At The Movies

Cinematic Portrait

Producer/director Irwin Winkler's "De-Lovely"
is filled with great tunes from a non-Jewish composer
who aimed to write "Jewish music."

BILL CARROLL
Special to the Jewish News

I is a curious combination that could
only come out of Hollywood:
noted movie producer Irwin
Winkler, raised in an Orthodox Jewish
home on New York's Coney Island,
paired with famed composer/lyricist
Cole Porter, a rich Episcopalian born on
an Indiana farm who became one of the
greatest songwriters of all time.
Winkler, 73, who grew up enthralled
by the music of Jewish composers Irving
Berlin, George Gershwin and Jerome
Kern, picked Porter's life story for a cine-
matic portrait called De-Lovely that he
both produced and directed. The biopic
opens today in Detroit.
"De-Lovely is a musical film about
Porter — his life in public, his life in
secret and the great music he made from
both," said Winkler in an interview
from his Los Angeles office. "Much of it
is true, some of it is imagined, but all of
it is faithful to the spirit of Cole Porter.
Winkler's movies have amassed 12
Academy Awards from 45 nominations,
including a Best Picture Oscar for
1976's Rocky. He also produced Raging
Bulb The Right Stuffand Goodfellas, and
he's the only producer to have three of
his movies on the American Film

,,

Institute's list of the Top 100 Films of all
time.
Encouraged by his parents to "pursue
anything he wanted to do" — his father
was in the wholesale silk business —
Winkler earned a marketing degree from
New York University and landed a job
in the mailroom at the renowned
William Morris theatrical agency in
New York.
He was promoted to agent and man-
ager, but went off on his own to open
Chartoff and Winkler, an independent
firm that represented the young Jackie
Mason.
Attracted to Hollywood, Winkler pro-
duced the first of his 42 films, Double
Trouble with Elvis Presley, at MGM in
1967, and started directing there in
1989.
"As a youngster, I just loved to hear
Frank Sinatra sing Cole Porter songs,"
he reflected. "Then I dug into Porter's
life and found it to be intriguing — a
man who was married for 38 years and
gay, in a period when being gay was
considered extremely taboo. And all that
time he was writing unforgettable love
songs, both for his wife [Linda] and
[for] men.
Porter was three-times rich — from
an inheritance from his lumber baron
grandfather, his wife's money and the

"

`De-Lovely'

DAVID ELLIOTT
Copley News Service

C

ole Porter's best songs are imper-
ishably fine. But the world that
bred them is gone — it's now a
shimmering ghost of revivalism, like Art
Deco and "cafe society" bars.
The songs keep a good rhythm going
in the new Porter tribute, Irwin
Winkler's De-Lovely, and Kevin Kline is
darn terrific as Porter. He's urbane, of
course, living for style and pleasure
(while also working very hard), but has
a sensitive dignity and alert gallantry
even when scuttling his life by cheating
on his wife.
It was always a lamely kept secret that

7/16
2004

40

Porter was gay (or bi). You don't write
songs like "Anything Goes" and "Let's
Do It" by walking the straight and nar-
row, and though Porter didn't write
"Mad About the Boy' (Noel Coward
did), he nudged in close. He is most
"out" here when the tune "Love for
Sale" is set in a humidly gay Hollywood
club where Cole is the new caviar de la

nuit.

Paying the price for candor is Ashley
Judd as Linda, Porter's wife and proba-
bly best friend. The film strives to be
about their great, enduring love, but
Judd fights high odds. That they are
attracted to each other is undeniable,
and they make a great party couple, but
in early scenes, as Linda keeps smiling

Kevin Kline, center, and Ashley Judd, right, portray Cole and Linda Porter in "De-Lovely"

royalties from his many musicals and
1,000 songs. He and Linda traveled
extensively, most often to France and
California. Dressed in a tuxedo and par-
tying all night, Porter spent most nights
like it was New Year's Eve.
"He represents the best of the jazz age.
He led a very extravagant, theatrical life:
his mannerisms, his style of living, his
clothes. He lived like royalty," said
Winkler.
Actor Kevin Kline, who was raised
Catholic but is Jewish on his father's side
— he's raising his children with his
actress-wife Phoebe Cates with elements
of both religions (her father is Jewish;
her mother half-Jewish on her father's
side) — plays Porter, and actress Ashley
Judd portrays Linda.
The movie credits Linda with helping
to revive Porter's career after some flop

shows and dips in popularity, but biog-
raphers point out that his musical come-
backs in such shows as 1948's Kiss Me
Kate, arguably his finest musical, were
really brought about when he stuck to
writing "Jewish tunes."
Once, after critical reviews in the
Brooklyn Jewish Examiner newspaper,
Porter told Jewish composer Richard
Rodgers that, in order to have hits, "I'll
write Jewish tunes" — following in the
footsteps of successful Jewish composers
who shifted from major to minor keys
and employed a step-and-a-half interval.
An example: "Only you beneath the
moon and under the sun," from Porter's
"Night and Day," one of the most fre-
quently recorded songs of all time.
(Night and Day is also the name of the
only other Porter film biopic, released
in 1946 and starring Cary Grant.

and blithely accepting Cole's liaisons,
she's like an attached hostess for his pri-
vate life.
Linda urges Cole to leave Broadway
for Hollywood and MGM. Amused by
it all, he falls into boyish fleshpots, and
Linda suddenly seems to think: By Jove,
he's really gay! Later, Cole has his terri-
ble accident on a horse ride, living on
smashed legs as the bravely agonized
FDR of popular song, and
Linda returns as nursing
angel and hearth fire.
The film is stylized as an inside
take, with the very old (or ghostly?)
Porter looking back with a director
Uonathan Pryce) assembling a musical
on Cole's life. Kline pulls this off wittily,
despite makeup that often makes him
look like an antique Bob Hope. And
Kline's frail singing voice becomes unex-
pectedly moving, as he talk-sings great
tunes at the piano.

Most of those expand into tightly
staged, weakly choreographed but vivid
show numbers, and it's fun to see mod-
erns like Elvis Costello, Natalie Cole,
Diana Krall and Alanis Morissette
"doing" Porter. Caroline O'Connor is a
terrific Ethel Merman, belting
"Anything Goes," and Cole showing a
stage singer how to feel "Night and
Day" is a high point. Winkler may not
be a lyrical director, but he loves
the man, the music and the
whole to-do.
The scripter, former movie critic
Jay Cocks, might have avoided the scene
of Cole sneering at the 1946 Porter bio
Night and Day with Cary Grant (Porter
actually liked it, because it had 27
songs). The dud is too easy to mock,
and Cocks wrote a few kitsch scenes
(like Linda's maudlin exit) that would fit
snugly into that dull, sappy movie.
The songs don't much illustrate the

