Looking For a Good Book

Here’s what I knew about Cole Porter prior to reading this book: 1) the lyrics in all the songs in Anything Goes were often repeated by my fellow theatre students back in my college days, 2) Cole Porter was my theatre professor’s favorite composer & lyricist, 3) I thought he was only a Broadway artist whose work was then brought to the big screen. Shows you what I know!

I had recently read a book about Harold Arlen which was incredibly packed with information and had me in the mood for more musical theatre related reading. This was interesting, informative, but slightly disappointing. … But disappointing how?

I’ve listened to various versions of Anything Goes countless times. I love the Kiss Me Kate and High Society films and I’m familiar with Can-Can, Silk Stockings, Nymph Errant, and Out of This World. And with my old professor always talking about Cole Porter, in my mind, Porter was one of the big names of musical theatre, like Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, or Rodgers and Hart. To learn this was not really the case – that the musicals I’m aware of but which never had any traction – was eye-opening and disappointing.

But it was also a bit disappointing in format. There’s such a general overview that we don’t get a lot of meat anywhere specific. It’s not a biography (the title clearly indicates this is about the musicals of Porter), but we get some bio. So what is it about his musicals that we’re to learn from this? Going chronologically from his first musical (1916) to his last (1958) we get a little insight into each of his works. The most interesting bit of insight (maybe it’s common knowledge to many) is that he wasn’t good at writing about love (which, you know, is kind of important in musical theatre). “Porter has always been better at describing love’s effects than love itself” author Bernard F. Dick writes. And, “Porter rarely wrote songs celebrating the joys of love.” This is definitely interesting insight. But why was this? I’m not sure we really get an answer to this.

The other bit of interesting examination is when “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “Anything Goes” songs are examined.  Clearly his biggest hits we learn that “Anything Goes” is “mathematical in its construction” and that “I Get a Kick…” “represents Porter’s subtlest use of rhyme.” Both offered a bit of insight into Porter’s song construction which I at least found fascinating.

But in general, this book left me wanting. I needed just a little more of SOMEthing to make this feel like it had a focus.

Looking for a good book? The Musicals of Cole Porter by Bernard F. Dick is a very general examination of Cole Porter’s works.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

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The Musicals of Cole Porter

author: Bernard F. Dick

publisher: University Press of Mississippi

ISBN: 9781496856128

hardcover, 232 pages