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Jun 17, 2019 · ‘Poor little rich girl’: Gloria Vanderbilt was caught between a neglectful mother and an oppressive aunt. Gloria Vanderbilt, accompanied by a bodyguard, a nurse and a chauffeur,...
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- HISTORY Vault: America the Story of Us
In 1934, the heiress' mother fought her aunt for custody in a very public trial.
Gloria Laura Vanderbilt was only 10 when she became an unwilling tabloid sensation. It was 1934, and she was the subject of a nasty custody battle between her widowed mother and her aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Depression-era Americans eagerly read about the acrimonious trial, which was open to the press until the day a maid accused Gloria’s mother of having an affair with a relative of the British Royal Family in court. Newspapers dubbed Gloria “the poor little rich girl,” kicking off a wave of media attention that followed her until her death on June 17, 2019.
Gloria, a society heiress who later launched a fashion empire built on designer jeans, was born on February 20, 1924, to Gloria Morgan and Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, great-grandson of the famous railroad tycoon. Reginald was a heavy drinker and gambler who was 24 years older than the teenage Gloria Morgan. By the time Reginald died from cirrhosis of the liver, he had blown through his money and racked up lots of debt. His 18-month-old daughter Gloria stood to inherit part of a family trust fund when she reached age 21, but until then, she and her mother would live on interest payments.
Over the next several years, Gloria Morgan lived in opulent style on those payments. The Swiss-born socialite went back to Europe, where her twin sister lived as mistress to Edward, Prince of Wales. Gloria Morgan moved in the same royal circles and briefly became engaged to the German prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. When her daughter got tonsillitis, she took Gloria back to the U.S. for an operation, then left the girl to recover with her aunt Gertrude on Long Island while she went back to Europe for several months.
This is where things started to come to a head. The Vanderbilt family and Gertrude in particular already disapproved of Gloria Morgan’s lifestyle, and now that she wasn’t living with her daughter, the family cut her interest payments in half. The mother returned to New York City and tried to get her daughter back, but Gertrude objected on the grounds that she was an unfit mother. In 1934, the women went to court to fight for custody.
Tabloid newspapers in New York City were already known for their sensational coverage of millionaires’ sordid behavior, such as in 1926 when a famous 51-year-old multimillionaire married a 15-year-old high school student. They had also covered salacious court cases, like the trial for the 1927 murder that inspired Double Indemnity. And because the Vanderbilt vs. Whitney case provided all of this, it became a major story in the tabloids.
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“I had no relationship with her at all and I just worshiped her from afar,” Gloria Vanderbilt later said of her mother in a 2016 interview with her son, Anderson Cooper. “I felt no connection at all. I felt like an impostor.” In addition, Gloria said she wasn’t close with her aunt. It was her nanny, Dodo, who became a kind of mother figure in her life.
Growing up, Gloria was troubled by the media’s continued attention. “As a teenager, she tried to avoid the spotlight, but reporters and cameramen followed her everywhere,” Cooper said in a statement to CNN when she died. “She was determined to make something of her life, determined to make a name for herself, and find the love she so desperately needed.”
- Becky Little
In 1934, Gloria Vanderbilt was at the center of an infamous child custody battle—but throughout the proceedings, she kept the most devastating secret.
Sep 28, 2024 · Witnesses described Gloria’s mother as a party-loving woman who neglected her daughter in favor of a jet-setting lifestyle. After seven weeks of courtroom drama, the judge awarded custody to Gertrude.
Sep 30, 2016 · A family dispute over who should have guardianship of a shy and sickly 10-year-old heiress, Gloria Vanderbilt, had escalated into the "trial of the century." The opposing parties were two...
Then, on Sept. 25, 1934, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt filed a writ claiming that Whitney had "spirited" away her daughter while the girl was feeding birds in Central Park and was holding her captive.
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Sep 12, 2023 · The courtroom drama intensified when Gloria’s own mother, Laura Kilpatrick Morgan, filed an affidavit stating that during their time in Paris, her daughter had been largely neglected, with Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt devoting herself to her own pleasures and rarely tending to her child’s needs.
