Cartier, designer and manufacturer
Adios, Argentina cigarette case owned by Cole Porter (1891–1964)
14-karat gold, ca. 1934
Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
Adios, Argentina cigarette case owned by Cole Porter (1891–1964)
“Another openin’, another show” … and another cigarette case. Cole Porter’s wife, Linda Lee Thomas, famously presented her songwriter husband with a cigarette case on the opening night of his musicals. His hit musical comedies include Anything Goes (1934) and Kiss Me, Kate (1948), and a number of his songs—among them “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and “Begin the Beguine”—are revered as American standards. Although there was never to be an opening for the ill-fated, unproduced movie musical Adios, Argentina, for which Porter wrote the classic song “Don’t Fence Me In,” the project was memorialized with this cigarette case given as a Christmas present in 1934. The case, designed and manufactured by Cartier, bears the inscription, “Adios, Argentina XMAS 1934” and an engraved caricature of Porter at his piano.
: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Art…
Currently on View at Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
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