- published: 02 May 2009
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Night and Day is a 1946 Technicolor Warner Bros. biographical film starring Cary Grant as American composer and songwriter Cole Porter. The movie was directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Arthur Schwartz, with Jack L. Warner as executive producer. The screenplay was written by Charles Hoffman, Leo Townsend and William Bowers.
The music score by Ray Heindorf and Max Steiner was nominated for an Academy Award. The film features several of the best-known Porter songs, including the title song, "Night and Day", "Begin the Beguine" and "My Heart Belongs to Daddy".
Alexis Smith plays Linda Lee Porter, Porter's wife of 35 years. Monty Woolley and Mary Martin appear as themselves, and the rest of the cast includes Jane Wyman, Eve Arden, Alan Hale, Dorothy Malone, Donald Woods, and Ginny Simms.
The film is a highly fictionalized and sanitized version of Cole Porter's life, leaving out amongst other things references to his homosexuality. A later film biography of Porter, the 2004 De-Lovely with Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd, dealt more frankly (though some said not enough) with his sexuality and includes a scene where Kline and Judd as Cole and Linda Lee watch Night and Day before its release and comment on its lack of realism and "happy ending".
Night and day, you are the one
Only you 'neath the moon or under the sun
Whether near to me or far
It's no matter, baby, where you are
I think of you day and night
Night and day, why is it so
That this longin' for you follows wherever I go ?
In the roarin' traffic's boom
Silence of my lonely room
I think of you day and night
Night and day, under the hide of me
There's an oh, such a hungry burning inside of me
And its torment won't be through
Till you let me spend life makin' love to you