July 23, 2024 • 28 mins
In the 1930s, America was captivated by a scandalous courtroom drama - a custody battle of little 10-year-old Gloria Vanderbilt (mother of Anderson Cooper). Gloria's mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, was accused of improperly managing her daughter's trust and galivating around Europe when she should have been parenting. The trial was already a media circus -- and that was before the British Royal family got involved.
For more on this trial and other fascinating trials in American history, listen to HISTORY ON TRIAL from Mira Hayward.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
I am so thrilled to be here doing a very
special episode of Noble Blood. It's really a crossover episode
with Mira Hayward, who is a former writer researcher on
Noble Blood and went off to start her own podcast,
which is absolutely brilliant if you haven't listened to it yet,
it's called History on Trial and it explores in depth
(00:31):
specific trials in American history that define really I was
going to say the legal system, but so much more
just to find an aspect of American history. I feel
like I learned something new every episode about the foundations
of this country.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you so much, Dana.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
It's so fun to be back here at Noble Blood
where I feel like I got my start in podcasting,
back in my Frandsfordnandez and I feel the same way
about it. I'm sure you feel it's about doing Noble Blood,
but it's really cool to have a job where you
get to stuff all of the time.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Absolutely, and I'm excited to learn something today. We're going
to be talking about a very very scandalous trial involving
American Royalty the Vanderbilt but there's also a connection to
the British royal family. Do you want to give us
an overview of the case.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
So this case is in nineteen thirty four custody battle
over a ten year old child named Gloria Vanderbilt, who's
actually Anderson Cooper's mother, News Royalty. It's between her mother,
Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, who's in her late twenties and is
like beautiful society woman, and her paternal aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney,
who's one of the most wealthy women in America. She's
(01:41):
in her late fifties, patron of the arts, founder of
the Whitney Museum of American Art. And this case is
so scandalous and so shocking for the public. It's the
midst of the Great Depression. People are loving seeing that
rich people are having a hard time too. But interestingly,
one of the things I learned while researching this case
was how much royal involvement there was, particularly from the
(02:04):
British royal family.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, let's start there. Let's start with Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt,
who's the mother of the child that will eventually be
at the center of this custody case. What is Gloria
Morgan Vanderbilt's connection to the British royal family.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
So, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt has an identical twin who's named Telma.
And when Telma and Gloria come out into society in
the early nineteen twenties in New York, people call them
the Magnificent Morgans. They're extremely beautiful, they're identical twins. They
have these cute little accents from growing up all over Europe.
They're super beautiful and glamorous. And Telma, after sort of
(02:41):
a disastrous first marriage to an American, gets married to
this extremely wealthy English viscount who is named Marmaduke Furness,
which is an all time British name, an amazing name.
So this marriage unfortunately not super happy, lots of affairs
on both sides, and in nineteen twenty nine, Telma meets Edward,
the Prince of Wales, and she and Edward start an
(03:03):
affair that lasts for five years and it's pretty serious.
During that time, they're basically living as a couple.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And is this the Edward, Prince of Wales who will
eventually become king and abdicate his throne for Wallace Simpson.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Yes, exactly, and there's actually an amazing Wallace Simpson connection here.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
So Edward we just know already has a weakness for
it seems like married socialites.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yes, it's actually hilarious.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
The press starts to have some questions about how much
time in Telman and Edward are spending together. So Gloria
sort of helps facilitate this affair by getting a country
estate that's right next to Edwards so that Telman and
Edward can spend a lot of time together. And the
Press is like he's always seen with the glamorous lady furness,
and the Prince issues the statement where he's like, I
only hang out with married women because it's more respectable
(03:50):
that way, and the Press is like, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Oh of course, much more respectable.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, and so is Gloria Morgan also involved with you know,
the sort of English court life with her sister.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yes, very involved.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
She actually gets presented at court to King George and
Queen Mary at one point in the early thirties. She's
hanging out with sort of this whole set that's involved
the sort of these glamorous young British nobles centered around
the Prince of Wales. Actually it's a little bit crazy.
So Talma and the princes are involved, and so the
prince also meets little Gloria, the child at the heart
of the custody battle. There's lots of pictures of them
(04:24):
together when she was a child, because he was sort
of her de facto uncle for a little bit. It's
actually through the Morgan's sisters. So Gloria and Talma have
an older sister named Kinswlo that Edward meets Wallace Simpson
because Consuelo is friends with Wallace, and she tells Gloria
and Telma, I've had this amazing friend. You're going to
love her. You'll get along so well. Her name is Wallace.
(04:45):
They meet, they love her, and Talma says, oh my gosh, Edward,
you would love this woman. And it's actually in nineteen
thirty four that Talma goes to America to help her
sister Gloria with this custody trial. Things are really ramping up,
and before she leaves, she has dinner with Wallace and
Wallace who calls Edward little Man, which I guess is
endearing says, you know, the little man is going to
(05:07):
be so lonely while you're gone, and Telma says, well
look after him for me, won't you?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Famous last words.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
So, really the casualty of this trial is because Telma
had to leave, it pushed Wallace, Simpson and Edward right
into each other's arms.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
In nineteen thirty seven, Telma is asked if she regrets him,
if she could do her life over again, what would
she do differently? And she says, I would never introduce
Wallace to the Prince of Wales. So that's the Prince
of Wales's involvement. There's one other British royal who I
want to talk about who is also involved in this trial,
and that is the Marchioness of milford Haven.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Before we get to the Marchioness, can we sort of
set the scene for the trial. So why is this
custody trial even happening at all? Obviously Gloria Morgan married
to Vanderbilt, good for her, And what is happening that's
causing this trial?
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I think it's a classic case
of a trial that didn't need to happen, and perhaps
because of the money and power involved. These people don't
know how to talk to each other in ways that
a normal family might, and so it.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Escalates into this custody battle.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Basically, Gloria married a man named Reggie Vanderbilt. Wealth was
not good for Reggie. He gambled his entire fortune away,
basically almost a billion dollars in fourteen years, and then
he dies a year after. They have their first child,
Little Gloria, and so Gloria and the other Gloria, because
like European royalty, they have a habit of naming all
(06:35):
of their children the same things. Live off of a
trust that Little Gloria inherits, but that trust is really
highly regulated by administrators, and there are questions amongst other
members of the Vanderbilt family if the elder Gloria is
using that money responsibly, and there are accusations that she
is living this sort of partying lifestyle that is not
(06:56):
good for the child, and little Gloria starts to sort
of have these hysterical episodes where she says that she's
afraid of her mother. Her paternal aunt, Gertrude Whitney gets involved,
She's Gloria's godmother. There's so much to this story and
so many sort of complicated women with the different motives.
Little Gloria's grandmother, Laura, thinks that she shouldn't be in
(07:17):
her mother's custody, so eventually little Gloria goes to live
with Gertrude Whitney, and then Gertrud Whitney won't really give
her back to the elder Gloria got it.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
So it's this complicated situation where both the mom and
daughter are living off this wealthy trust and now the
late husband's family is trying to I'm putting this in
air quote but quote unquote protect the little daughter.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yes exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Nobody of course asks what the little daughter wants at
any point in this, but yeah, that's exactly what's happening.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So okay, let's go back now to this marchiness. How
is she involved?
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yes, So this is a woman named Nadezhda Mount Batton.
She comes from a wealthy Russian royal family and she
marries Prince George of Battenberg, who is British Royalty. That
Battenberg gets changed to Mount Batton after World War One
because of anti German sentiment, same as like the sax
Coburg Gotha Windsor transition. The marchioness who's known as Nada
(08:16):
by her friends, which is very cute, is super wealthy,
super beautiful. There's this quote from Little Gloria in her
autobiography where she's remembering Nada when she's a child, and
she says she has masses of maple sugar hair and
light followed her wherever she walked.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And I was like, oh, my gosh, I want to
meet her.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
She sounds amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, like the.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Most glamorous woman on earth. And she and Gloria Morgan
Vanderbilt are really close, so close that it ends up
coming up in the trial.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Good to know, Oh, something to look ahead for. Okay,
So let's start the trial October nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So the trial begins in the New York State Supreme Court,
and the second witness to testify on Gertrude's side. So
on the side that is wanting to take Little Gloria
out of her mother's custody and put her into her
aunt's custody is the elder Gloria's lady's maid, twenty three
year old French woman named Maria Kyo. And Gertrude's side
(09:12):
has brought Maria on to sort of talk about Gloria's
party lifestyle and how she stayed up all night and
drank and had wild parties and her friends were doing
who knows what, and so she paints this picture that
is not particularly pretty.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Now that it's a partying mom who's not responsible enough
to have this little heiress in her custody exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
And I mean to go off on a tangent for
a little bit. It's pretty ridiculous because the way that
Gloria Vanderbilt raises her child is the way that basically
all wealthy women at the time were raising their child.
Nanny's did most of it, and they had their social responsibilities.
So Gertrude Whitney was traveling and hanging out with friends
just as much as Gloria Vanderbilt was. But in any case,
something really scandalous comes up on the cross of Maria Kyo.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
She has all these.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Allegations about Gloria and don Cross. Gloria's lawyer, Nathan Burkin,
sort of breaks down Maria's credibility because it's revealed that
a lot of the things that she's saying are just assumptions. So,
for example, she said oh, you know, Gloria was drunk
every night, And Nathan Burken says, well, how did you
know that she was drunk? And Maria says, well, she smiled.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
A lot, as most drunk people do, of course exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Nathan Burkin's like, I'm smiling right now? Am I drunk?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Burken sort of breaks down her credibility and it's going well,
but then he goes too far because he feels like, okay,
she hasn't actually seen anything, and so he asks her, well,
you actually never saw anything improper, did you?
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (10:38):
No, and she goes, well, there was one thing he
definitely should have stopped there, like left well enough alone.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
But he says, oh, what could have been so bad?
Speaker 3 (10:49):
And so Maria Coyoe tells this story where it's there
in the south of France. She gets Gloria's clothes ready
for the day, and she goes into Gloria's bedroom and
she says, when I came, Missus Vanderbilt was in bed
reading a paper, and there was Lady Milford haven Nada
beside the bed with her arm around Missus Vanderbilt's neck
(11:10):
and kissing.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Her just like a lover. Oh no, I know the
crowd of course goes crazy.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
There's like this soap opera moment just to stun silence,
and then everyone starts yelling and Gloria Vanderbilt collapses.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Obviously, homosexual behavior would have been so stigmatized at this time. Yes,
even possibly criminalized, right.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Yes, it was criminalized in New York State and most
other places in the United States and around the world,
and just seen as sort of evidence of perversion and
moral degeneracy, like so many connotations of it that are
extremely damaging to people's reputations at the time.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And also it's these two incredibly beautiful, glamorous, connected, famous women.
I can't even imagine the scandal.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Yes, oh my gosh, it's enormous. It makes international headlines
although it's interesting. Of course, the British press is much
more deferential to royals, and so they don't cover it.
They just say, like, there's been some lurid testimony at
this trial. The American press is like, Missus Vanderbilt was
in bed with another woman, and she of course immediately
denies this story, and Lady Milford Haven does too, and
(12:15):
she doesn't say whether she's asked if she'll testify, and
she says, well, I'm going to stand by Gloria until
the end. This is an untruth, and so people think
that she might come and testify. But then the British
royal family sort of goes into reputation management mode. And
Lady Milford Haven is very good friends with Queen Mary,
and she meets with the King and the Queen allegedly
(12:37):
according to reporters, and they tell her you can't testify.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
This is a disaster. It's going to make it worse.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Even if she was testifying to deny it, it would
just make it everything more scandalous, the coverage would increase.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Exactly. It's good pr advice, you can see. I mean,
I think throughout this they do a good job at
public relations. They know what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
But they do allow her, and they do advise her
to send a represent to New York to sort of
represent her interests and try to keep her name out of.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
The trial as much.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So she hires a lawyer named Theobald Matthew to go
to New York, which also another amazing name.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
What's his deal?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
His job is basically just to protect Nada and the
reputation of the royals.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yes, exactly, So he's a top society lawyer at the time,
and he goes to New York and he meets with
the lawyers on both sides and the judges, and he
says to them, look, it would be for everybody's best
interests that the British Royals stay out of this, and
they all basically agree pretty readily.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Wow, is there a moment in the case where the
British Royals would have come up where they sort of
move away from him?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
We can see this sort of cover up that might
be too strong a word play out in real time.
So there's a point during Gloria Vanderbilt's cross examination one
of the Gertrude Whitney's side's biggest points is that Glory.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Was always traveling and wasn't present for her daughter.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
And so Herbert Smith, Gertrude's lawyer, asks Gloria about all
the time that she spent in London and in the
English countryside in the early nineteen thirties and is pressing
her on this and is like, why were you gone
from your daughter? Little Gloria's in Paris for some of
this time, And Gloria just says personal reasons, which is
(14:24):
code for I was helping my twin sister have an
affair with the Prince of Wales.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
With the Prince of Wales, yeah, as one is doing
often when they're in England.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
So normally Herbert Smith would be pushing on this, this
is a good point for your case, you're leaving your
daughter in another country. But because it's about the Prince
of Wales, and because Theobald Matthew has said please don't
do this, he just drops it. He just drops this
line of questioning and moves on.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Which is fascinating because I know that the British press
is historically and arguably to the present day very deferential
to the British royal family. But it's amazing to imagine
that the American legal system but also be sort of
obeying those norms.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I know, it's honestly shocking to me. There's even a
point shortly after this where Gloria mentions that she borrows
four thousand dollars from somebody so that she could sort
of have some money of her own that wasn't regulated
by the administrators of her daughter's trust. Four thousand dollars
in nineteen thirty four, it's like seventy five thousand dollars today.
It's a big loan to get from somebody.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, a good amount of money.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
And so of course Herbert Smith says, well who are
you getting that money from? And she says, oh, I
don't want to say it out loud, can I write
it down? And the judge allows it, and she writes
it on this piece of paper. She passes it to
the judge, he reads it, He passes it to her lawyer.
He reads it, and then he passes it to Herbert Smith,
who reads it and then sort of melodramatically tears it
(15:45):
into tidy little pieces and throws it in the trash.
And the historical record being what it is, we know
whose name was on that piece of paper, and it
was Edward, Prince of Wales.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That's so funny that they wrote it down to what
it wouldn't get written into the court record.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
The Prince of Wales's name never is mentioned ever in
the court record, even though he plays a substantial part
in both Gloria's lives.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
So obviously, even though the Prince of Wales was a
pretty fundamental piece of this puzzle, it's kind of where
Gloria was when she was away from her daughter, whether
or not that was worth mentioning in the custody case
or not or worth being a factor, and whether she
should have custody over her daughter. It's fascinating to me
(16:33):
the lengths that the American legal system went to to
protect the British royal family.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I know, it's incredible to me, and it's interesting. There's
a lot of other royal connections in this case and
the legal system, particularly the judge show. In this custody case,
there's not a jury, it's just one judge who's hearing
all of the evidence. And this guy, Justice John Francis Carew,
is pretty self consciously American.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
He's born and bred New.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yorker, middle class and uh doesn't have a lot of
respect for royals who are not British. So at one point,
to sort of establish that Gloria is of good character
and has good friends, her lawyer brings up, okay, well
she's friends with all of these titled people, and Gloria's
sort of naming them and her brother is naming them,
and the judge is like, stop talking about these foreigners. Basically,
(17:18):
he says, let me find the quote. I mean, it's
just oh yeah, do not stress too much on that
exalted and aristocratic nobility, because this little girl is an
American citizen.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Oh that's so funny.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
So for these non British royals, he's like, these people
mean nothing to me. They're not American, they have bad values.
But for the British royal families, he's like, will do
anything to keep them out of the case.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Is there any foreign royal who does make a good
impression on the judge?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
There is one.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
So Gloria Vanderbilt, a year and a half after her
husband's death, meets a man named Prince Gottfried of hoan
Loa Langenburg, who is a German prince.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
I know.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
His friends call him Friedel, and they are briefly engaged.
It doesn't work out because of her crazy mother more
or less, but he actually comes to testify in her
trial and on her behalf, and the judge really likes him, actually,
I think, because he's so honest about how he kind
of does nothing.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
He didn't like foreigners, he didn't like foreign nobles. He
thought they were absurd. The British royals he understood, he
got their whole deal. But this is the one foreign
noble that he was like Okay, this one's okay.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yes, And sort of ironically he likes him because Friedel
is really upfront about the fact that he does nothing
and is like a man of leisure and just hangs
out in the south of France in his pajamas all day.
And the judge is like, this is an honest, fourth
raight young man.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
That sounds wonderful.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, and it's so.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
The other really sort of interesting thing is that after
his engagement with Gloria Vanderbilt ends, Prince Friedel marries Princess
Margarita of Greece and Denmark, and she comes to testify
on Gloria's behalf in this custody trial in the America.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Can Press is so baffled by this, They're like, why
would you.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Go across the ocean to testify in your husband's exes
custody trial for the ex that's yeah, like wow.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
What a woman.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
What they don't put together, most of them, is that
Princess Margarita is Lady Milford Haven's niece.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Oh, so she's also so she's defending her husband's ex fiance,
but she's also defending her aunt's.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Honor exactly exactly by saying, this woman who's accused of
having an affair with her has an impeccable reputation.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Oh, I love those sneaky. One thing that you learn
doing noble blood is everyone has a little connection. All
of these nobles have a connection.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I know. And everybody's related to each other.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
So so the American newspapers at the time didn't find
that branch of the family tree.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
No, and they're all sort of curious about it.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
But there she is, you say, Greece and Denmark, and
I'm just curious, is there if we're talking about secret
little links, is there a link to Prince Philip there?
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Yes, Princess Margharita is Prince Philip's older sister.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Oh my god, of course, so he's also related to
not he was also Nada's nephew.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yes, So actually Nada and her husband George raise Philip
for a little bit in the early They take him
in and he they sent him to boarding school. And
then Prince George dies and so then Prince Philip goes
on to be raised in large part by his brother
Lewis Mountbatten. But yeah, they are super closely tied in
(20:30):
to that part of the royal family.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Another point for them having to maintain this sort of
reputation management. Yes, completely, This is just a fascinating connection.
I'm wondering. At the heart of this trial is this
ten year old little girl. How is all of this
going for her? Do we know?
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Yeah, it's a disaster. That's I think, like the true
tragedy of this trial is it's extremely traumatizing for her.
She has millions of people hearing these horrible things about
her family. She has to testify herself. The judge lets
her testify in chambers so she doesn't have to do
it publicly, but of course her testimony leaks and it
(21:09):
damages her for the rest of her life. She has
a strained relationship with both her mother and her aunt
after the trial, and members of the family on both
sides blame her for being the cause of this trial.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
And she was ten.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
How is she that she was ten?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
It's unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, it's really tragic, and it just makes you think
about all the ways that this could have been handled differently.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
How does this trial end up?
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Yeah, So, I mean I would recommend listening to the
full episode. I'll give you the full context in sort
of a play by play, but ultimately the judge awards custody.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
To her aunt to Gertrude Whitney. Wow.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, it's pretty shocking, and a large part of that
is because of Little Gloria's testimony. She seemed to be really,
really frightened of her mother, and nobody understood exactly why.
In nineteen eighty five, Gloria Vanderbilt, Little Gloria publishes a
memoir called Once Upon a Time where she basically reveals
that her grandmother, Laura Morgan, so Gloria's mother.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
The mother of these magnificent Morgan twins.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Exactly exactly, and my personal nemesis at this point, basically
schemed to have this trial happen and to have her
granddaughter removed from her daughter's custody in order for Laura
to sort of secure her own place within the Vanderbilt family.
She was obsessed with status and with money, and she
felt like her daughter wasn't deferring to her interests enough.
(22:34):
Her granddaughter was sort of her bargaining ship.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
She threw her own daughter under the bus to use
her granddaughter as a status symbol.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yes, she testifies against her daughter at the trial. Oh,
it's pretty terrible.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
So at the end of this trial, little Gloria goes
into the custody of her paternal aunt.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yes, and unfortunately, tragically it's not any better for her
because I mentioned before, most wealthy women at the time
raise their children in the same way. So Gertrude is
extremely absent. One of her Little Gloria's cousins, Gerda, says
later after the trial, no one cared about Gloria. She
was left basically alone.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Oh that's heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
It's really heartbreaking.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
What happens to her mother, Gloria Morgan.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Gloria is such an interesting character. I think the author
Barbara Goldsmith, who wrote a great book called Little Gloria
Happy at Last, sort of compares her to a figure
in a fairy tale. That's how Gloria sees herself. Things
happened to her. She doesn't seem to feel she has
any agency, and she's always waiting for somebody to solve
things for her. She and her twin sister Telma lived
(23:45):
together for most of the rest of their lives. She
lives in Los Angeles for a long time. She has
a relationship with an actress named Keeddy Kevin for a
long time.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I don't mean not to ever speculate on a historical
figure sexuality. But do we know or know that she
had romantic or sexual relationships with women?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yes, yes, we do know that.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Her daughter, at least Gloria Vanderbilt, has written about that
about her mother's bisexuality. She had relationships with men and
with women throughout her life. What's interesting about this case too,
because Gloria Vanderbilt's sexuality is used against her, is that
Gertrude Whitney was also bisexual and also had relationships with
women and men throughout her life. But of course that
(24:29):
doesn't come up in the trial.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
No, it's just about reputation exactly.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
So, yeah, Gloria Morgan has a hard time, and in fairness,
I guess to Gertrude Whitney, I do think it's unfair
her child was taken from her, But she also is
not really present for her daughter in a lot of ways.
She doesn't seem to know how to do it. So
even when Gloria gets a little older and wants to
co live with her mother, the older Gloria will just
disappear for weekends at a time and be sort of
(24:56):
absent when Gloria, the younger Gloria turns to twenty one
and gets access to her trust. She cuts her mother
off and they go through periods of not speaking and
reconciling and not speaking and reconciling. Ultimately they do reconcile
before the older glorious death in nineteen sixty five, but
it's a really fraught relationship.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
I mean, it just seems like the real tragedy of
this case is the way these adults were using a
ten year old child for their own ends.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Yes, exactly, exactly, And I think that for so many
of the people involved, money and power and status just
warped their ability to sort of see clearly or objectively
and to think about, as you said, the child who's
at the heart of this.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Well, Mira, this is an absolutely phenomenal case. Anyone who's
interested in hearing about it in more details should listen
to History on Trial and just go back and listen
to pretty much every episode of that podcast because I've
learned so much. Are there any other episodes, any other
trials that you've highlighted that our particular favorite that you
want to highlight now?
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Oh? Yes, I mean you sort of fall in love.
I'm sure this is the same for you with Noble Blood.
With everything you write about you get into the weeds
of it. One of the ones that I've learned the
most from is about a woman named Iva Taguri who
was known as Tokyo Rose, and she was an American
who of Japanese descent, who got stuck in Japan during
World War Two, ended up working for a Japanese radio station,
(26:25):
and then after the war is accused of treason and
it becomes sort of this political cause for the United
States government. And the way it was a story I
had never heard before. It made me reflect a lot
about how the government uses its power and who it
uses that power for and against.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Phenomenal Well, go listen to History on Trial. Mira, thank
you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Thank you so much for having me, Dana. It was
so much fun to talk about this case.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Nobel Blood is hosted by
me Danish Forts, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zewick, Courtney Sender, Julia Milani, and Armand Cassam. The
show is edited and produced by Noemy Griffin andrima Il Kaali,
(27:34):
with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. Four more podcasts from iHeartRadio.
Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
I am so thrilled to be here doing a very
special episode of Noble Blood. It's really a crossover episode
with Mira Hayward, who is a former writer researcher on
Noble Blood and went off to start her own podcast,
which is absolutely brilliant if you haven't listened to it yet,
it's called History on Trial and it explores in depth
(00:31):
specific trials in American history that define really I was
going to say the legal system, but so much more
just to find an aspect of American history. I feel
like I learned something new every episode about the foundations
of this country.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you so much, Dana.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
It's so fun to be back here at Noble Blood
where I feel like I got my start in podcasting,
back in my Frandsfordnandez and I feel the same way
about it. I'm sure you feel it's about doing Noble Blood,
but it's really cool to have a job where you
get to stuff all of the time.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Absolutely, and I'm excited to learn something today. We're going
to be talking about a very very scandalous trial involving
American Royalty the Vanderbilt but there's also a connection to
the British royal family. Do you want to give us
an overview of the case.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
So this case is in nineteen thirty four custody battle
over a ten year old child named Gloria Vanderbilt, who's
actually Anderson Cooper's mother, News Royalty. It's between her mother,
Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, who's in her late twenties and is
like beautiful society woman, and her paternal aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney,
who's one of the most wealthy women in America. She's
(01:41):
in her late fifties, patron of the arts, founder of
the Whitney Museum of American Art. And this case is
so scandalous and so shocking for the public. It's the
midst of the Great Depression. People are loving seeing that
rich people are having a hard time too. But interestingly,
one of the things I learned while researching this case
was how much royal involvement there was, particularly from the
(02:04):
British royal family.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, let's start there. Let's start with Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt,
who's the mother of the child that will eventually be
at the center of this custody case. What is Gloria
Morgan Vanderbilt's connection to the British royal family.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
So, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt has an identical twin who's named Telma.
And when Telma and Gloria come out into society in
the early nineteen twenties in New York, people call them
the Magnificent Morgans. They're extremely beautiful, they're identical twins. They
have these cute little accents from growing up all over Europe.
They're super beautiful and glamorous. And Telma, after sort of
(02:41):
a disastrous first marriage to an American, gets married to
this extremely wealthy English viscount who is named Marmaduke Furness,
which is an all time British name, an amazing name.
So this marriage unfortunately not super happy, lots of affairs
on both sides, and in nineteen twenty nine, Telma meets Edward,
the Prince of Wales, and she and Edward start an
(03:03):
affair that lasts for five years and it's pretty serious.
During that time, they're basically living as a couple.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And is this the Edward, Prince of Wales who will
eventually become king and abdicate his throne for Wallace Simpson.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Yes, exactly, and there's actually an amazing Wallace Simpson connection here.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
So Edward we just know already has a weakness for
it seems like married socialites.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yes, it's actually hilarious.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
The press starts to have some questions about how much
time in Telman and Edward are spending together. So Gloria
sort of helps facilitate this affair by getting a country
estate that's right next to Edwards so that Telman and
Edward can spend a lot of time together. And the
Press is like he's always seen with the glamorous lady furness,
and the Prince issues the statement where he's like, I
only hang out with married women because it's more respectable
(03:50):
that way, and the Press is like, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Oh of course, much more respectable.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, and so is Gloria Morgan also involved with you know,
the sort of English court life with her sister.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yes, very involved.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
She actually gets presented at court to King George and
Queen Mary at one point in the early thirties. She's
hanging out with sort of this whole set that's involved
the sort of these glamorous young British nobles centered around
the Prince of Wales. Actually it's a little bit crazy.
So Talma and the princes are involved, and so the
prince also meets little Gloria, the child at the heart
of the custody battle. There's lots of pictures of them
(04:24):
together when she was a child, because he was sort
of her de facto uncle for a little bit. It's
actually through the Morgan's sisters. So Gloria and Talma have
an older sister named Kinswlo that Edward meets Wallace Simpson
because Consuelo is friends with Wallace, and she tells Gloria
and Telma, I've had this amazing friend. You're going to
love her. You'll get along so well. Her name is Wallace.
(04:45):
They meet, they love her, and Talma says, oh my gosh, Edward,
you would love this woman. And it's actually in nineteen
thirty four that Talma goes to America to help her
sister Gloria with this custody trial. Things are really ramping up,
and before she leaves, she has dinner with Wallace and
Wallace who calls Edward little Man, which I guess is
endearing says, you know, the little man is going to
(05:07):
be so lonely while you're gone, and Telma says, well
look after him for me, won't you?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Famous last words.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
So, really the casualty of this trial is because Telma
had to leave, it pushed Wallace, Simpson and Edward right
into each other's arms.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
In nineteen thirty seven, Telma is asked if she regrets him,
if she could do her life over again, what would
she do differently? And she says, I would never introduce
Wallace to the Prince of Wales. So that's the Prince
of Wales's involvement. There's one other British royal who I
want to talk about who is also involved in this trial,
and that is the Marchioness of milford Haven.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Before we get to the Marchioness, can we sort of
set the scene for the trial. So why is this
custody trial even happening at all? Obviously Gloria Morgan married
to Vanderbilt, good for her, And what is happening that's
causing this trial?
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I think it's a classic case
of a trial that didn't need to happen, and perhaps
because of the money and power involved. These people don't
know how to talk to each other in ways that
a normal family might, and so it.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Escalates into this custody battle.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Basically, Gloria married a man named Reggie Vanderbilt. Wealth was
not good for Reggie. He gambled his entire fortune away,
basically almost a billion dollars in fourteen years, and then
he dies a year after. They have their first child,
Little Gloria, and so Gloria and the other Gloria, because
like European royalty, they have a habit of naming all
(06:35):
of their children the same things. Live off of a
trust that Little Gloria inherits, but that trust is really
highly regulated by administrators, and there are questions amongst other
members of the Vanderbilt family if the elder Gloria is
using that money responsibly, and there are accusations that she
is living this sort of partying lifestyle that is not
(06:56):
good for the child, and little Gloria starts to sort
of have these hysterical episodes where she says that she's
afraid of her mother. Her paternal aunt, Gertrude Whitney gets involved,
She's Gloria's godmother. There's so much to this story and
so many sort of complicated women with the different motives.
Little Gloria's grandmother, Laura, thinks that she shouldn't be in
(07:17):
her mother's custody, so eventually little Gloria goes to live
with Gertrude Whitney, and then Gertrud Whitney won't really give
her back to the elder Gloria got it.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
So it's this complicated situation where both the mom and
daughter are living off this wealthy trust and now the
late husband's family is trying to I'm putting this in
air quote but quote unquote protect the little daughter.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yes exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Nobody of course asks what the little daughter wants at
any point in this, but yeah, that's exactly what's happening.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So okay, let's go back now to this marchiness. How
is she involved?
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yes, So this is a woman named Nadezhda Mount Batton.
She comes from a wealthy Russian royal family and she
marries Prince George of Battenberg, who is British Royalty. That
Battenberg gets changed to Mount Batton after World War One
because of anti German sentiment, same as like the sax
Coburg Gotha Windsor transition. The marchioness who's known as Nada
(08:16):
by her friends, which is very cute, is super wealthy,
super beautiful. There's this quote from Little Gloria in her
autobiography where she's remembering Nada when she's a child, and
she says she has masses of maple sugar hair and
light followed her wherever she walked.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And I was like, oh, my gosh, I want to
meet her.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
She sounds amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, like the.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Most glamorous woman on earth. And she and Gloria Morgan
Vanderbilt are really close, so close that it ends up
coming up in the trial.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Good to know, Oh, something to look ahead for. Okay,
So let's start the trial October nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
So the trial begins in the New York State Supreme Court,
and the second witness to testify on Gertrude's side. So
on the side that is wanting to take Little Gloria
out of her mother's custody and put her into her
aunt's custody is the elder Gloria's lady's maid, twenty three
year old French woman named Maria Kyo. And Gertrude's side
(09:12):
has brought Maria on to sort of talk about Gloria's
party lifestyle and how she stayed up all night and
drank and had wild parties and her friends were doing
who knows what, and so she paints this picture that
is not particularly pretty.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Now that it's a partying mom who's not responsible enough
to have this little heiress in her custody exactly.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
And I mean to go off on a tangent for
a little bit. It's pretty ridiculous because the way that
Gloria Vanderbilt raises her child is the way that basically
all wealthy women at the time were raising their child.
Nanny's did most of it, and they had their social responsibilities.
So Gertrude Whitney was traveling and hanging out with friends
just as much as Gloria Vanderbilt was. But in any case,
something really scandalous comes up on the cross of Maria Kyo.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
She has all these.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Allegations about Gloria and don Cross. Gloria's lawyer, Nathan Burkin,
sort of breaks down Maria's credibility because it's revealed that
a lot of the things that she's saying are just assumptions. So,
for example, she said oh, you know, Gloria was drunk
every night, And Nathan Burken says, well, how did you
know that she was drunk? And Maria says, well, she smiled.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
A lot, as most drunk people do, of course exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Nathan Burkin's like, I'm smiling right now? Am I drunk?
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Burken sort of breaks down her credibility and it's going well,
but then he goes too far because he feels like, okay,
she hasn't actually seen anything, and so he asks her, well,
you actually never saw anything improper, did you?
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (10:38):
No, and she goes, well, there was one thing he
definitely should have stopped there, like left well enough alone.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
But he says, oh, what could have been so bad?
Speaker 3 (10:49):
And so Maria Coyoe tells this story where it's there
in the south of France. She gets Gloria's clothes ready
for the day, and she goes into Gloria's bedroom and
she says, when I came, Missus Vanderbilt was in bed
reading a paper, and there was Lady Milford haven Nada
beside the bed with her arm around Missus Vanderbilt's neck
(11:10):
and kissing.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Her just like a lover. Oh no, I know the
crowd of course goes crazy.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
There's like this soap opera moment just to stun silence,
and then everyone starts yelling and Gloria Vanderbilt collapses.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Obviously, homosexual behavior would have been so stigmatized at this time. Yes,
even possibly criminalized, right.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Yes, it was criminalized in New York State and most
other places in the United States and around the world,
and just seen as sort of evidence of perversion and
moral degeneracy, like so many connotations of it that are
extremely damaging to people's reputations at the time.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And also it's these two incredibly beautiful, glamorous, connected, famous women.
I can't even imagine the scandal.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Yes, oh my gosh, it's enormous. It makes international headlines
although it's interesting. Of course, the British press is much
more deferential to royals, and so they don't cover it.
They just say, like, there's been some lurid testimony at
this trial. The American press is like, Missus Vanderbilt was
in bed with another woman, and she of course immediately
denies this story, and Lady Milford Haven does too, and
(12:15):
she doesn't say whether she's asked if she'll testify, and
she says, well, I'm going to stand by Gloria until
the end. This is an untruth, and so people think
that she might come and testify. But then the British
royal family sort of goes into reputation management mode. And
Lady Milford Haven is very good friends with Queen Mary,
and she meets with the King and the Queen allegedly
(12:37):
according to reporters, and they tell her you can't testify.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
This is a disaster. It's going to make it worse.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Even if she was testifying to deny it, it would
just make it everything more scandalous, the coverage would increase.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Exactly. It's good pr advice, you can see. I mean,
I think throughout this they do a good job at
public relations. They know what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
But they do allow her, and they do advise her
to send a represent to New York to sort of
represent her interests and try to keep her name out of.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
The trial as much.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So she hires a lawyer named Theobald Matthew to go
to New York, which also another amazing name.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
What's his deal?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
His job is basically just to protect Nada and the
reputation of the royals.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yes, exactly, So he's a top society lawyer at the time,
and he goes to New York and he meets with
the lawyers on both sides and the judges, and he
says to them, look, it would be for everybody's best
interests that the British Royals stay out of this, and
they all basically agree pretty readily.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Wow, is there a moment in the case where the
British Royals would have come up where they sort of
move away from him?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
We can see this sort of cover up that might
be too strong a word play out in real time.
So there's a point during Gloria Vanderbilt's cross examination one
of the Gertrude Whitney's side's biggest points is that Glory.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Was always traveling and wasn't present for her daughter.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
And so Herbert Smith, Gertrude's lawyer, asks Gloria about all
the time that she spent in London and in the
English countryside in the early nineteen thirties and is pressing
her on this and is like, why were you gone
from your daughter? Little Gloria's in Paris for some of
this time, And Gloria just says personal reasons, which is
(14:24):
code for I was helping my twin sister have an
affair with the Prince of Wales.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
With the Prince of Wales, yeah, as one is doing
often when they're in England.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
So normally Herbert Smith would be pushing on this, this
is a good point for your case, you're leaving your
daughter in another country. But because it's about the Prince
of Wales, and because Theobald Matthew has said please don't
do this, he just drops it. He just drops this
line of questioning and moves on.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Which is fascinating because I know that the British press
is historically and arguably to the present day very deferential
to the British royal family. But it's amazing to imagine
that the American legal system but also be sort of
obeying those norms.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I know, it's honestly shocking to me. There's even a
point shortly after this where Gloria mentions that she borrows
four thousand dollars from somebody so that she could sort
of have some money of her own that wasn't regulated
by the administrators of her daughter's trust. Four thousand dollars
in nineteen thirty four, it's like seventy five thousand dollars today.
It's a big loan to get from somebody.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, a good amount of money.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
And so of course Herbert Smith says, well who are
you getting that money from? And she says, oh, I
don't want to say it out loud, can I write
it down? And the judge allows it, and she writes
it on this piece of paper. She passes it to
the judge, he reads it, He passes it to her lawyer.
He reads it, and then he passes it to Herbert Smith,
who reads it and then sort of melodramatically tears it
(15:45):
into tidy little pieces and throws it in the trash.
And the historical record being what it is, we know
whose name was on that piece of paper, and it
was Edward, Prince of Wales.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That's so funny that they wrote it down to what
it wouldn't get written into the court record.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
The Prince of Wales's name never is mentioned ever in
the court record, even though he plays a substantial part
in both Gloria's lives.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
So obviously, even though the Prince of Wales was a
pretty fundamental piece of this puzzle, it's kind of where
Gloria was when she was away from her daughter, whether
or not that was worth mentioning in the custody case
or not or worth being a factor, and whether she
should have custody over her daughter. It's fascinating to me
(16:33):
the lengths that the American legal system went to to
protect the British royal family.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I know, it's incredible to me, and it's interesting. There's
a lot of other royal connections in this case and
the legal system, particularly the judge show. In this custody case,
there's not a jury, it's just one judge who's hearing
all of the evidence. And this guy, Justice John Francis Carew,
is pretty self consciously American.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
He's born and bred New.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yorker, middle class and uh doesn't have a lot of
respect for royals who are not British. So at one point,
to sort of establish that Gloria is of good character
and has good friends, her lawyer brings up, okay, well
she's friends with all of these titled people, and Gloria's
sort of naming them and her brother is naming them,
and the judge is like, stop talking about these foreigners. Basically,
(17:18):
he says, let me find the quote. I mean, it's
just oh yeah, do not stress too much on that
exalted and aristocratic nobility, because this little girl is an
American citizen.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Oh that's so funny.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
So for these non British royals, he's like, these people
mean nothing to me. They're not American, they have bad values.
But for the British royal families, he's like, will do
anything to keep them out of the case.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Is there any foreign royal who does make a good
impression on the judge?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
There is one.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
So Gloria Vanderbilt, a year and a half after her
husband's death, meets a man named Prince Gottfried of hoan
Loa Langenburg, who is a German prince.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
I know.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
His friends call him Friedel, and they are briefly engaged.
It doesn't work out because of her crazy mother more
or less, but he actually comes to testify in her
trial and on her behalf, and the judge really likes him, actually,
I think, because he's so honest about how he kind
of does nothing.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
He didn't like foreigners, he didn't like foreign nobles. He
thought they were absurd. The British royals he understood, he
got their whole deal. But this is the one foreign
noble that he was like Okay, this one's okay.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yes, And sort of ironically he likes him because Friedel
is really upfront about the fact that he does nothing
and is like a man of leisure and just hangs
out in the south of France in his pajamas all day.
And the judge is like, this is an honest, fourth
raight young man.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
That sounds wonderful.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, and it's so.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
The other really sort of interesting thing is that after
his engagement with Gloria Vanderbilt ends, Prince Friedel marries Princess
Margarita of Greece and Denmark, and she comes to testify
on Gloria's behalf in this custody trial in the America.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Can Press is so baffled by this, They're like, why
would you.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Go across the ocean to testify in your husband's exes
custody trial for the ex that's yeah, like wow.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
What a woman.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
What they don't put together, most of them, is that
Princess Margarita is Lady Milford Haven's niece.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Oh, so she's also so she's defending her husband's ex fiance,
but she's also defending her aunt's.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Honor exactly exactly by saying, this woman who's accused of
having an affair with her has an impeccable reputation.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Oh, I love those sneaky. One thing that you learn
doing noble blood is everyone has a little connection. All
of these nobles have a connection.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I know. And everybody's related to each other.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
So so the American newspapers at the time didn't find
that branch of the family tree.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
No, and they're all sort of curious about it.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
But there she is, you say, Greece and Denmark, and
I'm just curious, is there if we're talking about secret
little links, is there a link to Prince Philip there?
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Yes, Princess Margharita is Prince Philip's older sister.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Oh my god, of course, so he's also related to
not he was also Nada's nephew.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Yes, So actually Nada and her husband George raise Philip
for a little bit in the early They take him
in and he they sent him to boarding school. And
then Prince George dies and so then Prince Philip goes
on to be raised in large part by his brother
Lewis Mountbatten. But yeah, they are super closely tied in
(20:30):
to that part of the royal family.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Another point for them having to maintain this sort of
reputation management. Yes, completely, This is just a fascinating connection.
I'm wondering. At the heart of this trial is this
ten year old little girl. How is all of this
going for her? Do we know?
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Yeah, it's a disaster. That's I think, like the true
tragedy of this trial is it's extremely traumatizing for her.
She has millions of people hearing these horrible things about
her family. She has to testify herself. The judge lets
her testify in chambers so she doesn't have to do
it publicly, but of course her testimony leaks and it
(21:09):
damages her for the rest of her life. She has
a strained relationship with both her mother and her aunt
after the trial, and members of the family on both
sides blame her for being the cause of this trial.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
And she was ten.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
How is she that she was ten?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
It's unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, it's really tragic, and it just makes you think
about all the ways that this could have been handled differently.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
How does this trial end up?
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Yeah, So, I mean I would recommend listening to the
full episode. I'll give you the full context in sort
of a play by play, but ultimately the judge awards custody.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
To her aunt to Gertrude Whitney. Wow.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, it's pretty shocking, and a large part of that
is because of Little Gloria's testimony. She seemed to be really,
really frightened of her mother, and nobody understood exactly why.
In nineteen eighty five, Gloria Vanderbilt, Little Gloria publishes a
memoir called Once Upon a Time where she basically reveals
that her grandmother, Laura Morgan, so Gloria's mother.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
The mother of these magnificent Morgan twins.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Exactly exactly, and my personal nemesis at this point, basically
schemed to have this trial happen and to have her
granddaughter removed from her daughter's custody in order for Laura
to sort of secure her own place within the Vanderbilt family.
She was obsessed with status and with money, and she
felt like her daughter wasn't deferring to her interests enough.
(22:34):
Her granddaughter was sort of her bargaining ship.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
She threw her own daughter under the bus to use
her granddaughter as a status symbol.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yes, she testifies against her daughter at the trial. Oh,
it's pretty terrible.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
So at the end of this trial, little Gloria goes
into the custody of her paternal aunt.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yes, and unfortunately, tragically it's not any better for her
because I mentioned before, most wealthy women at the time
raise their children in the same way. So Gertrude is
extremely absent. One of her Little Gloria's cousins, Gerda, says
later after the trial, no one cared about Gloria. She
was left basically alone.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Oh that's heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
It's really heartbreaking.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
What happens to her mother, Gloria Morgan.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Gloria is such an interesting character. I think the author
Barbara Goldsmith, who wrote a great book called Little Gloria
Happy at Last, sort of compares her to a figure
in a fairy tale. That's how Gloria sees herself. Things
happened to her. She doesn't seem to feel she has
any agency, and she's always waiting for somebody to solve
things for her. She and her twin sister Telma lived
(23:45):
together for most of the rest of their lives. She
lives in Los Angeles for a long time. She has
a relationship with an actress named Keeddy Kevin for a
long time.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I don't mean not to ever speculate on a historical
figure sexuality. But do we know or know that she
had romantic or sexual relationships with women?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yes, yes, we do know that.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Her daughter, at least Gloria Vanderbilt, has written about that
about her mother's bisexuality. She had relationships with men and
with women throughout her life. What's interesting about this case too,
because Gloria Vanderbilt's sexuality is used against her, is that
Gertrude Whitney was also bisexual and also had relationships with
women and men throughout her life. But of course that
(24:29):
doesn't come up in the trial.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
No, it's just about reputation exactly.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
So, yeah, Gloria Morgan has a hard time, and in fairness,
I guess to Gertrude Whitney, I do think it's unfair
her child was taken from her, But she also is
not really present for her daughter in a lot of ways.
She doesn't seem to know how to do it. So
even when Gloria gets a little older and wants to
co live with her mother, the older Gloria will just
disappear for weekends at a time and be sort of
(24:56):
absent when Gloria, the younger Gloria turns to twenty one
and gets access to her trust. She cuts her mother
off and they go through periods of not speaking and
reconciling and not speaking and reconciling. Ultimately they do reconcile
before the older glorious death in nineteen sixty five, but
it's a really fraught relationship.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
I mean, it just seems like the real tragedy of
this case is the way these adults were using a
ten year old child for their own ends.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Yes, exactly, exactly, And I think that for so many
of the people involved, money and power and status just
warped their ability to sort of see clearly or objectively
and to think about, as you said, the child who's
at the heart of this.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Well, Mira, this is an absolutely phenomenal case. Anyone who's
interested in hearing about it in more details should listen
to History on Trial and just go back and listen
to pretty much every episode of that podcast because I've
learned so much. Are there any other episodes, any other
trials that you've highlighted that our particular favorite that you
want to highlight now?
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Oh? Yes, I mean you sort of fall in love.
I'm sure this is the same for you with Noble Blood.
With everything you write about you get into the weeds
of it. One of the ones that I've learned the
most from is about a woman named Iva Taguri who
was known as Tokyo Rose, and she was an American
who of Japanese descent, who got stuck in Japan during
World War Two, ended up working for a Japanese radio station,
(26:25):
and then after the war is accused of treason and
it becomes sort of this political cause for the United
States government. And the way it was a story I
had never heard before. It made me reflect a lot
about how the government uses its power and who it
uses that power for and against.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Phenomenal Well, go listen to History on Trial. Mira, thank
you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Thank you so much for having me, Dana. It was
so much fun to talk about this case.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Nobel Blood is hosted by
me Danish Forts, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston,
Hannah Zewick, Courtney Sender, Julia Milani, and Armand Cassam. The
show is edited and produced by Noemy Griffin andrima Il Kaali,
(27:34):
with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. Four more podcasts from iHeartRadio.
Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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