Anderson Cooper on the Vanderbilt Dynasty

For the past 15 years, Anderson Cooper, CNN presenter and “60 Minutes” correspondent, has been sorting through his mother’s treasures. Cooper’s mother was Gloria Vanderbilt, known for her designer jeans, and as the so-called “Poor Little Rich Girl” at the center of an infamous Depression-era custody battle between her own mother ( also named Gloria) and Aunt Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.

“This I just found out recently; it was the headline of ‘The Daily News’, July 4, 1935: ‘Gloria loses a child.’ Coverage after the trial. “

And there are photographs of Gloria, from the day her father died. “She’s my son’s age right now,” Cooper said.

“And here she is with her father,” correspondent Mo Rocca said. “Do you look at this guy and say, ‘Wait, wait a sec, this is my grandpa’?”

“I know! It’s crazy. It’s another world,” Cooper said.

Another world where the name Vanderbilt was synonymous with enormous wealth and privilege… “The Vanderbilts as a child seemed a bit like idlers. I knew they had all these houses and were now museums. . But it had no reality in my life. “

But after his mother’s death in 2019, and then the birth of his son, Wyatt, in 2020, Cooper decided to delve into this aspect of his family history, documenting it in a new book: “Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty” (Harper Collins).

The Vanderbilts came from Holland to the New World in the 17th century. The first generations here were farmers. Then came Cornelius, aka the Commodore. “Commodore Vanderbilt was a truly amazing person,” said Cooper. “I mean, he grew up on a farm in Staten Island.”

Cornelius left school at age 11 and made his first fortune in the expedition. “From a small boat carrying supplies, he built a steamboat empire.”

“And the steamboats were basically just the first chapter of his career?” Rocca asked.

“Yes. Well that’s what is so crazy, is it built of them massive empires. It was late in his life when he decided that steamboats were the past and railways were the future. And he started buying small railroads in the Northeast. And eventually he formed a railroad company that was basically an East Coast rail service to Chicago. “

Yet Cooper also discovered some unflattering aspects of his great-great-great-grandfather’s character.

Rocca said: “When I read that you described him as stingy and ruthless, I thought it was blunt!”

“Well, yeah, I mean he was!” Cooper laughed. “I actually started out thinking maybe he was a psychopath, and then I left, after doing a lot of research, I was like, ‘You know, it’s kinda hard. “Like, who can really say? I mean, who knows what’s on somebody’s head? There’s no MRI we have of him!

“But he himself said he had a mania for money. And other people described it as a pathology. I think that was his sole reason for being.”

By the Commodore’s death in 1877, he had raised $ 100 million: “He had more money than the US Treasury,” Cooper said.

One in twenty dollars in circulation belonged to the Vanderbilts!

In 1885, the commodore’s son, William Henry, managed to more than double the family coffers, to around $ 230 million, or nearly $ 6.5 billion in today’s dollars.

But it was the next generation of Vanderbilt whose ambitions had nothing to do with manufacturing money. Cooper said: “Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his brother, William K. Vanderbilt, their wives decide they are going to get the Vanderbilts to take over New York society.”

“And then the expenses start?” Rocca asked.

“Yes. The faucets are on.”

Hungry for respectability, this generation of wealthy Vanderbilts spent lavishly on mansions dotting Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and lavish “summer cottages” in Newport, Rhode Island.

Rocca asked, “Pop Quiz: What the Vanderbilt Family less constitutional amendment preferred? “

“Anything to do with taxes! Cooper laughs.

The 16th Amendment to the Constitution inaugurated federal income tax in 1913. Inheritance and inheritance taxes quickly followed. But Vanderbilt’s spending habits continued unabated.

Cooper said: “I see money as a kind of pathology that infected the following generations, because I think they all grew up with this idea that there would always be money out there, and that ‘they didn’t need to actually work. “

When Cooper’s mother, Gloria, was born in 1924, her inheritance was greatly reduced and she was given little advice on how to care for her: “This book has helped me understand my mother in a way. that I never really imagined, because after the world she was born into and the life her father led and the life her mother dreamed of leading and the life her grandfather led, you see why she, you know, grew up spending money without thinking about it. “

In 1978, Cooper’s father, Wyatt, passed away. “Ever since I was a child, I saw myself as my mother’s protector after my father died when I was 10 years old. My mother was a remarkable woman, but I knew she had no plan. And she had never had one. “

When it comes to money matters, Cooper has assumed an almost parenting role with his own mother: “I was talking to him when I was 13 about, you know, ‘You know, you can get a bank account and you should put some money into it. money in savings. money makes money. Just stupid things I read. “

“Would you say that at 13?” Rocca asked.

“Yeah. She just never had a plan. She just felt like – I heard once, I think I was, like, 14 or 15, I remember I was going to up in the house and I heard her on the phone say to a friend of hers, ‘Well, I can still make some money.’ And I remember stopping and freezing when I heard that and thought, “We’re doomed.”

“And that was a huge factor for me, I started working as much as I could. I got a job as a child model because when you’re 13, 14, you can’t do much. thing.”

Gloria vanderbilt made make a fortune with these jeans. But Anderson Cooper never stopped working. “Work for me was the thing that got me through it all. Work has always been the only constant in my life from when I was working, you know, as a model kid when I was a kid. was something reliable, it helped calm me down, and, you know, I know I was building the foundation for a life. “

A life that now includes her 16-month-old son, Wyatt, to whom the book is dedicated.

Cooper said, “I was like, ‘I want to write a book for my son that kind of explains some part of his past or his family’s past. “And that’s an honest take, I think, on this remarkable family – remarkable in a good way, but also in a bad way.”

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Story produced by Kay Lim. Publisher: Joseph Frandino.

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