Marie Brenner

Career

Brenner earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin and received a master of arts degree from New York University Film School. She was the first female baseball columnist covering the American League, traveling with the Boston Red Sox for the Boston Herald during the 1979 season. Brenner worked as a contributing editor for New York magazine from 1980 to 1984, and covered the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

Brenner joined Vanity Fair as a special correspondent in 1984. She left the magazine in 1992 to become a staff writer at The New Yorker, returning to Vanity Fair in 1995 as writer-at-large. Her 1996 article for Vanity Fair on Jeffrey Wigand and the tobacco wars, titled "The Man Who Knew Too Much", was made into the 1999 feature film The Insider, starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino, and directed by Michael Mann. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

In 2012, Brenner penned a piece entitled "Marie Colvin's Private War" for Vanity Fair. This article was later adapted into the film A Private War, directed by first-time director Matthew Heineman and starring Academy Award-nominated actress, Rosamund Pike. Pike was nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama at the 76th Golden Globe Awards, while Heineman was recognized with a nomination from the Directors Guild of America with a nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement of a First-Time Feature Film Director.

In 1997, she wrote an article for Vanity Fair on Richard Jewell, the security guard hailed as a hero, then incorrectly suspected, of the Olympic Park bombing in 1996. Titled "American Tragedy: The Ballad of Richard Jewell", it was, along with the 2019 book The Suspect: An Olympic Bombing, the FBI, the Media, and Richard Jewell, the Man Caught in the Middle by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen, the basis of the 2019 film Richard Jewell.

Brenner's 2002 Vanity Fair article, "The Enron Wars", delving into the investigation into the Enron scandals, made national news when Senator Peter Fitzgerald used it to question witnesses testifying before a Senate committee.

In 2009, the Manhattan Theater Club announced that it had commissioned Alfred Uhry to adapt Brenner's memoir Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found for the stage.

In 2020, Brenner was granted 18-month access to the New York Presbyterian hospital, depicted in her book The Desperate Hours: One Hospital's Fight to Save a City on the Pandemic's Front Lines, published in 2022.

An archive of Brenner's work is stored at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

Incident with Donald Trump

During a black-tie gala at Tavern on the Green in 1991, Donald Trump poured a glass of wine down Brenner's suit because she had written an unflattering piece about him earlier that year.

Personal life

Brenner was born December 15, 1949, in San Antonio, Texas, to Milton Conrad Brenner and Thelma (Long) Brenner. She grew up in San Antonio and moved to New York City in 1970.

Her father was chairman of Solo Serve Corporation, a chain of Texas discount stores started by her grandfather Isidor Brenner. Isidor, born in 1872, was a Jewish emigrant to Texas from the Duchy of Kurland (in modern Latvia), in 1892. He married Paula, a Jewish emigrant from Riga, Latvia, by way of Chicago. The couple moved their family back and forth between Mexico and Texas during the first years of the Mexican Revolution, finally settling the family in San Antonio, in 1916.

She is the niece of Anita Brenner, anthropologist, author, and one of the first women to be a regular contributor to The New York Times. She had an older brother Carl, a lawyer turned apple farmer who was the focus of her memoir, Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found.

Bibliography

• Tell Me Everything, New York: New American Library, 1976. ,
• Going Hollywood: An Insider's Look at Power and Pretense in the Movie Business, New York: Delacorte Press, 1978. ,
• Intimate Distance, New York: William Morrow and Co., 1983. ,
• House of Dreams: The Collapse of an American Dynasty, London: Joseph, 1988. ,
• Great Dames: What I Learned from Older Women, New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000. ,
• Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found, New York: Picador, 2008. ,
• A Private War: Marie Colvin and Other Tales of Heroes, Scoundrels and Renegades, London: Simon & Schuster, UK Ltd. 2018. ,
• The Desperate Hours: One Hospital's Fight to Save a City on the Pandemic's Front Lines, New York: Flatiron Books. 2022. .

References

References

1. Panero, James. (2008-06-29). "Brother, Who Art Thou?". The New York Times.
2. "Marie Brenner". Vanity Fair.
3. "The George T. Delacorte Center". Columbia University.
4. Alas, Mert. "AMERICAN NIGHTMARE: The Ballad of RICHARD JEWELL | Vanity Fair | February 1997". Vanity Fair.
5. (1985-04-15). "Marie Brenner Is Married to Ernest H. Pomerantz". [[The New York Times]].
6. "Press Release: Marie Brenner to Speak at Friends of the libraries' Annual Meeting". Boston University.
7. Marie Brenner. (1981-08-03). "The Wedding of the Century". New York Magazine.
8. "The Man Who Knew Too Much". Vanity Fair.
9. "The Insider".
10. Climek, Chris. "Review: 'Richard Jewell' Clears One Name While Smearing Another". NPR.
11. 1683355245.
12. [[Marc Tracy]]. (12 December 2019). "Clint Eastwood's 'Richard Jewell' Is at the Center of a Media Storm". [[The New York Times]].
13. (2001-02-07). "Enron Executives Testify Before Senate Commerce Committee". CNN.com.
14. Kenneth Jones. "Uhry Will Adapt Brenner's Memoir for MTC; Meadow to Direct". Playbill.
15. (2022-06-19). "Review: "The Desperate Hours," Marie Brenner".
16. "Marie Brenner: Insider Investigations". Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.
17. (November 14, 2017). "[[The Vanity Fair Diaries". Henry Holt and Co..
18. Marie Brenner (2008). Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found. New York: Sarah Crichton Books. pp. 99-100 and 104-105. {{ISBN. 9780374173524
19. (August 3, 2013). "Anita Brenner: A Bridge Between Nations and Religions". Mexican Museums and Mavens.
20. (9 March 2012). "Jazz Age Chronicles: Anita Brenner on Mexico's Avant-Garde Art and Artists." Review of Avant-Garde Art and Artists in Mexico: Anita Brenner Journals of the Roaring Twenties, ed. Susanna Glusker". Pasatiempo.
21. Jennie Yabroff. "Brothers and Sisters". Newsweek.
22. Catsoulis, Jeannette. (2018-11-01). "Review: Marie Colvin Fights 'A Private War'". The New York Times.
23. "a private war marie colvin - Yahoo Search Results".