Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan, born August 23, 1904 in Lucerne, Switzerland - died February 13, 1965, Newport, Rhode Island, United States, was a socialite and a member by marriage of the prominent United States Vanderbilt family.

Gloria Morgan was the daughter of Chilean/American, Laura Delphine Kilpatrick, and her husband Harry Hays Morgan, an American diplomat who served as the U.S. consul in Buenos Aires, Argentina and in Brussels, Belgium. Gloria Morgan's maternal grandfather, Hugh Judson Kilpatrick (1836-1881), was a Union Army general during the American Civil War who also served as the U.S. minister to Chile where he met Gloria's grandmother, an aristocrat whose family are said to be descendants of Spain's royal house of Navarre.

Gloria Morgan had two sisters: Consuelo Morgan and an identical twin, Thelma Morgan (1904-1970), who would become Vicountess Furness. In 1923, Gloria Morgan became the second wife of Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt. On February 20, 1924, their daughter, Gloria was born in New York City.

An ambitious and well-connected mother shipped Gloria and Thelma to New York City where at 17, Gloria and Thelma were living alone in a 4th floor walk-up in Harlem and attending school at the Roman Catholic Convent of the Sacred Heart.

Following the death of her husband in 1925, Gloria Morgan-Vanderbilt became the Administrator of a $3 million Trust left to their daughter. After Reggie Vanderbilt's death, she spent the better part of the next six years living in Paris, France enjoying the good life with rich friends at the various chic resort places across Europe. Members of the powerful Vanderbilt family believed that Gloria had been a bad influence and very neglectful of her daughter and a custody battle erupted that made national headlines in 1934. As a result of a great deal of hearsay evidence admitted at trial, the scandalous allegations of Gloria Morgan's lifestyle led to a new standard in tabloid newspaper sensationalism.

Gloria Morgan-Vanderbilt lost custody of her daughter to her influential sister-in-law, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942). Granted only limited parental rights litigation went through the Court of appeal where Gertrude Whitney won. As a result, a devastated Gloria Morgan-Vanderbilt was unable to spend much time with her daughter and under the powerful influence of the child's aunt, their relationship became virtually nonexistent. Not only did she lose her daughter, but the court removed her as administrator of her daughter's Trust fund. The Trust's annual investment income had been her only source of support.

Gloria and her divorced twin sister Thelma remained very close throughout their lives, living together for a number of years in New York City and in Los Angeles, California. Together, they wrote a memoir called "Double Exposure."

Virtually penniless, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt died in 1965, only a few loyal Hollywood friends such as Mary Pickford and Buddy Rogers attended her funeral. She was interred in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. On Thelma Morgan's passing five years later, she was buried next to her twin sister.

In 1978, New York City socialite, Philip Van Rensselaer wrote a book about the custody trial and Gloria Morgan-Vanderbilt's life titled That Vanderbilt Woman.