Cornelius Vanderbilt

Newspaper publisher, journalist, author and military officer, Cornelius was born into the famous Vanderbilt family. He was an outcast of high society and who was disinherited by his parents when he became a newspaper publisher. He worked as a staff member of the New York Herald and later The New York Times. In the early 1920s, Vanderbilt launched several newspapers and tabloids—the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News, the San Francisco Illustrated Daily Herald and the Miami Tab among them. Vanderbilt subsequently went to work as an assistant managing editor of the New York Daily Mirror.

In addition to his newspaper work, he wrote a number of books, including a biography about his mother, Queen of the Gold Age, and his own memoirs, Personal Experiences of a Cub Reporter and Farewell to Fifth Avenue.

In 1922, he joined the newly organized New York Civitan Club - an organization whose purpose is "to build good citizenship by providing a volunteer organization of clubs dedicated to serving individual and community needs with an emphasis on helping people with developmental disabilities."

He made the 1934 anti-Nazi documentary, Hitler's Reign of Terror.