“Dream Dancing” was written for the 1941 film, “You’ll Never Get Rich”, which starred Fred Astaire and the extraordinarily beautiful, Rita Hayworth. While Porter had been particularly looking forward to working on this assignment as Astaire was his favorite male star (Ethel Merman was his favorite female performer), he found himself amused but slightly disconcerted […]

“Kiss Me Kate” (1948), one of Porter’s most successful shows (1,077 performances) and his most fully integrated book musical, was packed full of gold standards; “Another Op’nin, Another Show”, WunderBar, “So in Love”, “Too Darn Hot”, “Always True to You in My Fashion”, “Brush up Your Shakespeare” and “Why Can’t You Behave”.  He described the […]

“The New Yorkers” (1930) featured several songs that are still sung today; “Where Have You Been?” the ever popular “Love for Sale”, “I Happen to Like New York” and “Let’s Fly Away”. The musical, starring Jimmy Durante, satirized New York (‘Park Avenue, the place where bad women walk good dogs’) ultra-jaded types, from high society […]

Introduced by Ethel Merman in the 1940, Broadway musical “Panama Hattie” (a takeoff on Panama Hat), you might not be surprised to learn that this is a drinking song as the singer wants to take to drinking after having been rejected in love. The NY Times of the day characterized “La Merman” as “a coarse-timbered […]

This is a follow-up post to my first effort of June 10, 2016. Written for the 1932 musical “Gay Divorce” (“Night & Day”, “How’s Your Romance” and “I’ve Got You on My Mind” also debuted in this show), this song was introduced to Broadway by Fred Astaire. “Gay Divorce” seems to have lived a charmed […]

Published in 1939, “Do I Love You?” was introduced in Porter’s bawdy, comedy “DuBarry Was a Lady” (the last musical to open on Broadway in the 1930’s), which starred Betty Grable, Bert Lahr and Ethel Merman. The show was described in a 1996 NY Times review “as sticking to an old Broadway formula: vaudeville shtick, […]

This song was featured in “Nymph Errant”, a “lost” Porter musical based on an identically titled, madcap novel which was first produced in London in 1933, starring Gertrude Lawrence. As musical theatre, it was considered to be “too English” for American audiences of the day and it did not appear on Broadway until 1982.   While […]

“Fifty Million Frenchmen” (1929), one of Cole Porter’s first successful, Broadway shows,  featured a number of songs that are still sung today; “You Do Something to Me”, “You’ve Got That Thing”, “You Don’t Know Paree”.  Many shows of the era rarely existed in a definitive edition. Songs left during tryouts and were replaced by others […]

“Wake Up and Dream” (1929) was a musical review that didn’t attract much critical acclaim its day although it did introduce two Porter songs that have remained popular; “What is This Thing Called Love” and “Looking at You”. While it has not been widely recorded, the lyrics of “Looking at You” are sufficiently charming that […]