B efore the custody trial even began, everyone involved knew it would be scandalous and likely detrimental to the young girl at its center. Whitney even bought the heiress a pony. Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt. On its very premise, the custody battle over little Gloria was dirty—it required her grandmother to turn on her mother, and a central accusation was that money mattered more to her than love.
As the trial began, it got even dirtier. Reporters from all over the country crowded the steps of the courthouse to watch Vanderbilt walk into the courtroom with her aunt. In the days and weeks that followed, both sides brought in witnesses eager to tear down the other side, and as the public followed along, the trial became more sensational—and surely destructive to the year-old at the center of it all. With the launch of her eponymous blue jeans, Vanderbilt became a fashion icon. Many believe it turned public opinion against Morgan Vanderbilt.
Vanderbilt, for her part, was not spared. And as the world read up on her, she became a target not only of media attention but also of blackmail, with threats on her life. The trial had it all: sex, royalty, celebrity and, at the root of it all, money.
Whitney won primary custody, and Vanderbilt was allowed to see her mother only on weekends and certain holidays, and usually with the accompaniment of a detective and a nurse. While this is the outcome that Vanderbilt seemed to have wanted, it also included a judgment that left her worst fear realized: The judge ruled that Keislich, her beloved Dodo, negatively influenced Vanderbilt against her own mother, pointing to the letter Keislich forced Vanderbilt to write to her grandmother.
She was ordered to no longer care for Vanderbilt. F or the next seven years of her life, Vanderbilt saw her mother rarely. They were reunited more meaningfully when the year-old Vanderbilt went to visit her mother for the summer in California.
Rather than go back and finish high school, Vanderbilt stayed in California, loving the social life her mother helped her build.
She dated Howard Hughes and Errol Flynn before her mother urged her to marry Pat DeCicco, an agent and mobster many years her senior whom she would remain married to for only four years.
The marriage would not last—nor would her reunion with her mother. She divorced DeCicco, later describing him as abusive, in when she was The following year, she stopped paying her mother a portion of her trust. Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt can get it either as a movie actress or a dancing teacher.
The two Gloria Vanderbilts reunited 15 years later, but according to Cooper the relationship never was one of a mother and daughter. But that never happened. Right after her divorce from DeCicco, she married the composer Leopold Stokowski, who was 42 years her senior. They had two children, Stan and Chris who distanced himself from the family.
After ten years, the pair divorced, and Vanderbilt remarried the director Sidney Lumet less than a year later. They were married for eight years. Her fourth and final marriage was to Wyatt Cooper, an author, screenwriter and actor; it lasted 15 years until Cooper died. It was during this marriage, she says, that she learned how to be part of a real family unit. With her passing at age 95 in , Vanderbilt left behind a legacy of family, with all of its ups and downs.
Here's everything you need to know about the men who filled her life as both a wife and a mother. Anderson was still in college when his older brother Carter committed suicide, which, combined with the tragedy of his father's death during heart surgery ten years earlier, helped inspire Anderson to pursue journalism. Though he began his career as a fact-checker for Channel One News, Anderson's drive quickly earned him the coveted spot of chief international correspondent for the channel following his self-produced coverage of the political turmoil in Burma.
From to he served as a reporter for ABC on several of its news programs including World News Tonight before taking a break from journalism to serve as host for the reality show The Mole.
Following the September 11th attacks in , Anderson returned to the world of reporting for CNN and in , he earned his own show on the network, Anderson Cooper In , Anderson came out publicly though he had been out in private since he was a teen becoming the first openly gay prime time news anchor in American history.
Throughout her life, Anderson maintained a close relationship with his mother, creating the documentary about Vanderbilt and their relationship as well as publishing a collection of correspondence The Rainbow Comes and Goes; A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss in Following her death on June 17, , Anderson delivered a moving eulogy for his mother on CNN, saying, "The last few weeks, every time I kissed her goodbye, I'd say, "I love you, mom.
You know that. I did know that. I knew it from the moment I was born, and I'll know it for the rest of my life. And, in the end, what greater gift can a mother give to her son? At the time of the birth announcement on Instagram , he explains that the name Wyatt is after his own father, Wyatt Emory Cooper, while his son's middle name is "a family name on my mom's side.
I imagine them all together, arms around each other, smiling and laughing, happy to know that their love is alive in me and in Wyatt, and that our family continues. Better known as Stan, Stokowski is Vanderbilt's oldest child, born in , during her marriage to conductor Leopold Stokowski. Stan largely eschews the spotlight that tends to follow his famous family, though he is said to have remained close with his mother and occasionally appeared with her at public events. Over the course of his life, he has owned several landscaping businesses in the New York and New England areas and has a wife, Emily Goldstein, and two daughters, Abra and Aurora.
Christopher Stokowski is the younger of Vanderbilt's two sons with Leopold Stokowski. Less is known about his life due to his longterm estrangement from Vanderbilt and her other children, and his general retreat from public life.
After almost 40 years of estrangement, Anderson Cooper and Vanderbilt released a documentary about Vanderbilt's life in titled Nothing Left Unsaid which critics pointed out largely glossed over Christopher. Following the film's debut, Anderson confirmed that he and Christopher had reconnected and reconciled, while Anderson's uncle Harry Cooper added that Christopher and Vanderbilt had met several times in the wake of the film's release.
His brother Anderson would later describe him as a gentle boy, interested in military history and politics though not one "suited for the rough-and-tumble of the game. In , he graduated from Princeton and began working on book reviews as well as editing for the history magazine American Heritage. On July 22, , at the age of 23, Carter died by suicide after jumping from the terrace of Vanderbilt's 14th story apartment.
Turning to her own life as a source of inspiration, in Vanderbilt published the first of her memoirs, Once Upon a Time: A True Story. Vanderbilt eventually wrote about one of the most difficult experiences of her life in A Mother's Story , exploring the suicide of her son Carter Cooper. By the early s, Vanderbilt had to contend with financial setbacks, with a former lawyer and former psychiatrist swindling great sums of money from her. The scheme adversely affected Vanderbilt's home-design business and forced her to sell her property.
Almost a decade later, in , her apparel company was bought by Jones Apparel Group. The year saw Vanderbilt dishing about her real-life loves in It Seemed Important at the Time: A Romance Memoir , and Vanderbilt returned to fiction with the erotic novella Obsession. In addition to writing, Vanderbilt enjoyed some success as a visual artist, working in the medium of collage and surreal, multidimensional dream boxes, which were featured in exhibitions held at the New York Design Center in and The coffee-table book The World of Gloria Vanderbilt —offering up images from her life—was released in In addition to her roster of accomplishments, Vanderbilt was the mother of famed news anchor and television host Anderson Cooper, to whom she was quite close.
Vanderbilt died at her New York City home on June 17, 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.
We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives.
Cornelius Vanderbilt was a famous industrialist who worked in railroads and shipping. He had accumulated the largest fortune in the U. Social activist, writer, editor and lecturer Gloria Steinem has been an outspoken champion of women's rights since the s. Mexican pop superstar Gloria Trevi's career fell apart in the s when she and her manager were accused of corrupting minors, sexual abuse and kidnapping.
Modernist abstract painter and collage artist Lee Krasner, wife of Jackson Pollock, created the 'Little Image' painting series and the multimedia collage 'Milkweed.
0コメント