Cole Porter’s Traveling Gambling/Game Set de Cole Porter - n.d.

Offered here is Cole Porter’s own traveling gambling/game set in an alligator 15.25” x 11” traveling case with two latches, handle, and key. Inside is a wooden tray with compartments.

(1) Roulette Wheel, 7.75”-diameter, with a 23” x 11.5” cloth gaming mat (folded). Also, a four page, 4.5” x 6” booklet by E.S. Lowe Company, “How to Play Roulette,” © 1941. In “Drinking Song” written for but not used in the 1957 musical “Les Girls,” to be sung by Mitzi Gaynor: “Where you let us play roulette till we were absolutely broke. Then you generously gave us each a buck.”

(2) Complete set of five poker dice: dice which have a representations of a playing cards on each side: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, ten, and nine, used to form a poker hand. Each player rolls all five dice at once; the best hand wins. From Cole Porter’s 1936 musical, “Born to Dance,” a couplet from a song introduced by Eleanor Powell: “If you want to ring the bell not once, but twice, If you want to roll and roll those lucky dice…”

(3) Dice Shaker Cup, two-inch diameter, 2.25” high, lined inside with green felt. Outside matches alligator case.

(4) 29 assorted Chess pieces, dark grey and light tan, each with streaks of white and brown respectively: dark grey – 7 pawns, 1 knight, 3 castles, 2 bishops, 1 King, 1 Queen; light tan – 6 pawns, 2 knights, 2 castles, 2 bishops, 1 King, 1 Queen. Seemingly plastic, a few are tilted a bit probably due to being exposed to heat in storage.

(5) One backgammon checker, 1” x 0.75”; one 0.75” backgammon doubling cube; one die; Also, a 16 page, 4.5” x 6” booklet by E.S. Lowe Company, “Backgammon, ” © 1941. In a 1934 song, “Thank You So Much Missus Lowsborough-Goodby,” a jab at high society, Cole Porter wrote, “For the fortune I lost when you taught me backgammon … Thank you so much, Mrs. Lowsborough-Goodby, thank you, thank you so much.”

From the notarized provenance, in part, “I worked for Louis[e] Cole Schmitt one of the Heir’s to Cole Porter’s estate (Cole’s cousin) when I was in high school … we became very close friends. [Note: Cole Porter’s mother’s maiden name was Cole] … I was cleaning out one of her basements at her request … about a week before I was to leave for the Air Force. I came across a box buried under some fishing supplies. It contained Cole Porter’s engraved backgammon set, some poker chips, a traveling gambling/game set … and a box with game pieces in it. She told me it was one of the many boxes from Cole’s estate and she told me stories of how she and Cole would play on that backgammon set and gambling set and how they would bet pieces of candy as the winnings, many stories of how Cole and Montey [sic] Woolley would take her riding horses at the Cole family farm in Peru Indiana, and how Cole and Montey would act like teenagers gambling and drinking and acting a fool. I asked her what I should do with the items, and she told me that since I saved them from getting thrown out, they would be my going away present. She always said Cole would have really liked me a lot if he’d ever gotten to meet me … I transfer ownership and clear title of the traveling gambling/game set to John Reznikoff of University Archives…”

“I’m Unlucky at Gambling” was written by Cole Porter for his musical “Fifty Million Frenchmen” which opened on Broadway in 1929 and ran for 254 performances, closing in 1930. It was the first Broadway show directed by Monty Woolley, Cole Porter’s gambling buddy. When the show was being put together, Porter recalled young Evelyn Hoey singing in Paris and offered her the part of Mae de Vere, an American actress abroad. Miss Hoey, only 18-years-old, sang three songs including “I’m Unlucky at Gambling.” Six years later, on September 11, 1935, the body of the 24-year-old musical comedy actress was found with a bullet wound in her head in the bedroom of the country home of Henry H. Rogers 3d, 31-year-old grandson and namesake of one of the founders of Standard Oil. Rogers was held by police pending an investigation then was released. A neighbor who was in the house at the time of the shooting quoted Rogers as shouting, “Oh, my God, my sweetheart has killed herself. Give me a gun to kill myself, too. There’s nothing for me to live for any more.” In November 1935, Hoey’s singing instructor testified before a grand jury investigating her death, saying “she was in love with a New York theatrical man, but her romance did not end smoothly.” The grand jury ruled the death a suicide. Ironically, the last song Evelyn Hoey sang in Cole Porter’s “Fifty Million Frenchmen,” the show for which she would be best remembered, was “I’m Unlucky at Gambling” – it was subtitled “And I’m Unlucky In Love.”