Gore Vidal - Life and Career - Early Life

Early Life

Vidal was born Eugene Louis Vidal in West Point, New York, the only child of Eugene Luther Vidal (1895–1969) and Nina Gore (1903–1978). The middle name, Louis, was a mistake on the part of his father, "who could not remember for certain whether his own name was Eugene Louis or Eugene Luther." As Vidal explained in his memoir Palimpsest (Deutsch, 1995), "... my birth certificate says 'Eugene Louis Vidal': this was changed to Eugene Luther Vidal, Jr.; then Gore was added at my christening ; then at fourteen I got rid of the first two names."

Vidal was born in the Cadet Hospital of the United States Military Academy (West Point), where his father, a first lieutenant, was the first aeronautics instructor. According to Conversations with Gore Vidal, the future writer was not baptised until January 1939, at age 13, by the headmaster of St. Albans, where Vidal was attending preparatory school. The ceremony took place so Vidal "could be confirmed at the Washington Cathedral in February as Eugene Luther Gore Vidal." He later stated that although Gore was added to his names at the time of the baptism, "I wasn't named for him, although he had a great influence on my life." In 1941, Vidal dropped both of his first two names, saying that he "wanted a sharp, distinctive name, appropriate for an aspiring author or national political leader. 'I wasn't going to write as Gene since there was already one. I didn't want to use the Jr.'"

Vidal's father served as director of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Air Commerce (1933–1937) in the Roosevelt administration, was one of the first Army Air Corps pilots and, according to biographer Susan Butler, was the great love of Amelia Earhart's life. In the 1920s and 1930s, he was a co-founder of three American airlines: the Ludington Line, which merged with others and became Eastern Airlines, Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT, which became TWA), and Northeast Airlines, which he founded with Earhart, as well as the Boston and Maine Railroad. The elder Vidal had also been a West Point football quarterback, coach, and captain and an all-American basketball player. He also participated in the 1920 and 1924 Summer Olympics (seventh in the decathlon; U.S. pentathlon team coach).

Vidal's mother was a society figure who made her Broadway debut as an extra in Sign of the Leopard in 1928. She married Eugene Luther Vidal, Sr. in 1922 and divorced him in 1935. Two more marriages followed (one to Hugh D. Auchincloss, later the stepfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), and, according to her son, she had "a long off-and-on affair" with actor Clark Gable. As Nina Auchincloss, she was an alternate delegate to the 1940 Democratic National Convention.

Vidal had four half-siblings from his parents' later marriages (Vance Vidal, Valerie Vidal, Thomas Gore Auchincloss, and Nina Gore Auchincloss) and four stepbrothers from his mother's third marriage to Army Air Forces Major General Robert Olds, who died in 1943, ten months after marrying Vidal's mother. Vidal's nephews include the brothers Burr Steers, writer and film director, and painter Hugh Auchincloss Steers (1963–1995).

Vidal was raised in Washington, D.C., where he attended Sidwell Friends School and then St. Albans School. Since Senator Gore was blind, his grandson read aloud to him and was often his guide. The senator's isolationism contributed a major principle of his grandson's political philosophy, which is critical of foreign and domestic policies shaped by American imperialism. Gore attended St. Albans in 1939, but left to study in France. He returned following the outbreak of World War II and studied at the Los Alamos Ranch School in 1940, later transferring to Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. Roy Hattersley writes, "for reasons he never explained, he did not go on to Harvard, Yale or Princeton with other members of his social class." Instead, Vidal enlisted in the US Navy, serving as first mate on the F.S. 35th which was berthed at the Dutch Harbor. After three years, he contracted hypothermia, developed rheumatoid arthritis and became a mess officer.