Thelma Furness, Viscountess Furness

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Thelma Furness
Viscountess Furness
Lady Furness in 1955
BornThelma Morgan
23 August 1904 (1904-08-23)
Grand Hotel National, Lucerne, Switzerland
Died29 January 1970(1970-01-29) (aged 65)
Manhattan, New York,[1] U.S.
BuriedHoly Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California
Spouse(s)
James Vail Converse
​
​
(m. 1922; div. 1925)​
​
​
(m. 1926; div. 1933)​
IssueWilliam Anthony Furness, 2nd Viscount Furness
FatherHarry Hays Morgan Sr.
MotherLaura Delphine Kilpatrick

Thelma Furness, Viscountess Furness (

King Edward VIII while he was Prince of Wales. She was supplanted in his affections by Wallis Simpson, for whose sake Edward abdicated, becoming the Duke of Windsor. She was the maternal aunt of the writer, fashion designer, and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt
.

During most of Furness's relationship with the Prince of Wales, she was married to

British nobleman Marmaduke Furness, 1st Viscount Furness
. They married in 1926 and divorced in 1933, the year before Thelma's relationship with the Prince of Wales ended.

Furness's first name was pronounced in Spanish fashion as "TEL-ma".[2]

Early life

Born in

consul in Buenos Aires and in Brussels,[4] and his half-Chilean, half-Irish-American wife, Laura Delphine Kilpatrick (1869–1956). Married in 1893, they were divorced in 1927.[5][6][7]

Morgan's maternal grandfather was a

House of Navarre
.

Thelma Morgan had two sisters:

French nobleman); Benjamin Thaw Jr. of Pittsburgh;[6] and Alfons B. Landa, president of Colonial Airlines and vice-chairman of the finance committee of the Democratic National Committee in 1948. Thelma Morgan also had a brother, Harry Hays Morgan Jr., who became a diplomat and then a minor Hollywood actor in such films as Abie's Irish Rose
(1946) and Joan of Arc (1948). Her half-siblings, from her father's first marriage to Mary E. Edgerton, were Constance Morgan (1887–1892) and Gladys "Margaret" Morgan (1889–1958).

Film career

For a very brief time, Furness was a motion picture producer and actress, after founding Thelma Morgan Pictures in 1923. As she told Time magazine, "I am incorporating the Thelma Morgan Pictures, Inc., with $100,000 capital and will produce big, sane, and sound 'specials.' I will be my own star. Hitherto, my chief experience has been in Junior League shows."[8] Her first starring role, in 1923, was the lead in a film Aphrodite, produced by her own company and filmed at Vitagraph Studios.

Furness described her leading role in Aphrodite to

So This Is Marriage?
(1924), and Any Woman (1925).

Marriages and relationships

Morgan's first husband was James Vail Converse (1893–1947), a grandson of

American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). They were married in Washington, D.C., on 16 February 1922 when she was 17 years old; Converse was about a decade older and had been married before. They divorced in Los Angeles, California, on 10 April 1925.[6][9][10]
By this marriage she had one stepson, James Vail Converse Jr. (born 18 January 1918), her husband's son from his first marriage to Nadine Melbourne.

After the divorce, Morgan was rumored to be engaged to the American actor Richard Bennett, the matinée-idol father of Hollywood film stars Constance Bennett, Joan Bennett, and Barbara Bennett.[9][11]

Morgan's second husband was Marmaduke Furness, 1st Viscount Furness (1883–1940), the chairman of Furness Shipping Company. She was his second wife. They were married on 27 June 1926, and divorced in 1933.[12] They had one son, William Anthony Furness, 2nd Viscount Furness, and as the former wife of a British nobleman she was known as Thelma, Viscountess Furness.[13][14] By this marriage she also had a stepson, Christopher Furness, and a stepdaughter, Averill Furness.

Furness and Edward, the Prince of Wales, in 1932

Furness first met the

Prince of Wales at a ball at Londonderry House in 1926[15] but they did not meet again until the Leicestershire Agricultural Show at Leicester on 14 June 1929.[16][17] Edward asked her to dine and they met regularly until she joined him on safari in East Africa early in 1930, when a closer relationship developed.[18] On Edward's return to Britain in April 1930 she was his regular weekend companion at the newly acquired Fort Belvedere until January 1934. She also entertained him at her London home, in Elsworthy Road, Primrose Hill, and the Furness country house, Burrough Court, in Leicestershire.[citation needed
]

On 10 January 1931 at her country house

Prince Aly Khan.[21] She had openly flirted with Khan during her voyage back to the UK in March 1934 which was reported to the Prince of Wales and widely reported in the British and American press including the social gossip magazine Tatler. While Furness was in the US with Aly Khan, Wallis Simpson stayed in her Mayfair home, 22 Farm Street, and entertained the Prince of Wales there.[22]

Furness' identical twin sister was

Reginald Vanderbilt and had a daughter, Gloria Vanderbilt. This makes her a maternal great-aunt of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper
.

Final years

Furness and her sister Gloria wrote a memoir called Double Exposure (1959).[1]

Furness died in New York City on 29 January 1970. As her niece, Gloria Vanderbilt, recalled, "She dropped dead on Seventy-third and Lexington on her way to see the doctor. In her bag was this miniature teddy bear that the Prince of Wales had given her, years before, when she came to be with my mother at the custody trial, and it was worn down to the nub".[1][23]

Furness was buried next to her twin sister, Gloria, in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.[24]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Lady Furness Dies". Eugene Register-Guard. 30 January 1970. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  2. ^ Spoto, Donald, The Decline and Fall of the House of Windsor (Pocket Books, 1996), page 208
  3. ^ "Harry Hays Morgan Passes In London". Rochester Evening Journal. 20 March 1933. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  4. ^ a b "Vanderbilt Dead After Hemorrhage Last Night". The Evening Independent. 4 September 1925. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  5. ^ "Vanderbilt-Whitney Suit Is Tinged With Pittsburgh's History". 4 October 1934. Retrieved 13 August 2010.
  6. ^ a b c "Much Bitterness Marks Vanderbilt Family Feud For Custody Of Heiress". Reading Eagle. 21 October 1934. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  7. ^ "Milestones June 27, 1927". Time. 27 June 1927. Archived from the original on 25 November 2010. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  8. ^ "Imaginary Interviews". Time. 2 July 1923. Archived from the original on 13 May 2007.
  9. ^ a b "Bennett Denies Thelma Morgan Has Jilted Him". The Milwaukee Sentinel. 16 September 1925. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  10. ^ "Thelma Morgan Is Suing Jas. Converse For Divorce". The Newburgh Daily News. 17 March 1925. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  11. ^ "What Next For Mrs. Reggy's Lively Sister?". The Troy Sunday Budget. 20 September 1925. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  12. ^ "British Peer Is Divorced". The Southeast Missourian. 27 January 1933. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  13. The Milwaukee Sentinel
    . Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  14. ^ "Wins Divorce". The Telegraph-Herald. 22 January 1933. Retrieved 15 March 2011.
  15. ^ Vanderbilt & Furness 1959, p. 177.
  16. ^ Vanderbilt & Furness 1959, pp. 223–3.
  17. ^ The Times, 15 June 1929, 17b.
  18. ^ Vanderbilt & Furness 1959, pp. 265–66.
  19. ISBN 0-440-15120-1
    , retrieved 13 August 2010
  20. ISBN 978-1-4092-0809-9
    . Retrieved 29 May 2013.
  21. ^ Anthony Camp, Royal Mistresses and Bastards: Fact and Fiction 1714–1936 (London, 2007) 397.
  22. ^ "MRS SIMPSON FARMED IN MAYFAIR January 6, 2019". The Steeple Times. 6 January 2019. Retrieved 9 August 2021.
  23. ^ Dominick Dunne, Fatal Charms and the Mansions of Limbo, Ballatine, 1999, page 152.
  24. ^ Royal Mistresses of the House of Hanover-Windsor

Further reading

External links

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