7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7Porter was the grandson of a millionaire speculator,
and the moderately affluent circumstances of his life
probably contributed to the poise and urbanity of his
musical style. He began violin study at the age of six and
piano at eight; he composed an operetta in the style of
Gilbert and Sullivan at 10 and saw his first composition, a
waltz, published a year later. As a student at Yale University
(B.A., 1913), he composed about 300 songs, including “Eli,”
“Bulldog,” and “Bingo Eli Yale,” and wrote college shows;
later he studied at Harvard Law School (1914) and Harvard
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in music (1915–16).
He made his Broadway debut with the musical comedy
See America First (1916), which, however, closed after 15
performances.
In 1917, after the United States had entered World War
I, Porter went to France. (He was not, as later reported, in
French military service.) He became an itinerant playboy
in Europe and, though rather openly homosexual, married
a wealthy, older American divorcée, Linda Lee Thomas,
on Dec. 18, 1919; they spent the next two decades in lively
partying and social traveling, sometimes together, some-
times apart.
In 1928 Porter composed several songs for the Broadway
success Paris, which led to a string of hit musical comedies,
including Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929), Gay Divorcée
(1932), Anything Goes (1934), Red, Hot and Blue (1934), Jubilee
(1935), Dubarry Was a Lady (1939), Panama Hattie (1940),
Kiss Me, Kate (1948, based on William Shakespeare’s The
Taming of the Shrew), Can-Can (1953), and Silk Stockings
(1955). He concurrently worked on a number of motion
pictures. Over the years he wrote such glittering songs
and lyrics as “Night and Day,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,”
“Begin the Beguine,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “In
the Still of the Night,” “Just One of Those Things,” “Love
for Sale,” “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” “Too Darn Hot,”