Cole Porter

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 01:34:21PM -0500, Fred Shapiro wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Dec 2002, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>
> > Perhaps because the "Mussolini" line wasn't an original line
> > and wasn't written by Cole Porter.  It was inserted by
> > P. G. Wodehouse (!) for a later production.
>
> My bad.  Looking at The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, I see that
> Mussolini was not in the original lyrics.  CLCP says that P. G. Wodehouse
> added lyrics for the London production; it doesn't indicate that the
> Mussolini line was among these (i.e., it doesn't tell what the Wodehouse
> additions were), but I'll take Jesse's word for it.

There was a famous (to me, at least) exchange a few years back, when
the N.Y. Times Magazine did a cover article about Mussolini, and the
writer commented that Mussolini's reputation was so bad at this point
that even the magisterial CLCP doesn't quote that line. Robert Kimball,
the editor, wrote in to explain why. I'm sure you can Nexis this up
for us....

Jesse Sheidlower
OED