| Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt | |
|---|---|
 Vanderbilt with her daughter "Little Gloria". |
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| Born | Mercedes Morgan 23 August 1904 Hotel Nationale, Lucerne, Switzerland |
| Died | 13 February 1965 (aged 61) |
| Resting place | Holy Cross Cemetery |
| Education | Governesses Strathalan House, England Convent schools in Barcelona, Spain, and Montreaux, Switzerland Convent of the Sacred Heart Skerton Finishing School, New York City, New York Miss Nightingale's School, New York City, New York |
| Known for | socialite, mother of Gloria Vanderbilt, maternal grandmother of Anderson Cooper. |
| Religious beliefs | Roman Catholic |
| Children | Gloria Laura Vanderbilt |
| Parents | Laura Delphine Kilpatrick Harry Hayes Morgan Sr |
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.
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Born at the Hotel Nationale in Lucerne, Switzerland, as Mercedes Morgan,[1] 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, The Netherlands; and Brussels, Belgium. Her mother was his second wife, the former Laura Delphine Kilpatrick.
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.[2]
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.[3] 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.
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.[4] On 20 February 1924, their only child, Gloria Laura, was born in New York City.
Reginald Vanderbilt died on 4 September 1925 of what was described in news reports as "a throat infection which had caused internal hemorhages".[1] Following his death, his young widow became the administrator of a $2.5 million trust left to their daughter, Gloria, and spent the better part of the next six years living in Paris, Biarritz, and London, with her mother and child and often in the company of her sisters and brother, all of whom lived in France and England with their respective spouses.
The conditions of Vanderbilt's will and the custody of their child, however, were complicated by the general belief that his widow had not reached the legal age of majority, which meant that she herself required a guardian. Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt believed that she was 20, rather than 21, because her mother had long declared the twins' birth year as 1905 rather than 1904. The discrepancy was discovered upon an examination of the Morgan twins' childhood passports and their birth certificates during the Vanderbilt custody trial in 1934. No reason, however, was given as to the change of birth years. As Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt wrote in her 1936 memoirs, Without Prejudice (E P Dutton), "Had I not thought myself a minor at this time ... there would have been no necessity for a guardian for myself ... [or] 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."[5]
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), 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 (a member of the British Royal Family) and a brief engagement to HSH Prince Alfonso Maximilian "Freidel" von Hohenlohe-Langenburg (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.
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.
Five years later, her sister Thelma was buried by her side.
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