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