Newsweek
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 1974 film The Godfather Part II . [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 Wertmüller during the filming of Seven Beauties in Italy. The film received four nominations at the 49th Academy Awards. [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]
Vanity Fair
Orth has written for Vanity Fair since 1988 and has been a special correspondent for the 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 after she left office. [31]
Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Orth traveled to Central Asia to investigate the connection between drugs and terrorism for a piece titled "Afghanistan's Deadly Habit". [32]
Orth has investigated pedophile priest Paul Shanley [33] and the Laci Peterson murder. She has also written articles on Tom Cruise [34] and Scientology, Madonna, [35] Tina Turner, [36] Karl Lagerfeld [37] and Conrad Black. [38]
Orth chronicled the hostage rescue of Colombian-French politician Ingrid Betancourt in a November 2008 piece titled "Inside Colombia's Hostage War" [39] and wrote about Elda Neyis, also known as Karina, Colombia's most notorious FARC female revolutionary.
Orth was one of the first journalists to report on child molestation charges against Woody Allen and Michael Jackson. [40]
Reporting on Woody Allen and Mia Farrow
Orth reported extensively for Vanity Fair on the child molestation charges against director Woody Allen. [45]
Orth's 10,000-word November 1992 piece, "Mia's Story", broke the news that 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, [46] 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. [47] "Mia’s Story" is among the most-read stories in Vanity Fair's archives. [48]
In 2013, in a piece titled "Momma Mia!" [49] Orth obtained the first on-the-record interview with Dylan Farrow, then age 28. In the story, Dylan detailed her allegation that Allen sexually abused her in the attic of the family home, which Allen strongly denied. [48] Dylan also discussed the impact the child molestation case had on her life and the Farrow family [48] Orth interviewed eight of Farrow’s children [50] for the 9,400-word story [48] 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. [45]
In 2014, 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 in The New York Times denying that he had abused Dylan when she was a child in the early 1990s. [51] On the same day that 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. [52]
Much of the reporting by Orth on the relationship between 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]
Reporting on Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace
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, Italian fashion designer Gianni 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 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 Vanity Fair. [60]
After Versace's murder, and before her article was published in the magazine, 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 husband, Tim Russert, and their son Luke, as well as Orth's mother. [57] In the book, she claimed, among other things, that 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 series's premiere, 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 70th Primetime Emmy Awards, the series won seven 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 series also received four Golden Globe nominations, winning two for Best Limited Series [70] and Best Actor in a Limited Series for Darren Criss's portrayal of Cunanan. [71]
