Anderson Cooper has opened up about how the birth of his son Wyatt inspired him to pen a book about his family’s history after years of not knowing much about the Vanderbilt dynasty.
The CNN anchor, whose mother was socialite-turned-designer Gloria Vanderbilt, teamed up with historian and novelist Katherine Howe to co-write The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, which is slated for release on September 21.
‘In some ways I wanted this to be a letter to my son,’ Cooper, 54, told People magazine of his motivation to publish the historical book.
Candid: Anderson Cooper, 54, opened up about how the birth of his son Wyatt inspired him to write about his family in his new book Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
Cover story: The CNN anchor covers the latest issue of People magazine, in which he talks about his family’s ‘painful’ past
The journalist welcomed his one-year-old son Wyatt Morgan Cooper via surrogate on April 27, 2020, and named after him after his father, Wyatt Cooper, who died during heart surgery when he was 10.
History: Cooper co-wrote his upcoming book with historian Katherine Howe. It’s slated for release on September 21
‘My dad wrote a book before he died about his family growing up in Mississippi. And because he died when I was so young, a lot that I know of him came from that book,’ he explained in the cover interview. ‘I wanted to write a letter to Wyatt about this crazy and unusual part of his family’s past.’
The Vanderbilts were once one of the most powerful dynasties in the US after having risen to prominence and wealth during the Gilded Age.
Cooper’s great-great-great-grandfather Cornelius Vanderbilt amassed a fortune through his shipping and railroad empires.
Cornelius was the richest man in American when he died in 1877. He left behind an estimated $100 million that was equivalent to $2.5 billion in today’s currency, but it was later squandered by his heirs.
‘As a kid, my mom didn’t really talk about her childhood. It was very painful for her. So I grew up not really knowing much about the Vanderbilts, and the little I did know was that they were very wealthy and they had built enormous palaces, and some of those were museums, but a lot of them had disappeared,’ Cooper said.
Looking back: Cooper admitted he didn’t know much about the Vanderbilts growing up because his mother Gloria (pictured in 2010) didn’t really talk about her childhood
Family: Gloria was the daughter of Reginald and Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt (pictured). Her great-great-grandfather Cornelius Vanderbilt was once the richest man in America
Looking back: Gloria (pictured in 1938) became known as ‘the poor little rich girl’ thanks to a highly publicized custody trial between her mother and her father’s sister Gertrude Whitney
‘It was always this question in my mind: How, in a hundred years, does a family go from having more money than anybody else in the world to having all their houses torn down because nobody can afford them?’
Gloria, who spent her entire life in the public eye, passed away at age 95 on June 17, 2019, after a short battle with stomach cancer.
Cooper was going through boxes in her apartment after her death when he found a number of family letters from relatives he had never met.
‘There were very personal letters from her grandmother and her aunt and her mother, and all these people who I didn’t really know, who I’d never met, but whose voices suddenly kind of came alive in these letters,’ he said.
‘It was really fascinating to start to think of them as human beings and not just historical characters or people I’d read about, people you can read about in history books.’
Parents: Cooper was raised by his mother Gloria and father, writer Wyatt Cooper (pictured in 1970)
Looking back: Cooper’s son was named Wyatt Cooper after his father, who died when he was 10 years old. He is pictured with his parents and brother Carter in 1972
Tragedy: Cooper’s brother Carter (pictured in 1976) died by suicide in 1988 when he was 23 years old
Born in 1924, Cooper’s mother Gloria was the only child of Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt and his second wife Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt.
Her father was an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis of the liver when she was one, leaving her in the care of her mother Gloria Morgan.
Reginald left behind him a mountain of debt that pillaged his wealth, but he did set up a $5 million trust fund for Gloria to share with her older half-sister Cathleen Vanderbilt, his only child with his first wife Cathleen Neilson.
Gloria Morgan, who was 20 at the time of her husband’s death and therefore considered a minor, was not given access to her daughter’s portion of the trust fund.
Instead, she was issued $4,000 monthly installments to care for her daughter, but she used it frivolously.
As a child, Gloria lived in France and was unaware of the Vanderbilts or the trust fund she was set to inherit at age 21. She was predominantly cared for by her beloved nanny Emma Sullivan Kieslich nanny, whom she called ‘Dodo.’
By 1934, when Gloria was 10, her aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, sued her mother for custody of her, claiming she was an unfit mother. The trial exposed the dysfunction of one of America’s wealthiest and most high-profile families at the time.
Whitney accused Gloria Morgan of being a lesbian. In turn, she claimed Whitney’s art, which was full of nudism, would influence her daughter.
The tabloids feasted on the court battle, dubbing it the ‘trial of the century’ and giving the young Gloria the nickname ‘poor little rich girl.’
In the end, Gertrude was given custody of the child and the judge fired Dodo. Years later, Gloria recalled her heartache at the decision.
‘She was my mother, my father, my everything. She was my lifeline she was all I had,’ she told her son in an interview.
As she grew up, she socialized in Manhattan and charmed film and play directors until she made connections in Hollywood where she would find three of her four husbands.
When she first arrived in Hollywood at the age of 17, her first boyfriend was one of the biggest stars of all time, Errol Flynn.
In 1941, when she was at the age of 17, Gloria married Hollywood agent Pat DiCicco, a decision she instantly knew was a mistake, according to Cooper. The pair were together for four years before they divorced.
She married her second husband, the conductor Leopold Stokowski, in 1945, when she was 21. He was 63 and she described it as love at first sight, despite the age gap.
They had two children together, Stanley and Christopher, and were married for 10 years before divorcing. She was later linked to a host of famous men, including Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando.
In 1956, she married her third husband, the famous director and producer Sidney Lumet. They were together until 1963.
Her fourth marriage, to Cooper’s father Wyatt, began four months after her divorce from Lumet. Together, they had Cooper and his brother Carter, who was two years older.
While raising her children, Gloria acted on Broadway and in films, wrote poetry and novels, and produced wildly popular art.
In the 1970s, she made a name for herself in the fashion industry with her line of denim — Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans — which were emblazoned with a swan and her name.
But her life was not without tragedy.
Ten years after the death of Cooper’s father Wyatt in 1978, her son Carter leaped to his death in front of her from her apartment terrace.
Gloria remained close with Cooper and Stanley throughout their lives, but she and Christopher became estranged in 1978 when he accused her therapist of meddling in his love life.
The mother of four left the majority of her estate to Cooper, who reportedly inherited all of his mother’s belongings except for her co-op apartment at 30 Beekman Place in Manhattan, which went to Stanley. She did not leave anything in her will for her estranged son Christopher.