Fabulous Alva Vanderbilt Belmont (The REAL Bertha Russell from The Gilded Age)

[@Giugix9]

I love your videos! I saw the one about the opera and now I’m watching all of then

[@marina_via]

Oh, how happy I am to hear that, thank you @Giugix9

[@katefarmerpallotta9710]

Enjoy your videos

[@marina_via]

So happy to hear that, thank you, Kate!

[@PokhrajRoy.]

I really loved ‘The Gilded Age’. I loved Denee Benton.

[@IslandDweller1]

I think a more realistic real-life parallel to Bertha would be not Alva Vanderbilt but Mrs Paran Stevens. The Vanderbilts had very different roots from the Russells. They'd been around for generations by this point, and Alva was actually born to a fair degree of wealth and prestige. True, they hadn't achieved the notice of Caroline Astor, but they were far from coming from nothing the way the Russells have. Yes, the coup Bertha achieves over Mrs Astor regarding her daughter's ball is based on Alva Vanderbilt's, but in the case of Alva the coup was literally generations in the making and she had a lot of leverage that Bertha doesn't. The Vanderbilts had carved enough of a place in society that many Astor friends were going to the ball regardless of what the Astors did, and members of foreign aristocracy were also to be there. Thus, it was such an important event in its own right as to make it a big deal for the Astor daughter to be left out. The panic that Bertha manages to throw Mrs Astor into on the show is completely unrealistic - Bertha has nothing to bargain with, and it never would have happened. Mrs Paran Stevens, on the other hand, was a thorough outsider who laid seige to New York society, was hell-bent on marrying her daughter to a title, and had many failures but ultimately carved a place for herself. Her story is much closer to Bertha's. She was also the abortive mother-in-law of Edith Wharton.

[@marina_via]

Oh my god, what a great repy, so informative and deep! I enjoyed reading it, will go research Mrs Paran Stevens! I'm yet in the development of the future scripts for other videos from the Gilded Age universe, so, we'll see, maybe I'll have a chance to get back to her. Thank you for again for sharing your knowledge!