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Anderson Cooper And Gloria Vanderbilt’s ‘Nothing Left Unsaid’ — A Poignant And Honest Conversation [Spoilers]

By Paula Mooney

From the archive: published Apr 10, 2016, 10 years ago. Details may have changed since.

Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, can be seen in the above photo as the duo attended the premiere of their documentary, Nothing Left Unsaid. Anderson and Gloria showed up at the Time Warner Center on Monday, April 4, in New York, prior to the world getting a look at the close mother and son relationship that the two put on display for the world to see in their documentary.

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Compelling and honest, the Nothing Left Unsaid documentary had as its goal for the mother and son to sit down and go over the things they may have never said to one another — and say those things before it became too late to say them. For her part, Gloria laid bare her many lives and multiple marriages to many men. She even spoke to Anderson about being a 17-year-old girl who was left to her own devices and allowed to treat her home as a hotel as she dated a variety of screen legends.

Gloria admitted that she didn’t experience a typical childhood when she was born in the 1920s. Born on February 20, 1924, Vanderbilt is currently 92 years of age.

In fact, soon after her birth, Gloria’s parents took off on a six-month voyage while Gloria was left in the care of nannies, nursemaids, and others to take care of her. Vanderbilt stated that her own mother was very young when she was born, and therefore, had her own life to lead. Gloria didn’t find anything odd about her upbringing. Instead, Gloria stated that if a person is born in the jungle, they think the whole world is a jungle.

She didn’t learn anything different until she began to see how the other half lived, and since Gloria became the focus of a custody dispute and dubbed the “poor little rich girl” during the Great Depression, her life was a source of fascination for people subsisting off of $10 per week or less. With millions at stake at that time in the Vanderbilt fortune, it was more money than some folks could fathom.

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Anderson, meanwhile, learned plenty about his mother during their segments of interviews together. Cooper learned just how young his mother was when she entered into several marriages, some of them after knowing her husbands only a short time. He learned of his mother’s abusive ex-husband and Gloria’s philosophy about believing a person should always be in love throughout their lifetime.

Cooper reflected upon the fact that his mother looked as if she were a completely different person in the variety of photos that he examined. Anderson said that it was as if his mother had lived several lives. Lots of photos and videos of a young Anderson also appear in Nothing Left Unsaid, with one scene featuring Cooper teaching his mom how to film him on a handheld video recorder.

The HBO documentary showed Gloria’s feelings about makeup and how putting on one’s face can make a person feel like a totally different person. She revealed to her son how she was encouraged to focus on her artwork instead of the entertainment industry. Gloria was proud of the businesswoman she became when her Vanderbilt jeans became a big success.

Initially, Anderson said he believed he was more like his father, but throughout the course of the Nothing Left Unsaid documentary, he realized he was much more like his mother. The most heartbreaking scene in the documentary came when they discussed the suicide of Anderson’s brother, Carter Cooper, and visited his grave.

In the documentary, Gloria said that she cried and cried for days after Carter’s death, and then couldn’t cry anymore.

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