In The Window - 41 Playlist
Birthday Program
spiritplantsradio.com
As a birthday treat for myself this weekend's show is all Cole Porter songs
01. Betty Carter - Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love (3:05)
02. George Melly & John Chilton's Feetwarmers - Anything
Goes (2:12)
03. Frank Sinatre - I Concentrate On You (3:04)
04. Mel Torme - Too Darn Hot (2:47)
05. Ella Fitzgerald - I've Got You Under My Skin (3:14)
06. Ella Fitzgerald - Miss Otis Regrets (3:56)
07. Cole Porter - You're The Top (3:26)
08. Cole Porter - Anything Goes (3:11)
09. Cole Porter - When Love Comes Your Way (1:42)
10. Cole Porter - I'm A Gigolo (2:26)
11. Cole Porter - Be Like The Bluebird (2:56)
12. Cole Porter - Two Little Babes In The Wood (3:17)
13. Billie Holiday - Love For Sale (2:58)
14. Fred Astaire - Night And Day (4:59)
15. Ann Miller - I Hate Men (3:55)
16. Hutch - Let's Do It (3:29)
17. Blossom Dearie - Give Him The OOH-LA-LA (2:40)
18. Alma Cogan - You Do Something To Me (2:31)
19. Gertrude Lawrence - The Physician (3:04)
The Painful Life of Cole Porter
After listening to Cole Porter's delightful songs, easily
some of the most sophisticated, witty, and melodious ever written for the
American theater, many assume that his life was a Champagne-drenched romp
through high society. This was, essentially, the view captured in Night and Day,
the 1946 Hollywood bio-epic starring Cary Grant as Porter.
However, a soon-to-be released film, De-Lovely, featuring
Kevin Kline as the composer-lyricist, proposes to explore well beyond such hazy
or sanitized versions of the Cole Porter story. Indeed, many aspects of Porter's
life simply could not be discussed in great detail during the 1940s and 1950s, such
as his 35-year marriage to socialite Linda Lee Thomas. Although the Porters
shared deep emotional ties and loyal friendship, throughout their marriage Cole
Porter preferred both long-term intimate relationships and brief physical
encounters with men.
More striking, however, was Porter's medical
history, which is scrupulously documented in a biography by William McBrien. After
years of equestrian sportsmanship, in October of 1937, the composer's legs were
crushed when his horse shied and rolled directly over them. The half-ton horse's
fall delivered compound fractures to both of Porter's thighbones and provided
the entryway for osteomyelitis, perhaps 1 of the most serious and difficult to
treat infections known. Even today, as every doctor knows all too well, infections
of the bones, which are slow to absorb even the most powerful of antibiotics, present
a daunting challenge to treatment.
Always an optimist with his chin pointing decidedly
northward, Porter told friends that in the hours immediately after his fateful
accident, as he waited for emergency medical help, he took out his notebook and
composed the lyrics for what became the hit song, “At Long Last Love”.
Over the next 2 decades, Porter underwent a series
of excruciating operations on the bones and nerves of his legs. Determined not
to let these injuries diminish his busy creative or social life, Porter
continued full throttle as evidenced by the scores of photographs during this
era depicting the formally attired composer being literally carried by his
valet to social events and Broadway openings, not to mention producing a
torrent of songs and musicals that remain standards of 20th century American
theater, jazz, film, and popular music.
At the same time he wrote many of his best-known, confectionary
musical masterpieces, Porter was undergoing a brutal medical regime that would
stop most in their tracks. For example, writing in 1945 to the choreographer
Nelson Barclift, Porter explained the details of his latest operation in which
the surgeon had to rebreak the bones of his legs, remove the jagged ends, splice
the Achilles' tendons, and remove 8 inches of his tibia bones to perform a bone
graft over the fractured areas. Most vexing, however, was continued evidence of
staphylococcal infection in the poorly healing bones and severe pain from scar
tissue pressing on the nerves that made tortuous even something as light as the
touch of a sheet.
Coincident to the opening of such Broadway hits as
Kiss Me Kate (1948), Can-Can (1953), Silk Stockings (1955), and the remake of
the 1939 motion picture, The Philadelphia Story, appropriately retitled High
Society and starring Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, and Bing Crosby in 1956, Porter's
physical condition plummeted. In 1958, after a valiant battle, the germs
inhabiting his bone marrow won and Porter's right leg was amputated at midthigh.
Although he was fitted for a prosthetic leg and underwent rigorous physical
therapy, the man whose witty lyrics and melodies epitomized hope and joy had
little to be hopeful about. Porter told many friends, after the amputation, “I
am only half a man now.”
In his last years, Porter confined his once
glamorous nights and days to his apartment in the Waldorf Towers. The horrible
pain he experienced in both of his severely damaged limbs led to an ever-increasing
reliance on alcohol and narcotic painkillers. Sadly, these problems, combined
with the surgical removal of part of his stomach for gastric ulcers, bouts of
pneumonia, bladder infections, kidney stones, and loneliness (his beloved Linda
died in 1954), all led to overwhelming depression and debilitation.
When Porter died at the age of 73 in 1964, few
people, save his closest friends and associates, had any idea of the painful
and tragic life he led for more than 25 years. Miraculously, through physical
anguish, drastic surgical procedures, and the grip of addiction, he could still
trip the light fantastic in his mind and reliably inspire the rest of us to do
so as well. Such stories remind patients and doctors alike that regardless of
the outcome, the human spirit remains the most formidable foe of illness.
Shamelessly stolen from :-
http://journal.medscape.com/
MedGenMed. 2004; 6(2): 47.
Published online 2004 June 30.
For a full bio on Cole :-
http://www.coleporter.org/bio.html
Back to normal next show - love Frogs
