Cole Porter

PORTER, Cole (1891-1964).

Autograph lyrics for the song Looking At You from Cole Porter’s 1929 London and Broadway musical Wake Up And Dream, c.1928, the 29 lines inscribed in pencil on the reverse of a 'Princess Hotel, Paris' telegram form, the lyrics representing Porter’s original spelling and syntax, which were fine-tuned for the final version.

Looking At You was first performed in the 1928 Parisian nightclub production the Revue des Ambassadeurs. ‘Eventually Clifton Webb and Dorothy Dickson joined the cast’ writes William McBrien, ‘and they inspired Porter to write one of his loveliest songs’. Writing for New Theatre Quarterly, James Ross Moore elaborates, ‘Porter had written this lilting song, so evocative of swinging on a summer’s day, for Webb to sing to Dorothy Dickson’, and credits the Revue des Ambassadeurs with signalling Porter’s ‘coming-of-age’. The song was so popular that Porter later included it in his 1929 London and Broadway musical Wake Up and Dream, where it was sung by Jessie Matthews. From the collection of Porter’s close friend Clifton Webb, one of the inspirations for the song. Webb worked primarily on Broadway until the mid-1940s when his Hollywood career took off with an Academy Award nominated performance in the 1944 noir Laura. McBrien, 119. Moore, in New Theatre Quarterly, May 1992, 113-122.

One page, 275 x 145 mm; in modern custom clothbound folder. Provenance: Clifton Webb (Hollywood actor and Porter’s close friend).