Mark Hanna, The Famous Broker Who Hired Jordan Belfort
One of the most famous scenes in The Wolf of Wall Street involves Matthew McConaughey, as stockbroker Mark Hanna, thumping his chest during a meeting with Belfort. Unlike other characters in the film, Mark Hanna is a real person, and his actual name is used in the movie. That said, the on-screen depiction of him differs slightly from the man he really was.
Mark HannaMark Hanna, the real-life stockbroker who mentored Jordan Belfort early in his career.
For starters, Hanna revealed in a 2014 tweet that he never actually did the iconic chest-thumping — that was purely an invention of McConaughey.
Hanna made just a handful of Twitter posts talking about the movie and his personal experience with Belfort. For a time, he even hosted a website through which he offered a discussion group “that covers everything about Life and Business from the Master.”
The website described Hanna as a “legendary broker and salesman” at some of the most famous — and infamous — firms on Wall Street throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Hanna attended St. John’s University, graduating with his M.B.A. in finance, then went on to work for large brokerage houses such as Lehman Brothers and L.F. Rothschild, where he met Jordan Belfort.
Around the same time, Hanna was named “Broker of the Year” for earning more than $1 million in commissions in his first year on the job. After that, he became the Senior Vice President of L.F. Rothschild — and in 1990, he helped Belfort open Stratton Oakmont. Although he didn’t stick around for long — he left to start The Harriman Group in 1993 — his legacy has become irreversibly tied to the true story of The Wolf of Wall Street.
Paramount PicturesMatthew McConaughey as Mark Hanna in The Wolf of Wall Street.
While Mark Hanna eventually left Wall Street behind to focus on speaking engagements, he largely avoided talking about his personal life during his time as a stockbroker. Thankfully, Belfort’s memoir fills in some of those gaps.
In his book, Belfort describes a dinner Hanna invited him to soon after they met. At the time, Belfort didn’t drink, but Hanna ordered them both martinis, telling Belfort, “Have no fear; soon enough you’ll be an alcoholic.” But the most off-putting part of the evening, Belfort wrote, was when he realized that Hanna would not be eating at all — he was just going to do coke.
“He scooped out a sparkling pile of nature’s most powerful appetite suppressant — namely, cocaine — and he took a giant snort up his right nostril… I was astonished. Couldn’t believe it! Right here in the restaurant!”
Hanna then told Belfort that the “true ticket on Wall Street” was cocaine and “hookers.”
The young Belfort under Hanna’s tutelage reads as a drastically different person than the Belfort who was known as the real Wolf of Wall Street. Both the film and Belfort’s memoir point to Hanna’s influence as part of the reason for Belfort’s eventual descent into debauchery, but Mark Hanna was really just a representation of Wall Street men of the era — men who defined success as having enough wealth to blow a ton of money on drugs, women, and yachts.
