Martin Scorsese’s First Wife Headlines New Director Book: Complete Relationship Timeline
By Alexander Ross
The marriage directly coincided with the tortuous creation of Scorsese’s debut feature. The film originated in 1965 as an NYU student project titled Bring on the Dancing Girls, morphed into I Call First, and finally premiered theatrically in 1967 as Who's That Knocking at My Door. It starred an unknown fellow student named Harvey Keitel and exposed the Catholic sexual neuroses and street violence of young Italian-American men.
Producing a full-length feature with student resources dragged on for years. Scorsese was forced to stop production repeatedly whenever money ran out. To secure theatrical distribution through exploitation producer Joseph Brenner, Scorsese even traveled to Amsterdam in 1968 to shoot an explicit, unrelated erotic dream sequence to pad the runtime.
Brennan weathered these disruptions firsthand. Film cans lined the apartment floorboards, while visiting actors and student cinematographers turned private living spaces into impromptu workshops. While the finished picture announced a fierce cinematic talent, the relentless strain eroded the young marriage. By the turn of the decade, the couple had drifted apart. They separated quietly, finalizing their divorce in the early 1970s as Scorsese relocated west to direct Boxcar Bertha for Roger Corman.
Alexander Ross has covered the video game industry for a decade, writing deep dives on game design, esports tournaments, VR developments, and gaming culture.
