Even though, with the exception of Kiss Me, Kate (1948) and Anything Goes (1934), few of Cole Porter's shows are now revived, the best of his songs live on. The Porter style--the impudence, the wit, that sense of being allowed a peek into a privileged world, and, in the best of his love songs, the intensity of the passion--is instantly recognizable. If, of all the Broadway masters, he is one of the few perceived to have been happy with "legs and laffs" shows--there is no Show Boat (1927), no Carousel (1945), no Most Happy Fella (1956) in the Porter catalogue--he was unquestionably the one who most constantly pushed the taboos, challenging what could or could not be said or sung.

He might have been able to push beyond those boundaries because, in an era when many songwriters were born into poverty on New York's Lower East Side, Porter had a wealthy background. Born...