Brilliant American lyricist Cole Porter lived a life right out of one of his own songs, and this extremely thorough new biography by English literature professor William McBrien does an admirable job of demonstrating how Porter’s manic life inspired the immortal lyrics.

Cole Porter was born on June 9, 1891 to a Katie, an heiress, and Sam, a middle class druggist in rural Peru, Indiana (pop. 1200) on the banks of the Wabash River. His maternal grandfather, J.O. Cole, made millions as a shopkeeper during the California goldruch, and through wise investments in oil-bearing West Virginia land. J.O., a "tyrant", intended his grandson to go to military college and take over the family business.

The musical teenager had other ideas. Backed up by his mother, he lost no time exchanging the dusty streets of Peru for the exclusive Worcester Academy in Massachusetts. J.O. disinherited his dandified grandson and it was Cole’s mother who later voluntarily gave her son about $2 million out of her own inheritances. Much later, Cole’s facility as a songwriter for Broadway and Hollywood, earned him a second fortune in royalties.

At Worcester (where he arrived with his own piano), Yale and Harvard, in fact for the rest of his life, Porter lived a life of uninterrupted privilege and luxury. At school he was immediately placed in housing reserved for sons of millionaires, and was doted on by professors. Summers were spent at tony seaside camps in Maine. In 1908, Cole was given a 2 month trip to France as a graduation present. Yale passed in a frenzy of theatricals, cheerleading, glee clubs and illicit overnight trips to Manhattan theatres. Porter entered Harvard law school in 1913 but left without a degree.

In 1917 the sophisticated young draftee headed into World War I with a specially constructed miniature piano on his back. Porter seems to have treated the war as a costume party. Friends remember seeing him strolling in Paris wearing the uniform of an aide-de-camp one day, that of a Zouave the next. After the Armistice, Porter stayed on in Paris. He met the beautiful socialite Linda Lee Thomas, "one of the Virginia Lees", and not just rich but "rich rich." Though Linda knew he was a homosexual, she married him in 1919 and they remained husband and wife with separate establishments until her death in 1954. It was a marriage blanc, but Linda seemed satisfied, having recently divorced her sexually sadistic first husband (her alimony was $1 million). She clearly enjoyed Cole’s predominantly gay social circle and there were rumours she was a lesbian. In 1920, they bought a Paris townhouse for $250,000. In 1927, they paid $3000 per month to rent the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice (the average American labourer made about $1500 per year at this time). But they lived separate lives after the 1940s.

For the rest of his days, Porter moved exclusively in cafe society, surrounded by the very rich and their parasites. He followed fashion from Venice to the south of France, Paris, New York and later Hollywood. He was the archetypal playboy of the western world, but he had a miserable love life. As early as 1925 he was infatuated with Ballets Russes dancer Boris Kochno, and there were many more love-objects after Kochno came to naught. Porter was always falling in love (as his songs attest), but he got very little love in return - and no wonder. As McBrien’s detailed psychological profile makes clear, Porter may have been amusing, socially glamorous, and influential, but he was not a lovable man. Appreciative of physical beauty, he was himself unbeautiful - short, skinny, with a toad-like face and bulging eyes. He drank like a fish and was, since 1920, syphilitic. Instead of compensating with kindness, he developed the psychological vices of an ugly, poxed man : selfishness, vanity, irresponsibility, bitchiness, and greed. For sex, he depended on male prostitutes and quickies with ambitious actors/singers/dancers. For long term companionship, he had a salaried valet.

The jealous gods took their revenge when, in 1937, Porter’s horse fell on him, crushing both legs. Infection caused permanent crippling, and for the next 27 years of his life Porter was never free from pain. His accident was not completely debilitating, however. McBrien reports drunken orgies with soldiers and sailors at Cole’s Long Island beach house in the late ‘30s and ‘40s, as well as trips to Harlem bordellos for "black studs" (paradoxically, Porter was a racist who shunned his old friend Monty Woolley when he took a black lover). At Camp Porter, as he called his Hollywood home, there were gay pool parties, from which women were rigorously excluded. Porter spent his final years redecorating his Waldorf Towers penthouse, changing his will to spite former friends, and breaking appliances so he could lure cute repairmen into his lair. In 1955 he had a partial gastrectomy, in 1963 he was severely burned while smoking in bed. He broke his hip in 1964 and died in 1965 of malnutrition and infections.