Porter began studying music as a child, and by age 11 had published an operetta. As a young man he attended Worcester Academy and Yale University. At Yale he wrote "Yale Bulldog" and "Bingo Eli Yale," fight songs still in use today.

WWI interrupted his career, and after the war, Porter spent most of his time in Europe where he continued his musical studies.

By the end of the 1920s, Porter's career took off and he moved to New York where he wrote hit after hit with shows such as "Fifty Million Frenchmen," "The Gay Divorce," "Anything Goes," "Rosalie," "Kiss Me Kate," and many, many more. Cole Porter's lyrics "revel in dazzling word-play". Someone once asked him who wrote a song playing on the radio. He answered, "Rogers and Hammerstein,...if you can imagine it taking two men to write one song."

No one was safe from his wit, it seemed. He produced the following lyric for a character based on Elsa Maxwell, renowned hostess, describing her next party, "Twill be different in every way...Gershwin's promised not to play". This alluded to George Gershwin's tendency to regularly entertain late-night party goers with his latest creations.