Cole Porter (4*)

I first fell in love with Cole Porter's wit when I heard Barbra Streisand sing "You're the Top" to Ryan O'Neal in "What's Up Doc?".  Thanks to biographer William McBrien,  I know that none other than George Gershwin penned a delightfully dirty parody.
 

You're the top!

You're Miss Pinkham's tonic.

You're the top!

You're a high colonic.

You're the burning heat of a bridal suite in use, 

You're the breasts of Venus,

You're King Kong's penis,

You're self-abuse.

You're an arch

In the Rome collection.

You're the starch 

In a groom's erection.

I'm a eunuch who 

Has just been through

an op,

But if baby,

I'm the bottom

You're the top.

McBrien also settles the debate I've long had with a friend who insists that the double entendre of the song's title is deliberate.  I maintained that "top" and "bottom" are categories more recently adopted by practitioners of gay sexual politics, but that's hard to defend given the revelations of this well-researched book.  Despite his long-term marriage, and genuine affection for his rich wife, Porter, a midwestern snob and Yalie, was as gay as a goose with an appetite for hunky men at least as voracious as George Cukor's, his Hollywood peer.  Throughout Porter's long, storied career (at least two movies, one starring Cary Grant, which he hated, and the other Kevin Kline, produced long after his awful, lingering death in 1964) he repeatedly fought the cultural bluenoses.  McBrien helpfully quotes samples from Porter's overflowing treasure chest, including these new favorites from a "Kiss Me, Kate" showstopper:

With the wife of the British ambassida

Try a crack out of "Troilus and Cressida"

If she says she won't buy it or like it

Make her tike it, what's more As You Like It

If she says your behavior is heinous

Kick her right in the Coriolanus

Brush up your Shakespeare

And they'll all kow-tow

It's hard to imagine a lifestyle more glamorous (or tragic) as Porter's today.  A description of an early stay in Venice, where he entertained both royalty and celebrity with a "Negro jazz band" on a barge hired for the occasion rates a film all its own (Robbie Williams is old enough to star!) AND shames the yacht episode of "Succession."  People may have more money and bigger toys today, but nobody had as much fun as the well-traveled Porter.  Or worked as hard with such timeless results.