Marie Brenner

Marie Harriet Brenner (born December 15, 1949) is an American author, investigative journalist and writer-at-large for "Vanity Fair". She has also written for "New York", "The New Yorker" and the "Boston Herald" and has taught at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Her 1996 "Vanity Fair" article on tobacco insider Jeffrey Wigand, "The Man Who Knew Too Much", inspired the 1999 movie "The Insider", starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino. Her February 1997 "Vanity Fair" article "American Tragedy: The Ballad of Richard Jewell" partially inspired the 2019 film "Richard Jewell" directed by Clint Eastwood.
Career.
Brenner earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin and received a M.A. 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 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.
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." 