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[0:07] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the extraordinary story of how immigrants, Jews, queers, African Americans, and other outcasts invented the Broadway musical and how they changed America in the process.

[0:22] David Armstrong: I'm David Armstrong, and I call this episode Glitter and Be Gay, the LGBTQ people who invented Broadway.

[0:29] David Armstrong: From its earliest days, the Broadway musical has to a very large degree been a queer creation.

[0:35] David Armstrong: In fact, throughout all of its 120-year history, the musical theater has included LGBTQ plus people throughout its ranks, including in the most significant and important positions and at the highest levels of leadership.

[0:48] David Armstrong: And at least within the theater world, these queer artists have, to varying degrees been able to be out, accepted, and acknowledged.

[0:56] David Armstrong: The levels of this visibility, however, have ebbed and flowed over the decades as society's overall attitudes toward queerness have shifted back and forth between periods of tolerance and intolerance.

[1:08] David Armstrong: Several factors have contributed to this strong level of representation within the art form.

[1:12] David Armstrong: As I touched on in our second episode, show business as a profession has until very recently always existed on the fringes of social respectability.

[1:21] David Armstrong: Throughout most of world history, actors, singers, dancers, and other theater artists have been considered to be only one step away from vagabonds and prostitutes.

[1:30] David Armstrong: So it would make sense that a profession made up of outcasts would be more accepting of diversity and unconventional lifestyles.

[1:37] David Armstrong: Author Patrick McGillan points to a long history and tradition of show business being an open door for all types of humanity.

[1:45] David Armstrong: And as such, it seems that theater, dance, music, and the arts in general have always been a haven for queer people throughout history and throughout the world.

[1:53] David Armstrong: Now you could certainly make a case that the American non-musical theater has also had a similar level of queer dominance and influence.

[2:01] David Armstrong: And of course, many of the same artists and producers worked in both the musical and the non-musical worlds.

[2:07] David Armstrong: We, however, will keep our focus on the invention of the American musical and how LGBT people were at the forefront of this unique American invention.

[2:16] David Armstrong: I've compiled a list of 350 of the most significant creators and leaders of the Broadway musical from the very beginning right up through today, and well over 100 of them can be identified as queer.

[2:28] David Armstrong: And queer is an especially appropriate term for those artists who work during the first 50 years of the musical because many of them cannot be identified as exclusively gay or lesbian.

[2:39] David Armstrong: As you might expect, many were involved in both same-sex and traditional heterosexual relationships, either by necessity or inclination.

[2:47] David Armstrong: In his groundbreaking study of early gay life in New York City, author George Chauncey writes about the New York theater scene in the early 20th century.

[2:56] David Armstrong: And he states that while gay men did not enjoy total acceptance in the Broadway work environment, it did offer them more tolerance than most workplaces.

[3:04] David Armstrong: Some men could be openly gay among their co-workers, he says, and many others were at least unlikely to suffer serious retribution if their homosexuality were discovered.

[3:14] David Armstrong: And in an unpublished memoir written in the 1980s, the Hollywood set and costume designer George Hopkins looked back on his experiences in the turn of the century New York theater scene and remembered it as being saturated with gay culture.

[3:28] David Armstrong: But he added that homosexuality wasn't the casual topic of conversation that it is today.

[3:34] David Armstrong: It's a tricky prospect to determine the sexuality of people who lived between 50 to 100 years ago and left behind very little documentation of their sexual preferences or identities.

[3:45] David Armstrong: And we might ask ourselves, is it any of our business?

[3:48] David Armstrong: I do believe that from a cultural and historical perspective, it is absolutely worth discovering and sometimes even speculating on the sexuality of theater practitioners from this period because it can reveal the actual and immense contribution of queer artists to our world and culture.

[4:05] David Armstrong: In a positive way, this disrupts the conventional received vision of history.

[4:10] David Armstrong: And since all of the individuals are long gone, I don't see what harm can come from it.

[4:15] David Armstrong: Even if during their lifetimes they wished to keep their sexuality a secret, we now view it with no shame attached.

[4:21] David Armstrong: I want to begin our story with a man named Charles Frohman, who was without a doubt one of the leading theatrical producers during the period when the musical began to emerge.

[4:36] David Armstrong: He was born to a Jewish family in Sandusky, Ohio in 1860, and by the turn of the century, he was running a theatrical empire.

[4:44] David Armstrong: During his career, he produced 700 plays and musicals in both New York and London, including the American premieres of Peter Pan, The Importance of Being Earnest, and a musical we talked about in a previous episode, The Girl from Utah.

[4:44] David Armstrong: Frohman was at the center of a queer circle of leading theater artists that included the playwrights Oscar Wilde, Clyde Fitch, and Somerset Maughan, the superstar Maud Adams, and most significantly his producing and life partner Charles Dillingham.

[5:13] David Armstrong: Frohman and Dillingham were truly partners in every way.

[5:16] David Armstrong: They shared offices and town and country homes.

[5:19] David Armstrong: They frequently vacationed and traveled the world together.

[5:23] David Armstrong: Their colleagues in the theater considered them to be and treated them as the equivalent of a heterosexual married couple.

[5:30] David Armstrong: Their close connection continued even after Dillingham married a woman in 1913.

[5:35] David Armstrong: His wife may have been a lesbian, and the marriage was very likely a cover for both of them to mask their queerness from the outside world.

[5:42] David Armstrong: This kind of subterfuge was not unusual for the time, and certainly understandable since the significant risks of being outed publicly would have been very evident to both Frohman and Dillingham.

[5:54] David Armstrong: They were both close friends of Oscar Wilde, and Frohman was his American producer.

[5:59] David Armstrong: In fact, in 1895, Frohman went forward with producing the New York premiere of The Importance of Being Earnest, even as Oscar Wilde was being put on trial in London for, quote, gross indecency.

[6:11] David Armstrong: That you could be sent to prison for being queer would not have been in any way theoretical for Frohman and Dillingham.

[6:18] David Armstrong: Even so, they were remarkably visible even in the press as being unusually close friends and business partners.

[6:26] David Armstrong: In 1915, Frohman was about to sail to England on the ocean liner the Lusitania, and Dillingham accompanied him to the dock and promised to be there to meet him when he returned.

[6:36] David Armstrong: A few days later, Frohman would go down with the ship when it was sunk by German torpedoes, an event that sparked America's entry into the First World War.

[6:45] David Armstrong: Numerous letters of heartfelt condolence were sent to Dillingham from the Schubert brothers and other theatrical luminaries of the day that addressed him in the same way as they would any other widowed spouse.

[6:57] David Armstrong: Charles Dillingham would continue on a long and spectacular career, producing a string of hit shows, including musicals by Victor Herbert, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and include co-productions with Florence Ziegfeld.

[7:10] David Armstrong: Most importantly, he would nurture and launch the careers of many of the queer artists that would invent the musical.

[7:17] David Armstrong: One of those was the director and designer Hassard Short.

[7:21] David Armstrong: For over 30 years, he was one of the most sought-after and acclaimed stagers of musicals.

[7:26] David Armstrong: He was hailed as a genius of color and movement and called the master magician of Broadway.

[7:32] David Armstrong: He is credited with numerous innovations in stagecraft and lighting, including eliminating the traditional footlights and replacing them by mounting lights on the balcony rail, as is still standard practice today.

[7:44] David Armstrong: He was born in England and dropped out of school as a teenager to seek a life in the theater.

[7:49] David Armstrong: His first stage appearance was in London in 1895, and that led to many other roles.

[7:55] David Armstrong: Then in 1901, he was brought to New York by Charles Frohman, where he had a great deal of success as an actor, portraying what he called silly ass Englishman.

[8:04] David Armstrong: He did this so well that these kinds of roles became known as Hassard Short parts.

[8:10] David Armstrong: As a side job, he began directing special fundraising performances, and it was his staging of an event during the Actors Equity Association strike of 1919 that led to his first directing job on Broadway.

[8:23] David Armstrong: It went well and he was soon working with the best.

[8:27] David Armstrong: During the 1920s, he staged several of Irving Berlin's music box reviews, as well as Jerome Kern's musical Sonny and many others.

[8:35] David Armstrong: From the beginning of his career, he established complete directorial control over his productions.

[8:41] David Armstrong: His billing was usually staged and lighted by Hassard Short, but it was often much grander.

[8:47] David Armstrong: And on at least one occasion it read, entire production, including settings, costumes, and lighting, executed under the personal supervision of Mr. Short.

[8:56] David Armstrong: He was especially acclaimed for his staging of three spectacular musical reviews during the 1930s.

[9:02] David Armstrong: The first was Dietzon Schwartz's Three's a Crowd, featuring what critics acclaimed as a breathtaking staging of the song Body and Soul.

[9:10] David Armstrong: The second was The Bandwagon starring Fred and Adele Astaire, where he employed stage elevators and turntables to new and striking effect.

[9:19] David Armstrong: The third was Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer, which included what were called masterpieces of lighting and color control, especially during the song Easter Parade.

[9:30] David Armstrong: His productions were lavish and spectacular, and he designed and executed them with such impeccable taste and attention to detail that they made Ziegfeld's extravaganzas seem old-fashioned and garish by comparison.

[9:43] David Armstrong: Short often traveled to Europe with his collaborators Moss Hart and Irving Berlin, along with Berlin's family.

[9:49] David Armstrong: They went in search of inspiration and new ideas for their productions, and their comings and goings were reported by the newspapers of the day in their theater and gossip columns.

[9:59] David Armstrong: But what the press declined to mention, even though they most certainly knew the full story, was that Short always traveled with his companion, Billy Ladd, a slender, bleach blonde former chorus boy.

[10:10] David Armstrong: Mrs. Irving Berlin would later say this about Hassard and Billy's relationship.

[10:15] David Armstrong: I disapproved.

[10:17] David Armstrong: But as time went by, I couldn't help noticing that theirs was the happiest marriage of the group.

[10:23] David Armstrong: Mine accepted, of course.

[10:25] David Armstrong: Hassard Short was likely the model for Julian Marsh, the openly gay British Broadway director character in Bradford Rope's 1932 novel 42nd Street, from which the 1933 film as well as the 1980 stage musical would be adapted.

[10:41] David Armstrong: The character's queerness is made very clear in the novel, but it was reduced to only a possible subtext in the movie, and he was rewritten as decidedly heterosexual in the stage version.

[10:51] David Armstrong: The name of the character, however, Julian Marsh was no doubt an echo of Julian Mitchell, the white straight Anglo-Saxon Protestant director who was another early directing genius.

[11:02] David Armstrong: Hassard Short and Julian Mitchell were the first to demonstrate what the impact of dynamic musical staging could be, and how that staging could sometimes be of equal importance to the text and music in creating the overall effect of a show.

[11:15] David Armstrong: They would forge a path that a long line of dynamic and mostly queer directors would follow right up to this day.

[11:22] David Armstrong: One of the biggest and highest paid stars of the teens on a par with Jolson, Cantor, and Fanny Bryce was the female impersonator Julian Eltinge.

[11:32] David Armstrong: He's almost entirely forgotten today, but he was so famous at the time that he even had a theater named after him.

[11:38] David Armstrong: Eltinge's gender illusions were by all reports staggeringly good.

[11:42] David Armstrong: There was no camp or comment about his performance.

[11:45] David Armstrong: Instead, he could entirely convince an audience that he was actually a woman.

[11:50] David Armstrong: Between 1905 and 1915, he starred in five musicals that were created especially for him by top talents such as George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, P. G. Woodhouse, and Jerome Kern.

[12:02] David Armstrong: And the shows often had lyrics written by Eltinge himself.

[12:05] David Armstrong: This is actor David Sabella recreating a Julian Eltinge performance.

[12:21] David Sabella: What petticoats conceal.

[12:23] David Sabella: And if there's a slight defection, you will never stand inspection when you go down.

[12:30] David Armstrong: The plots closely followed the Charlie's Ant model and involved situations that required his leading male hero character to dress as a woman in order to solve some plot complication and save the day.

[12:41] David Armstrong: His biggest fans were women who apparently worshipped him.

[12:45] David Armstrong: At the height of his fame, he published Julian Eltinge's magazine of beauty hints and tips and marketed his own line of women's cosmetics, corsets, and shoes.

[12:54] David Armstrong: Offstage, however, he made every effort to quash any suggestion of a possible queer identity.

[13:00] David Armstrong: He released publicity photos of himself boxing, hunting, and riding horses, as well as stories about him winning bar fights.

[13:07] David Armstrong: He eventually left Broadway for Hollywood, and between 1914 and 1930, he starred in 12 silent films.

[13:14] David Armstrong: In the 1930s, however, his career went into a fast decline, and after his death in 1941, he faded into undeserved obscurity.

[13:23] David Armstrong: The Eltinge Theater is still there, by the way.

[13:25] David Armstrong: When they renovated 42nd Street in 1998, the entire theater was moved on rails down to the other end of the block, and today it's the Empire AMC Movie Theater.

[13:35] David Armstrong: It still features a painted ceiling mural of the three muses of Greek myth.

[13:40] David Armstrong: Legend has it that all three of them are images of Julian Eltinge in different costumes and poses.

[13:46] David Armstrong: It was Charles Dillingham that introduced Broadway's second major drag star in a lavish musical review that he co-produced with Ziegfeld.

[13:55] David Armstrong: The show was called Miss 1917, and it included songs by Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, McCarthy and Tierney, and Bob Cole and Jay Rosamond Johnson.

[14:05] David Armstrong: And the headliner of the show was a man named Bert Savoy.

[14:08] David Armstrong: Already a big star in vaudeville, Savoy performed a double act with his comedy partner and life partner, Jay Brennan.

[14:16] David Armstrong: Bert Savoy was born Everett Mackenzie, and he reportedly began his drag career performing a Hoochie Coochie dance in a carnival sideshow in Boston, and then perfected that routine in the rough saloons and dance halls of Alaska during the Gold Rush.

[14:31] David Armstrong: His career, however, really took off in 1915 when he teamed up with Jay Brennan.

[14:36] David Armstrong: Their racy dialogue and campy songs turned them into a vaudeville sensation.

[14:41] David Armstrong: Savoy was one of the first drag performers to develop an overtly queer persona, and his style has been passed down to the drag race stars of today.

[14:50] David Armstrong: His routines included signature catchphrases such as, oh, you don't know the half of it, Dearie, which probably inspired this Gershwin song.

[14:59] David Armstrong: I've got the you don't know the half of it, dear blue.

[15:05] David Armstrong: He was pure camp on and off the stage.

[15:09] David Armstrong: Oh, how I wish you'd trumpet anchor and y'all.

[15:16] David Armstrong: After Miss 1917, Savoy and Brennan starred in three more Broadway shows: the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, the Greenwich Village Follies of 1920, and the Greenwich Village Follies of 1922.

[15:29] David Armstrong: I've got the you don't know the half of it, the story of Bert Savoy's dramatic death is legendary and by all accounts absolutely true.

[15:42] David Armstrong: On June 26, 1923, at the height of his Broadway stardom, Savoy and his half-brother and two friends were walking along the shore at Long Beach, watching an incoming storm when a loud thunderclap caused Savoy to shout out, Ain't Miss God cutting up something awful?

[16:00] David Armstrong: Or something along those lines, and he was immediately struck by a bolt of lightning and died.

[16:06] David Armstrong: For a while after that, Brennan continued to perform the act quite successfully with another partner who copied all of Savoy's mannerisms and catchphrases.

[16:15] David Armstrong: Brennan later became a screenwriter in Hollywood and died in 1961 at the age of 78.

[16:22] David Armstrong: Film superstar Mae West would later confess that she had based much of her distinctive persona comedy style and mannerisms on Bert Savoy.

[16:31] David Armstrong: Well, when I'm good, I'm very good.

[16:33] David Armstrong: But when I'm bad, I'm better.

[16:36] David Armstrong: Because of his untimely death, Savoy just missed what is now called the Pansy Craze of the 1920s and early 30s, which he had probably helped to inspire.

[16:45] David Armstrong: The Pansy Craze was a flourishing of overtly queer performers and overtly queer songs and comedy material that created a sensation in nightclubs and vaudeville shows during the era and even had some impact on Broadway.

[17:00] David Armstrong: During its height, Eddie Cantor interpolated a song called Masculine Women, Feminine Men, into his hit Broadway show, Kid Boots.

[17:09] David Armstrong: The song was recorded by a number of people, but unfortunately not Eddie Cantor.

[17:13] David Armstrong: The singer here is Irving Coffin.

[17:20] David Armstrong: It's time to tell them apart today.

[17:23] David Armstrong: And fame.

[17:33] David Armstrong: You go in to give your girl a piss in the hall.

[17:37] David Armstrong: But instead you find your kissing her brother Paul in the line.

[17:42] David Armstrong: The song was written by Broadway songwriters James Monaco and Edgar Leslie.

[17:47] David Armstrong: The masculine women of eminent men.

[17:51] David Armstrong: During the 1920s, queer culture flourished in New York, Berlin, Paris, and other major cities around the world.

[17:58] David Armstrong: However, even during this period of relative openness, some of them would struggle with accepting their sexuality, and others would revel in it.

[18:06] David Armstrong: This brings us to one of a handful of Broadway songwriters whose name would become world famous, and whose songs and persona are so inextricably linked that they became brands unto themselves.

[18:18] David Armstrong: Even today, the name Cole Porter conjures up an Art Deco vision of glamour, wit, and sophistication.

[18:25] David Armstrong: He was also one of the few that wrote both words and music for his songs, and always with brilliant craftsmanship.

[18:31] David Armstrong: Stephen Sondheim contends that technically, in both music and lyrics, no one's better than Porter, and few are his equals.

[18:38] David Armstrong: All in all, he wrote 28 Broadway musicals and more than 1,000 songs, including more than 50 enduring hits that remain some of the funniest, most romantic, and most beloved songs of all time.

[18:50] David Armstrong: Cole Porter was born in 1891 in the sleepy little town of Peru, Indiana.

[18:56] David Armstrong: His grandfather, J. O. Cole, was the richest man in Indiana, having amassed a fortune during the gold rush, and he had Cole's life all mapped out for him.

[19:06] David Armstrong: He would go east to study law and then return to join the family business.

[19:10] David Armstrong: However, Cole's equally strong-willed mother, Kate, had other ideas.

[19:14] David Armstrong: She felt that Cole had artistic gifts, and she began his musical training early.

[19:19] David Armstrong: Violin at six, piano at eight, and with her help, Little Cole even wrote an operetta at the age of 10.

[19:26] David Armstrong: Cole's father was an unassertive man who played a lesser role in Cole's upbringing, although he was an amateur poet, which may have had some influence.

[19:34] David Armstrong: When he was 14 years old, Cole was sent east to Worcester Academy in Massachusetts.

[19:39] David Armstrong: He brought his piano with him and found that his skill at entertaining made him quite popular.

[19:44] David Armstrong: In 1909, he entered Yale University, where he majored in English, minored in music, and studied French.

[19:51] David Armstrong: He was an early member of the famous singing group, The Wiffenpoofs, and president of the Glee Club.

[19:55] David Armstrong: While at Yale, he wrote over 300 songs, including the football fight songs Bulldog and Bingo Eli Yale, which are still sung today.

[20:04] David Armstrong: He also composed scores for several musical comedies that were mounted by the Dramatic Society.

[20:10] David Armstrong: He quickly fell in with a group of upperclassmen who were all wealthy, homosexual, and devoted to art, theater, music, and wit, including his lifelong friend Monty Woolley.

[20:20] David Armstrong: As described in the book Staging Desire, Queer Readings of American Theater History, the homosexual scene at Yale in the teens was typical of the situation in wealthy American circles.

[20:32] David Armstrong: Faculty, staff, and students knew that there were homosexuals on campus, but they were young men from some of the country's wealthiest and most influential families, and so were fairly immune to criticism or harassment.

[20:45] David Armstrong: After graduating from Yale, he enrolled in Harvard Law School, as he had promised his grandfather, but he soon switched to music.

[20:52] David Armstrong: In 1915, two songs that he had written for Yale shows were placed in the Broadway musicals Hands Up and Misinformation.

[21:00] David Armstrong: And the following year, he wrote the complete score for a patriotic comic operetta called See America First.

[21:07] David Armstrong: Unfortunately, this show was a quick flop and closed after only 15 performances.

[21:13] David Armstrong: Despondent, he spent the next year loafing around New York City and then went to Paris during World War I, where he worked for a war relief organization.

[21:22] David Armstrong: But his later claim that he had joined the French Foreign Legion is probably an exaggeration.

[21:27] David Armstrong: While in Paris, he met Linda Lee Thomas, a wealthy Kentucky-born divorcee, eight years or 14 years his senior, depending which book she references.

[21:37] David Armstrong: In her youth, she was known as the most beautiful woman in America.

[21:41] David Armstrong: They married in 1919.

[21:42] David Armstrong: Linda knew all about Cole's sexual orientation, but having been brutally abused by her first husband, she was not interested in a sexual relationship.

[21:51] David Armstrong: Cole and Linda's partnership was mutually advantageous. They shared the same interests, and the marriage gave Linda continued social status and Cole a glamorous heterosexual facade. But by all reports, there was real love and affection between them, and they remained married until Linda's death in 1954. In 1923, Cole's grandfather died, and as promised, because he had not become a lawyer, he left Cole out of the will. Cole's mother inherited more than four million dollars, equivalent to 30 million today, and she promptly gave half of it to Cole. Cole and Linda split their time between Paris and Venice, where they lived in a succession of rented palazzos and threw legendary parties. The Porters were riding high, and Cole seemed to be a man who had everything.

But something was missing. As disastrous as See America First had been, and as fabulous as his current lifestyle was, he still had a feeling that his true identity was as a songwriter. So amid all the parties, traveling, and fabulous lifestyle, Cole continued to study and write. He studied orchestration and counterpoint at the Skola Cantorium and was influenced by the music of Stravinsky and Ravel. He began to introduce new, somewhat avant-garde sounds into his songs, leaving behind the rather ordinary harmony and melody of his previous songs. In later life, he would dismiss this compositional shift with the glib words, "I realized that to become a successful songwriter, I was going to have to write Jewish tunes."

While this is ridiculously simplistic, it can't be denied that Porter's first hit songs often featured long, sinuous melodies and startling harmonic shifts between major and minor tonalities. Porter was, within the limits of the popular song, a musical modernist, and that surely can be traced back to his years in Paris. He reintroduced himself to Broadway in 1928 with a musical called, appropriately, Paris. The songs of the show included "Let's Misbehave" and the sexually provocative smash hit, "Let's Do It."

[24:04] David Armstrong: Even educated fleas do it. Let's do it. Let's fall in love. He makes us think he's referring to sex, building on this idea throughout the chorus, and then turns it into love at the last possible second. And Porter continues to brilliantly work this delightful deceit over five choruses of the song. In the book Staging Desire, author Mark Furnow contends that this song stands as an emblem for Porter's entire way of living. He says that Porter revels in the raw, erotic power that drives life, and then slaps a token mask of convention over this truth before showing it to the world. In many of his early hit songs, Porter refers to love as either an "it" or a "thing." "Let's do it." "What is this thing called love?"

"You do something to me." "You've got that thing." And he even uses both in "It was just one of those things." And I think he knew exactly what he was doing. All of those "it's" and "things" can be interpreted as either innocent or naughty, either male or female, and therefore either gay or straight. Though he was certainly not out in any contemporary sense, he can be seen as hiding in plain sight, often employing coded language and gay slang in his songs that would be recognized by those in the know.

[25:43] David Armstrong: "Let's do it." "Appetizing young love for sale." "Love that's fresh, still unspoiled." "Love that's only slightly soiled." The song was considered by many to be far too risqué, and only instrumental versions were allowed to be broadcast on the radio. Until rather recently, Broadway musicals were created almost exclusively for adult audiences. They were expected to be racy and sophisticated, and Cole Porter made them even more so. Cole would have great success in Hollywood as well as on Broadway, and he loved the Hollywood lifestyle, especially its wild underground gay scene, which he jumped into with great enthusiasm. Linda, however, grew more and more concerned that Cole's homosexuality would become public and ruin both their marriage and his career, and this led to one of the few rifts in their relationship.

Although much has been written about Porter's considerable appetite for casual sexual encounters with soldiers, sailors, and rent boys of various kinds, he also had a number of very loving, passionate, and often tortured long-term relationships. Friend Ray Kelly, whose children still receive half the royalty income from Porter's shows and songs.

[28:07] David Armstrong: "I tried so not to give in." "I've got you under my skin." Porter's songs often contain hidden and not so hidden sexual and queer overtones, including the lyrics to "Too Darn Hot" from Kiss Me, Kate. "It's too darn hot." "I'd like to fool with my baby tonight." But when the thermometer goes way up, and whoever is sizzling hot, Mr. Adam for his madam is not. This landmark study of human sexuality sent shockwaves through mid-century America and eventually transformed society's view of homosexuality. Cole clearly knew what was in the report, and he knew that referencing it would be provocative. Stephen Sondheim thinks that Porter is the easiest of the major lyricists to imitate because his style is so extreme.

"It was just one of those things." "Just one of those crazy things." The list songs are such a tasty stew of pop cultural references. The risqué songs are so heavy with double entendre. The love songs and out-of-love songs are so outrageously extravagant that they verge on and often cross over into camp. "A trip to the moon on Gossamer Wings." "Just one of those things." If we but Sondheim believes that the unique thing about Porter is that even at his most camp, the lyrics are genuinely felt. When he uses a line like, "A trip to the moon on Gossamer Wings," we believe it because he believes it.

[30:38] David Armstrong: "So goodbye, dear, and amen." "Here's hoping we meet now and then." "It was great fun, but it was just one of those things." "Just one of those bells that now is in ring." He and Larry Hart are the two acknowledged gay lyricists in the American Pantheon, but Hart's style conceals his homosexuality. Mark Furnow sums it up like this. Cole Porter reveled in the delightful irony of pretending to satisfy cultural expectations of gender and sexuality while at the same time doing just what he felt like doing behind a shield of what was called good taste and discretion. And I would add that this is very typical and representative of the disruptive, subversive, subliminal, and ultimately liberating nature of the Broadway musical.

Broadway Nation is produced and written by me, David Armstrong. This episode was co-written by Albert Evans. And I'd also like to thank Billie Wildrick for her voice acting contributions and David Sabella for his recreation of Julian Eltinge. You can hear other Julian Eltinge songs on David Sabella's YouTube page. Finally, I want to thank everyone at KVSH 101.9, The Voice of Vashon Island, Washington, and especially everyone at the Broadway Podcast Network.