Cole Porter: The Definitive Biography

Biographies & Memoirs

McBrien, William

Arts & Literature

Alfred.A. Knopf

The definitive biography of Cole Porter – the urbane American composer of musical comedies and of over 1000 songs – which reveals the darker side of the star whose life and work epitomizes the romance of Café Society. 
Cole Porter – composer of Night and Day, Easy to Love and I’ve Got You Under My Skin – is familiar to three generations. His tunes conjure up romance, glamour and cultivated sensuality. 
William McBrien charts Porter’s life, beginning on a fruit farm in Indiana and moving on to Yale, Harvard and the Paris Conservatoire. After roaming bohemian Europe for a decade with his rich and beautiful wife, Porter made his name in the 1930s with hit shows like Anything Goes. A riding accident left him in constant pain, but he continued to write shows like Kiss Me Kate and Silk Stockings until his death in 1964. 
McBrien contrasts Porter’s refined, elegant music with the pain and passion of a life which mixed devotion to his wife with numerous homosexual love affairs. Having talked to friends and colleagues (including Bob Hope, Diana Vreeland, Stephen Sondheim) who have never spoken about him before, and researched Porter’s lyrics and correspondence, McBrien makes new links between his life and work, revealing how his own particular brand of hedonism was his protection against encroaching darkness.

Humor & Entertainment

Harpercollins Entertainment

Stevie: A Biography of Stevie Smith

Jack Barbera and William McBrien's delightful biography of Stevie Smith--one of the most fascinating and original English literary figures of this century--captures the essence of a remarkable woman and her impact on the literary scene. Drawing on a wealth of private and archival materials, they present the fullest and most convincing portrait yet of her life and work. They depict the unhappiness of her long childhood exile in the hospital with tuberculosis, her father's abandonment of the family, and her mother's early death. The authors also paint a rich portrait of her adult life, spent almost entirely in a genteel North London suburb and shared with a beloved aunt. Although Stevie gained international recognition with the publication of Novel on Yellow Paper in 1936, she continued to work for more than 30 years as a secretary in a publishing house. In the 1960s, she enjoyed a new wave of recognition as a performer, broadcaster, and literary reviewer, receiving in 1969 the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Replete with anecdotes from Stevie's friends and excerpts from her work, this biography offers new insights into the charm and paradox of a unique poet as well as into her writings and the world in which she moved.

Barbera, Jack

Oxford University Press

Stevie Smith, who died in 1971, remains one of the most fascinating and original English literary figures of this century. Her wit and eccentricity have become legend, her personal style was unique, her poems are among the oddest, funniest, and most moving in the language. Her life was so compelling that it became the subject of a play and a film, both starring Glenda Jackson. In this charming biography, Jack Barbera and William McBrien capture the essence of a remarkable woman and her impact on the literary scene. Drawing on a wealth of private and archival material, much of it previously unknown, they present the fullest and most convincing portrait yet of Stevie Smith's life and work. They depict the unhappiness of her long childhood exile in the hospital with tuberculosis, her father's abandonment of the family, and her mother's early death. And they paint a rich portrait of her adult life, which was spent almost entirely in a genteel North London suburb and shared with a beloved aunt. Although Stevie gained an international following in 1936 with the publication of Novel on Yellow Paper, she continued to work for more than 30 years as a secretary in a publishing house. Her writing later ceased to be fashionable but in the 1960s, she enjoyed a new wave of recognition as a performer, broadcaster, and literary reviewer, receiving in 1969 the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Replete with anecdotes from Stevie's friends and excerpts from her work, this biography offers new insights into the charm and paradox of a unique poet as well as into her writings and the world in which she moved.

Stevie Smith, who died in 1971, remains one of the most fascinating and original English literary figures of this century.  Her wit and eccentricity have become legend, her personal style was unique, her poems are among the oddest, funniest, and most moving in the language.  Her life was so compelling that it became the subject of a play and a film, both starring Glenda Jackson.      In this charming biography, Jack Barbera and William McBrien capture the essence of a remarkable woman and her impact on the literary scene.  Drawing on a wealth of private and archival material, much of it previously unknown, they present the fullest and most convincing portrait yet of Stevie Smith's life and work.  They depict the unhappiness of her long childhood exile in the hospital with tuberculosis, her father's abandonment of the family, and her mother's early death.  And they paint a rich portrait of her adult life, which was spent almost entirely in a genteel North London suburb and shared with a beloved aunt. Although Stevie gained an international following in 1936 with the publication of Novel on Yellow Paper, she continued to work for more than 30 years as a secretary in a publishing house.  Her writing later ceased to be fashionable but in the 1960s, she enjoyed a new wave of recognition as a performer, broadcaster, and literary reviewer, receiving in 1969 the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.      Replete with anecdotes from Stevie's friends and excerpts from her work, this biography offers new insights into the charm and paradox of a unique poet as well as into her writings and the world in which she moved.

Stevie: A biography of Stevie Smith

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Papermac

The most richly told biography we have had of one of the most important and beguiling composer/lyricists of the century--the incomparable Cole Porter, whose songs were the essence of wit and sophistication and whose life was marked by tragedy, courage, sorrow, and secrecy. McBrien reveals the private Porter: his privileged Indiana youth (he composed his first song at ten). He went East to boarding school and to Yale, where he wrote the football anthems "Hail to Yale" and "Bull Dog," and show after show in which many of his classmates appeared--among them, Archibald MacLeish, Gerald Murphy, Dean Acheson, and Averell Harriman. Then a brief, unhappy stint at Harvard Law School. Off to Paris at twenty-six, and in crisis joining the French Foreign Legion during the First World War. Two years later, Cole Porter had his first Broadway hit. William McBrien's biography, the result of ten years of work and bursting with stories and scenes of Porter's life, takes us beyond the patina of Porter's very public career, beyond the high and low aristocratic worlds of Venice (Porter with Elsa Maxwell in 1923 together put Venice back on the map as the place to be), beyond the opulent parties and costume balls on two continents he not only attended but threw himself--and made into an art form. McBrien takes us into Porter's seemingly conventional marriage to reveal his complicated emotional life--the lost, privileged man who had a wild, irrepressible talent to amuse but at first find couldn't find his voice; the man who married "the most beautiful woman in the world," the very social, very southern Linda Lee Thomas, but who preferred his own sex. He had long relationships as well as frequent dalliances with many men but for thirty-five years maintained a loving marriage to the woman he truly adored. We see the supremely gifted Porter who created twenty musicals on Broadway (Anything Goes, DuBarry Was a Lady, Gay Divorce, Born to Dance), writing for such stars as Ethel Merman, Fred Astaire, Mary Martin, Bert Lahr, and Bea Lilly; and who gave Hollywood Fifty Million Frenchmen, The Gay Divorcee, Rosalie, Broadway Melody of 1940, Night and Day, High Society, Silk Stockings, Can-Can, and Kiss Me, Kate. Porter was "the top" and lived at the top, but his life was catastrophically transformed after a near-fatal horseback-riding accident. The thirty-one operations during the next eighteen years brought on increasing pain, and the growing paralysis that darkened his life was never hinted at publicly nor in his work. Interweaving the life and the music, McBrien shows us a man whose genius as a composer flowered in deceptively simple melodies that were thought to be completely modern but today are considered ingenious, complicated, and steeped in the nineteenth-century tradition of lieder; a composer whose craft concealed complicated solutions to musical problems while it enchanted his audiences. And we come to understand how Porter's doubts and desires, longings and infatuations, insinuated their way into the heart of his incomparable words and music.

Cole Porter: A Biography

KNOPF

In his life and in his music, Cole Porter was the top—the pinnacle of wit and sophistication. From the 1910s through the ‘50s, from Yale pep rallies through the Broadway triumphs of Anything Goes and Kiss Me, Kate, he delighted audiences with a glittering torrent of song: “I Get a Kick Out of You.” “Night and Day,” “Love for Sale,” and “Just One of Those Things.” The bright surface of these gems—their catchy melodies and ingenious lyrics—made them instant pop hits. Their more subtle qualities and their musical and emotional depth have made them lasting standards, among the greatest glories of the American songbook. In Cole Porter, William McBrien has thoroughly captured the creator of these songs, whose life was one not only of wealth and privilege but also of tragedy, secrecy, and courage. A prodigal young man, Porter found his aesthetic and emotional anchor in a long, loving, if sexless marriage, while continuing to maintain many discreet affairs with men. In 1937, at the height of his success, he suffered a near-fatal riding accident; his last eighteen years were marked by pain, drugs, and repeated operations on his legs, years of physical agony but unstinting artistic achievement. Here is the book that Porter’s fans have long hoped for—a life that informs the great music and lyrics though illuminating glimpses of the hidden, complicated, private man.

Cole Porter

Vintage

Cole Porter. Una Biografia (Spanish Edition)

Alba.

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Books by McBrien, William

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McBrien, William. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Cole Porter: The Definitive Biography

Cole Porter: The Definitive Biography

Stevie: A Biography of Stevie Smith

Stevie: A Biography of Stevie Smith

Stevie: A biography of Stevie Smith

Cole Porter: A Biography

Cole Porter

Cole Porter. Una Biografia (Spanish Edition)