Gloria Laura Morgan Vanderbilt (born February 20, 1924) is an American artist, actress, heiress, and socialite most noted as an early developer of designer blue jeans. She is a member of the prominent Vanderbilt family of New York and mother of CNN's Anderson Cooper.
Vanderbilt was born in New York City, New York, the only child of railroad heir Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (1880-1925) and his second wife, Gloria Morgan (1904-1965). She was chri...
more
Gloria Laura Morgan Vanderbilt (born February 20, 1924) is an American artist, actress, heiress, and socialite most noted as an early developer of designer blue jeans. She is a member of the prominent Vanderbilt family of New York and mother of CNN's Anderson Cooper.
Vanderbilt was born in New York City, New York, the only child of railroad heir Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (1880-1925) and his second wife, Gloria Morgan (1904-1965). She was christened in the Episcopal church as Gloria Laura Vanderbilt (and after her father's death, christened in the Catholic Church, to which her mother belonged). From her father's first marriage to Cathleen Neilson, she had a half-sister, Cathleen Vanderbilt (1904-1944).
She became heiress to a half share in a five million dollar trust fund upon her father's death from cirrhosis when she was 15 months old. The rights to control this trust fund while Vanderbilt was a minor belonged to her mother, who traveled to and from Paris for years, taking her...
less
