Gloria Vanderbilt, New York artist, model, heiress and
socialite, dies at 95
Son Anderson Cooper says she lived life ‘on her own terms’
Obituary: Gloria Vanderbilt, 1924-2019
Victoria Bekiempis and agencies in New York
Mon 17 Jun 2019 18.29 BST First published on Mon 17 Jun 2019
15.42 BST
Gloria Vanderbilt, an American heiress who became a
successful model, designer, writer and artist, has died, her son Anderson
Cooper announced on Monday on CNN. She was 95.
“Gloria Vanderbilt
was an extraordinary woman who loved life and lived it on her own terms,”
Cooper said. “She was a painter, a writer and designer but also a remarkable
mother, wife and friend. She was 95 years old, but ask anyone close to her and
they’d tell you she was the youngest person they knew – the coolest and most
modern.”
Gloria Laura Morgan Vanderbilt was born on 24 February 1924 and
lived a storied life from infancy. Her father was the renowned rake Reginald
Vanderbilt, the great-grandson of the railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Her mother, who married in her teens, was more of a party girl than an
attentive parent.
When Gloria was 18 months old, her father died of cirrhosis
of the liver, aged just 45. She received a $5m trust fund which her mother used
to fund a lavish socialite lifestyle full of travel and affairs.
I always feel that
something wonderful is going to happen. And it always does
Gloria Vanderbilt
Gloria’s paternal aunt, the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt
Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, ultimately sued for
custody of the little girl, resulting in her becoming the most famous American
child of her time. The 1934 trial in the case became a tabloid sensation trial
that resulted in Gloria being called a “poor little rich girl” amid bitter
family drama.
“For five hours Mrs
Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt … listened to a tight-lipped nurse denounce her with
virtual relish as a cocktail-crazed dancing mother, a devotee of sex erotica
and the mistress of a German prince … it was a blistering tale no skin lotion
could soothe,” Town & Country reported.
The courtroom devolved into chaos when a French maid
testified that “Mrs Vanderbilt was in bed reading a paper and there was [the
royal] Lady Milford Haven beside the bed with her arm around Mrs Vanderbilt’s
neck and kissing her just like a lover”.
The judge ejected the press. After seven weeks of testimony,
he awarded custody to Whitney.
In 2016, Vanderbilt told the Associated Press the “poor
little rich girl” moniker “bothered me enormously … I didn’t see any of the
press, the newspapers were kept from me. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t
feel poor and I didn’t feel rich. It really did influence me enormously to make
something of my life when I realized what it meant.”
Her foray into the world of fashion started at age 15 as a
Harper’s Bazaar model and at 17, after spending seven years with the “rigid”
Gertrude, she moved to Hollywood. Vanderbilt dated stars and vowed to marry the
aviation and movie mogul Howard Hughes, but instead wed his press agent,
Pasquale di Cicco. The marriage caused Whitney to write Gloria out of her will.
Gloria, who came into her trust at age 21, in 1945, wound up
divorcing Di Cicco, claiming routine beatings. One day later she married a
63-year-old conductor, Leopold Stokowski. They had two sons and their marriage
lasted a decade.
Her next two marriages were to the film director Sidney
Lumet and the writer Wyatt Emory Cooper. Other romances included Frank Sinatra,
whom she described as “kind of just the most amazing person in my life”, Errol
Flynn and Marlon Brando.
“I’ve had many, many loves,” Vanderbilt told the Associated
Press in 2004. “I always feel that something wonderful is going to happen. And
it always does.”
Vanderbilt married Lumet in 1956 and lived with him and her
children in a 10-room duplex penthouse on Gracie Square in New York. She
divorced him to marry Cooper in 1963. Their elder son, Carter, a Princeton
graduate and editor at American Heritage, killed himself in 1988 at age 23,
leaping from his mother’s 14th-floor apartment as she tried to stop him.
Vanderbilt’s fame increased dramatically in the late 1970s,
when she partnered with the clothing-maker Mohan Murjani to sell designer jeans
that featured her name on the back pockets – a move that earned $10m in 1980,
Bloomberg noted. After her success in designer jeans, Vanderbilt branched out
into shoes, scarves, table and bed linens, designer fragrances and china,
through her company, Gloria Concepts.
Her wide-ranging career also included art, as well as memoir
and fiction writing. At 85 she wrote an erotic novel called Obsession which
told the story of a woman becoming obsessed with her deceased husband’s
relationship with a dominatrix. Excerpts leaked to a tabloid sent shockwaves
through the New York elite.
The New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser described the
143-page book as “pure, elegant, unadulterated smut” that could be “easily read
with one hand”. But Vanderbilt told the New York Times she wasn’t embarrassed
at all.
“I don’t think age has anything to do with what you write
about,” she said. “The only thing that would embarrass me is bad writing, and
the only thing that really concerned me was my children. You know how children
can be about their parents. But mine are very intelligent and supportive.”
Cooper was also unfazed.
“I’m often surprised by my mom but am always supportive of
anything she does,” the CNN anchor said. “She’s totally unique and cool.”
1 comment:
I remember the story of Gloria’s paternal aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who went to court to remove custody of the child from her own mother. But I had forgotten that Gertrude was the founder of the terrific Whitney Museum of American Art :)
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