Porter wrote of both painful sexual yearning and heartache in a mannered, sophisticated way. Little wonder that Fred Astaire, who could dance seduction with an equally mannered elegance, was Porter's favored interpreter.

Sponsor Message.

Porter's World of Style and Wit

For radio listeners and movie- and theater-goers in Depression- and Eisenhower-era America, Porter's name was synonymous with "fashionable" and "debonair," summoning images of art deco sleekness, tuxedoed elegance, and chilled martinis served on the Lido.

In his songs Porter fashioned a world of style, wit, and refinement that seemed to exist in inverse proportion to the reduction-to-least-common-denominator democratic emphases of the period's political demagoguery.

In contrast to the quotidian world, Porter's was a world composed of superlatives ("You're the Top"), a world as mysterious as the chords of "In the Still of the Night," and one as surprising and intoxicating as "a sip of sparkling Burgundy brew" ("You Go to My Head").

Through his music, as well as through his much photographed and reported-upon social life, he offered middle-class America the thrill of something so sophisticated as to be faintly scandalous and, so, all the more fascinating.

The "Otherness" that he represented was understood by the shrewd to include homosexuality.

Playwright and scenarist Leonard Spielglass recalls that even while homosexuality was disparaged among the population at large, Porter's behavior placed him in "the most exclusive club in New York. That's terribly important to realize--that it was a club into which . . . [the average person] couldn't get . . . . I mean, no ordinary certified public accountant could get in the Larry Hart, . . . [Noël Coward], George Cukor world. That was the world . . . . That was Cole Porter . . . . On the one hand you said, 'They were homosexual--oh, my, isn't that terrible!' On the other hand you said, 'My God, the other night I was at dinner with Cole Porter!'"

Porter's greatest achievement may have been to make straight, middle-class America secretly crave what it publicly despised.

The glbtq history of Los Angeles, the U.S.'s second largest metropolis, is replete with cultural, social, and political firsts.

A number of musical works in various genres have responded directly or indirectly to the AIDS crisis, generally focusing on expressions of grief, anger, or sympathy rather than on the personal and social consequences of the disease.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons have had tremendous influence on popular music, though some musical genres have been more receptive to a homosexual presence than others.

The musical has been a significant aspect of American gay male culture, manifesting itself both in diva worship and, more recently, in the presentation of openly gay characters and shows written by gay writers primarily for gay audiences.

Accomplished actor and singer John Barrowman has won plaudits as a musical theater star, as well as for his roles in film and television.

Accomplished playwright, actor, composer, and lyricist, Sir Noël Coward was also a singer and cabaret performer; he dominated the British stage between the world wars, then reoriented his career in the direction of America.

Responsible for many of the most popular and critically praised films of Hollywood's golden age, George Cukor became typed as a "woman's director," a phrase that may have also alluded to his homosexuality.

Actress and cabaret performer Marlene Dietrich scandalized society almost as much by wearing trousers in public as by her numerous love affairs with both men and women.

American pianist and singer Michael Feinstein has had a lifelong fascination with the popular music of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

The fragile persona and emotion-packed voice of actress and singer Judy Garland are powerfully linked to gay culture and identity; she appealed especially to gay men, but also to lesbians.

Among the top five motion picture actors from 1928 to 1933, William "Billy" Haines later became one of the most successful interior designers in the country.

Despite having written lyrics as witty as any sung on the Broadway stage before or since, Lorenz Hart is best remembered for his songs of unfulfilled desire and failed romance.

One of the most respected singers of the mid-twentieth century, Mabel Mercer was a most original stylist who in her later years became a beloved icon of gay New York.

American composer Ned Rorem is one of the most accomplished and prolific composers of art songs in the world, but his musical and literary endeavors extend far beyond this specialized field.

One of the most innovative talents of the musical theater in the second half of the twentieth century, Stephen Sondheim has only indirectly reflected his homosexuality in his work.

American actor Clifton Webb rescued the film sissy from secondary status, then moved on to a variety of comic and dramatic roles.

Composers and lyricists Robert Wright and George "Chet" Forrest, partners in life and art, specialized in adapting themes from classical music into engaging tunes for movie scores and stage musicals.