[Cole] had been hopeful that they could secure Carol Channing for the Juno part in [Out of This World (1950)]. In fact, he made a trip to New York to audition the score for her and her then husband, a professional football player and part-time detective. All evening, the husband had sat staring intently at him as he played and sang.
The next day Miss Channing called to thank Cole. "I really must apologize for my husband," she said. "When we got home, he said to me, 'That wasn't Cole Porter.' I asked whatever did he mean and he said, 'That wasn't Cole Porter. I saw Night and Day. And that's not Cole Porter.'" —George Eells, The Life That Late He Led: A Biography of Cole Porter
friend of mine met a man who knew Cole Porter. My friend mentioned seeing
a photograph of the songwriter dressed to the nines and with a beautiful woman
on his arm. The image seemed to my friend the epitome of glamor—and
he said so to Porter's friend. "Cole with a woman," said the
man, "That must have been something!"
De-Lovely, alas, is all about Cole with a woman. The real Porter (1891-1964) was described by his friend and theatrical associate Arnold Saint Subber as "far queerer than anyone else I knew." Not so the Cole Porter of De-Lovely. Kevin Kline plays Porter not as a homosexual but as a heterosexual who goes to bed with men. De-Lovely is a conventional love story affirming middle-class marriage, despite Porter's homosexual dalliances. The film makes it clear that it is Linda whom Cole "really" loves: indeed, the film's Cole Porter even expresses a desire for children—not something one would expect from the Cole Porter of the biographies. (In the much reviled 1946 version of Porter's life, Night and Day, starring Cary Grant and Alexis Smith, Porter's real-life "fuck-buddy" Monte Woolley is allowed to say that he disapproves of all marriages with the exception of that of his mother and father. In Night and Day, however, just as in De-Lovely, Cole "really" loves Linda: he is not a homosexual but a terrible workaholic who doesn't give her enough attention.)
All the biographies agree that one of the major players in Cole Porter's life was his mother, whom he dubbed "Kate the Great." She is nowhere to be seen in De-Lovely. Nor is Peru, Indiana, where Porter was born; nor is Yale, where he went to school. His tyrannical grandfather who wanted him to be a lawyer is absent from the film, as are Porter's prejudices. ("Cole Porter didn't like colored people," remarked Orson Welles, who had worked with him.) His initial Broadway show, See America First—which bombed so badly that the composer claimed it drove him to join the French Foreign Legion—makes no appearance in Irwin Winkler's purportedly "more accurate" version of Porter's life. (The Foreign Legion story was largely a fiction, but Porter created many fictions—not least the fiction of "Cole Porter.") 1/
Ashley Judd's performance—which has been praised—is of little help. She is more like a transfigured American cheerleader than she is like the elegant, aristocratic Linda Porter, whom people found "old-fashioned, not modern at all." In Cole Porter: A Biography William McBrien writes of "the kind of elegantly Victorian manners Linda maintained. 'She didn't know how to open a door,' said a friend, 'she'd just stand and wait for someone else to do it for her.'" It was also remarked that, though Linda smoked, she never once lit the cigarette herself. Alexis Smith in Night and Day comes far closer to this conception than does Ashley Judd, who plays Linda as if she were essentially a take-charge, All-American girl. Indeed, the real Linda Porter was in fact at least eight years Cole Porter's senior; Ashley Judd is twenty-one years younger than Kevin Kline. Kline's Porter remarks more than once about how "beautiful" Linda is; never does he say anything of that sort about his male lovers, who appear only briefly and are never much in the way of competition for Judd.
De-Lovely attempts to turn Cole Porter's life into a musical comedy, and it is not absolutely dreadful—but it is hardly the kind of musical comedy Porter wrote. (It is more like Chicago than it is like Kiss Me, Kate.) Some—not all—of the production numbers are well done. Elvis Costello unfortunately looks like a fat Woody Allen as he sings "Let's Misbehave"—I can't imagine anyone wanting to—but I thought Kevin Kline and Kevin McNally did a better job on "Well, Did You Evah" than Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra did in High Society (1956). The worst moment in the film is probably when an abridged version of Porter's classic "Begin the Beguine" is presented as if it were the complete song. De-Lovely also demonstrates Ashley Judd's wisdom in avoiding situations in which she has to sing. Her "True Love" makes you long for the Grace Kelly / Bing Crosby version, also from High Society.
One could wish for a film which really was about Cole Porter a complex, problematical man who wrote some amazing and, to some degree, subversive songs. The various elements of Porter's life are fascinating, contradictory. His friend Elsa Maxwell described him as "the most paradoxical man ever to invade...show business." I don't think anyone has suggested—and certainly De-Lovely does not—that Porter's marriage was, at least in part, the result of his paradoxical, not of his sentimental nature: I can do anything; I'm a flamingly gay man—but I can have a wife too. That Linda played a maternal role in Porter's life has been suggested many times.
Cole Porter was certainly "some kind of man," as Orson Welles has Marlene Dietrich say at the end of Touch of Evil. But unfortunately—and despite Kevin Kline's nuanced, intelligent performance—he wasn't the kind of man we see in De-Lovely.
1/ Some of Night and Day's fabrications are deliberate versions of the truth—"acceptable" stories which substituted for the truth. In 1946 you certainly could not have a hero who was a homosexual; Night and Day's Cole Porter has little desire for women, but it is because he is a workaholic, not a homosexual. The film appeared just after World War II, and the filmmakers may well have feared that Porter—who had little military experience—would appear to be a draft-dodger: fatal for box office. So his Foreign Legion story is "embellished" into an experience of World War I; indeed, he is even wounded in the war. (We are going to have to get used to seeing him with a cane, so he is given a cane at that point in the film.) The failure of Porter's first show was a well- known story in 1946 and had to be included in some way. Night and Day discreetly indicates that the show "sunk" because of the sinking of the Lusitania! However: Indiana, Porter's mother, his tyrannical grandfather (considerably softened), and even a critical statement about marriage are allowed into Night and Day; not so De- Lovely. In terms of the "truth" of Porter's life, De-Lovely is probably no more accurate than is Night and Day- -and, as Porter remarked, Night and Day has Cary Grant.
COLEY
"How super to be married to a genius; too bad he's a fruit."
"Kevin Kline plays Porter not as a homosexual but as a
heterosexual who goes to bed with men."
—reviewers on De-Lovely
And so another film, another "life"
That "tells us all about you" and your wife.
She was the Statue of Liberty and you
The Libertine who lit her cigarette.
She forgave you when you would coquet
And worse (Bad Boy), and offered Mother Goo
(Poor Coley: did you fa' down and go boom?).
In the silence of your lonely room
You dream of whips and slaveys and of "things"
And Kate the Great who played the mother part.
They were not made of gossamer, your wings.
You were aflame, and burned us to your heart.
Cole / coal