How Gloria Vanderbilt’s traumatic childhood sent the late heiress on a lifelong ‘restless search for love’

Jun 18 , 2019

American heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, pictured in 1964, who died on Monday aged 95, became known as a fashion designer in 1970s and ’80s. Photo: AP

American socialite, fashion designer and mother of US TV anchorman Anderson Cooper, dies aged 95

Like a lot of sensational trials, the custody battle over Gloria Vanderbilt was dubbed the “trial of the century”. With courts now tending to keep custody matters private, the media maelstrom around it would never happen today.

But in 1934, the headlines nearly dripped with the details of a neglected little girl’s suffering: “Mother seldom saw Gloria”, “Servant shocks court with her story”, “Feud so bitter opponents insist on separate seats in court”.

Vanderbilt, who died on Monday at 95, said her traumatic childhood sent her on a lifelong “restless search for love”.

She was born into the American Vanderbilt family, whose huge wealth was built on its shipping and railroad empires in the late 1800s and later became known for building lavish New York mansions.

The one-time actress, model and fashion designer, who in the 1970s and ’80s had a range of jeans with her signature on the back pocket, as well as other fashions and perfumes, was married four times and had four children, including Anderson Cooper, the CNN television journalist.

Her third marriage to acclaimed film director, Sidney Lumet, ended in divorce in 1963. She married her fourth husband, Wyatt Cooper, in 1963. He died in 1978.

Gloria Vanderbilt, who has died aged 95, pictured with her fourth husband, Wyatt Cooper, at a New York party in 1968. Photo: TNS

When her parents married in 1923, her mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, was a beautiful 19-year-old socialite, already a society fixture along with an identical twin sister, Thelma.

Her father, Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, was a 42-year-old gambler, struggling with alcohol and squandering his family fortune.

“Little Gloria”, as she was called, was born the next year. The year after that, her father died of cirrhosis of the liver and other complications of alcoholism.