Cocktails and laughter, but what comes after?

"The craving to be famous is like an insidious disease, no matter how well known you become it's never enough, it never satisfies."

"I've never let myself dwell on what other people think of me. You can never change their minds so why waste time trying?"

"These days people seem to want to show every little thing about themselves, where is the fun in that? There is nothing wrong with a little mystery, is there?"

"Death is the price you paid for being born."

And so, farewell, then Miss Gloria Vanderbilt, heiress, socialite, model, painter, author and flogger of expensive jeans to the fashionistas of '70s America...

There is only one song I can play, really:

Noel Coward - Poor Little Rich Girl

Poor little rich girl
You're a bewitched girl
Better take care
Laughing at danger
Virtue a stranger
Better beware!
The life you lead sets all your nerves a-jangle
You love affairs are in a hopeless tangle
Though you're a child, dear
Your life's a wild typhoon

In lives of leisure
The craze for pleasure
Steadily grows;
Cocktails and laughter
But what comes after?
Nobody knows!
You're weaving love into a mad jazz pattern
Ruled by Pantaloon
Poor little rich girl
Don't drop a stitch too soon



Facts about Gloria Vanderbilt:

• Young Gloria’s paternal aunt Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney successfully sued for custody of “the poor little rich girl” in 1934, in a trial that exposed her mother's lavish lifestyle and indiscretions, and sparked a "tabloid frenzy".
• She became a top fashion model at the age of fifteen.
• Truman Capote is said to have based the character of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s on her.
• She married four times - to Howard Hughes' press agent Pasquale di Cicco, conductor Leopold Stokowski, director Sidney Lumet, and to Wyatt Cooper (father of US television "face" and gay rights advocate Anderson Cooper).
• Her Amanda jeans ("they really hug your derrière”) were an overnight success, and her company was valued at over $100 million at it height; she saw relatively little of the money, however - she flogged the company and her name as a brand, and ended up taking a succession of "advisors" who had fleeced her during that boom time to court.

RIP, Gloria Laura Vanderbilt (20th February 1924 – 17th June 2019)