On the Coronation of George VI in 1937, one man within the packed pews at Westminster Abbey was seen along with his head bowed and his lips shifting continuously all through the ceremony.
The international royals, aristocrats and politicians round him assumed he should be praying. He was not. He was Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, a son of the richest household on the planet, and in addition a celebrated journalist.
Hidden in his waistcoat was a pocket radio transmitter and his whispered commentary was being picked up by a receiver in a trailer parked exterior the Abbey and beamed throughout the Atlantic to tens of millions of U.S. listeners. It was a totally unauthorised broadcast — and an outstanding scoop. Author Robert Graves gleefully famous the story in his historical past of the interwar period, The Lengthy Week-Finish
Cornelius (referred to as ‘Neily’) had been in a position to wangle a seat within the Abbey as a result of his mother and father, Cornelius III and Grace, have been pals of the Royal Household. At one among their well-known events held at Claridge’s in 1921, Grace had launched Lord Louis Mountbatten to his future spouse, Edwina Ashley, the richest heiress in England.
Overlook Prince Harry’s newest broadside, the true royal scandal is the raunchy household historical past of his US interviewer, Anderson Cooper (pictured with the Duke above), writes Christopher Stevens
Cooper’s great-aunt Thelma had an affair with the long run King Edward VIII (pictured collectively in 1932)
What was much less well-known to the general public – and a truth not shared along with his American viewers on that momentous Coronation Day – was that the key commentator was additionally a relative of the socialite Thelma Furness, a former mistress of the earlier Prince of Wales, George’s brother Edward VIII.
Now, practically a century later, one other journalist from the Vanderbilt clan has landed a royal scoop that threatens seismic repercussions. Step ahead, Anderson Cooper, the 55-year-old CNN anchor, whose interview with Prince Harry will likely be aired to a world viewers this Sunday on 60 Minutes, the venerable present affairs present on the American channel CBS.
The interview, billed as ‘revealing and explosive’, is the principle occasion in a publicity drive for Harry’s ghost-written memoir, Spare.
And so a scion of the Vanderbilt household is continuous within the household custom. Anderson Cooper’s great-grandfather, Cornelius II, was the grandfather of Neily Vanderbilt.
That makes the 2 journalists first cousins as soon as eliminated, in a clan whose colossal fortune was constructed on the steamboat and railroad industries, however whose historical past is so plagued by scandal, plots, betrayals, court docket instances and royal liaisons that it greater than offers the Windsors a run for his or her cash.
Little surprise that, when he revealed a household memoir in 2021, Cooper described it as ‘The Crown on steroids’.
Probably the most dramatic and cruel Vanderbilt feud was fought over Anderson Cooper’s mom, Gloria. She turned an artist and designer well-known for her husbands, lovers and excessive society connections. However as a baby of ten, she had been on the centre of a court docket battle dubbed ‘the custody trial of the century’.
Gloria was the daughter of Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt (Neily’s uncle), who inherited an unlimited fortune and squandered all of it.
A gambler, alcoholic, playboy and drug addict, Reginald as soon as declared that it was unimaginable to inherit nice wealth and be blissful. An unearned fortune, he stated, was as corrosive to ambition as cocaine was to private morals.
Divorced from his first spouse in 1920, he started taking an curiosity in his daughter Cathleen’s teenage pals. One among them was Gloria Mercedes Morgan, aged simply 15 when he met her.
Reginald proposed and three years later they have been married. On the night time earlier than their engagement occasion, he threw a lavish costume ball, with Gloria showing as Marie Antoinette.
But Reginald’s mom, Alice, was suspicious of {the teenager}’s advantage. She insisted that earlier than any marriage ceremony may happen, the lady should be examined by the Vanderbilt doctor to show she was ‘virgo intacta’.
Gloria was 19 when their daughter — confusingly additionally named Gloria — was born in 1924. Eighteen months later, Reggie died from cirrhosis of the liver.
In his loss of life throes, along with his mom beside him, he haemorrhaged blood so violently that his younger spouse was not allowed to see his physique.
Reginald Vanderbilt died in debt, owing a colossal sum in taxes and unpaid payments, together with one for $9,000 to the jeweller Tiffany’s (about £130,000 immediately).
Girl Thelma Furness (pictured right here in 1925) launched Prince Edward to his future spouse, Wallis Simpson
The widowed Gloria was left penniless . . . apart from a $2.5 million belief fund (£175 million immediately) for his or her child daughter. The belief equipped the younger widow with a month-to-month allowance, value about £50,000 now, to cowl her bills, together with servants’ wages.
‘Child Gloria,’ notes Cooper in his household memoir, ‘was now the piggy financial institution for her whole family, and he or she couldn’t even discuss.’
Her widowed mom Gloria had a twin sister, Thelma. Leaving the newborn with a nanny in New York, the 2 girls launched into a liner for Europe to strive their luck in its aristocratic scene.
And the way Europe adored them! They turned referred to as The Magnificent Morgans, and will have been the inspiration for Anita Loos’s 1925 novel, Gents Want Blondes, about two American women who reduce a blinding swathe via Paris and London society (Marilyn Monroe later starred within the film).
Gloria turned briefly engaged to Gottfried, a German prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, who proved to be relatively much less rich than he’d appeared at first sight.
One other of her shut pals was Nadejda Mikhailovna de Torby Mountbatten, spouse of the Marquis of Milford Haven and daughter of a Russian Grand Duke — recognized to all her pals as Nada.
Thelma, in the meantime, married Marmaduke, Viscount Furness – and, the day after their marriage ceremony in June 1926, she was launched to Edward, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII).
Excessive society on either side of the Atlantic was shamelessly promiscuous. Shortly after giving start to a son, Thelma made a wager along with her husband that he wouldn’t have the ability to persuade the vaudeville performer Peggy Hopkins to bounce with him at a celebration.
It was a rash wager. Peggy as soon as boasted that she’d sleep with anybody who purchased her diamonds (by the top of her life, she reckoned she’d been via 50 fiances, though solely six made it to the altar).
Quickly after he claiming his dance, Marmaduke turned her newest conquest, and his marriage broke up. Thelma took revenge by turning to the inheritor to the British throne and fell in love.
The sensation was mutual – for a time at the very least – and Thelma and the Prince started spending romantic weekends collectively at Fort Belvedere in Windsor Nice Park. However, as soon as once more, she was to break her personal love life with a hopelessly naive mistake.
This time, she launched the long run king to one among her girlfriends. Her identify? Wallis Simpson. Edward rapidly turned besotted and, in 1936, simply months after ascending to the throne, gave up his crown for ‘the girl I really like’.
Thelma by no means recovered from the betrayal. When she died of a coronary heart assault in 1970, aged 65, a tiny teddy bear was present in her purse. A present from the Prince of Wales, she had stroked and clutched it a lot via her life that every one the fur had rubbed off.
Thelma and her twin sister Gloria (pictured collectively) have been members of American excessive society
Thelma (pictured) married Marmaduke, Viscount Furness – and, the day after their marriage ceremony in June 1926, she was launched to Edward, the Prince of Wales
Her sister Gloria’s occasion life-style ran aground within the early Nineteen Thirties. When her daughter fell unwell with tonsillitis, relatively than staying at her bedside, she left the kid to get well with a Vanderbilt aunt, Gertrude Whitney — and sailed again to Europe.
Gertrude was disgusted and paid detectives to analyze how the little lady’s belief fund was being spent — and found it was largely on events and amorous affairs for the mom. And so she sued for custody of the kid, declaring Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt to be an unfit dad or mum.
The small print laid naked on the trial in autumn 1934, in New York’s Supreme Courtroom, made worldwide headlines. Gloria, now 30, was charged with maternal neglect. The court docket heard how she and her German lover, Prince Gottfried, used to lounge in mattress, consuming cocktails and studying pornographic magazines.
To the scandalised public, the thought of the couple lazing all day in silk pyjamas was as decadent because the porn — pictures stated to characteristic nuns, flagellation and ‘bare males with girls’s tongues’.
One physician informed the court docket that the kid was struggling hysterical matches and that her well being may very well be at risk if she was pressured to return to her mom. This testimony, wrote one court docket reporter, ‘was a blistering story no pores and skin lotion may soothe’.
However the proof that precipitated the best sensation got here from a maid, a Frenchwoman named Maria Caillot, who was requested whether or not she had ever seen something ‘improper’.
‘Sure,’ she replied, ‘I bear in mind one factor . . . Mrs Vanderbilt was in mattress . . . and there was Girl Milford Haven [Gloria’s great friend Nada] beside the mattress along with her arm round Mrs Vanderbilt’s neck — kissing her, similar to a lover.’
This revelation, that Nada and Gloria have been lesbian lovers, precipitated such an uproar the choose needed to clear the court docket and ban reporters and the general public the next day.
Buckingham Palace was additionally rocked. Rumours about Nada and her sister-in-law, Edwina — now married to Lord Louis Mountbatten — had swirled for years. The 2 girls revelled in one another’s firm, travelled collectively and have been stated to be ‘enthusiastic individuals’ in bare, moonlit swims.
The Supreme Courtroom awarded custody of ten-year-old Gloria to her aunt Gertrude, with weekend visits allowed to her mom, who additionally acquired an annual allowance of $21,000 (about £390,000 immediately).
The younger Gloria grew as much as haven’t any much less lurid a life. Like her mom, she married earlier than she was 18, to a Hollywood producer and part-time mobster referred to as Pat DiCicco. That resulted in divorce after he beat her by slamming her head towards a wall.
She had two sons along with her second husband, conductor Leopold Stokowski, earlier than divorcing him in 1955 and marrying director Sidney Lumet.
By this time, she had reduce off her mom’s allowance, remarking that Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt had earned a dwelling by working previously and will do it once more.
Through the years, gossip columnists linked the youthful Gloria with lovers together with Roald Dahl, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando and Howard Hughes.
Her fourth husband was writer Wyatt Emory Cooper, to whom she was married till his loss of life in 1978. He was the daddy of her second two sons — Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, who killed himself aged 23, and Anderson Cooper, the information anchor who has landed the interview with Prince Harry.
Gloria Vanderbilt died in 2019, aged 95. She was the final of the Vanderbilt dynasty to be born within the period of limousines with liveried chauffeurs and to be guarded by personal detectives, wrote her son Anderson Cooper — and ‘the final to be born earlier than the Melancholy, when the Vanderbilt riches appeared as limitless and everlasting as the celebrities within the sky’.
