Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Little Gloria...Happy At Last by Barbara Goldsmith Barbara Goldsmith. Not even Hollywood in its heyday could have dreamed up a melodrama so electrifying as the one that swirled around 10-year-old “Little Gloria” Vanderbilt in 1934 when she became the object of a scandalous custody battle between her beautiful but poor, and none too bright, mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, and her rich, powerful aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney whose own private life included several lovers and a pseudonymous novel about lesbianism. Taking the court case as her focal point, and documenting it every step of the way, Goldsmith has produced a book of fabulous readability. It is the psychological perception she brings to her story that grips so intensely, however. What she is chronicling is the whole passing parade of American and international high society at a time of tumultuous transition when the old guard was giving way to the new “café” society. And what a cast of characters she has?everything from royals (Thelma, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt’s twin, was mistress to the Prince of Wales), grande dames, a rigid Irish Catholic Tammany judge, and a “devoted,” hideously possessive nurse, to the terrified little girl, told her mother might kill her. Over it all loomed the aura of the Lindbergh kidnapping. Goldsmith probes the motives, the secrets, the hidden longings of them all credibly and compassionately in a book that will sell and sell and sell. This book has it all. Little Gloria. Happy at Last. Ten-day return guarantee; full refund includes original shipping cost for up to ten days after delivery if an item is misdescribed or damaged. Different carrier (UPS, FedEx, DHL) on request. About the Seller. The Owl at the Bridge. About The Owl at the Bridge. Glossary. Some terminology that may be used in this description includes: A.N. The book is pristine and free of any defects, in the same condition as . [more] VG Very Good condition can describe a used book that does show some small signs of wear - but no tears - on either binding or. [more] This Book’s Categories. Social SciencesEthnic GroupsJewish StudiesEthnic Biography Biography & EssaysBiography & Memoirs. Subscribe. Sign up for our newsletter for a chance to win $50 in free books! A Brief History of the Dust Jacket. When did dust jackets first appear, and what exactly are they for? Learn about this often-important detail as it applies to book collecting. More. Little Gloria. Happy at Last. Based on the book by Barbara Goldsmith, it tells the story of the real life Gloria Vanderbilt and how her parents met and married. Gloria Vanderbilt was left a very rich girl at the age of eighteen months when her father died. When Gloria was seven her grandmother contested her own daughter's right to the custody of little Gloria, launching one of the most notorious court cases of the last century. as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney as Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt as Emma Kieslich as Nathan Burkan as the Honorable John Francis Carew as Laura Delphine Fitzpatrick Morgan as Maury Paul as Gilcrist as Smythe as Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt as Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt as Gloria Laura Vanderbilt. Awards. References. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1". Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". ISBN 13: 9780333295083. Little Gloria. Happy at Last, 1980, by Barbara Goldsmith. Hardcover with dust jacket, 650 pages, published by Alfred A. Knopf. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Shipping: US$ 3.99 Within U.S.A. Other Popular Editions of the Same Title. Featured Edition. ISBN 10: 0394428366 ISBN 13: 9780394428369 Publisher: Knopf, 1980 Hardcover. Pan Ma. 1981 Softcover. Dell P. 1981 Softcover. Dell, 1982 Softcover. Customers who bought this item also bought. Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace. 1. Little Gloria.Happy At Last. Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # think_cr2_0333295080. 2. Little Gloria.Happy At Last. Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_0333295080. 3. Little Gloria - Happy at Last: Biography of Gloria Vanderbilt [Hardcover] Goldsmith, Barbara. Book Description Condition: New. New. Seller Inventory # Q-0333295080. Shop With Us. Sell With Us. About Us. Find Help. Other AbeBooks Companies. Follow AbeBooks. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. Barbara Goldsmith, Author of ‘Little Gloria,’ Dies at 85. Barbara Goldsmith, a founding editor of New York magazine and the author of “Little Gloria … Happy at Last,” a best-selling account of the bitter 1934 custody battle over Gloria Vanderbilt, died on Sunday at her home in Manhattan. She was 85. The cause was heart failure, family members said. In 1974, Ms. Goldsmith was doing research at a law library for a novel about the art world, “The Straw Man,” when she chanced upon four fat volumes labeled “In the Matter of Vanderbilt.” They contained 8,000 pages of court transcripts from the custody case that pitted Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Gloria’s aunt, against the child’s mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, with a $2.5 million trust fund the glittering prize. It was one of the great headline-hogging trials of the age, and Ms. Goldsmith threw herself into the subject with abandon. For the next five years, she pored over the court records and conducted more than 300 interviews in seven countries. The result was a 650-page whopper, published in 1980, full to bursting with scandal, betrayal, extravagance and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. The book, which Newsday called “moth-to-flame reading,” was turned into an NBC mini-series in 1982, with Angela Lansbury, Christopher Plummer and Maureen Stapleton. Ms. Goldsmith went on to write several more well-received books, notably “Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull” (1998), about the women’s rights advocate who in 1872 became the first woman to run for president of the United States, and “Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie” (2005). Ms. Goldsmith was born Barbara Joan Lubin on May 18, 1931, in Manhattan and grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y. Her father, Joseph, was a founder of the nationwide accounting firm Eisner & Lubin and a real estate investor. Her mother, the former Evelyn Cronson, was a schoolteacher and, with her husband, a philanthropist. After graduating from New Rochelle High School, she enrolled in Wellesley College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English and art history in 1953. In 1954, she married C. Gerald Goldsmith, an investment banker. The marriage ended in divorce, as did her second marriage, to the filmmaker Frank Perry, who died in 1995. Ms. Goldsmith, who also lived in East Hampton, N.Y., is survived by two sons, John and Andrew; a daughter, Alice Elgart; and six grandchildren. After college, she worked for Art News as a critic before becoming an editor at Woman’s Home Companion. The magazine did not have an entertainment section, so she set about creating one, contributing interview-profiles of Clark Gable, Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and other stars. Later, at Town & Country, she started a series called “The Creative Environment,” for which she interviewed important figures in the arts, including I. M. Pei, Marcel Breuer, George Balanchine and Pablo Picasso. After being introduced to Clay Felker by Harold Hayes, the editor of Esquire, she began writing for The New York Herald Tribune, where Mr. Felker was an editor. When the newspaper went out of business in 1966, Ms. Goldsmith lent Mr. Felker $6,500 to acquire the name of its Sunday supplement, New York, which he transformed into New York magazine, with Ms. Goldsmith as one of the founding editors. Having done Mr. Felker a good turn, she nearly scuttled his new publication with her 1968 profile of Viva, the Andy Warhol superstar. “La Dolce Viva” depicted its voluble subject as befuddled, destitute, dissolute and promiscuous. An accompanying nude photo by Diane Arbus reinforced the general impression. “Between my prose and Arbus’s photos, half the readers wanted to cancel their subscriptions, and the other half thought it was the best thing ever,” Ms. Goldsmith told The East Hampton Star in 2001. Worried, Mr. Felker had shown the article to Tom Wolfe, his star writer. “I was standing up when I started reading — and found I was unwilling to interrupt myself long enough to sit down,” Mr. Wolfe wrote in New York magazine in 2008. He told Mr. Felker, “I don’t see how you can not run it.” Half the advertisers fled the magazine, and Mr. Felker barely survived a revolt by his investors. Mr. Wolfe included the article in “The New Journalism,” his 1973 anthology. Ms. Goldsmith accepted a position as senior editor at Harper’s Bazaar in the early 1970s but soon left to write “The Straw Man,” a novel of intrigue and perfidy in the art world. It was her only work of fiction. In addition to her books on Woodhull and Curie, she wrote “Johnson v. Johnson” (1987), a blow-by-blow account of the legal battle between the children of J. Seward Johnson Sr., heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceuticals fortune, and his third wife, the former Barbara Piasecka, a Polish immigrant who had been hired as a chambermaid to Mr. Johnson’s second wife. At stake was a will that left his widow, known as Basia, the bulk of Mr. Johnson’s $400 million estate. Ms. Goldsmith became a crusader for acid-free paper while researching “Little Gloria.” “The books and newspapers from before 1850 were in fine shape, but some of the newer ones came apart in my hands,” she told Newsweek in 1989. That year, responding to a lobbying campaign by Ms. Goldsmith, 2,500 authors and 40 publishers signed a declaration promising that they would, whenever possible, use acid-free paper for all first printings of quality hardcover trade books “in order to preserve the printed word and safeguard our cultural heritage for future generations.” At the same time, the National Endowment for the Humanities, responding to the campaign, increased its book-preservation budget by $20 million. From 1987 to 2015, Ms. Goldsmith underwrote the Freedom to Write Award, given by PEN to authors facing political persecution. In writing “Little Gloria,” the one interview Ms. Goldsmith failed to land was with Gloria Vanderbilt. She waved Ms. Goldsmith aside in a brief telephone conversation, saying that she would feel uncomfortable talking about the subject and that she intended to write her own book, which she did. “Once Upon a Time: A True Story,” appeared in 1985. No matter, Ms. Goldsmith insisted. “I didn’t write a biography of Gloria Vanderbilt,” she told The Washington Post. “I wrote a social history about a time of opulent waste in America that will never come again, where people gave dinner parties with sand on the table and you’d dig for jewels and come up with an emerald.”