Rory says that to Richard after he tells her that Cole Porter wrote the Yale Fight Song. Actually, he had been writing songs since he was 11 but he had only had one published before he wrote Bingo, Eli Yale. Then again, he had just turned 19 and was starting his sophomore year at Yale. Eventually he wrote 800 songs, most of them for hit Broadway musicals. You can Wiki his biography and bibliography. I'm not going to repeat all that here. What I'm going to do is tell you why he is the greatest writer of English-language songs ever.

There are very few people who wrote both the words and music for songs in "The Great American Songbook." George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser and Cole Porter. That's pretty much it. Steven Sondheim has some lyrics on the list but they are from shows for which he did not write the music.

Cohan's song are now all dated. Give My Regards to Broadway and I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy are around in commercials; You're a Grand Old Flag gets a work out on the Fourth of July. That's about it.

Irving Berlin wrote the songs for three Astaire/Rogers films, the songs for Annie Get Your Gun, and White Christmas, Easter Parade and God Bless America. Off the top of your head, hum a Berlin song that isn't on that list. When was the last time a Berlin show, other than Annie Get Your Gun, was revived or even performed as a high school play? If you guessed "never", that's pretty close. Berlin, for the most part wrote disposable Tin-Pan-Alley songs.

Frank Loesser and Steven Sondheim wrote the lyrics to some very famous songs, but not the music. On Broadway Loesser was a one hit wonder with Guys and Dolls (generally regarded as the best Broadway musical of all time, but still..). As much as I love Company and Follies, hum me a Sondheim song that isn't Send in the Clowns. Sondheim's music is there to carry the lyric but isn't often melodic or even memorable.

So that brings us to Cole Porter who between just Kiss Me Kate, and Anything Goes, is probably being performed on stage somewhere every day of the year. The poor man suffered the two worst bio-pix ever made, but at least there was enough interest in him to make them. He had range, emotionally (from Night and Day to You're the Top) and subject matter (I Love Paris to Don't Fence Me In). And he could double entendre at least as well as Larry Hart. This is one of the least blue verses from In The Morning, No (it's a duet, female in italics):

"Are you fond of swimming dear?
Kindly tell me, if so.
Yes, I'm found of swimming, dear,
But in the morning, no.
Can you do the crawl, my dear?
Kindly tell me, if so.
I can do the crawl, my dear,
But in the morning, no.
When the sun through the blind
Starts to burn my poor behind
That's the time when I am in low.
Do you use the breast stroke, dear?
Kindly tell me, if so.
Yes, I use the breast stroke, dear,
But in the morning, no, no--no, no,
No, no, no, no, no!"

In conclusion, I'd ask you to remember this advice Cole gave us in1941, "Don't inquire of Georgie Raft, why his cow has never calfed. Georgie's bull is beautiful, but he gay."