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Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt

Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt (23 August 1904 – 13 February 1965) was a Swiss-born American socialite best known as the mother of fashion designer and artist Gloria Vanderbilt and maternal grandmother of television journalist Anderson Cooper. She was a central figure in Vanderbilt vs. Whitney, one of the most sensational American custody trials in the 20th century.


Early life

Born at the Hotel Nationale in Lucerne, Switzerland, as Mercedes Morgan, she was a daughter of Henry Hayes Morgan Sr, an American diplomat who was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and grew up in Europe. He later served as the U.S. consul general in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Berlin, Germany; Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Brussels, Belgium. Her mother was his second wife, the former Laura Delphine Kilpatrick; the couple was divorced in 1927.

Her maternal grandfather, Hugh Judson Kilpatrick (1836–1881), was a Union Army general during the American Civil War who also served as the U.S. minister to Chile. Her maternal grandmother, Luisa Kilpatrick, née Valdivieso Araoz, was a member of a wealthy Spanish family that settled in Chile in the 17th century.

Morgan, who adopted the name Gloria as a teenager, had two sisters: Consuelo (1902-?, Countess Jean de Maupas, Mrs Benjamin Thaw, Mrs Alfons Beaumont Landa) and an identical twin, Thelma (1904–1970, Mrs. Thomas Vail Converse Jr, Viscountess Furness), who became a mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales. She had a brother, Henry Hayes Morgan Jr, who became an actor (stage names Harry Hayes Morgan and Harry Hays Morgan), as well as a half sister, Margaret Morgan, who was from her father's first marriage.

She was educated by governesses and in convents in Europe as well as New York City, where she attended the Catholic Convent of the Sacred Heart (in the Manhattanville section of the city), the Skerton Finishing School, and Miss Nightingale's School. In October 1921, with their father's permission, Morgan and her sister Thelma, both reportedly 16 years of age, ended their schooling and moved by themselves into an apartment at 40 Fifth Avenue, a private townhouse. Working as Gloria Rochelle, she had some minor roles in movies in the US and Europe.
Marriage and widowhood

On 6 March 1923, in New York City, at the townhouse of friends, Gloria Morgan—then believed to be 17 years of age and having received the legal consent of her father to wed—became the second wife of Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, age 42, an heir to the Vanderbilt railroad fortune. for a legal guardian for my child's person .... On this untruth—irrevocable and irremediable—hinged the currents of my child's life and my own."
Custody trial

Influenced by reports from private detectives as well as family servants and Laura Morgan (who appears by all published accounts to have been somewhat emotionally and mentally unbalanced and who testified on Mrs. Whitney's side at the trial),members of the Vanderbilt family came to believe that Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt was a bad influence and neglectful of her daughter. A custody battle erupted that made national headlines in 1934. As a result of a great deal of hearsay evidence admitted at trial, the scandalous allegations of Vanderbilt's lifestyle—including a purported lesbian relationship with the Marchioness of Milford Haven, and a brief engagement to HSH Gottfried, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenbur (rumored to be a fortune-hunter)—led to a new standard in tabloid newspaper sensationalism.

Vanderbilt lost custody of her daughter to her sister-in-law Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Granted limited parental rights, Vanderbilt was allowed to see young Gloria on weekends in New York. The court also removed Vanderbilt as administrator of her daughter's trust fund, whose annual investment income had been her only source of support.Two years later, the custody issue was re-opened, giving her another chance to re-gain guardianship of her daughter. This time, the case was brought before the Supreme Court of the United States.[ The court declined to hear the matter and it once again came before the State of New York's Supreme Court.The result was an agreement that Gloria would spend more time with her mother than was previously granted.In 1946, the widow was once more in the news when her daughter announced she would no longer be paying her mother an annual $21,000 allowance. Saying that her mother was able to work and had done so in the past, Gloria Vanderbilt stated the annual allowance would now be given to a charity for blind and starving children.
[ Later years

From the 1940s until their deaths, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt and her twin sister, Thelma, Viscountess Furness, lived together in New York City and in Los Angeles, California. They wrote a dual memoir called "Double Exposure: A Twin Autobiography (D McKay, 1958).

Vanderbilt died in 1965 and was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California