Thelma Furness | |
|---|---|
| Viscountess Furness | |
 Lady Furness in 1955 | |
| Born | Thelma Morgan 23 August 1904 (1904-08-23) Grand Hotel National,Lucerne, Switzerland |
| Died | 29 January 1970(1970-01-29) (aged 65) Manhattan, New York,[1] U.S. |
| Buried | Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California |
| Spouses | |
| Issue | William Anthony Furness, 2nd Viscount Furness |
| Father | Harry Hays Morgan Sr. |
| Mother | Laura Delphine Kilpatrick |
Thelma Furness, Viscountess Furness (néeMorgan, 23 August 1904 – 29 January 1970), was a mistress ofEdward VIII while he wasPrince of Wales. She was supplanted in his affections byWallis Simpson, for whose sake Edward abdicated, becoming theDuke of Windsor. She was the maternal aunt of the writer, fashion designer, and socialiteGloria Vanderbilt.
During most of Furness's relationship with the Prince of Wales, she was married toBritish noblemanMarmaduke 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]
Born inLucerne,Switzerland, Thelma Morgan was a daughter of Harry Hays Morgan Sr. (1860–1933),[3] an American diplomat who was U.S.consul inBuenos Aires and inBrussels,[4] and his half-Chilean, half-Irish-American wife, Laura Delphine Kilpatrick (1869–1956).[5] Married in 1893, they were divorced in 1927.[6][7][8]
Morgan's maternal grandfather was aUnion general,Hugh Judson Kilpatrick (1836–1881), who was also U.S. minister toChile,[4] and through her maternal grandmother Luisa Fernandez de Valdivieso (1836–1926), who was a niece ofCrescente Errázuriz Valdivieso,Archbishop of Santiago, she reportedly was a descendant ofSpain's RoyalHouse of Navarre.
Thelma Morgan had two sisters:Gloria (her identical twin, the mother ofGloria Vanderbilt, the fashion designer, artist and mother of news anchorAnderson Cooper) and Laura Consuelo Morgan (aka Tamar), who was married to three men in succession: Count Jean de Maupas du Juglart (aFrench nobleman);Benjamin Thaw Jr. of Pittsburgh;[7] and Alfons B. Landa, president ofColonial Airlines and vice-chairman of the finance committee of theDemocratic 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 asAbie's Irish Rose (1946) andJoan 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).
For a very brief time, Furness was a motion picture producer and actress, after founding Thelma Morgan Pictures in 1923. As she toldTime 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 inJunior League shows."[9] Her first starring role, in 1923, was the lead in a filmAphrodite, produced by her own company and filmed atVitagraph Studios.
Furness described her leading role inAphrodite toThe New York Times as that of "an American girl, brought up under the sinister influence of an old Egyptian woman." She also had small parts in the filmsEnemies of Women (1923), aWilliam Randolph Hearst production whose cast includedLionel Barrymore andClara Bow,So This Is Marriage? (1924), andAny Woman (1925).
Morgan's first husband was James Vail Converse (1893–1947), a grandson ofTheodore N. Vail, former president of theAmerican Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). They were married inWashington, 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 inLos Angeles, California, on 10 April 1925.[7][10][11] 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 actorRichard Bennett, thematinée-idol father of Hollywood film starsConstance Bennett,Joan Bennett, andBarbara Bennett.[10][12]
Morgan's second husband wasMarmaduke Furness, 1st Viscount Furness (1883–1940), the chairman ofFurness Shipping Company. She was his second wife. They were married on 27 June 1926, and divorced in 1933.[13] 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.[14][15] By this marriage she also had a stepson,Christopher Furness, and a stepdaughter, Averill Furness.
Furness first met thePrince of Wales at a ball atLondonderry House in 1926[16] but they did not meet again until the Leicestershire Agricultural Show atLeicester on 14 June 1929.[17][18] Edward asked her to dine and they met regularly until she joined him onsafari inEast Africa early in 1930, when a closer relationship developed.[19] On Edward's return to Britain in April 1930 she was his regular weekend companion at the newly acquiredFort 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 houseBurrough Court, nearMelton Mowbray, Furness introduced the prince to her close friendWallis Simpson and, while visiting her sister Gloria in America between January and March 1934, she was supplanted in the Prince's affection by Simpson.[20][21] Reacting to Edward's coldness later that year she threw herself into a short-lived affair withPrince Aly Khan.[22] 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 magazineTatler. 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.[23]
Furness' identical twin sister wasGloria Morgan Vanderbilt, who was married toReginald Vanderbilt and had a daughter,Gloria Vanderbilt. This makes her a maternal great-aunt ofCNN anchorAnderson Cooper.
Furness and her sister Gloria wrote amemoir calledDouble Exposure (1959).[1]
Furness died inNew 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][24]
Furness was buried next to her twin sister, Gloria, inHoly Cross Cemetery inCulver City, California.[25]
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