Double Exposure

2020 Reprint of 1959 Edition. Profusely Illustrated with Photographs. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. The lives of Thelma and Gloria Morgan, the twin daughters of Harry Hays Morgan, an American diplomat, and Chilean-born Louise Valdivieso, read like a curious synthesis of The Turn of The Screw and Confidential. Deeply attached to one another through their twinship,- the sisters, Thelma who later became Lady Furness and Gloria, who married Reggie Vanderbilt and mothered Gloria Vanderbilt II -- write of their lives simultaneously, switching the narrative from woman to woman with fascinating ease. There is much here which will attract the socially curious -- tales of the Prince of Wales, Aly Kahn, the titan playboys of the twentieth century as seen by these women who were more than formally involved with them. There are shades here, too, of Stella Dallas- the shocking trial for the custody of Gloria Vanderbilt II in which Louise Morgan, clutching a crucifix, testified to outrageous acts of licentiousness committed by her bewildered daughter. And there is much finally of epic stature-the Medea-like grandeur with which the ancient dowagers of New York society mediated upon the lives of their families. Written with good taste, but sparing no detail no matter how unorthodox, this autobiography of two women is a biography of an age, an age of fantastic extravagance and rigid form, an age in which the various episodes unfolded here seem probable for all their bizarre and melodramatic overtones. Superbly entertaining.-Kirkus.