Gloria Vanderbilt (1924-2019) was born 100 years ago today.
Hers is a name that has meant something different to every American generation. Contemporary people may or may not recognize her as the mother of CNN’s Anderson Cooper. People my age remember her primarily as a brand; she was a prominent fashion entrepreneur in the ’70s and ’80s. Before that, she was a minor Hollywood actress and a model. She studied with Sanford Meisner, had appeared on Broadway and was in live television dramas on shows like Playhouse 90. All four of her husbands were in the biz. They were: Pat DiCiccio, a shady, mobbed up producer previously married to Thelma Todd, and a suspect in her murder (if murder it was); conductor Leopold Stokowski, best remembered from Walt Disney’s Fantasia; director Sidney Lumet; and Wyatt Cooper, a writer and actor who seems to have made her happier than the other three.
But the name Vanderbilt is much older than that. Its roots in New York go back to its origin as a Dutch colony. The family fortune dates to the early 19th century with Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), certainly the most significant Staten Islander in history (sorry, Pete Davidson). Vanderbilt started out operating his dad’s ferry, then launched his own ferry line, and then expanded into steamships and railroads, becoming one of the principal tycoons of the Gilded Age. By some calculations Vanderbilt was the the third richest man in American history, after J.D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Many testaments to the Vanderbilts wealth and influence remain: from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee to the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina (still the nation’s largest private residence) to The Breakers in Newport.
Wealth breeds decadence and the Vanderbilts remained stinking rich for generations. Gloria’s father, Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (1880-1925), a great grandson of the Commodore, was a wastrel who gambled away his personal fortune and died of alcoholism a year after Gloria was born. His much younger wife Maria Mercedes “Gloria” Morgan Vanderbilt (1904-1965) came from a family of diplomats and was known as a social butterfly — a party girl. She was 19 when she married Vanderbilt, 20 when “Little Gloria” was born, and clearly not ready to settle down and be an attentive mother. She spent long stretches abroad, with and without the child, basically on pleasure outings with friends. The thing is that even though Reginald had spent down his own fortune, Little Gloria was a Vanderbilt heir, with something like $84 million coming to her, which her mother, as guardian, was squandering on her lavish lifestyle.
The family protested this state of affairs, and it all came to a head in 1934 (the height of the Great Depression) when Reginald’s sister Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (founder of the NY museum that still bears her name) sued for custody of the child. The trial was a major scandal, with lots of tawdry and titillating allegations about Gloria’s mother’s personal life coming to light. Eventually, Whitney won the case, and she became guardian of her niece through the remainder of her minority.
These events were turned into a book in 1980 called Little Gloria…Happy at Last, by journalist Barbara Goldsmith, wife of the filmmaker Frank Perry. The book was adapted into a 1982 TV movie, which is the real point of this post! For some reason I’ve seen this damn thing FOUR times over the decades! Haha, not because it’s any good, but out of periodic curiosity. Like most such productions it has a top-notch cast, some great locations, okay costumes…and an absolutely SHIT script with no point-of-view on the events other than that they’re divertingly risque, or would be if armies of lawyers had allowed anyone to tell the story. You have to use your imagination a lot and read between the lines, and even so, the morally bankrupt entertainment factory never seems quite certain whether something is “bad” or not. On those occasions when they do decide some behavior is “bad” most TV people lean too hard on telegraphing that they know it’s bad, which is beside the point. But this movie suffers from the opposite affliction. I mean Hollywood is an entire CITY of rich people neglecting and corrupting their own children. When that happens to Little Gloria in this movie, you can tell the creators think it’s pretty cute.
Beyond its camp value then, the other reason to watch the movie is the cast. The unspeakably gorgeous Lucy Guttridge (perhaps best known for the 1984 ZAZ movie Top Secret) plays Big Gloria. She’s the weakest link unfortunately — doesn’t have the chops or the right personality for the role. The script tells us she is lascivious, but we never quite see it on the screen. She’s too sweet and nice. And she has so much to fight against in this movie. All of the women she’s fighting are played by 400 pound gorillas: Gertrude (Angela Lansbury), mother-in-law Alice (Bette Davis), her own treacherous mother (Glynis Johns), and an unintentionally hilarious scheming Irish nanny (a typecast Maureen Stapleton). I mean, the deck is stacked against ya! Christopher Plummer is pretty great as Reginald, summoning the same mischievous drunken charm that allowed him to play Barrymore. Martin Balsam plays Gloria’s sympathetic lawyer, providing the distorting misconception that she’s some kind of martyr instead of a parasite wasting her child’s resources. A pre-Family Ties Michael Gross is a lawyer on the Vanderbilt side. Barnard Hughes is typecast as the judge. John Hillerman is entertaining as Maury Henry Biddle Paul, coiner of the phrase “Cafe Society”, the gossip columnist who narrates the tale. Oh, and Little Gloria is played by Jennifer Dundas, still a successful actress, and co-founder of Blue Marble Ice Cream.
Of course, if you’re looking to do honor to Gloria Vanderbilt on her centennial birthday the best way is probably not to watch a trashy TV movie about her early childhood. The woman wrote, or co-wrote no fewer than half a dozen books of memoirs, and I imagine they’re just as racy. You should read ’em, if you’re one of the 12% who still reads books. Let’s not be part of the problem, eh? If you read a book — any book — instead of watching this show, everyone wins!