Maureen Orth | |
---|---|
Born | Maureen Orth 1943 Berkeley, California, U.S. |
Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley University of California, LA |
Occupations | Journalist, author, correspondent |
Spouse | |
Children | Luke Russert |
Website | maureenorth |
Maureen Orth (born 1943) is an American journalist, author, and a Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine. She is the founder of Marina Orth Foundation, which has established a model education program in Colombia emphasizing technology, English, and leadership. She is the widow of TV journalist Tim Russert.
Orth’s research was the basis of multi-episode documentaries and television films about Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Andrew Cunanan. [1]
Maureen Orth was born in 1943, Berkeley, California, USA and grew up in the Bay Area of California, the daughter of Helen (Pierotti) Orth and Karl Orth. [2] She has two siblings, Christina Orth and the late Dan Orth. [3]
Orth attended Alameda High School. [4] She studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated in 1964 with a degree in political science. [5] At Berkeley, Orth was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. [6]
Following her graduation from college, she served in the Peace Corps in Medellín, Colombia, from 1964 to 1966. [7] Orth later earned a master's degree in Journalism and Documentary Film from UCLA in 1969. [8]
Before launching her career in journalism, Orth worked in Washington, DC and helped organize the hearings for the House Select Subcommittee Environmental Education Act in conjunction with the first Earth Day. [9]
Orth began her journalism career in San Francisco in 1970 chronicling issues of the counter culture for the San Francisco Examiner . [10] She was mentored by author Alex Haley. [4] In 1971, she became the West Coast correspondent of The Village Voice [11] and also freelanced for the Los Angeles Times [12] and Rolling Stone .
In 1972, Orth joined TVTV, a pioneering video group that had obtained a PBS grant to cover both the Republican and Democratic Conventions in Miami, Florida. The resulting films used the first ever footage shot on the convention floor using ½ inch Sony portapack videotape. [13]
Orth moved to New York in 1973. She wrote the Ms. Magazine cover story titled “Suffer the Little Children…The American Child-Care Disgrace.” [14]
Orth was hired as one of the first female writers for Newsweek , covering music, books and movies. She was a plaintiff in a successful 1970 lawsuit claiming that the newsroom discriminated against women. [15] At Newsweek, Orth wrote eight cover stories in five years on subjects including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, [16] Stevie Wonder, [17] and The Godfather Part II film. [18] She was the only journalist to report from the notoriously chaotic set of Apocalypse Now in the Philippines. [19]
In 1975, Orth took a brief leave of absence from Newsweek to be the assistant to director Lina Wertmuller, in Italy, during the filming of Seven Beauties. This film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. [20] She later wrote about the experience in an article for the magazine. [21]
When news broke in August 1977 that Elvis Presley had died, Orth requested to be sent to Memphis, Tennessee to cover the story. She wrote the first news piece to suggest that Presley's official cause of death might not have been a heart attack. [22] She was a contestant on The Gong Show and wrote about it for the magazine. [23]
Between 1978 and 1980 Orth was a senior editor at New York, and New West Magazines. In 1981-1982 she was the principal correspondent of Newsweek Woman on Lifetime Television. From 1983 to 1984 she was a network correspondent for NBC News. Orth was a contributing editor at Vogue from 1984 to 1989, and a columnist for New York Woman from 1986 to 1990. [24] She has also freelanced for the New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. [24]
Orth has written for Vanity Fair since 1988 and has been a Special Correspondent for that magazine since 1993. [24] Among the heads of state she has interviewed are Russian President Vladimir Putin, [25] [26] German Chancellor Angela Merkel, [27] British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, [28] Argentinian President Carlos Menem, [29] and Irish President Mary Robinson. [30] Orth secured the first interview with Thatcher just months after leaving office. [31]
Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Orth traveled to Central Asia to investigate the connection between drugs and terrorism for a piece titled "Afghanistan's Deadly Habit."
Orth has investigated pedophile priest Paul Shanley and [32] the Laci Peterson murder. Orth has also written articles on Tom Cruise [33] and Scientology, Madonna, [34] Tina Turner, [35] Karl Lagerfeld [36] and Conrad Black. [37]
She chronicled the Colombian hostage rescue of Ingrid Betancourt in a November 2008 piece titled "Inside Colombia's Hostage War" [38] and wrote about Elda Neyis, aka Karina, Colombia's most notorious FARC female revolutionary.
Orth was one of the first journalists to report on child molestation charges against celebrities Woody Allen and Michael Jackson. [39]
In January 1994 Vanity Fair published "Nightmare in Neverland," the first of five articles from 1994 through 2005 [40] that investigated the charges stemming from Jackson's alleged behavior towards underage boys instigated by the 1993 child sexual abuse accusations against Michael Jackson. [41]
She observed and wrote about two of Jackson's trials including a civil lawsuit filed against him in 2003 by concert promoter Marcel Avram, and the 2005 criminal trial on child molestation, for which Jackson was acquitted. [42]
Orth’s reporting was later associated with 2019 HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland." [43]
Orth reported extensively for Vanity Fair on the child molestation charges against director Woody Allen. [44]
Orth's 10,000-word November 1992 piece, " Mia's Story" broke the news that Woody Allen was in therapy for inappropriate behavior towards his then 7-year-old adopted daughter Dylan and the history of Allen's relationship with Farrow's adopted teenage daughter, Soon Yi-Previn. In 2013, [45] Orth also broke the news that a video of Dylan confiding to Farrow about what she said happened with Allen had been obtained by New York’s Fox Channel 5 but was never aired. [46]
“Mia’s Story” is among the most-read stories in Vanity Fair's archives. [47]
In 2013, in a piece titled "Momma Mia!" [48] Orth obtained the first on the record interview with then 28-year-old Dylan Farrow. In the story, Dylan detailed her allegations of how Allen sexually abused her in the attic of the family home, which Allen strongly denied. [47] Dylan also discussed the impact the child molestation case had on her life and the Farrow family [47] Orth interviewed eight of Farrow’s children [49] for the 9,400-word story [47] which generated significant media interest in Farrow’s son, Ronan, as possibly the biological son of Frank Sinatra. All eight of Farrow’s children interviewed for the story said they suffered psychological damage from the case and wanted nothing to do with Allen. [44]
In response to Orth’s 2013 story, and the renewed media attention on the decades-old accusations and custody fight between Allen and Farrow, Allen drafted a lengthy opinion piece published the New York Times in 2014 denying that he had abused Dylan when she was a child in the early 1990s. [50]
On the same day Allen’s editorial was published in the New York Times, Orth published “10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual Abuse Allegation” in Vanity Fair. [51]
In a May 2016 column for The Hollywood Reporter, Ronan Farrow noted that most of the facts of the claims made by Dylan against Allen had been “meticulously reported by journalist Maureen Orth.” [52]
Much of the reporting by Orth on the relationship between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow was used by filmmakers Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering and Amy Herdy [53] as the basis for their 2021 HBO Documentary “Allen v. Farrow.” [54] Orth was interviewed for the documentary and appears on camera in episodes one and three of the four-part series. [55]
In the spring of 1997, Orth read a news story in the New York Daily News about the manhunt for Andrew Cunanan, and an unlikely string of murders. [56] She began conducting research and gathering information on Cunanan and spent nine weeks developing a story set to appear in Vanity Fair. [57] [58]
While Vanity Fair was doing the final fact-checking of Orth's article, Versace was killed in Miami on July 15, 1997. That night, Cunanan was named as a suspect [57] and the following morning Orth broke the news on NBC's Today Show that, according to her research, Versace and Cunanan had met each other backstage at the San Francisco Opera in 1990 when the designer created the costumes for the opera's production of "Capriccio." [59]
Orth conducted additional research in Miami for her piece, “The Killer’s Trail,” which appeared in the September 1997 issue of the magazine. [60] After Versace's murder, and before her article was published in Vanity Fair, book publisher Delacorte was rumored to have paid Orth a significant advance for a book-length reworking of the story. [61]
Two years later, Orth published Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History. [62] She dedicated the book to her late husband, Tim Russert, and their son Luke, as well as Orth's mother. [57] In the book, Orth claimed, among other things, that Gianni Versace had AIDS and that his deteriorating health was kept a secret to avoid putting a public listing of his company at risk. [63]
In October 2016, reports began circulating that FX would be developing a television miniseries based on Orth's book as part of the American Crime Story franchise. [64] In January 2018, FX debuted a nine-episode miniseries, "American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace" starring Darren Criss, Édgar Ramírez, Penélope Cruz and Ricky Martin. Orth was a creative consultant on the series. [57]
The Versace family was unhappy with how Gianni Versace was portrayed in both the book and the television show, [65] stating that it presented a distorted [66] and fictionalized account of the designer's life. [63] At the time of the television show's premier, the publisher of the book vigorously defended Orth's reporting saying:
"First published almost 19 years ago, Vulgar Favors is a carefully reported and extensively-sourced work of investigative journalism by an award-winning journalist with impeccable credentials. The book has stood the test of time and is widely regarded as the definitive account of Andrew Cunanan's chilling crime spree. Random House stands by the book and its author, Maureen Orth." [67]
At the 2018 Emmy Awards, the series, based on Orth's reporting, won seven Emmy Awards including Outstanding Limited Series, Outstanding Casting, and Outstanding Contemporary Costumes. [68] Orth appeared onstage with the cast and producers to accept the award. [69] The Hollywood Foreign Press Association honored the program with four Golden Globe nominations and two wins for Best Limited Series [70] and Darren Criss won for Best Actor in a limited series. [71]
Orth lives in Washington, D.C. In 1983, she married the political journalist Tim Russert, whom she met at the 1980 Democratic National Convention. Their son, Luke Russert, who was born in August 1985, is a former NBC News correspondent. [72]
Orth is the dedicatee of her friend Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove . [73]
She has served on the Executive Board of the College of Letters and Sciences, University of California, Berkeley and been a Trustee of the University of California, Berkeley, Foundation since 2010 . [74] Orth has also served on the Boards of Internews [75] and the National Council of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. [76]
Orth and her family have vacationed on Nantucket Island since 1993 [77] where their neighbors included television personality Fred Rogers. [78]
Orth is a supporter of the Peace Corps. For the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, she produced a series of video postcards celebrating the organization. [79]
Orth developed an interest in Colombia while a Peace Corps Volunteer in Medellin following college. While there, she built a school the community named for her: Escuela Marina Orth. [6] In 2005, at the request of the Secretary of Education of Medellin, she founded two non-profit foundations: The Marina Orth Foundation, a 501c3 public charity in the United States, and Fundacion Marina Orth in Colombia. [80] The Marina Orth Foundation serves 21 schools, and each K-5 primary school student their own laptop through the One Laptop Per Child program. [81] The program emphasizes STEM, robotics, English and leadership. More than 13,000 students have been involved with the program. [82] Computer coding is taught at the third-grade level and all students are taught robotics beginning in kindergarten. International volunteers help to teach English and organize extra-curricular activities. The foundation has sent the school's robotics teams to international competitions. [83]
Heywood Allen is an American filmmaker, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. Allen has received many accolades, including the most nominations (16) for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He has won four Academy Awards, ten BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Grammy Award, as well as nominations for a Emmy Award and a Tony Award. Allen was awarded an Honorary Golden Lion in 1995, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1997, an Honorary Palme d'Or in 2002, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2014. Two of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Maria de Lourdes Villiers "Mia" Farrow is an American actress and activist. She first gained notice for her role as Allison MacKenzie in the television soap opera Peyton Place and gained further recognition for her subsequent short-lived marriage to Frank Sinatra. An early film role, as Rosemary in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968), saw her nominated for a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. She went on to appear in several films throughout the 1970s, such as Follow Me! (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), and Death on the Nile (1978). Her younger sister is Prudence Farrow.
Maureen Paula O'Sullivan was an Irish actress who played Jane in the Tarzan series of films during the era of Johnny Weissmuller. She starred in dozens of feature films across a span of more than half a century and performed with such actors as Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo, Fredric March, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, the Marx Bros. and Woody Allen. In 2020, she was listed at number eight on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Andrew Phillip Cunanan was an American serial killer who murdered five people over three months from April 27 to July 15, 1997. His victims include Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace and Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin. Cunanan died by suicide on July 23, 1997, eight days after murdering Versace.
Giovanni Maria "Gianni" Versace was an Italian fashion designer, socialite and businessman. He was the founder of Versace, an international luxury-fashion house that produces accessories, fragrances, make-up, home furnishings and clothes. He also designed costumes for theatre and films. As a friend of Eric Clapton, Princess Diana, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Madonna, Elton John, Tupac Shakur, Joan Collins and many other celebrities, he was one of the first designers to link fashion to the music world. He and his partner Antonio D'Amico were regulars on the international party scene. The place where he was born and raised, Reggio di Calabria, greatly influenced his career.
Donatella Francesca Versace, sometimes simply referred to mononymously as Donatella, is an Italian fashion designer, Grand Ufficiale dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana and businesswoman, socialite, and model. She is the sister of Gianni Versace, founder of the luxury fashion company Versace, with whom she worked closely on the development of the brand and in particular its combining of Italian luxury with pop culture and celebrity.
Satchel Ronan O'Sullivan Farrow is an American journalist. The son of actress Mia Farrow and filmmaker Woody Allen, he is known for his investigative reporting on sexual abuse allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, which was published in The New Yorker magazine. The magazine won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for this reporting, sharing the award with The New York Times. Farrow has worked for UNICEF and as a government advisor.
Lee Albert Miglin was an American business tycoon and philanthropist. After starting his career as a door-to-door salesman and then broker, Miglin became a successful real estate developer. He was an early developer of business parks. His firm, at one point, proposed the construction of the Miglin-Beitler Skyneedle, which was planned to be the tallest building in the world. Miglin was murdered in his home in May 1997 by Andrew Cunanan, a serial killer.
Moses Amadeus Farrow is a South Korean-American family therapist. The adopted son of actress Mia Farrow and director Woody Allen, he has come to the defense of his father against a sexual abuse allegation.
American Crime Story is an American true crime anthology television series developed by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who are also executive producers, alongside Brad Falchuk, Nina Jacobson, Ryan Murphy, and Brad Simpson. The series is the second installment in the American Story media franchise, following American Horror Story. Each season is presented as a self-contained miniseries and is independent of the events in other seasons. Alexander and Karaszewski did not return after the first season, but retain executive-producer credits. In the United States, the series is broadcast on FX. In January 2023, the series was renewed for a fourth season.
Sophie von Haselberg is an American actress. She is best known for co-starring in Woody Allen's 2015 film Irrational Man, alongside Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone. Other notable roles have been in FX's The Assassination of Gianni Versace (2018) and the Lifetime television series American Princess (2019). She is the daughter of Bette Midler and Martin von Haselberg.
Soon-Yi Previn is the adopted daughter of actress Mia Farrow and musician André Previn. She is married to filmmaker Woody Allen, and the couple have two adopted children.
The second season of American Crime Story, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, examines the July 1997 assassination of legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace by sociopathic spree killer Andrew Cunanan. It is based on Maureen Orth's book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, and was developed by Tom Rob Smith, after the departure of series creators Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski.
In August 1992, American filmmaker and actor Woody Allen was alleged by actress Mia Farrow to have sexually molested their adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow, then aged seven, in Mia Farrow's home in Bridgewater, Connecticut. Allen has repeatedly denied the allegation.
There have been many reported cases and accusations of sexual abuse in the American film industry reported against people related to the medium of cinema of the United States.
Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story is a 1995 American drama miniseries directed by Karen Arthur and written by Cynthia A. Cherbak. The film stars Patsy Kensit, Dennis Boutsikaris, Richard Muenz, Robert LuPone, Gina Wilkinson and Frances Helm. The film aired on Fox in two parts on February 28, 1995, and on March 2, 1995.
Leslee Dart is an American publicist and entrepreneur. She is the founder and co-CEO of the Dart Group, now known as 42West, which prior to its 2017 acquisition was the largest independently-owned public relations firm in the entertainment industry.
Marilyn Miglin was an American entrepreneur, inventor, and longtime host on the Home Shopping Network. She has been referred to as the "Queen of Makeovers".
Apropos of Nothing is a 2020 memoir by American filmmaker and humorist Woody Allen. The book was originally due to be published by Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, in April 2020, but on March 6, 2020, Hachette said they would no longer publish it. The memoir was published, in English, by Arcade Publishing and, in Italian, by La nave di Teseo on March 23, 2020. The photo of Allen on the back cover was taken by his longtime friend and frequent co-star Diane Keaton.
Allen v. Farrow is an American documentary television miniseries directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering that explores an allegation of sexual abuse made against Woody Allen in 1992. It consists of four episodes and premiered on February 21, 2021, on HBO.
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