Gloria Vanderbilt

Gloria Vanderbilt was born into a name synonymous with American aristocracy and railroad fortunes. Her father, Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, was a scion of the famous family. Her mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, however, had a secret weapon in her lineage: her mother, Laura Delphine Kilpatrick, was born Laura Delphine Carmen Mercedes de Arce, the daughter of a Jewish diplomat from Chile. This made Gloria roughly a quarter Jewish, a fact often overshadowed by her very public, very non-Jewish life.

Throughout her life, Vanderbilt was a chameleon, effortlessly transitioning between roles: a child of the "custody battle of the century," an actress, an artist known for her collages and paintings, an author, and most famously, a denim empress whose name adorned millions of pairs of designer jeans. Her name became a brand, long before that was a common celebrity practice.

While she never publicly embraced or practiced Judaism, her maternal grandmother's heritage provides a fascinating, if subtle, thread in the tapestry of American Jewish history. She lived a life of extraordinary privilege, creativity, and reinvention, leaving behind a legacy that transcended her famous surname, proving you don't have to be a Vanderbilt and a Jew to make it big, but it probably doesn't hurt.