Gloria Vanderbilt, descendant of farmer Jan Aertsz of De Bilt, was a hellcat. On that, friend and foe agree. But she had an excuse. Father died before she was even two years old, mother ran off with Gloria’s inheritance and had her parental rights taken away. “I hate Mom,” the girl screamed in the courtroom. Everything was out of whack from day one.
She earned her own capital as a kind of early Kim Kardashian (also half Dutch, from Houten, not far from De Bilt), slept with a long line of flawed men, including Marlon Brando (from Utrecht, around the corner), sold fashion and jewelry, and chose a swan as her logo. She lived to be 95, but that logo was a model: every day was a dying swan.
Her son Anderson Cooper had a brother. That guy jumped 14 stories from an apartment building after making sure Gloria was watching. She couldn’t get past that, she said. Everything she touched turned into gold for a moment and then vanished into ash. She lost almost every penny she once possessed. “The love of my life,” she finally wrote, “was my mother.” And with that, her tragic grief came full-circle.
