Inside Strangers Author Belle Burden's High-Society Family

Grandmother Barbara "Babe" Paley

Originally from Boston, where she made her debutante debut at 19, the future Vogue editor moved to Manhattan in 1938 and before long was a fixture on best-dressed lists.

She married oil heir Stanley Grafton Mortimer Jr.—a descendant of John Jay, the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court—in 1940.

The following year, Babe married CBS founder William S. Paley, just after his divorce from Dorothy Hart Hearst was finalized.  

Babe and William welcomed son William C. "Billie" Paley in 1948 and daughter Kate Cushing Paley in 1950.

After Babe's dear friend Truman Capote referenced William's dalliances in his friendship-destroying 1975 Esquire article "La Côte Basque, 1965," Babe never spoke to the writer again.

She remained married to William until her death from lung cancer in 1978 at the age of 63. He died in 1990 at 89.

Mother Amanda Burden

While Amanda was growing up on Long Island, her mom and stepdad spent most weekdays at their Manhattan apartment.

 "It was a strange household," Amanda told Vanity Fair in 1990. "Our parents weren't there, and when they came we were all clamoring for attention. There was no bonding among the kids. We were all looking out for ourselves."

Amanda attended Wellesley until she dropped out to prepare for her 1964 wedding to Shirley Carter Burden Jr., a Harvard senior she met on a blind date.

They welcomed daughter Flobelle "Belle" Burden and son S. Carter Burden III before divorcing in 1972.

Amanda then finished her degree in environmental science at Sarah Lawrence College and earned a master's in urban planning from Columbia. From 1983 to 1990, she was Vice President for Planning and Design of the Battery Park Authority, then was appointed to the NYC Planning Commission, leading the department during Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration.

The chic civic activist also followed her mom into Vanity Fair's International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame.

Amanda later married to Warner Communications CEO Steven J. Ross from 1989 until 1991. Starting in 1993, she dated journalist Charlie Rose on and off for more than two decades.

Father Carter Burden

The Commodore Media founder's father was the great-great-grandson of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, patriarch of one of the richest American families of their (or any) day.

Carter's mother, Flobelle Fairbanks, was a niece of silent screen star Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and, according to Carter's 1996 New York Times obituary, his first serious girlfriend was Charlie Chaplin's daughter Geraldine Chaplin.

For a time, Carter and Amanda were the toast of NYC society, but, according to Vanity Fair, Amanda ultimately filed for divorce on grounds of "cruel and inhuman treatment."

Carter married Susan Lombaer, a family therapist, in 1977 and they were together until his death in 1996 from a heart ailment at the age of 54.

Husband Henry Davis

Belle Burden went to Harvard and then earned her law degree from NYU, after which she married fellow lawyer Henry Patterson Davis in June 1999.

"Because of where I grew up in the Upper East Side and then going to private schools, there was an expectation that you would meet your mate and you would have a nice wedding and you’d get married," the previously very private attorney said on a January episode of the NY Times' Modern Love podcast. "I think because I’d been through my parents’ divorce and then my mother’s divorce from my stepfather, I had a deep yearning to be married for eternity and to have an intact family. I think it was the thing I wanted most in life."

She detailed being blindsided by the sudden end of what she thought was her happy 20-year marriage in her memoir Strangers, using pseudonyms to identify her husband and their three children, who were minors when she and Henry split up in 2020.

Belle has acknowledged that she heard her ex was "not happy" about her book.

Though Henry signed off on her 2023 "Modern Love" column in the New York Times that preceded the book, Belle recounted on a March episode of Lipstick on the Rim With Molly Simm, he said about Strangers, "'I don’t think I come off well in this.'"

Regarding his ex-wife's telling of their divorce and custody issues in her book, Henry told the Times in January, "While I disagree with many of her recollections, as well as her overall mischaracterization of my relationship with my children, I do not wish to comment in more detail in order to protect them from further violations of their privacy other than to say that I continue to lovingly support, and be lovingly supported by, my children.”

Stepmother Susan Burden

The author is very close with her stepmom, who both hosted Belle's wedding at her home in Water Mill, N.Y., and supported her through her divorce.

After Henry admitted he'd been having an affair, Belle wrote in Strangers, "I know I called my stepmother, Susan, and told her what had happened. She yelped in shock."

In the ensuing days, Susan "called me several times a day," Belle recalled. "We were very close, bonded from the moment she entered my life in 1972. She wept with me, both of us quiet as we cried. She was the only person who tried to reach [Henry]."

Susan emailed Henry, pleading with him to end the marriage "kindly, honorably," Belle wrote. "He was furious."