we are today to tell a frank story about a man's life, so they sanitized it," said Winkler. Porter, feeling he needed money, sold the rights to his life story to Warner Bros. in 1943. Though his homosexuality was "common knowledge" in Hollywood, according to Porter's biographer William McBrien, the studio didn't dare include that aspect of his life in the film.
"[Porter] hated the fact that they sanitized this version of his life. I think he probably would have been a lot happier with our version," said Winkler. He noted, with a smile evident even over the phone, that Porter — no matinee idol — would probably be happy to be remembered as tall and handsome, like Grant or Kline.
When they begin the beguine, it brings back the sound of music so tender,
It brings back a night of tropical splendor, it brings back a memory ever green ...
To live it again is past all endeavor, except when that tune clutches my heart,
And there we are, swearing to love forever, and promising never, never to part ...
— "Begin the Beguine," 1935
Winkler's film depicts Linda as, despite everything, the love of Cole's life, and the muse who inspired all his songs. Based on the biographies available about Porter — of which there are surprisingly few — this seems a questionable conclusion. (McBrien, for one, notes many examples of songs being written for a particular man: He reports that "In the Still of the Night," for example, was written for Porter's then-lover Ed Tauch.)
So perhaps, after all these years, this still isn't the definitive Porter story. But this is the version that Winkler and Cocks wanted to tell, and Cole and Linda aren't here to dictate otherwise. It's a high-concept vision (the story is told as a musical unfolding on a stage, as Cole looks back on his life) rather than a journalistic account, and certainly more honest than the 1946 version. And it's hardly the first film biography to selectively edit a life story. Recently, "A Beautiful Mind" and "The Hurricane" came under fire for just that.
Ultimately, film biography is at its best when it captures the essence of a person, catching its subject under a light that reveals a bit of his or her soul. And when telling the story of a writer, there's no better route than that writer's own words. ("Sylvia" and "Iris," recently, were hampered by not quoting the work of Plath and Murdoch.)
The great variety of Porter's songs reflected the many contradictions in his life: Some are jaunty ("Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love"), some melancholy ("After You, Who?" is a little-known masterpiece, in which the singer mourns the loss of a relationship that hasn't yet ended), some celebrate perfect romance ("Easy to Love"), some justify fleeting pleasure ("Just One of Those Things").
"De-Lovely," though perhaps not the perfect Cole Porter movie for the ages, finds its heartbeat in Porter's words. And if, through this film, those words find a way to a new generation — well, that would be de-lovely indeed.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com
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