By Lori Acken
Fashion icon Gloria Vanderbilt — looking decades younger than her 92 years in a bright coral tunic, slim pants and oversize gold earrings — smiles at rapt reporters from a Pasadena hotel ballroom stage.
On either side, giant screens beam her beloved youngest son, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, into the room from Fairfax, Va., where, later, Cooper will host a town hall at President Obama’s request. Though
Cooper had planned to be here beside her, his mother’s face shines with pride.
Now viewers can witness the pair’s tender, honest and deliciously witty relationship in the documentary Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper, drawn, in part, from Vanderbilt’s own letters, home movies, photos and artwork. Executive produced by Cooper and Liz Garbus (Ghosts of Abu Ghraib), the film is a revealing look — through the lens of a son’s steadfast love — at a spirited woman who expresses joy and exorcises demons via her artistic endeavors and never bought into her own fame. The documentary originally aired on HBO earlier this month, but will re-air on CNN Friday, April 29.
“Her entire life has played out on a very brightly lit stage, and the idea, really, behind this film is: You may know her name, but you really don’t know who she is or what her story is,” says Cooper. And what a story it is.
Vanderbilt’s railroad-scion father died when she was a toddler. Raised primarily by a beloved nanny until an aunt won custody from Vanderbilt’s young and wayward mother, the stunning teen became a
fixture on the Hollywood social scene. Romanced by Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra, Vanderbilt also endured a trio of failed high-profile marriages — until she met Cooper’s father, actor/playwright Wyatt
Cooper. The union thrived until Wyatt died in surgery at just 50; 10 years later, their older son Carter committed suicide in front of his mom at age 23.
Shared tragedy, says Cooper, bound his mother and him especially tight.
“My dad died when I was 10,” he says. “My mom’s father died when she was 15 months old. We both grew up with this fantasy that there was a letter out there somewhere — an idle letter from my dad somewhere out there — and that she had a letter from her father out there, too. And both of us still kind of secretly believe that letter will someday show up.”
A decade ago, Vanderbilt and Cooper began excavating a storage unit Vanderbilt kept for as long as her son could remember. When the idea for the documentary took shape, they shared its contents with
Garbus. “One box you would open up and it would be a box of amazing letters from Howard Hughes, who my mom dated when he was hot Howard Hughes — when he was, like, 35 and my mom was 17.
Before he was Desert Inn Howard Hughes with the tissues,” Cooper grins. “But then you’d open up another box, and it would be a box of cornflakes from 1953.”
The process, combined with advancing technology, drew the pair even closer.
“I’ve always felt very close and connected to you, but I now do not feel that ‘the heart of another is a dark forest,’” says Vanderbilt, gazing up at her son. “I feel that I understand you more and love you
more, if that’s possible. And it really all happened because we started, just by computer, communicating with each other.”
She tightly clasps her hands. “And it turned into this.”
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