Porter used "Miss Otis" as a punchline in the 1950s, opening the door to dismiss a presumptuous man from his home. Truman Capote, in his article published in the November 1975 issue of Esquire Magazine, relates a story Porter told him. In Porter's 1935 show Jubilee, an alternate lyric for the song "My Most Intimate Friend" goes "and Miss Otis thinks she'll be able to attend." Porter incorporated the tale of "Miss Otis Regrets" into Hi Diddle Diddle later that year. The "smart set" that attended these parties, known to use wit or wisecracks to punctuate anecdotes and gossip, began using references to "Miss Otis" as a punchline. This performance was so well received that the song evolved, "workshopped" with each subsequent cocktail party, many of which were at the Waldorf-Astoria suite of Elsa Maxwell, to whom Porter dedicated the song. In the previous 24 hours, Miss Otis was jilted and abandoned, located and killed her seducer, was arrested, jailed, and, about to be hanged by a mob, made a final, polite apology for being unable to keep her lunch appointment. Instead of a country girl, however, Miss Otis is a polite society lady.įriend and Yale classmate Monty Woolley jumped in to help Porter "sell it", pretending to be a butler who explains why Madam can't keep a lunch appointment. He retained the referential song’s minor-keyed blues melody and added his wry take on lyrical subject matter common in country music: the regret of abandonment after being deceitfully coerced into sexual submission. Hearing a cowboy's lament on the radio, Porter sat down at the piano and improvised a parody of the song. The song began during a party at the New York apartment of Porter's classmate from Yale, Leonard Hanna. It was composed by Cole Porter in 1934, and first performed by Douglas Byng in Hi Diddle Diddle, a revue that opened on October 3, 1934, at London's Savoy Theatre. " Miss Otis Regrets" is a song about the lynching of a society woman after she murders her unfaithful lover. 1934 song composed by Cole Porter "Miss Otis Regrets"
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