Word: porters
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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After the war, the Porters plunged headlong into Europe's melting pot of millionaires and marquises. They bought a $250,000 house in Paris, complete with kidskin chairs, zebra rugs and a room decorated in platinum leaf, but the house was often only a place from which mail was forwarded to the English countryside, Antibes, Venice, Florence, Siena, and the Duke of Alba's palaces in Seville and Madrid. In 1923, when Porter came into an inheritance from his grandfather, he began renting Venetian palaces...
...Palazzo Rezzonico, which the Porters leased from 1925 to 1929, was the scene of parties that would have done the Medici proud. At one affair, 50 gondoliers stood like statues along a winding stairway, 600 guests frolicked in fancy-dress costumes provided by Porter, and floodlights played on tightrope walkers overhead. Once Sergei Diaghilev brought his ballet company to dance Les Sylphides at a Porter garden party. Diaghilev insisted on a few props: fireworks, a 50-foot statue of Venus (which was hauled through the canals by two barges and set up in the garden), and 20,000 candles...
...Porter designed a galleggiante-an ornate danceboat seating 150-for the leading Venetian hotel. This pleasure dome plied the canals regularly, with French chef, wine cellar, Negro jazz band and $10 cover charge. As a small boy, Cole had fallen in love with Venice when he saw a backdrop painting of the Grand Canal in the Peru (Ind.) theater; he still thinks it is the best place to live...
...Yale crony, Monty Woolley, he decided to follow the trail of the brew as it grew lighter; they wound up in Pilsen. In 1935, Playwright Moss Hart got the idea of taking a world cruise and writing a show (Jubilee) on the way. He broached the idea to Porter at lunch. Recalls Hart: "Cole said: 'Let's go to Cook's.' By 3 o'clock, we had booked passage. By 5, we'd had our shots. Six days later we sailed...
...about the same time, when Porter had been solidly established in the theater for some five years, luscious Lucius Beebe, self-made expert on the art of splendiferous living, hailed a master of the art: "It is really the simple things of life which give pleasure to Mr. Porter-half-million-dollar strings of pearls, Isotta motor cars, cases of double bottles of Grand Chambertin '87, suites at Claridge's, brief trips aboard the Bremen, a little grouse shooting ... He is on all the first-night lists, Leon at L'Aperitif salutes him as 'Highness...