American Artist, Author, Actress, Fashion Designer, Heiress, and Socialite. She was a fashion icon and the mother of television news personality Anderson Cooper. Born Gloria Laura Vanderbilt in Manhattan, she was the only heir of railroad heir Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt. When her father died while she was a toddler, she and her half-sister became the subject of a custody suit between her mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, and her paternal aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who ultimately gained custody. The court case was detailed in the 1980 book by Barbara Goldsmith titled "Little Gloria ... Happy At Last" and was subsequently made into a television miniseries on NBC. The miniseries garnered six Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. She attended Greenvale School on Long Island; Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut; and the Wheeler School in Providence, Rhode Island. She studied acting under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse and art at the Art Students League of New York. She gave one-woman art shows of her oil paintings, watercolors, and pastels, and her artwork was licensed by Hallmark Cards in 1968. From 1954 to 1963, she dedicated herself to acting and appeared in live and filmed television shows such as "Playhouse 90," "The Dick Powell Show," and "The Love Boat." Her first theater appearance in "The Swan" inspired the swan logo she would later use in her fashion design. She was a fashion model, and appeared in "Harper's Bazaar" at the age of 17, as well as being the face of her clothing and fragrance lines. In the 1970's, she began her fashion empire by licensing her name with a line of scarves. She was approached by Indian designer Mohan Murjani who proposed a line of designer jeans that would carry her signature embroidered on the pocket, along with her swan logo. The fashion line grew to include dresses, fragrances, blouses, shoes, and other accessories. She sold the rights to her name to the Murjani Group in 1978 and started her own company, GV Ltd. In the 1980's, she accused her former partners in GV Ltd. and her lawyer of fraud. After a drawn-out trial, she was awarded $1.7 million dollars which she was never able to recover. Due to unpaid taxes, she was forced to sell her Southampton and New York City homes. She held her first Art Exhibition in 2001 to critical acclaim, and held a second exhibition in 2007. As an author, she wrote two art books, three novels, and four memoirs which included, "It Seemed Important At the Time: A Romance Memoir," "A Mother's Story," and "The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss" which she co-wrote with Anderson Cooper. In April 2016, they were the subject of the HBO documentary "Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper," featuring a series of conversations between mother and son. She was married four times, beginning with her marriage to Pat DiCicco in 1941 when she was 17. After their divorce in 1945, she married conductor Leopold Stokowski, and they had two sons prior to their divorce in 1955. She married Sid Lumet in 1956, and they divorced in 1963. Her fourth and final marriage was to Wyatt Emory Cooper in 1963; this marriage lasted until his death in 1978. They had two sons, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper and Anderson Hayes Cooper. She died a few weeks after being diagnosed with stomach cancer.