A life in pictures: Remembering Gloria Vanderbilt
<p>Gloria Vanderbilt was duped as the last daughter of the great Golden Age of America who spent a large portion of her childhood in the public eye.</p>
<p>Born in 1921, she was the only child of railroad heir Reginald Vanderbilt and his second wife Gloria Morgan.</p>
<p>Gloria was a young girl whose childhood revolved around a media circus and she was the centre of one of the messiest and highly publicised custody battles of the ‘30s between her mother and paternal aunt, who won.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt went on to live a spectacularly colourful life, and became an artist, author, fashion designer and New York “It” girl.</p>
<p>She had four children to two husbands and was married four times between 1941 and 1978 until her fourth husband who she believes was the love of her life, Wyatt Cooper, died in 1978 while undergoing open-heart surgery.</p>
<p>In 1988, her third eldest son Carter Cooper sadly took his own life by jumping from the terrace of the family’s Manhattan home.</p>
<p>Gloria Vanderbilt passed away at age 95 after a long battle with stomach cancer in her New York home.</p>
<p>“She was ready. She was ready to go,” Anderson Cooper, youngest son of the wealthy socialite said in an emotional statement to viewers. “[She died] the way she wanted.”</p>
<p> “What an extraordinary life. What an extraordinary [mother] and what an incredible woman,” Cooper added.</p>
<p>Scroll through the gallery above to see the life of Gloria Vanderbilt in pictures.</p>
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